Blood Relations (48 page)

Shaking violently, Caitlin slammed down the phone.

uring the week following Dina’s return from Tarpon Springs, she barely spoke to Sam. Her anger had lifted, Dso far as he could tell, replaced with cool indifference.

Sam had been sleeping in his study, on a cot that had been stored in the garage. He had thought, before she came back, that he would find an apartment, but Dina told him not to bother. She herself intended to leave Miami as soon as possible. She had already given notice at her accounting firm. The speed and finality of this decision surprised Sam. Maybe she should think about it a little more? No, she had made up her mind.

Sam suggested they put the house up for sale; Dina could take the proceeds. He asked how much she needed in alimony. Did she want him to pay off her car? She listened politely for a minute, then said it didn’t matter, to do what he wanted. Her plans for the future seemed hazy.

No, she hadn’t found a job in Tarpon Springs. She might stay wit h her father. Perhaps with Nick, it didn’t matter.

On the subject of Melanie, she simply said, I can’tforce her to go.

She didn’t appear depressed. She seemed simply not to care, as if she had resigned herself to what had to come.

This was a relief to Sam, who was supervising two major jury trials this week, and therefore less time than usual for his own concerns. He averaged five hours of sleep a night and on Tuesday stayed over at the office. At first he expected Dina to sink into weeping and lethargy, as she had after Matthew’s death, but she continued in her unruffled mood. He asked friends for the names of divorce attorneys, but had no time to call any of them.

He hadn’t seen Caidin since Sunday morning, but her face or touch, or the smell or sound of her, had come into his mind, most often when he lay on the narrow cot in his study. They had spoken twice; she said she understood how busy he was, not to worry. She would be driving up to New York in two weeks with her friend Rafael, where she would spend the summer. Sam promised that somehow, before she left, they would have at least one day together.

The lunch’crowd in the cafeteria on the ground floor of the Justice Building tended to empty out by two o’clock.

Coming down during a break in a trial on Wednesday, Sam had no trouble spotting Dale Finley in the back corner behind a copy of El Nuevo Herald. The state attorney’s chief investigator had stretched his legs out under the table, and one ankle had a holster wrapped around it.

Brown socks, tan polyester pants.

Finley’s eyes shifted when Sam sat in the chair across from him, and his white eyebrows lifted, making deep ridges in his forehead.

Sam said, “Got a question for you.”

“What’s that?”

“One of my witnesses on Ruffini and Lamont says you were looking for her at her apartment last week. Caitlin Dorn. Why?”

Finley folded the paper. “Just keeping track of everybody. I am under the assumption, correct me if I’m wrong, that the state likes to know where its witnesses are.”

You’re not assigned to this case. So who told you to go looking for Caitlin Dom?”

Leaning across the table, Finley smiled, and the scar on his chin whitened. “I’ll be candid with you, counselor. I think it’s highly probable that the witnesses, along with the victim, are going to flip on us. We’re going to be left with our thumb up our ass. Now, the aforesaid Ms.

Dom, being the remaining prime witness, is of particular interest.”

Sam laughed. “You wanted this case dropped, Finley.

You tried to scare Ali Duncan off.”

“Well, we don’t always get what we want, in the parlance of the old song. My major concern at this juncture is to see that when State vs. Ruffini crashes, it doesn’t fall the wrong way.”

“On Eddie Mora.”

“Being candid? Yes.”

Leaning back in his chair, Sam watched a couple of private defense lawyers kid around with one of the county judges, down to grab some coffee before the afternoon session started. The judge had started out as a public defender, and one of the defense lawyers had been a prosecutor in the felony division. Sam had often wondered what it was like, jumping across the fence like that.

Finley said, “I told Eddie it would be wise to ask the governor to appoint you as the interim state attorney.

They have to make a decision by next week, in case you were curious.”

Sam looked back at him.

“My motives toward you aren’t necessarily hostile,” Finley said.

“You don’t want a political enemy running for the office that Eddie left vacant,” Sam suggested. “It would embarrass the people who want Eddie on Senator Kirkland’s ticket. And you want out of Miami, don’t you, Dale?”

“Pragmatism is my byword, I guess you’d say.”

“What did Eddie have to say about your suggestion?”

Sam asked.

“He was noncommittal. That’s Eddie.”

A cafeteria worker in a brown and orange uniform came by to clear the adjacent table. She put the trays on a cart and wheeled it away.

Sam asked, “What do you know about Marty Cassie?”

“Marty Cassie got himself shot,” Finley said. “Too bad.

Looks like somebody’s cleaning house over on South Beach.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“Don’t ask me.” Finley picked up his ca# con leche.

took a sip, then said, “Miami Beach police are looking a reason to tie him to the other two, the model and nseca, but I don’t see the connection.”

“The connection is, they were all shot with the same gun,” Sam said. Late yesterday Gene Ryabin had called him with the ballistics report on Marty Cassie.

Finley smiled. “True, but the model and Fonseca were involved in that rape case. As for Marty Cassie, well, he was just an annoying little shit.”

Sam said, “He asked the city manager of Miami Beach to persuade the state attorney not to file the sexual battery case. Did you find that annoying, Dale?”

A laugh scraped out of Finley’s throat. “Indeed. But I didn’t shoot him. No, a man like Marty Cassie, he annoyed a lot of people.”

“Klaus Ruffini?”

“In spades, but Klaus wouldn’t swat him down for that reason. The first two, maybe. But not Cassie, unless Cassie threatened him in some way. I can’t figure out what it was.”

“I heard Klaus Ruffini forced Marty Cassie to literally kiss his butt before he made a real estate purchase,” Sam said. “You don’t happen to know the story on that.”

“Ruffini didn’t take the deal,” Finley said. “And Marty Cassie didn’t actually have to press his lips to Ruffini’s derriere. But the property. I do know about that. Marty Cassie owned a small share, your ex-partner Frank Tolin the majority. The Englander Apartments. From which, in fact, a certain Ms. Dorn recently departed. I have an idea you might know where she went to.”

When Sam only looked back at him across the table, Finley sighed and finished his coffee. “Well, on that note of mutual cooperation-” He took his folded newspaper and stood up, his weight on his good leg. He spoke softly.

“As I said, counselor, my intentions are not hostile-at this point in time. Here’s a suggestion. You should start worrying about Vicky Duran.”

“Meaning what?”

“She had lunch Monday with Klaus Ruffini’s lawyer, Gerald Fine. Not at the Oak Room downtown, you understand. I think it was a couple of burgers in the front seat of Mr. Fine’s BMW, parked in a lot by the Orange Bowl.

Much as I respect Ms. Duran as a person and an administrator, I don’t think she’s right for the job of state attor they. You might want to point that out to Eddie before she persuades him otherwise.”

“What does she have on him?”

“About what you do,” Finley said. “Guesses. Inferences. But she doesn’t have photos of herself and Mr. Fine in conference.”

Sam turned the salt shaker around and around, then pushed it aside. “What do you want?”

Finley said, “It crossed my mind that Eddie might not make it to Washington. Politics is unpredictable. Senator Kirkland could change his mind. The party might nominate somebody else. Who knows? I hope you’ll remember me if you get into office. I might be out of a job someday.

A little future consideration of that nature seems like a fair exchange. What do you think, counselor?”

“No deal.”

“Well, the offer stays open for a while.” Finley tapped Sam’s arm with his newspaper. “Don’t wait too long.”

Riding the escalator upstairs, Sam braced his hands on the black rubber rails, thinking. He didn’t need a photograph or even a transcript of the conversation between Victoria Duran, deputy chief of administration of the Dade County state attorney’s office, and Gerald D. Fine, Esquire, to see what it was. Beekie knew about the city manager’s call to Eddie, Hal Delucca’s request that the state attorney ignore a sexual battery to save Miami Beach the embarrassment. She knew that Eddie would have told Hal Delucca to go screw himself, but there had been something there. Eddie had pretended to Sam to be concerned about image: How would it look if the state attorney’s office failed to file a sexual battery case against a movie star? That had been bullshit, and Beekie must have known it. One of the defendants had Eddie by the shorts.

Ruffini was the obvious choice. Marquis Lamont was in town for a movie; he had no other connection to Miami.

The state attorney would have been insane to do any favors for George Fonseca. In any event, Fonseca was now dead. It had to be Ruffini.

Apparently what Beekie wanted from Jerry Fine was information. She wanted to know how his client, Klaus Ruffini, had pushed Eddie Mora, in exchange for which she would do the pushing. As payback, Beekie would dismiss the case against Ruffini when she had Eddie’s @oh-The governor would be likely to go along with whomevefEddie named, and then with positive public exposure in the job for five months, she could be elected on her own.

The woman was delusional. Jerry Fine may have had his own people taking photos; he may have taped the conversation. He’d be a fool not to. A little something for a rainy day, in case the voters of Dade County ever put Victoria Duran in office.

Sam wdsn’t about to take surveillance photos from Dale Finley. The price was way too high. But the conversation had told him that he had to decide quickly whether to make his own move on Eddie Mora. Ask him how he’d like to have the local TV stations broadcast a story about his wife’s trips to Havana, and Eddie’s attempt to dump a criminal case against the man who knew about it.

The long, tiled corridor on the fifth floor echoed with voices. People surrounded the entrance to courtroom 5-3, waiting to go back inside to hear Sam finish dissecting a defense witness. Sam spoke to a crime reporter from the Miami Herald for a minute, then went over to talk to a couple of the city of Hialeah detectives on the case.

Standing in the corridor, which had no windows and seemed to vanish into darkness at either end, and feeling his heart race in irregular patterns, Sam thought suddenly of Caidin Dom. Of lying in bed with her on a rainy afternoon, watching the curtains bell softly inward.

Frank Tolin was over by his bookcase pouring himself a scotch, neat. The sun was nearly down, slanting across the buildings, turning the clouds pink over the Atlantic.

Sam had called a while ago, told him he’d be coming around to pick up what was left of the cost deposit on the wrongful death case, if there was anything left. Frank had seemed edgy over the phone. He’d told Sam he would mail the check. Sam said no, he’d come on around.

“Sit down, Sam. My goodness, you look like you’re just about to fly out of here. Have a drink. Scotch. Bourbon. Name something.” The bones in Frank’s face protruded. He’d always been thin, but now he looked gaunt.

This is what losing Caidin had done to him, Sam thought.

“I can’t stay,” he said. “Mind if I ask what you think I’m going to do? You left the door open, and a minute ago I saw one of your partners looking at me as if I was going to pull out a gun and shoot somebody.”

With a soft clank, the stopper went back into the scotch decanter. Frank said, “You’ve been seeing Caitlin.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“She told me.”

Sam sat down in the red leather club chair and put his ankle on the opposite knee. He said, “Dina and I are getting a divorce.”

“No. I don’t know what to say. You and Dina? She didn’t tell me you had problems.” Frank sat behind his desk.

“And I’m in love with Caitlin. I don’t know if you’re aware of that, but that’s how it is.”

Frank took a sip of his scotch and laughed. “I’ll be damned.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t contact her again.”

“What’s she told you?”

“That you sent her some letters. You called her till she had to take her phone out. You evicted her from her apartment.” Sam spoke in an even voice, keeping it under control.

Frank looked at him awhile. “Well, when you’re with a woman that long—eight years, Sam-and she walks out, it hurts. Deeply.”

“Did you hit her, Frank?”

He laughed. “Yes. I hit her. My God, she was coming after me with a lamp. In my own living room. What would you have done?”

Sam could feel the pressure building in his neck. He smiled slightly. “I came to pick up a check, then I’ll be on my way.” It wasn’t about the check, he knew now. Caidin had been right: He wanted to look in Frank Tolin’s eyes when he told him he had Caitlin Dom.

Frank said, “Sure. I made it out after you called.” He opened a drawer. “Two thousand dollars. Payable to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel J. Hagen.” He extended it across the desk. “There you go.”

“I didn’t want all of it back. You must have spent something.”

“My pleasure to help. By the way, I’ll miss seeing Dina. How is she taking this?”

Sam folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Frank said. “We’ve been talking to each other’s women.”

Halfway to the door, Sam said, “Don’t push it, Frank.”

“Wait a second. You need to hear this. We aren’t friends-according to you-but still, I owe you something for saving my neck when we were kids.” Frank had one of his fancy cowboy boots on the edge of the desk. “I know Caitlin Dorn better than you do, and there’s something you need to hear.”