Blood Relations (15 page)

Glancing now at the girl beside her, Caitlin didn’t want to talk her out of it. Ali D. had snapped into a young woman Caidin had never seen before.

Maybe the case wouldn’t be filed at all, if Frank was state attorright about the city manager whispering in the they Is ear. But that information had come from Marty Cassie, who was hardly reliable. And anyway, Sam Hagen, for all his faults, couldn’t be bought. If Ali had the guts to go through with this, Caitlin could, too.

She blew out a little puff of air and resettled her hands on the steering wheel.

And if it came out about her affair with Sam, she would deal with Frank somehow. And if, by some remote chance, anyone learned about Matthew-well, that was in the past as well. It would hurt Sam and Dina to know it, but they could work out their own problems. And nothing could hurt Matthew anymore.

The expressway rose high over the Miami River, over the rusty freighters and boatyards and small white houses with tile roofs. Far to the west, heavy gray clouds were forming over the Everglades, where the sprawl of asphalt and concrete finally ended in wetlands.

“Let me give you a hint about Sam Hagen. I know him.

Well, I used to. He practiced law with Frank a few years ago.”

“Frank?”

“Frank Tolin. You met him Saturday.”

“Oh, yeah. Your boyfriend.”

Caitlin glanced at her, then said, “Listen, Ali. Sam isn’t going to be impressed by the fact that you’re a model. He doesn’t like South Beach, the club scene, or the fashion industry.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t, that’s all. Be polite, be ladylike, and watch your mouth. Try to be respectful. He’d appreciate that.”

Above the sunglasses, little creases appeared in the smooth skin between Ali’s eyebrows. “Wait a minute. I’m not the one who committed a crime. Why do I have to suck up to the prosecutor? Sam’s supposed to be on my side.”

“Don’t call him Sam. It’s Mr. Hagen. He is on your side, but I’ve seen how you act around people you want to impress-men especially.”

:‘What do you mean, how I act? I don’t act.”

‘Ali, you do. You laugh too loudly and you talk too much. Don’t try it with Sam Hagen. He isn’t like the people you’re used to. He has a low tolerance for bullshit.

And you ought to wear something over that shirt. Take my jacket.”

“God! I’m nervous enough and now you start criticizing me. How I talk, what I’m wearing. Thanks a lot.” Her voice shook.

Caitlin said sharply, “I’m trying to help you.”

:‘Why should you?”

‘Well, excuse me to hell and back. I didn’t have to drive you over here.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Ali stared straight through the windshield, thin arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Just drop me off and leave. I can get home by myself.”

Caitlin guided the car off the exit ramp. “You’d be somebody’s lunch.”

They waited at an intersection for the light to turn green. The state attorney’s office was in the five-story, salmon-pink building to their right. No one was visible through the heavily tinted glass.

Ali said, “Caitlin? I’m sorry. Okay? I mean, I’m like really scared about this.”

Caitlin looked over at her, then reached across the seat.

“It’ll be okay.” She squeezed Ali’s hand. The bones seemed as fragile as a kitten’s.

“Damn.” Ali sucked in a breath. “It won’t do any good.

Klaus Ruffini convicted of rape? Like it would ever happen.” She laughed shakily. “Or Marquis either. And they’ll say George was my boyfriend once, so it wasn’t rape at all. I could do what George said and collect a pile of money to shut up about it.”

“Is that what you want?”

Ali’s head was moving slowly back and forth. She said quietly, “I remember everything they did to me. They think I don’t, but I do. They are going to be very sorry they ever saw me.”

The light changed, and Caitlin drove past the criminal court building, slowing while people crossed the street.

The sky was saturated with blue.

“Ali-what I told you about how to deal with Sam Hagen? Never mind. Just tell him what happened. He’ll listen to you.”

When she was Ali’s age, Caitlin was modeling for a department store in Pittsburgh to make extra money for high school. After her stepfather came into her room one night, her mother told her she’d have to leave. Caitlin stayed with a married cousin in a trailer and slept on the sofa bed. At eighteen she was sharing an East Village walk-up with a friend who had won a contract with the Wilhelmina agency in a “silky hair” contest. Caitlin had some head shots taken, made the rounds, and finally an agency signed her. They put her smiling face in a rack on the wall with her stats: height 5‘8’, size 5/6, bust 34, waist 24, hips 34, shoe 8, hair blond, eyes green. Then her European sizes in French and German. Another clone of Cheryl Tiegs.

During the day she rode the subway, noisy and crowded, to her appointments, where she was turned down more often than not. If she had no bookings, she didn’t eat. But at night she might be picked up in a limo and given champagne on the way to dinner at restaurants where the prices were printed on his menu, not on hers. She waited tables, made floral deliveries, walked dogs, froze in the winter, kept her energy up on cocaine if it was offered, and stole from delis when she was hungry.

Men with money liked to have models around, and the agency gave the girls invitations to parties in apartments overlooking Central Park or the river, with antiques, thick carpets, original art, catered food, and, in those days, crystal bowls of cocaine on polished tables. In a penthouse on Park Avenue, Caitlin stumbled into an immense bathroom with a marble floor and a wide, silk chaise where a senator with a pelt of white chest hair lay with two teenage models, his ruddy, glistening member ludicrously erect. She used the toilet, then left. They never noticed. That winter a lawyer for Chase Manhattan Bank woke her at dawn, said he’d forgotten his wife and kids were coming back from Disney World at noon. He sent a fur coat by way of apology, and when Caitlin refused to see him again he sent someone to retrieve it. The man reached into her closet and she knew better than to object.

Most people in the industry did their jobs and went home. Caitlin joined the club scene: models and photographers and designers partying with rock stars and other celebrities, going from club to club in limos, getting drunk, getting stoned, dancing until sunrise, then snorting or popping whatever they needed to get through the shoots scheduled for eight o’clock in the morning.

Caitlin found work. Her book grew thick with tear sheets from catalogs and magazines, and clients began to ask for her by name, paying up to $5,000 a day. She flew a dozen times to Europea hair color commercial in Paris, runway shows in Milan, shoots in Spain, Sweden, Greece. One cosmetic company had rights to her eyes, another to her hair, and a hosiery company owned her legs.

She felt just as fractured inside, aware that who she was depended on what the camera might record at any given moment.

She married a TV producer and divorced him when she found him with another man. She passed out in a shoot for Richard Avedon that had taken two weeks to arrange. She was arrested twice for DUI, evicted from several apartments, and had an abortion and a miscarriage. A doctor told her she would never conceive again. Her heroin use ended after she nearly died of an overdose. Her agency kept it all quiet.

In Miami no one cared that her career was in decline; the town was hungry for any kind of celebrity. As she closed in on thirty, there were fewer fashion ads and more products-a deodorant, a cruise line, the female half of a couple having dinner at a hotel. Then an ad for Correctol, smiling ani stretching in her nightie as if she’d had a good night’s sleep for a change. Caitlin began to imagine the inevitable progression: grocery shopping, laxatives, dentures, then incontinence pads, and then what?

Coffins?

At the clubs she kept it down to an occasional line of coke with her friends. She drank too much. She thought seriously of suicide.

Frank pulled her back from the edge. Not a perfect white knight, but he saved her, then stuck around. Some days were hard, others weren’t so bad. She wanted to take photographs and make a living at it, although being an artist of any kind was risky, and the competition was murderous. Of her earlier days, she could almost swear they had happened to another woman, or in a book she had read a long time ago.

Caitlin had told Sam about her life. Bits and pieces, what she thought she could afford to give away, and then everything in a flood of words and tears. Sam’s arms around her, his warm breath in her hair. But in the end it was too much for him. A man with a responsible job, a wife, and two children.

But he would listen to Ali. Caitlin was sure of that, if she knew anything at all about Sam Hagen.

On the ground floor Ali gave her name through a glass window, then she and Caitlin found places to sit. Several dozen chairs faced front, bolted together in long rows.

The room was crowded and noisy with people. A couple of young Hispanic cops in dark blue city of Miami uniforms stared openly at Ali. Even in Caitlin’s jacket, two sizes too big, she had that effect.

Five minutes after they had come in, Caitlin felt Ali’s fingers clamp around her forearm.

She whispered, “It’s him. The guy outside my apartment this morning.”

A man with a bristly white crew cut stood in the open door to the lobby. A scar ran through his bottom lip to his chin-as if it had been slashed with a knife-giving him a tilted, off-center cleft.

After a minute he came over, walking with a limp. A waist holster made a bulge under his loose-fitting guayabera. He looked down at Ali, who stared back up at him. “Miss Duncan.”

She nodded.

“Good afternoon. I’m Dale Finley. I work for Edward Mora.”

‘Who?”

‘The state attorney.” He made a slight smile, then glanced at Caitlin. His eyes were icy blue with flecks of yellow. “Who are you, a relative?”

“A friend.”

“What’s your name?” r, Why?”

“Because I asked you.”

She shrugged. “Caitlin Dorn.”

There was a flicker of recognition. “Were you asked to appear, 11 Miss Dorn?”

‘No.

‘What are you doing here?”

“I came with Ali. Does it matter?”

“Not at the moment.” He held an arm toward the lobby.

“Let’s talk for a minute, Miss Duncan.”

She took Caitlin’s hand. “You come, too.”

“Miss Dom can sit right here. We won’t be long.”

Ali raised her chin. “I don’t have to talk to you at all.

Detective Ryabin said for me not to talk to anybody but Sam Hagen.” She raised an eyebrow. “I assume you know Detective Ryabin?”

Whatever Finley thought of her response, he made none of his own. He put his foot on the chair adjacent to hers and leaned over so she could hear him, crossing his arms on his knee.

He smiled at Ali. “I bet you’re tough, aren’t you?

That’s good, because with the men you’re accusing, why, there might be half a dozen defense attorneys, all itching to get at you. We need to know in advance that you can take the pressure, that you’re not going to give up halfway through a trial.”

She laughed. “I won’t.”

“Good.” He nodded, then came closer. “Once this case is filed, if it is, they’ll want to know about you.

Your sexual practices, your boyfriends, the drugs you take, everything. We need to know about it first, so before Mr. Hagen sends for you, put your thinking cap on. That’ll make it go a little faster, if you’re ready with your answers when he starts asking questions.

Some people say it’s like a trip to the dentist, but if you don’t hold back, you’ll be out of here before you know it.” The scar through his lip whitened when he smiled.

Ali stared up at him.

He said, “We’ve got police reports and statements by a number of witnesses. Some of them say you were a little tipsy. Maybe you don’t recall the events as clearly as we’d like. I don’t care, myself, but Sam Hagen’s not as forgiving as me when people want to file a case, then change their story when the going gets rough. You have to be straight with us. Can you do that?”

She nodded.

“That’s great. I wouldn’t want to see you charged with perjury.” He patted her arm. Then he turned toward Caitlin. “Miss Dorn. I might have to pay you a visit, ask you some questions. I’m afraid you can’t get any special treatment from this office.”

“Excuse me?”

“Aren’t you dating Mr. Hagen’s former law partner?”

“That’s none of your damned business.”

He smiled and straightened up, taking his foot off the chair, leaving a dusty shoe print. “I appreciate you ladies taking the time to talk to me. Mr. Hagen is busy right now. He’ll send someone down in a while to get you, Miss Duncan. See you later.”

Dale Finley limped out of the waiting room and vanished in the direction of the elevators. Caidin looked back at Ali. She was taking deep breaths, and her eyes were fixed on Caitlin, burning with indignation and betrayal.

“I told you. They won’t do anything. I knew it. They wouldn’t care if I walked out that door.”

“Stay here. I’ll be back.” Caitlin abruptly grabbed her purse and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“To find out what the hell is going on.”

The reason Sam had not been able to reach Adela Ramos, he discovered when he returned from lunch, Twas that Adela Ramos had been on her way to his office. She had brought her brother with her. She wanted Sam to explain to him why the jury had acquitted a guilty man. Adela had tried to explain it herself, the American system of justice was difficult to understand.

delfonso Garcfa and Adela sat side by side on the sofa.

Joe McGee, Sam’s co-counsel on the case, sat in a chair facing them, Sam in another. Garcfa worked construction, and it was hard for him to take time off. He had worn a suit and a white shirt and a tie, showing these lawyers he was worthy of some respect.

He wanted to know: If Luis Balmaseda had confessed, why had the judge not allowed the jury to hear it? Had the judge been paid off? Perhaps the jury had found Bal maseda not guilty because he was an American citizen and Adela was not. Did the life of a four-year-old boy mean so little to them?