Authors: Janice Weber
Far, far back in his brain, two tiny cells that had been floating in a sea of billions of other cells suddenly collided. Ross
began to feel a little ill. “I hope not,” he said, slowly pushing the file aside.
Marjorie opened her appointment book and recited the day s events. Ross worked with her until the other employees arrived
and the fax machines began raining acid on everyone’s parades. After Marjorie returned to her desk, Ross picked up his phone.
He knew Dagmar’s number by heart now. “Would it be possible to get together today? Late afternoon?”
“I could meet you at Joseph’s apartment,” she said.
“Your apartment, you mean. Four-thirty? I won’t take too much of your time.”
He scraped through the day on automatic, visiting a few sites, smiling at all the right faces. Business was booming, as if
Dana were still alive. On one hand, it was a relief to stay busy; on the other hand, it was a little insulting to his partner’s
memory. Ross spent hours trying to remember what Emily had told him about Diavolina. She had mentioned someone named Leo:
wasn’t he the chef who ran away? There was Ward. Ross didn’t want to think about her at all. Then there was Byron, the OD’d
sous-chef. There were a couple of rejects floating around the kitchen. They served weird food and were very popular with the
smart set. That was all Ross remembered. If only he had listened better, asked a few more questions, while Emily was working
there!
At four o’clock, he buzzed Marjorie. “I have to see Dagmar for a few minutes.”
“Again? Is she trying to adopt you or something?” Hearing no answer, Marjorie sighed. “You’ve got the Turners coming in at
five-thirty. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll be back in an hour.” Ross walked briskly through the Common. The late afternoon wind was stripping trees with increasing
ease and squirrels were beginning to scrap over the acorns. At Dagmar’s building, the doorman led Ross directly to the elevator;
by now he knew that whenever Mrs. Pola went upstairs, Ross soon followed.
“Hi, Dagmar,” Ross said, kissing her cheek. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”
They went to the big room with the little love seat and those splashy pillows. No coffee today; on the table was a decanter
of scotch. “Something’s bothering you,” Dagmar said, pouring a glass. “Tell me about it.”
“It has nothing to do with work.” Ross swallowed and waited for the soft, warm bloom in his gut before putting the glass down.
“Would you mind if I took another look at that statue in the bedroom?”
Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. Maybe her white nostrils flared, as if she smelled something burning. “Of course,” she
replied. “You know where it is.”
Ross crossed the hallway and slowly opened the door to Joe Pola’s bedroom. The statue of the woman standing at the window
had not moved; only the light behind it had changed. The marble seemed to glow in the crepuscular shadows. As he was circling
the sculpture for the fifth time, willing it to come alive, Dagmar appeared in the doorway.
“What do you know about this?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
“No.” Dagmar sat on the bed, steadying herself against a post. “I wish I did.”
“It’s got a sister called Diavolina. Inspiring a restaurant of the same name.”
“I’ve eaten at Diavolina,” Dagmar said. “There was no statue there.”
Ross pulled the snapshot of the restaurant interior from his pocket. “Same model, same artist, or I’m blind. The pose is a
little different, of course.”
After a long moment, Dagmar handed the picture back. “Where did you get this?”
“My files, Dana did renovations for a man named Leo Culien. It was his statue. The sculptor was Slavomir Dubrinsky.”
“Why don’t you ask Culien about it, then?”
“He’s disappeared. And Dubrinsky’s dead. Did you know that he taught at the Academy of Art? Do you know anything about his
pupils? Anything about his models?”
“No, I don’t know a thing about him. What’s the matter, Ross? I’ve never seen you like this.”
He sat on the bed and put his face in his hands. After a long time, he said, “A pupil of Dubrinsky’s committed suicide about
ten years ago. I need to know about it. It’s very important.”
“What was her name?”
“Rita Ward.”
Ross felt Dagmar stop breathing. “Wasn’t that the girl who jumped off the Darnell Building?” she asked.
“Yes. It was over a man. I need to know who that was.”
“Why?”
Because if it wasn’t Guy Witten, then Ward had avenged herself on the wrong target. “For my own peace of mind.” Ross looked
out the window, toward the sailboats, aching for Dana. “Have you ever hated someone enough to kill him, Dagmar?”
“Oh yes. Very much so.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Waited and hoped for an opportunity.”
“Did you ever get one?”
“Several. Each time I failed.”
“Your nerve failed?”
“Lord no! My plans failed.” Dagmar put a hand on Ross’s shoulder. “Don’t ever apologize for exacting your own justice, Ross.
Another opportunity will present itself.”
Something inside of him collapsed: Dagmar understood, and had already forgiven him for whatever he had done. Did he dare tell
her the truth? He longed to; Ross was desperate to find another Dana. “The opportunity did present itself,” he began. “I’m
afraid my aim was a little off. Someone got hurt rather badly.” He looked in her wise eyes. “I don’t know what to do about
it.”
She held his gaze for an electric, ecstatic moment. “I’d say aim a little better next time.”
Speechless, fluttering between joy and horror, Ross looked away. Dagmar touched his elbow. “Let me look into this. Something
will turn up, I’m sure.”
He thanked her and left.
Giddy with strange news, Emily called Ross’s office the moment she got her car into the woods beyond Brother Augustine’s monastery.
Should she blurt out the story of her mother and Leo now, or should she just tantalize him with a few details until she could
get back to the office and tell him in person? Neither, it turned out: Marjorie picked up the phone. “Where’s Ross?” Emily
said curtly. Damn, this was a private line!
“He’s visiting sites all afternoon. He should be back around five-thirty.”
At least he had left Marjorie back at the office. Emily tried to match the secretary’s starchy tone. “Just tell him I called,
please.”
She drove back to Boston, exiting at the expressway. Traffic was just beginning to pile up along Albany Street, where five
lanes had to squeeze into two after an excruciatingly long red light. Cabs and buses, with neither mufflers nor suspensions
to lose, usually led the pack racing ahead after the light turned green. Diavolina was just a few dozen potholes away. Emily
cut over to Tremont Street, parking up the block. She called the restaurant, praying that Zoltan would pick up the phone.
He usually did this time of day, taking reservations while the kitchen staff battled over dinner and Ward began hitting the
gin reserves.
“Diavolina,” he said.
“This is Emily. I have to speak with you right away. Could you get away for a few minutes? I’m parked about a block up the
street.”
“What is this about?”
“Leo. Please, it’s very important. I won’t be long.”
“Just wait there,” Zoltan said, hanging up. Presently he
hopped in the passenger seat of Emily’s car. “I told Klepp I’m buying cigarettes.”
That was good for about five minutes. “You’re supposed to know everything at Diavolina. Have you heard from Leo?“ Emily asked.
Zoltan’s dark eyebrows wrinkled. “No. Have you?”
“Of course not! Why the hell should I? You’ve got to tell me what’s going on here.” As the maître d’stared stonily out the
window, Emily continued, “I know about him and my mother. But not enough. I know that they were in some kind of trouble together.”
She was not getting through to Zoltan, Emily saw; he was protecting old secrets, older friendships. “I talked to Augustine
this morning.”
His eyes finally met hers. “What did he tell you?”
“That I wasn’t born in a hospital, that my mother died, Leo’s half blind, and no police were involved.” Emily grabbed Zoltan’s
withery hand. “Did you know my mother?”
His Adam’s apple skipped an inch up and down. “You look like her,” he said. “Sometimes you even talk like her. I recognized
you the moment you walked into Diavolina.”
Emily bit her tongue, waiting: Zoltan was choosing words, one by one, from a musty, abandoned cellar. What had O’Keefe told
her about the maître d’? That he had murdered his wife and not been caught? Or not murdered her and been caught? It was fairly
easy to imagine Zoltan’s hands twisting the life out of a woman’s neck as expertly as he twisted the cork from a bottle of
champagne. It was more difficult to imagine the woman who would become Zoltan’s wife.
“Your mother and I were onstage together several times,” he finally began. “Little parts, but she always stole the show. She
had many admirers. Finally she fell in love with one.”
“Who? Leo?”
“No. Someone else. For a while she was very happy. Then she became pregnant. He wouldn’t marry her.”
“Why not?”
“Perhaps he was already married. Leo looked after her then. She was not having an easy time, as you might imagine. In
those days unmarried women were viewed quite differently than they are today. She lost work, she lost her apartment. She was
frequently ill. It made Leo crazy. Late one night your mother called. She told me that Leo had gone to a club downtown and
that there might be trouble. I went down immediately and saw him sitting in the shadows watching another man across the room.
It was quite apparent that this was the villain who had ruined your mother.”
“What did he look like?”
Zoltan shrugged disdainfully. “A typical man. He was with another woman. I sat at the bar for an hour or two, waiting to see
what would happen. Finally the man left with the lady. Leo followed. Out in the street, they exchanged a few words, then a
few punches. They ended up in an alley. It was a long, bloody fight. They were both quite strong.”
“You didn’t try to stop it?” Emily cried.
Zoltan looked haughtily, perhaps murderously, at her. “I wouldn’t think of doing so. Honor was at stake.”
“What about the other woman?”
Zoltan opened the window and spat. He rolled it shut and swallowed noisily. “She tried once to interrupt. The man threw her
into a brick wall. Perhaps he wanted to fight as much as Leo did. After a very long time, they were both lying unconscious
in their own blood. I pulled Leo away from there. He was seriously hurt. The other man looked dead.” Zoltan’s mouth twisted
into a harsh smile. “By the time I dragged him home, your mother was in labor, quite beside herself with fright and worry.
Leo somehow packed her in a car and drove away. That’s the last I saw of her.”
Emily watched a man up the block casually drop a candy wrapper into the wind. After a few feet it fluttered to the dirt. So
her father hadn’t wanted her either; somehow, she had known that for forty years. “Did the other man die?”
“There were no newspaper reports of a death.”
“What happened to Leo?”
“I didn’t see him for a long time. He lost an eye. He was never quite the same. Quieter.”
“Did he ever talk about me or my sister?”
“Never.”
Why should he? They weren’t his. Neither had their mother been. At the end of the day, all he had gotten for his trouble was
a glass eye. “I think he’s looking for me now. Would you know why?”
“Maybe to settle an old score.”
Thick air here: Emily opened her window. “What does Slavomir Dubrinsky have to do with all this?”
Zoltan’s eyes widened, as if he had just sat on a thorn. “He was an artist,” he said carefully.
“Don’t act dumb. I know he went to prison for statutory rape and Leo met him there. Before Slavomir died, he gave me a key
to a post-office box. Inside were a few sketches. At first glance, I thought they were of me.”
“He recognized you too.” Zoltan smiled wistfully: Emily was so clever, just like her mother. “He was commissioned to make
a statue.”
“By whom?”
“Your mother’s lover, I would guess. She posed for Slavomir three times a week before her delicate condition became obvious.”
“Where’s the statue now?”
“I have no idea.”
“What did it look like?”
Zoltan’s eyes closed. “Her naked. It was quite beautiful. After your mother died, Slavomir made a second statue for Leo.”
“A copy of the first?”
“Not quite. Slavomir called the first statue Angelina. The second he called Diavolina. Leo got that one.”
“What for? A souvenir?”
“A token of gratitude. Leo has always looked after his friends.” Zoltan opened the car door. “If he calls the restaurant,
I’ll tell him you’re here.” He walked quickly away.
In a daze, Emily drove home. She called the office again; Ross was still out. She poured herself a stiff scotch and lay on
the couch in the atrium, watching clouds and tiny airplanes drift
across the sky. It was always helpful to look upward, at limitless clear expanses, when her past threatened to pull her into
bottomless muck. It didn’t happen very much anymore, but when it did, she felt as impotent and ignorant as she ever did: a
mother again? For years, Emily had thought about her mother every day, felt her presence, sent her daily messages; having
never seen her mother dead or alive, nor having experienced the downside of maternal rule and discipline, the child in Emily
believed that her mother was exactly like that beauty in the photographs on Uncle Jasper’s piano, forever mysterious and feminine,
immaculate. That theory had suffered heavily when Philippa had started posing for publicity photos, and Emily saw the discrepancy
between actress and actual woman. She had stopped idealizing her mother and, for a number of years, became fairly angry that
her mother had not had the brains to get herself married before getting herself pregnant. That anger finally ran its course
as Emily realized that every adult on the face of the earth was annoyed with his or her parents for something and that in
many cases, parents who had remained alive had done much more damage than those who had had the grace to exeunt during the
prologue. Over the last decade, thoughts of her mother had receded to a benign, diffuse fog as Ross and then Guy had overtaken
her imagination. She would have been content to leave it that way.