Sex with Carlos, virginal romance with Dave. Fragments of a life.
"Gail!" It was Miriam on the line, sounding agitated. "Where were you? I didn't know how to get in touch with you. I called your house."
"What happened?" Gail had the phone back at her ear.
"You missed that big meeting at nine o'clock with Jack Warner and Larry Black and the rest of the litigation department. I told them you had a personal emergency, but I don't think they believed me."
Gail closed her eyes. "Oh, no. Oh, shit." "Are you all right?"
"Miriam, you want to know the truth? I forgot." She struck the wall with the flat of her hand. ' 'Damn. Look, tell Larry—" She laughed. "Tell him it slipped my mind."
"Are you serious?"
"Weep into his wing tips. Say I'm in an agony of remorse."
"I'll rephrase it, okay?"
Gail leaned against the edge of the phone booth and watched the waitress pouring coffee at the counter. "Any other dire emergencies I should know about?"
"Carlos Pedrosa called about the option."
"I know. I just spoke to him."
"And Jimmy Panther called about the mask. He left a number and said for you to call him as soon as you can."
Gail wrote it on her notepad.
Miriam said, ' 'Is that the Indian mask you took over to the museum?"
"Yes. I'll explain it one of these days. As soon as I can figure it out myself."
"And Anthony Quintana called twice. He said it's important. Here's the number—"
"No, I've got it." He would want to tell her the result of his phone call with Frank Britton.
Miriam asked, "When are you coming in?"
"What have I got on the schedule?" Miriam told her. Gail said, "Nothing we can't move around. Reset everything for after two. I should be back by then."
Gail's next quarter went for a call to Anthony's office, which she dialed without looking at his card. He was with a client, hold on.
"No, don't disturb him. I'll try back in half an hour." She checked her watch. "Before eleven, anyway." She hung up, then stood there staring blankly at the pay phone, seeing only Anthony's face over her last night on his living room floor. They hadn't made it to the bedroom. She had a rug burn on her butt. Beard burn on her face and tenderer places. He was saying things she probably couldn't have found in a Spanish dictionary. A foreign tongue.
"Miss, are you using the phone?"
Gail jumped. An elderly woman was behind her, waiting. "Sorry. No, I'm finished."
She had a cup of coffee and wished it had been decaf. She checked her watch again and wondered what Britton had told Anthony. Her heart was beginning to jump.
At the telephone again, she pulled open the phone book and looked up Vista Title Company. She didn't want to hear what Frank Britton had said. Not yet.
Delores Perrera lived with her husband, Julio, and her mother in an apartment building behind Westland Shopping Center in Hialeah. She would still have been working as a post-closer at Vista Title, she explained to Gail, except that she had a weak uterus and the doctor was afraid she'd miscarry for the third time. It had been her mother who had opened the door when Gail knocked, Loly staying on the sofa, her stomach a gentle mound under a long white T-shirt. She wore tight black knit pants and red pumps with little heels.
It had taken Gail a few minutes to realize where she had seen her before—at Renee's funeral. The woman she had uncharitably pointed out to Dave as a pregnant exotic dancer, coming in with a pimp. Not a pimp after all. Her husband, Julio, now downstairs changing the water pump on his Trans Am in the parking lot.
Loly struggled up when her mother brought in two
tacitas de café.
Gail had protested coffee, but the mother had smilingly ignored her. The silver-colored tray held little china cups and a plate of
pasteles.
She retired to the kitchen, which Gail could see through an open archway. A spotlessly clean room, like the rest of the apartment.
"My mom the hostess," Loly said. "You don't have to drink it." She bit into a pastry. "I'm going to name my baby Renee if it's a girl. What do you think?"
Gail smiled. "She'd have liked that." Loly was the woman whose baby shower Renee had been planning the week before she died.
Loly settled back against a pillow. "Like I said on the phone, I'll tell you what I can about her."
"You may have heard. The police think she was murdered."
Loly nodded. "When they came around the office asking questions, before I quit, I thought something was going on. I call up over there a lot—you know, my friends and all—and we talk about it."
"Let me ask you this. What was Renee's relationship with Carlos Pedrosa?"
"He was her lover, I guess you'd say. He took her places. Bought her stuff. She said they went to Jamaica for a week. But they weren't engaged or anything." Loly glanced toward the kitchen. Her mother was washing dishes. "Are you telling me you think Carlos did it?"
"I don't know. But a stranger didn't kill her," Gail said. "A stranger wouldn't have bothered to fake a suicide. Carlos was supposedly with another woman at the time, but I have my doubts." Gail sipped her espresso, pinching the cup by its tiny handle. Vile black stuff, intensely sweet.
"Oh, my Go-o-o-d." The last word stretched out. Loly had the tip of her forefinger in her mouth, thinking. When she noticed Gail looking at her she said, "Betty Diaz. I heard she was talking around the office about Carlos. How they were going out and stuff. I said,
What?
Betty Diaz?" "Oh. It's true, then."
"No, you don't get it. This girl is so—" She circled her hand in the air, looking for the right word. "Not ugly, but—I mean, Carlos and Betty Diaz? And then Teresa— she's the receptionist over there—she goes, Oh, Betty was saying how she had to talk to the police and all, acting like she's so big."
"Do you think she would lie for him?"
Loly shrugged. "She might, if she thought he really liked her. God. She'd be stupid to think that."
Gail put her cup down carefully. "How well did you know him?"
"Carlos? He didn't come in a lot. We'd say hi to each other, that's about it. Mostly I know him from what Renee said." Loly adjusted the pillow under her back. "Okay, you want to know about Carlos? I wasn't going to say this but right now I don't care. He was embezzling money from his company. Renee knew about it."
"Pedrosa Development?" Gail stared at Loly.
"I found out because I had to issue some checks at the title company and the money wasn't in the file from the builder. We assign every closing its own file—" When Gail nodded, Loly went on. "Renee said don't worry about it, take it out of another file for now. See, what Carlos was doing was taking money from one file to pay another. He couldn't catch up. The houses weren't selling fast enough to cover the shortages. But listen, Renee didn't do any of that, okay? It was Carlos. And George Sanchez. He's the Vista title examiner. The two of them were in on it."
"George Sanchez, the attorney who works for Ferrer and Quintana."
"Yes. Renee just figured it out, I guess. She was very smart. But she didn't want to get Carlos in trouble. She said he was trying to pay it all back."
Before his grandfather got wind of it, Gail imagined. Or before Anthony found out. Either one just as fatal for Carlos. Now she had the real reason Carlos had dragged his heels settling the Darden case. He hadn't had the cash to give their down payment back; he had to make sure they took the house. For an instant Gail wondered if Anthony was aware of this. No. If he had known, Carlos would be out on his ass. Anthony would have seen to that. Ferrer and Quintana owned the title company. Carlos and George Sanchez had been—might still be—screwing around with the company trust accounts as well as stealing from Ernesto Pedrosa.
"Renee could have made trouble for Carlos," Gail said.
"I don't think she would have told anybody," Loly said. "That would be turning in a friend."
"How trusting of him." The second sip of coffee wasn't as jarring. Gail got through half the cup. "Did Renee tell you she was pregnant?"
"Yes. She wouldn't say whose it was, but probably Carlos. I mean, who else? She didn't sleep around."
"Do you know if she was pressuring him to marry her?"
"Not that I know of. She never talked about marriage like it was something she would do. I don't think—" Loly's eyes went to the floor, then back to Gail. "Renee knew she couldn't have got married and had it turn out good. You know?"
Gail shook her head.
Loly shifted on the pillow again. "Well, she was real nice and fun to be with and all, but— How can I put this? She was like . . . broken. I knew she tried to kill herself before because I saw the scars and asked her about it. She told me stuff. Doing drugs, getting down under ninety pounds one time. And she used to date these men that were really—you know, like would beat her up and stuff. And she'd laugh about it, like it was funny. I didn't think it was funny."
Loly reached over and laid her hand on Gail's arm. "No, come on. It's okay. I talked to her, you know? I go,
chica,
you can't keep doing this stuff. I thought she was getting better. She
was.
When I heard she committed suicide, I said,
what?
It didn't make sense to me. She wanted that baby. Yeah, that's what she said. She wanted it. Maybe she got pregnant on purpose, who knows? Everybody needs somebody."
"Because she couldn't have Carlos."
"No. She didn't
want
Carlos." Loly balanced her cup and saucer on her stomach. "I asked her. I go, Renee, you must be really in love with this guy. She says, No, you only want what you can't have." The cup moved up and down with Loly's breathing. "I think she was in love, but not with him. She wouldn't tell me who, but I have my opinion. Carlos's cousin. You might know him, since you're a lawyer, too. Anthony Quintana? He's a partner in the law firm next door."
Gail leaned over to put down the tiny cup and saucer, avoiding Loly's eyes. "Yes. I do know him."
"I heard they had something going at one time. He's a real good-looking guy, you know? Whenever he'd come in the office, which wasn't too often, I'd see how she'd get. Once I caught her crying in the bathroom after he left. She told me to mind my own business. Yeah. That guy must have messed her up. And he wouldn't even look at her."
A cabinet door closed in the kitchen. Through the window Gail could hear the rush of cars on the expressway. She took a breath and looked around for her purse.
"Well, I ought to go."
"Stay for lunch. It's no trouble." When Gail finally said she absolutely had to be downtown in half an hour, Loly walked her to the door, then kissed her on the cheek.
"Come back and see the baby in three months," she said, then drew back and studied Gail's face. "You know what? When I first saw you, when my mom let you in, I thought you were Renee. Crazy, right?"
The key to Renee's condo in Coconut Grove was still on Gail's key ring. She had let a realtor in last week to see it. Women from Irene's church had already cleaned out everything but the furniture, upstairs and down, and a truck was supposed to come tomorrow for that, taking it all to a shelter for the homeless. The closets and dressers were empty, only a few hangers left, or a drawer half open. Gail herself had been through the place two weeks ago, throwing everything remotely provocative into a white plastic garbage bag—videotapes and magazines; a lingerie bag full of soiled underwear; the collection in the nightstand. She had tossed the bag into the Dumpster at the end of the parking lot.
Now Gail sat on the edge of the bed in Renee's bedroom. She faced the hall, her jacket off and sweat tickling down her back. She had opened the window and raised the miniblinds. It hadn't done any good. The electricity was off.
Without the sheets and pillows, without the Georgia O'Keeffe print of the open orchid or the clothes on the floor or the knickknacks on the dresser, it was only a room. Gail closed her eyes. There was still the faint scent of Shalimar. Or maybe she was imagining it.
She wondered if the sound of a fist on flesh had ever echoed in this room. If Renee had brought them here, those men who would hurt her. Probably not. They must have belonged to those darker years when she had tried to kill herself; when she was hardly ever sober or civil; when she had finally spent weeks in a psychiatric hospital.
What horrified Gail, thinking of Renee drawn to pain and death, was that in one small, dark corner of herself, she understood. She had anesthetized herself with work as Renee had done it with drugs and alcohol. Dave hadn't known how to reach her. He had long since given up trying. Five years ago, worn raw by days of arguments, she had slapped him; he had struck back, breaking her nose, blood all over their bedroom. Then he had dropped to his knees and sobbed.
But in one bright, clear instant before it happened, his fist coming toward her face slowly, silently, she had felt a lightness, a letting go. Stop struggling, stop fighting. Stop everything.
Gail turned her head far enough to see the satiny blue fabric of the mattress, tufted and stitched. She slid her hand along the edge.
Possibly—no, almost certainly—Anthony had been on this bed with Renee. Gail didn't regret last night, only that he had not told her. She smiled. An uncommon breach of manners for this man.