Blood Relations (27 page)

Ruffini draped an arm over the wooden steering wheel.

“Do you carry a gun?”

“No. I’m not a cop-”

“You look like a cop. A plain-clothes detective.”

“What do you want, Mr. Ruffini?”

“Nothing. To be friendly. Someday when this is all over, let’s go out to dinner. I’ll tell You all about my life.

It’s not easy. You might think so, but I have my troubles.

You know what?” Ruffini reached across the space between the two cars and gripped Sam’s wrist. “You should send your wife and daughter to Moda Ruffini. They can have a dress, whatever they want. Later, after the trial.

Now would look bad, but later.”

Sam pulled his arm away. “Is this a joke with you?”

Ruffini was still talking. “Someone told me you have a wife and daughter. And once you had a son. May I express my sympathy for your great loss? I have a son, Francesco, who is eleven, but he’s in Milan with his mother. He isn’t Tereza’s son, you see, so we don’t talk about him so much in front of Tereza. But not what you think! I was married to his mother, who was a relation to Louis Malle. You like French cinema, Mr. Hagen? I don’t. Made so cheap, and very depressing.”

“Move the car,” Sam said. “I need to open my door.”

“One of my troubles,” said Ruffini, “is the girls who come after me. Like this redhaired girl, saying I did things. It’s a lie. You know what she wants. Money.

They all do. She’ll come after me for blackmail. Will you arrest her when I prove this to you, maybe on a videotape?”

Sam flung open his door. It caught the Cadillac on the front fender and left a silver crease in the shiny red paint.

“Hey!” Ruffini leaned out, looking at the fender, then at Sam. “What did you do?”

“I told you to move the fucking car.”

I could sue you.”

“Go for it.” Sam slid through the narrow opening, started his engine, and shot Klaus Ruffini a black look as he pulled out of the parking space.

When Rafael Soto showed up at the police station at one o’clock, Gene Ryabin took him into the interW view room, a small beige cubicle with a table and two chairs. They spent the first fifteen minutes bullshitting about New York. Soto had grown up there in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in East Harlem. Ryabin said his wife had been born in San Juan, and he’d lived off upper Broadway after emigrating from Prague.

Sam and a Miami Beach detective watched from behind a two-way mirror. Rafael Soto sat on one side of the narrow table in a chair with a molded blue plastic seat.

Ryabin had a chair with wheels, and gradually he had rolled around to the same side of the table. Both men were facing the mirror. There were some gauzy curtains over it.

Ryabin had left his pistol and holster in his desk drawer. His jacket was off and his tie was loosened. He asked Soto if he wanted anything. A cigarette, coffee, a soda? Soto said he didn’t, thanks anyway.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Anytime we bring someone in here, for any reason, we have to ask if they want a lawyer present.” He shrugged. “Bureaucracy. What can you do?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Soto said.

“Good. But if at any time you want a lawyer, let me know, okay?”

“Okay.

Ryabin slid a pen and a legal pad across the table and asked Soto to write his full name, address, Social Security number, and so on. For the file. And to make a list of his friends and coworkers. And the same for the decedent.

Five minutes later, Soto had his head bent over the pa per when Ryabin asked, “The doorman at Charlie Sullivan’s building says you came by a few nights ago.”

Without looking up, Soto said, “Yes, to get some things of mine.”

“What things?”

“A few CDs. Some clothes.”

“He says you were arguing in the lobby.”

“No, that isn’t true.”

Ryabin’took the paper and pen away and slid them to the other end of the table. “When was the last time you saw Charlie Sullivan alive?”

“That night, I guess.”

“You guess.”

“It was that night.”

“What day of the week?”

“Umm.” He looked upward, and the fluorescent fixtures made bars of light in his red-framed glasses.

“Wednesday.”

“How long did you know Charlie?”

“Everybody called him Sullivan.”

“Okay. How long?”

“We knew each other for a few years, you know, to say hello to. We met in New York. Last year he bought a condo on the Beach and spent more time here.”

“You were boyfriends?”

Soto ran a finger along a scratch in the Formica table top. “That sounds so … trivial.”

“I apologize,” Ryabin said. “When did the relationship get to be more than, ‘Hello, how are youT

“Last fall. November, I think.”

“When did you split up?”

“March. More or less. I mean, it didn’t just stop. We saw each other for a while, although it wasn’t the same.”

Soto wiped a knuckle under his nose.

“Did he find someone else? Was that the reason?”

Sam recalled that Rafael Soto had given his age as twenty-seven. He was a graceful, slender man, and behind the silly glasses were a pair of melting brown eyes. Luis IL

Balmaseda, who had murdered his lover’s child, had possessed the same delicate male beauty.

“There was always someone else, Detective. That’s how he was. I knew that before we got involved.”

“You were in love with him?”

He nodded.

“And you say you didn’t care that he was promiscuous.

Is that the way it is with you guys, Rafael?”

There was a silence as Rafael Soto stared at him. Then he said, “How it is, Detective, is the way it is with any human being. We’re all the same. You people are the ones who don’t get it.”

A chuckle rumbled out of Ryabin’s squat chest, and the gap in his front teeth showed. “I know if I’m finding my wife doing another guy, I would care.”

“No, I did care, but-”

“You didn’t like it, did you?”

“I might not have liked it, but I didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“But he deserved it.”

“To die like that? Sullivan was outrageous in many ways, and I suppose he made some people angry, but he didn’t deserve that. He grew up in Southwark-that’s the bleakest part of London. He almost didn’t survive it. Yes, he was promiscuous and often cruel, but he could also be kind and generous. He had many friends. You don’t know. It’s so easy to make judgments from where you are, in a police station, but really. You don’t know.” Soto wiped his cheek. “I’m sorry. Do you have a tissue?”

Ryabin gave him a handkerchief and watched while Soto blew his nose.

“How do you become involved with a man like that, knowing in advance what he is?”

“We don’t always choose whom we fall in love with, Detective.”

Ryabin waved for Soto to keep the handkerchief, then leaned back in his chair and knitted his fingers across his belly. “If I went with ou to your apartment, would you y have a problem with showing me around?”

“Why?”

“Why not? You don’t have something you want to hide, do you?”

Soto said, “Is this proper procedure?”

“Of course. If you show me around your apartment voluntarily, I don’t have to get a search warrant.”

The brown eyes widened. “A search warrant?”

“Not if you help us out.”

Soto glanced at the glass ashtray at the end of the table against the wall. “Could I have a cigarette after all?”

“Sure.” With some eagerness Ryabin pulled his pack out of his shirt pocket and lit one for Rafael Soto, then himself. Soto inhaled deeply. His hands were shaking.

Ryabin slid an ashtray down from the end of the table.

Settling back in his chair, Ryabin propped a foot on the edge of the table. “Rafael, are you HIV positive?”

Soto frowned. “No.”

“You’re sure? Maybe a present from your late friend?”

“I said no. Sullivan was always careful. So am L”

Ryabin said, “Tell me about the others. Who was he involved with?”

“Several people.”

“Several who? The names.”

“I don’t know names. Arnold somebody, the head bartender at the Clevelander. A dozen models, mostly men, but some girls too. One of Madonna’s personal fitness trainers whose name is something like Igor or Boris. A gay cop-would you like his name? There was a novelist with a wife and two kids.” Soto tapped his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. “Claudia Otero, the designer. She was his steady girlfriend, I guess you could say. Uta Cassie was a more recent acquisition, a plaything, really. Her looks aren’t up to his usual standards, but she’s very inventive.

And there would be others he’d pick up and drop.”

“He wasn’t particular.”

“Oh, you’re wrong. He was very particular.”

“This Uta Cassie. She’s the wife of Martin Cassie?”

“Sullivan didn’t mind.”

“Maybe her husband did.”

“To say the least. Uta told me they got into a fight about Sullivan.”

Behind the mirror, Sam Hagen wrote quickly, trying to catch it all. The lights were dim, and he had left his glasses in the car. He couldn’t read his own writing.

Ryabin asked, “Have you ever met Martin Cassie?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Around. South Beach is a very small town. Caitlin and I-Caitlin Dorn-we were working on a project for him.

Well, it’s really Klaus Ruffini’s project, the Grand Caribe Resort, which is going absolutely nowhere, now that Klaus is in trouble. Not that I care. The Grand Caribe was obscenely tasteless. It would have ruined the Beach.”

Soto exhaled impatiently. “Isn’t it obvious who wanted Sullivan out of the way?”

“Tell me,” Ryabin said. “Maybe not so obvious. I don’t have the benefit of your inside knowledge, Rafael.”

“Any one of those men who assaulted Ali Duncan.

Klaus Ruffini more than the rest.”

“Why is that?” Smoke drifted around Ryabin’s head.

“Because his wife, Tereza, hated Sullivan for being such good friends with Claudia Otero.”

“The designer.”

“Yes. Claudia gave Sullivan his first real boost into international modeling. He was faithful to her, in his way.

But Claudia and Tereza are constantly at each other’s throats. One season Tereza somehow stole Claudia’s best designs before they were shown, and she put on her own show with knock-off copies. Claudia has never forgiven her for that.”

“Did Sullivan ever sleep with Tereza?”

“God, no. He thought she was the lowest of the low.”

“How is it that Charlie Sullivan and Klaus Ruffini can be at the same time in the same room at the Apocalypse?”

“Well, that’s South Beach. Hypocrisy refined to an art form.”

Ryabin moved in closer. “What were you doing around midnight last night?”

“I told you. I was at home watching TV. Then I went to bed after the news because I had to get up early. Excuse me, but do I need a lawyer?”

“I don’t know. Do you?” Ryabin shrugged. “Right now we’re only asking some questions. Would you say you need a lawyer?”

Soto hesitated, then shook his head. “No, it’s okay.”

“What time did you meet Miss Dorn this morning?”

“About six o’clock. I left my car on the street outside the Century Hotel and rode in the production van, and she followed.”

“Do you own a gun, Rafael?”

“Me? I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

“I didn’t ask you that. I asked if you owned one.”

“No.”

“The doorman at Sullivan’s building says you and he were screaming at each other on Thursday. Not Wednesday. Thursday. Three days ago.”

“All right. Thursday. But we weren’t screaming at each other.”

“The doorman is lying?”

“We might have raised our voices.”

“What were you arguing about?”

Soto gave a nervous laugh. “Nothing important.”

“Rafael. Don’t get an attitude. You want to wait in the holding cell with three or four teenage gang members from Liberty City who I have in there at the moment, then okay.”

He drew in his shoulders. “You can’t do that to people.”

“In here, I can do anything I want to. Don’t make me prove it. Now, an answer, please.” Ryabin’s forehead creased into deep horizontal lines. “What were you and Charlie Sullivan fighting about?”

Soto twisted his cigarette into the ashtray. “I’d like to leave now.” When he started to get out of his chair Ryabin gave it a sharp kick. Soto stumbled and sat down hard. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest.

“I asked you a question.” Ryabin’s hand came down on the table with a sharp crack. The ashtray bounced.

Soto’s voice trembled. “He … he wouldn’t give back my Etta James CD.”

Ryabin raised an eyebrow.

“She’s a blues singer.”

“What did you watch on TV last night?”

“A movie. On my VCR.” When Ryabin continued to look at him, Soto added, “I believe it was Hitchcock. The Thirty-nine Steps.”

“Yes, I’ve seen that. It’s very good. What is your video club?”

“It’s … Blockbuster. No, I borrowed this one from a friend.”

“What did you do after the movie, Rafael?”

“I went to bed.”

“Five minutes ago you told me you watched the news.

So now you’re watching Hitchcock?”

“No. Both. I don’t remember.” He was trembling. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“Is there a reason we should arrest you, Rafael?”

“I didn’t kill him!”

“All we want now is your help.” Ryabin patted his arm.

“That’s all. Tell me. Didn’t you and Sullivan live together at one time? Then he told you to get out?”

Rafael Soto lifted his eyes and seemed to look through the curtains, past the glass, and into the small, dark room where Sam Hagen and Ryabin’s partner on the case were listening to this. “When can I go home?”

“Soon. We’re almost finished.”

Sam got up. He knew that Gene Ryabin had only begun. He would ask the same questions again in a different form, add new ones, and pick the answers apart. Then start over.

The detective was leaning back in the chair, with a foot propped on the edge of the desk. He took his pencil out from between his teeth and said, “What a fuckin’

weeme.”

Sam lifted his jacket off the back of his chair.