Blood Relations (13 page)

It was only after Sam was back at his desk with a deposition transcript in another case that he realized that Ryabin had been talking about Matthew.

Close to noon, Sam’s secretary stopped him on his way past her cubicle. She had a batch of papers for him to sign. He checked his watch, then felt his pockets for a pen. She gave him one, and he leaned over her desk. The secretarial furniture was modern, sleek, and speckled gray. Gloria’s work space was jammed with lopsided craft projects her various grandchildren had made. Their faces smiled from a garden of tiny photo frames.

Sam was supposed to have his own secretary but instead shared Gloria Potter with two other attorneys in Major Crimes, the budget being what it was.

“Joe McGee left Adela Ramos’s number for you,” Glona said.

“All right, let me have it.” Sam shifted the pen to a better position and scrawled his signature, which consisted of cramped initials ending in straight horizontal lines. His thumb was aching today.

Gloria patted a little yellow note onto his coat sleeve.

“Here. And Vicky Duran wants to see you.”

“I don’t have time. I’ve got lunch downtown with Dina.”

Sam went around an upholstered partition to the next desk, sat in the empty chair, and punched in the number for Adela Ramos.

Not a damn thing he could do for the woman, he thought, leaning his forehead on extended fingers.

The phone puffed in his ear. The system had fucked her over. No, not the system. A bad call. The weight of his decision from last week bore down on him. He could make sure the police kept an eye on Luis Balmaseda. Arrest Balmaseda for stalking if it got bad; throw his ass in jail.

“Sam.”

He looked up. Beekie.

Victoria Duran came around the partition and stood over him. Bright green suit with black buttons. Auburn hair. Colorful as a parrot. Sam held up a hand, listened through another ring, then replaced the receiver.

Gloria had gone to the copy machine. Her cardigan sweater hung over the back of her chair. Beekie spun the chair around and sat down. She crossed her impressive legs. They I shone in sheer hose from thigh to open-toed pumps.

“Do we have a decision on the alleged sexual battery case?”

“The alleged victim is coming in at two o’clock,” Sam said.

“Because Eddie is getting phone calls,” Beekie said, her eyes going momentarily toward the corridor. “Reporters, the attorney for Klaus Ruffini, Lamont’s producer. I told them you’re handling the case. They say they called, but you don’t call back.”

“As soon as I have something to tell them, I will. For now, we’re still looking into it.” Sam stood up. “Sorry, Vicky, I’ve got an appointment.”

“Wait a minute.” She reached up from her chair to stop him. “I asked Dale Finley to help you out. He can do the background checks, collect evidence, whatever you need.”

Finley was an investigator for the state attorney’s office, hired by Eddie Mora a couple of years ago. The story was Dale Finley had worked for the CIA, got busted in Havana, and spent some hard years in Combinado del Este prison before being exchanged for a Cuban spy grabbed in Panama.

“I don’t recall asking for backup,” Sam said. “Whose idea was this? Eddie’s?”

“Mine.

“Isn’t that outside your job description, Beekie?”

Her back stiffened. “I want to help you, okay?”

:‘Why is that?”

‘Are you trying to be rude?”

:‘No, I’m just curious why you care.”

‘I care t ‘ hat this matter isn’t mishandled.”

Sam patted her shoulder, his hand bouncing a little on the jutting shoulder pad. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Tell Dale Finley I don’t need him.”

” He would go straight to Eddie. I already told Eddie that Finley is working with you. What would he think?

You’ll make yourself look bad.”

Halfway to the corridor, Sam turned slowly around.

“Vicky, pay attention. Stay out of this. If at some point I need Dale Finley, I will talk to him.”

Under the already vivid powder on her cheeks, Victoria Duran’s color heightened. She uncrossed her legs and stood up next to him. Sam could see the reddish sun blotches on her chest, the skin wrinkling a bit at the cleavage. She spoke in a low voice. “I told Eddie to turn the case over to someone in the sexual battery unit. Treat it more like a routine matter, which it is. If we give it to the head of Major Crimes, people will wonder why such a heavy gun. But he trusts you. So I said, ‘Okay, have it your way, Eddie.” But Sam, you’ve had this over a week. People are asking questions.

Don’t make it into something it’s not. I know what you think of Eddie. He took your job. Don’t stab him in the back.”

Holding back a laugh, Sam realized that Vicky Duran’s feelings for the state attorney went way beyond professional. The poor woman was in love with him.

She had her fingers clamped around Sam’s coat sleeve now, like talons, digging in when he started to move.

“Don’t. If you ruin his chances, Sam, you won’t be happy working here.”

He raised his eyes to hers and she dropped his sleeve.

He came in closer, conscious of his size, and of her moving backward a step, bumping the desk. He said quietly, “Better hope he takes you with him, Vicky.”

Sam was twenty minutes late meeting Dina for lunch.

She had chosen the restaurant downstairs from her accounting firm, a walnut-paneled place with a threetiered salad bar and classical music coming out of hidden speakers. Walking in, smoothing his wind-blown hair, Sam bypassed the maitre d’ and went to Dina’s table, located to one side under a painting of a Bahamian fishing village.

The waiter came over and he ordered iced tea, nothing else.

Dina’s lunch was already on the table, a fillet of grilled fish. She had eaten it into a square, apparently, then had cut off the corners to make a perfect octagon.

Sam asked, “What’s up?”

“Thank you for tearing yourself away from the office,” Dina said.

“Sorry. I got here as soon as I could. Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine.” Her olive green suit made her skin sallow, and the brown shadows beneath her eyes might have been painted on. She stirred cream into her coffee. “I was thinking of going to Tarpon Springs next weekend.

Would you mind?”

He smiled a little, trying not to show his annoyance. He turned the cut-glass salt shaker around and around. “Dina, I told you. I have a trial starting Monday.”

“I know that,” she said. “I don’t expect you to go with me. I’ll fly to Tampa. Nick can meet me at the airport. He says Dad’s a little better. He was asking for me the other day.” Her mouth twisted into a smile. “Pou ineh i Constandina? Maybe this time he’ll remember who I am when he sees me.”

She’d last been in Tarpon Springs at Easter, a month and a half ago, but not only to visit her father. Nick had told Sam that whenever Dina went home she would pick up some potted flowers from his nursery and take them out to the cemetery.

The waiter brought iced tea in a frosted glass. A thin wedge of lime sat on the rim.

Sam said, “Sure. Go ahead. You want to take Melanie along?”

Dina shook her head.

“That’s fine. We’ll make do.” He tore open a blue pack of fake sugar and stiffed it into the tea. He didn’t know what she wanted him to say. “Go up anytime you like. You don’t have to ask my permission.”

As he lifted the glass he noticed the way her attention seemed focused on a spot past his chair. “What’s the matter, Dina?”

She shifted her eyes to his, then said, “I’ve made an appointment with Frank Tolin for five-thirty this afternoon, for both of us. Frank will tell us if we have grounds to file a lawsuit for wrongful death.”

Carefully he replaced his glass on the table.

Dina smiled, then said, “I believe that is the correct term, isn’t it? Wrongful death?”

His mind finally caught up to the meaning of the words.

“A lawsuit? Against whom, for God’s sake?”

“The bar where Matthew had been drinking. He wasn’t twenty-one. He didn’t have an ID, even a false one.

They broke the law, and they should be held accountable.

We can sue Harley-Davidson if there was a defect in his motorcycle. And the city of Miami Beach. Did anyone ever ask if the road was properly maintained? And what about the owner of the truck? It was changing lanes-”

“Hold it.” Sam lifted his hands. “When did you see Frank Tolin?”

“I haven’t yet. I called him this morning, we discussed it briefly over the telephone, and he said to come in. Five-thirty is the only time he has available till next week.

You’re not in trial this afternoon. There’s no reason we can’t go.”

“I can’t believe this.”

Dina asked, “Do you have some objections to Frank Tolin? I’ve noticed that since you left his office you never mention his name.”

:‘You want to sue Harley-Davidson?”

‘The motorcycle is still around. We can have it examined. A friend of Matthew’s bought it, and it’s still in his garage till he finds the money to-”

“Forget it.”

Her dark eyes were on him, accusing.

“Dina. Listen to me.” He dropped his hand over hers, which stiffened under his fingers. “Honey. Whatever Frank told you over the phone, if we file a lawsuitwhich I can’t imagine he’d advise us to do-the chances of winning, much less collecting damages—2’

“I don’t give a damn about the money. It’s the principle. People can’t be allowed to get away with this.”

“With what?”

“With destroying our son. What was his death if not wrongful? And Matthew wasn’t the only one destroyed.

What about us? You’re morose and edgy. Melanie’s grades are terrible. My career is in tatters.”

“Dina, I am familiar with personal injury law. We are not-”

“You’ve never done a wrongful death case. Have you?”

He spoke slowly, his forefinger accenting the words.

“We are not going to spend money we do not have to file a lawsuit begging a jury to compensate us for an accident caused by the negligence of a nineteen-year-old who chose to drink, who chose to exceed the speed limit on a souped up, fifteen-thousand-dollar motorcycle at four o’clock in the-”

“He didn’t choose the result.”

“No. He didn’t. That was just tough luck. He’s not around to see the consequences, but we are. And that’s our tough luck. I’m not going to lay the blame on somebody else. There’s already too goddamn much of that these days.” Sam picked up his tea, then put it down.

He turned sideways in his chair and forced his breathing to slow.

When he glanced at her again, Dina said, “You’re worried how it might appear, I suppose. What people would say if the next state attorney for Dade County sued the city of Miami Beach-”

His angry, warning look stopped her in mid-sentence.

Then he added quietly, “The answer is no.”

“You astonish me,” she said. “Your only son is gone and it causes barely a ripple. You’ll show someone his picture in our photo album next year, or in ten years, and say, ‘This was our son Matthew.” And they say, ‘Oh.

What a shame.” Yes. What a shame. Tell me, Sam. Is it that you didn’t care, or are you afraid to admit you loved him?”

Sam swirled the ice in his tea, then took a swallow.

“Great set of alternatives you’re giving me. I’m either an unfeeling bastard or a total coward.” As he watched, the color drained from her face, and she stiffened, hugging her arms over her chest. “Dina?”

She turned her cheek away from his hand and took a deep breath, then another. Her voice, when it came, was calm. She smiled. “You know, Sam, I grew up believin in God. It’s easy to do if nothing bad has happened.

Well, here’s what I think, now that I’m older and presumably wiser: If there is a God, he got bored with us a long time ago, and now he’s busy elsewhere. The innocent perish and the wicked are raised up, but don’t wait for the Almighty to balance the accounts. I don’t know if there’s eternal justice or not, but I can tell you this. Here on earth we’d better make our own. That’s what you do, isn’t it, Sam? Hand out justice, or try to. Your own substitute for God. Well, guess what? Our son is dead. And the funny thing is we’re dying, too, and you just don’t care.”

Laughing suddenly, she raised her fingers to her lips. “I said it. Dead. Usually I can’t get the word past my teeth.

Matthew is dead. His flesh is rotting in a coffin, and by God some point should be made of it. He is dead. I wish you would acknowledge that fact. And I would dearly love it if someone would simply say, ‘I’m sorry.”

” Her eyes gleamed with tears.

He took her hand. “Dina, no. You think a lawsuit will fix everything. Believe me, it won’t. Let me call Dr. Berman.”

Her smile wavered. “I have tried Dr. Berman. I have taken the pills he prescribed. I have said prayers to a God in whom I no longer believe. I have considered going back to Tarpon Springs to live. I have even thought of not living at all. That would be effective, certainly, but a little extreme.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Sam leaned on an elbow, knuckles supporting his cheek, which had grown some stubble since he had shaved at five-thirty this morning.

“I want-need-a resolution. I don’t know what will happen after I talk to Frank, but I’m going to keep that appointment, whether you go with me or not.”

Sam could see it: Dina sitting in the leather wing chair in Frank Tolin’s office, weeping. Sam had never Shown much pity during Matthew’s LIFE. He had yelled at Matthew, then at Dina for taking Matthew’s side, the two of them forming an alliance against him. And Sam was still demanding that she make a choice: her husband or her son. It wasn’t fair.

“All right,” Sam said. “I’ll go with you.”

“NO.” She aligned the corners of her napkin and smoothed it flat on the table. “You’ve told me how you feel. Tonight-if you have time, or if you’re interestedI’ll tell you what Frank said.”

“Jesus. You wanted me to go. I’m saying I will.”

Anger flashed across her face. “Is it too much to ask that you treat me as a wife, rather than as another of your obligations?”

Stunned, he didn’t reply.

For an instant her emotions seemed to hang like a stone at its apogee, then her features sank into something like despair. “I love you, Sam.”