Blood Relations (6 page)

“It did me more good than Dr. Berman. Look.” Dina turned on her knees to face Sam directly. On her breast lay a flat silver cross with the three semicircles on each point that made it took so Eastern Orthodox. Sam hadn’t seen it in a long time.

He didn’t know what to say, Dina asked, “Does it bother you?”

He shook his head. “No. If you want to wear it, go ahead.”

She smiled. “It wouldn’t go with my suits.” She went back to trimming leaves, and the cross swung with the movement of her arm, ticking on a button. She was wearing one of his old shirts.

With Dina’s head bowed over the clippers, Sam could see how her hair was coming in gray. It was parted in the middle and pinned behind her neck. Dark brown at the ends, more gray at the crown. He could have traced with a finger the line that indicated when Matthew died. She had aged since last summer. Even so, she was still a striking woman, with dark eyes and a mouth so full and red she didn’t need lipstick.

He knew he loved her, but in a different way than twenty-some years ago. They’d been through a lot, most of which he didn’t like to dwell on. He had considered divorce more than once; had even talked to a divorce attorney. Nothing had come of it for one reason or another.

Kids. The job. Money.

Then Matthew died, and she fell apart, and that had made him think about what mattered in the long run.

Everything has a time, he had finally realized. There’s a point when you can make big changes, and after that you can’t. A few years ago he would let himself get worked up over what-ifs. Sit out here in the gazebo by himself and drink, and then he’d feel like hell, as if his heart was going to give out, or any minute he’d start to cry.

Where would they be in twenty more years? Sliding toward seventy, an absurd idea. Wherever they were, it wouldn’t be here. The house was too big. When Dina took a leave of absence, too sick to work, Sam had refinanced it. The monthly payments still made him a little lightheaded every time he signed the check.

He watched her for a while, then asked, “Dina, doesn’t your firm have a fair number of clients over on the Beach?” Jacobs Ross & Rendell, of which she was a partner, was the Miami branch of an accounting practice headquartered on Wall Street.

“Several. Why?”

“What about Klaus Ruffini?”

“Ruffini. No, he isn’t one of ours, not directly. I believe someone in the office did a financial forecast for a project he’s involved in. A resort. There was an article in the Herald a few months ago. Didn’t you see it? They want to build a big hotel and several hundred time-share apartments, all very low class, if you ask me. If we’re lucky it will all sink under its own weight.”

“What do you know about Ruffini?”

“He’s from northern Italy. His mother’s Swiss, I think.

His father owns a shipping line or a steel mill, something like that. Why are you so interested in Klaus Ruffini?”

“He’s been accused of sexual battery. He and two other men, in the VIP room of a nightclub on Washington Avenue. Eddie wants me to check it out.”

A cool smiled curved Dina’s lips. She brushed some leaves out of the cracks between the bricks. A vacuum cleaner could not have done a more thorough j said, “Rape. On South Beach, how shocking. They’ll buy oh. She her off. Or scare her off.”

“Probably so.”

She said, “I see people like that all the time. They do what they want and no one touches them.”

“Have you met Klaus Riiffini9”

“Someone pointed him out to me in a restaurant downtown. He was with his wife, a fashion designer. They own Moda Ruffini.”

11W

hat’s that?”

“Sam, you really are out of touch in the Justice Building.” Dina tugged on a root. “Moda Ruffini is a clothing store, along the lines of Armani or Versace, but not quite as chic. Matthew tried out for a magazine ad for them, but they didn’t use him.” Dina dropped the root into the bag.

“A little strange, isn’t it, that Eddie gave the case to you?”

“Not really. I’m the only one in the office that people know won’t kiss his ass. He’s trying to dump the case without people thinking he was influenced.”

She arched a brow. “Was he?”

Sam shrugged. “The city manager wants the case to go away. Eddie agrees that it should, but he’s trying damned hard not to look cozy with Hal Delucca.”

“And so he’s letting you do the dirty work.” Dina laughed. “Eddie’s more devious than you are, sweet. Be careful.”

He didn’t tell her the rest of it, that Eddie Mora might not be the state attorney much longer. That Eddie had hanged for hinted at supporting Sam as his successor, in exc h he was a little help on this. Sam wasn’t sure how muc reading into it. He wanted to let it sit for a while. ho’s the Dina shifted the cardboard under her knees. “W

woman? I assume the victim is a female, though one can never be sure over there.”

“A model, supposedly. Seventeen years old.”

“Seventeen. My God. She’s a child. Sam, you have to pursue this.”

“You told me a minute ago there’s no way I could win.”

“What about statutory rape? She’s under the age of consent.”

“It doesn’t apply.”

“Why not?” Dina demanded.

“Because statutory rape requires a minor of previously chaste character.” Sam said, “This girl isn’t. She went to a nightclub, took drugs, got drunk-”

“And got what she deserved.”

“I didn’t say that. I said it’s probably not a case we could win. If the jury won’t buy it, we’ve got nothing.” He watched Dina’s clippers snap at stray twigs. He said, “The jury in the Balmaseda case came back with a verdict.”

She glanced up, waiting.

“An acquittal. It took them four hours.”

“They let him go, after what he did to that little boy?”

“They had more than a reasonable doubt about who did it, I guess. The judge excluded his confession.” Sam flexed his right hand, rotating his thumb. “They might have voted for second degree, if we’d given them the chance. Joe McGee-he’s the division chief-wanted to go with jury instructions on first degree, and I let him do it. I feel bad about that. It was a risk. I shouldn’t have gambled.”

Dina made an exasperated laugh. “It isn’t your fault.

Balmaseda got away with it. Some people seem to get away with things, don’t they?”

“Not all of them, or I’d quit this business,” Sam said.

“He murdered a child and got away with it. How many other criminals like Balmaseda get away with it?”

Suddenly weary, Sam said, “Let’s go in. I want to hit the sack early. What about you?”

But Dina was still staring intently at him. “Nothing will happen to Klaus Ruffini either. Don’t dare tell me the girl was responsible. Three men and a seventeen-year-old girl.” Dina’s expression darkened further. “Have you spoken to her?”

“Not yet.”

“Had you even planned to?” She laughed. “Of course not. She should have known better.”

“Yes, I plan to speak to the girl,” Sam said, trying not to show his irritation. “If it’s a good case, I’ll file it. If it isn’t, I won’t.”

flush of red had risen in Dina’s cheeks. “You can’t.

You’re stuck in a system that has no connection to justice, only to expediency, or to whoever has the most money or power. Oh, you’ll say it isn’t that way, but it is. Men with money can rape a young woman and nothing will be done about it.”

Sam leaned heavily against the framed opening of the gazebo. Shadows stretched across the grass. On the other side of the fence the sprinklers slowed, then stopped.

When he looked at Dina again, she was twisting the clippers through a handful of stems.

“Is this girl from a good family, Sam? You should find out. Do her parents know what happened to her? I almost want to call them myself. We should have a support group. Parents of Children Ruined by South Beach, what do you think?”

“Dina, for Christ’s sake. Matthew died because he got drunk and crashed his damned motorcycle.” Sam could feel his neck getting hot. “He did it to himself. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it, and even less you can do about it now. How long do we have to go over and over this?”

She pulled back as if he had struck her.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Why don’t we go in? Melanie made dinner.”

“Sam, do you suppose we’re being punished for something?”

“By what?”

“God. Eternity.”

“No.” Sam rested his forehead on his fists. “I don’t believe in that.”

“Strange thing for a lawyer to say.” The clippers made metallic clicks. “The universe has laws, doesn’t it? And laws imply judgment. You know that well enough. If someone suffers, there has to be a reason. A system of laws must be rational. If one is punished, the next question is, what is the punishmentfor?”

The breathlessness of her voice made him look at her.

She was crying. Tears were spilling down her cheeks.

Sam picked up her straw hat. He said gently, “Come on, honey. Let’s go in.”

“I’m not finished. I want to finish this before it gets dark.”

He stepped down to the walkway, holding Dina’s hat out to her. Then he saw her left hand. She was still clipping off the last few branches, and blood ran down her arm in bright streaks, soaking into the rolled cuff of the white shirt, He knelt and grabbed her wrist. “Dina! What-” The clippers clattered to the bricks.

There was a gash in her left thumb between the first and second joints. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said wonderingly.

“Isn’t that funny? It doesn’t hurt at all.” The blood was dripping onto her slacks now and spattering the walkway. Sam let go long enough to pull his T-shirt over his head. He wrapped the hem of it around her thumb and pressed.

“This is deep. You’ll need stitches.”

“No.” She struggled to pull her hand away. “No, I don’t want to go to a doctor. Not for this.” Her head sank onto his chest. “You fix it for me, Sam. Please.”

With an arm around her back, he lifted Dina to her feet and took her inside.

Sam bound the cut with gauze and tape while Melanie watched, grimacing. He said he would check it in the morning, and if it looked bad, she would go to the doctor, no arguments. Melanie hovered until Dina told her to please stop. She was all right, for heaven’s sake.

Now Dina lay in bed. She had taken a pill, and her eyes were nearly closed. “I cause so much trouble,” she whispered. “Poor Sam. I’ve worn you out.”

“No. Go to sleep.” He smoothed her hair, which lay in unruly tangles on the pillow.

“I won’t dream tonight,” she said. “When I take these pills I don’t dream. But this week he’s been in my dreams every night.”

“Bad dreams?”

She nodded. “Very bad. Do you ever dream of him, Sam?”

“No.” He noticed that the silver cross lay upside down on the nightstand, its chain jumbled. “You took it off.”

She laughed sleepily. “The pills work better. I think I was having a flashback to my childhood. Put it back in my dresser, will you? Throw it out, I don’t care.”

He opened the drawer of the nightstand and dropped the cross inside.

“Sam? Lie down with me.”

“Sure. Scoot over.” He put an arm under her neck, kissed her forehead, then gazed out the window at the darkening sky while her breathing deepened.

They had met when he was twenty-two years old, just out of the army. His father had died the year before in Winter Haven, where he had owned an orange grove. Sam went to settle some matters with the estate, then drove up to the University of Florida in Gainesville to see about enrolling. He didn’t know what he wanted to study, but he had some GI benefits and enough pay saved to get through four years if he was careful. He picked up a catalog from admissions, then strolled around the leafy oldbrick campus. He was wearing his green T-shirt, and his hair was regulation short.

A pack of hippies began to trail him. Tie-dyed, bellbottomed freaks. One wore an army jacket with a black armband. They shouted at him. How many babies had he killed in Vietnam? Hey, soldier-boy, did you bomb any villages? How many women did you rape? Did you get off on it?

Sam’s hands went into fists. He waited for them to make a move, wanted them to. He was ready to break some bones. Then he heard another voice. A darkhaired girl with books in her arms pushed through, shouting for them to stop it, leave him alone. They stared at her long enough for the mood to break.

Sam followed her and asked why she had done that.

She shrugged. “It wasn’t fair. They don’t know who you are.”

“Neither do you. Maybe I did kill people over there.

Maybe I liked it.”

Then this dark-eyed girl stopped walking. She studied him. “No. I don’t think you liked it.”

Sam knew he couldn’t let her just walk away, vanishing into the crowd of students.

Her name, she told him later, was Constandina Pondakos. And then she laughed. “Dina for short, okay?”

It was still dark outside when Sam woke up. He lay in bed for a while, then swung his feet over the edge, trying not to wake Dina. He went around to the other side and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. She didn’t stir. Sam put on slacks and a T-shirt, then went downstairs to make some coffee. The refrigerator hummed, and a tree frog croaked in the backyard.

Police reports on the Alice Duncan sexual battery case were in his briefcase. He pulled out the folder, lay it on the kitchen table, and flipped it open. He put on his glasses and sat down. The ten pages included a summary by the lead detective, along with supplemental reports by two other men in the Personal Crimes Unit and the four uniformed officers who had secured the premises, gathered evidence, and interviewed witnesses at the scene.

Sipping his coffee, Sam scanned the report. Victim stated that Fonseca forced her to engage in sexual intercourse with him and then with Lamont. Fonseca and Ruffini then restrained victim while Ruffini sodomized her with the neck of a champagne bottle.

Sam skipped ahead. After the premises were secured the following items were taken into evidence. The sordid list included ladies pantyhose; a used condom; a .22-caliber double-shot pistol; a crack pipe; two hypodermic syringes; several forms and varieties of drugs in vials, plastic bags, pills, rocks, capsules; and rolling paper.