by D. W. Buffa
BREACH OF TRUST
D.W. Buffa
Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
ALSO BY D.W. BUFFA
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
HILLARY
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
ALSO BY D.W. BUFFA
The Defense
The Prosecution
The Judgment
The Legacy
Star Witness
Trial By Fire
Rubicon
Evangeline
The Swindlers
The Dark Backward
The Last Man
Helen
Hillary
CHAPTER 1
They must have thought me mad, all those solemn-eyed art lovers, all those exhausted, lost-looking tourists, all those weary New York faces struggling to get past me while I stood in front of a painting that looked like someone I once knew. An elderly woman tugged at my sleeve and asked if I would mind if she got a closer look. I stepped back, my eyes still fixed on that strange canvas. Holding a shopping bag in her left hand, her head tilted slightly to the right, she examined each brush stroke as if that might yield a secret. After a few moments, she turned to me and, as if I had acquired some right of possession, or rather, as if she understood how quickly attachments are formed to things we have only just seen, thanked me before moving on to the next painting, something by Cézanne. It seemed incredible, but she seemed not to have noticed the striking resemblance—the uncanny resemblance—to one of the most photographed faces of our time.
I moved closer, put on my glasses and bent forward. I read the brief description: The Boy in the Striped Sweater, painted by Modigliani in 1918. Amedeo Modigliani, born in 1884, died in 1920, had marked in advance his own mortality with the admirable and arrogant epitaph: “A short, but intense, life.” I heard it first when I was in college. Because nothing appeals to the mercurial temperament of young men quite so much as defiance of death, I remembered it with a kind of nostalgia for certain vague and romantic dreams of my own.
It was only a matter of chance that I had found myself suddenly in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; only a matter of chance that had made me turn into one exhibition hall and not another. Only a matter of chance, and yet there was a strange suggestion of inevitability, as if no matter what I had done, no matter what turn I had taken, I would have ended up here, in front of this painting, to be reminded of what he had been like when I first knew him, before that awful thing happened and we were no longer friends.
The colors were vibrant, alive, making me feel it again, the way things had always seemed so much more vivid and intense when he was around. I had never been able to bring it all back, see it with the clarity that I could now, my once-upon-a-time friend, seen through the gifted eyes of Amedeo Modigliani who had been painting someone else. The Boy in the Striped Sweater bore the same expression, the same look I had so often seen on his face. It was an attitude, an aspect of his character that for all the pictures I had seen of him had never been caught on film. It was too subtle, too much the impression of a kind of immobility that only struck you, or struck you most forcibly, when he was talking, when his eyes were alive with the thought he was trying to express, when his hands were in motion and his face all lit up. It was the part of him he always held back, the secret observer who watched without either sympathy or contempt, but with a kind of vast amusement, the small ambitions and the sad pretensions of the world around him. Modigliani had caught it with his brush.
The boy in the striped sweater sits at an angle on a chair with his legs apart and his hands clasped between them. He has greenish blue eyes with thin curving eyebrows arched high above them. He has a long nose decidedly off center, red lips and ears that stick out as if they cannot wait to hear what you want to say next. The face is all angular half circles, with a small protruding cupid-shaped mouth twisted a little to the side. There is a smirk on his lips, as if he is thinking of something he thinks you will probably find amusing. There is a gentle sadness about that mouth, as if he has already lived life in advance and knows that nothing will ever go wrong. It is the absence of any expectation of surprise. His hair is thick and bushy, parted high up on his head, reddish brown—chestnut, I suppose you would call it. And his head—yes, well, it was the way he held it that told you who he was; that told you he was different than what you were used to; that told you he was from a world you only imagined you knew something about, a world in which privilege was a thing ordinary and commonplace. The head, large in proportion not only to his narrow, sloping shoulders, but to his ample waist, reflecting, as it were, the relative application of interest and effort, inclined a little to the side, pulled back just a bit, watching you.
There was nothing he wanted from you—that was what that look conveyed—but he understood that others would always want something from him. He did not resent it, this knowledge that he was seen by other people as someone who could do something for them. You could see it in that look, that unquestioned sense of what he was and what he had it in his power to do, a power so great that he could refuse to give you what you wanted and by that same refusal give you something that you wanted even more: to have him listen in that attitude of perfect calm to whatever you wanted to tell him about yourself.
I left the Metropolitan and though I had only an hour to get ready walked along Fifth Avenue as if I had all day. Perhaps I would be a little late; perhaps I would follow my first instinct and not even go. Four or five hundred people were going to be there; only one of them would notice my absence and I could not imagine he would think about it twice. He had asked me to come, but only after one of his people had called first and I had said no. We had not talked since the day it happened, years ago, when he still looked like that painting by Modigliani and I still looked like—well, a lot younger than I do now.
He seemed to find it amusing that I had not just refused to come, but had turned down the chance to introduce him at the dinner when he spoke. He sighed and laughed and told me I had no ambition; which, he confided, was one of the reasons he had asked. Then he said in a solemn, serious voice, that he would let me beg off the introduction but it was important that I come, and that he would view it as a personal favor. He added, when I did not answer, that he looked forward to seeing me, and that so did his wife. In the silence that followed, I could almost see him sitting in that languid pose, his legs apart, his hand resting in his lap, his large head tilted slightly to the side. Then he said the words that told me he had not forgotten what had happened and that the memory of it still hurt.
“It’s going to be at the Plaza. It would mean a lot to me if you were there.”
I cut into the park, following the asphalt path under the high arching trees and through the sloping green grass lawn. For all the tightly packed buildings and the frenzied swift moving crowds, this was the place that made me feel, not the energy or the excitement, but the elegance and the beauty of New York. On one of the dark green wooden benches that lined the sides of the twisting path, a man with curling gray hair and shrewd blue eyes, wearing a tan windbreaker and clean canvas shoes, stroked the tousled head of a boy in a b
lue sweater and short pants. They were laughing as each tried to keep up with the ice cream melting in the waffle cones they held. He was old enough to be the boy’s grandfather, but here, in Manhattan, where money could always banish age, the proud, comfortable look glistening in his eyes left no doubt that the boy was his son. There was an empty space next to him, apparently where the boy had been sitting, because next to that was a young woman who by an instinct that must have taken generations to breed kept her back arched and her head held high while she bent forward to tease the boy about the ice cream dribbling down his chin. She was beautiful, captivating and she had a voice that touched your ear the way silk feels across your hand. I caught her eye and smiled and for just an instant she glanced back.
Someday, if she had not yet, she would have affairs, and if the men were only twice her age she would think them still young.
Just ahead, with their mouths drooling open, like five thirsty drunks stumbling out of a bar into the light, five small dogs with ugly flat faces and obscene piglike tails were coming right at me. Their paws scratched against the hard asphalt surface as they strained against the leashes held in the resentful hand of a lean and muscular Hispanic woman with dark, murderous eyes. I stepped out of the way and listened to a guttural language that even had I understood it could not have conveyed a more ominous sound.
I reached the circle where the heavy hoofed horses wait in front of open carriages for the next couple who want to be driven through Central Park. Across the street, in front of the Plaza Hotel, the police had already barricaded the front entrance. Around the corner, at the side entrance, facing the park, a long line of limousines had taken possession of half the street, forcing traffic to an angry, horn-smashing crawl. I still had half an hour, plenty of time to get there if I hurried; or plenty of time to change my mind and go out to dinner by myself, see a show, do what an occasional tourist might do who just wanted to see the city and have a good time.
I tried not to look at the Plaza as I walked along the sidewalk next to the park. I heard the cabdrivers cursing and pounding their horns, edging their way a few inches at a time. I glanced across at the side entrance, keeping my eyes level with the street. Men in tuxedos and women in long expensive dresses moved with the air of people who went to these sorts of things all the time. Someone would call out a name in a voice full of surprise. Someone would stop, a look of eager anticipation in their eyes, and then, shaking hands, slapping the other on the back, making a quick round of affable introductions, laughing at their own hesitation before they remembered the right names, they would step inside where the same ritual of recognition would repeat itself over and over again as all these strangers tried hard to pretend they had once been great good friends.
I had never been to a class reunion, not high school, not college, certainly not this. I had never been much for the formal ceremonies that mark the end of things. When I graduated from the University of Michigan I was anxious to get back to Oregon and I had them mail my diploma home. When I graduated from the Harvard Law School I was in such a hurry to get out of Cambridge, I did not care if I had that piece of paper or not. I had not liked law school, but that was not the reason I had wanted to get away as soon as it was over.
The crowd was growing by the minute on the sidewalk near the door. Maybe they did all know one another; maybe they had all been great good friends; maybe… My eyes began to drift away, to go higher, to look up one story at a time until… I sat down on a bench, wondering at the madness of it all, to have a mood dictated by something as strange and impersonal as a place. It was the end of April and the warmth of the air felt later than that, but my hand went to my throat as if it were still December, and the air was crisp and cold and snow was falling. My eyes were back in motion, reaching higher and higher, the third floor, then the fourth. I forced myself to stop. I got to my feet and calling myself a fool walked away, staring down, afraid to look up, afraid that if I did I would see her, Annie Malreaux, still falling to her death.
I got back to the hotel and changed into my tuxedo, struggling with the cuff links and the endless studs, wondering whether what you used to see in the movies—that married women helped their husbands do this—had ever been true. It was only three blocks to the Plaza and though I would not have much minded if I had been late, I was on time. I got into the line that passed through security and then stood in another line to register. A young woman put her finger at the top of a typewritten list and immediately found my name.
“Joseph Antonelli.” She looked up. “You were almost first.”
“That’s a nice way of telling me I lost.” she handed me a name tag. “From what I hear, that doesn’t happen to you very often.” she was young, in her late twenties, rather pretty, with straight brown hair and even-set intelligent eyes. She worked for the alumni association. It was her job to know things about the people who had gone there, to the fabled Harvard Law School, to know what they had done and how much they could give. I looked at her for a moment, returning her smile.
“But it always hurts,” I said in reply.
She nodded as if she knew the truth, not because she had ever tried a case in the criminal courts, or had ever practiced law, but because no matter how much we talk about winning, no matter how important it may be, we all have much more experience with being on the other side, the one that doesn’t quite make it, the one no one remembers when the game finally comes to an end.
I did not know anyone, and everyone seemed to know me. It was really quite funny, that look of almost stunned surprise. Every time I turned around in that vast, crowded ballroom I was face-to-face with another stranger. Balancing a drink in one hand, nodding a kind of hassled acknowledgment of someone they did not know, they read the name on the tag. It was usually when they said it out loud, announced it for the purpose of letting you know they were prepared to admit that you really did exist and had somehow gone to Harvard, too, that it hit them: Joseph Antonelli was famous, and in some quarters notorious. The person I could not remember invariably assured me that of course I must. We had been in this class together, or that class; we had studied together, had gone out for a beer together. The enigmatic smile on the face of a still quite striking woman changed into mocking disappointment when she asked: “Have you forgotten that night?” I was saved by the long arm of her husband who from another conversation turned around to shake my hand.
“The night all six of us studied straight through till morning for that civil procedure exam?” I replied, watching her over my drink.
Heads began to turn as my name, the name that had not meant anything when I was another anonymous face in a law school class, spread through the room like a widening circle in a pond. For most of them I was simply a curiosity, someone who had become famous, not someone they were all that eager to know. A glance, a few questioning remarks among themselves—not all of them flattering or kind. No one felt easy around criminal defense attorneys, especially other lawyers who never went to court because they constructed legal labyrinths by which to protect their Wall Street clients from anyone who might want to look into how the money was made. It was what they had wanted to do from the beginning, before they ever showed up at Harvard. They wanted money, and the law seemed the best way to get it. You knew who they were right away. They wanted to concentrate on the basics, on the rules, on the facts, on the things you needed to know to become adept at the craft. The first mention of justice, or fairness, or how the law could or should be changed and they were checking their watches. They were intelligent, focused, habitually well prepared; they knew everything about being lawyers and from the moment you first heard them reporting the facts of a case you began to doubt there was any effective difference between them and a machine.
There were others, of course, who had higher aspirations, who looked upon the law, or at least a law school education, as an opportunity for something more. They wanted to be lawyers, but only, or mainly, so they could become judges, or hold other, perhaps higher offices
instead. In the sixties, Harvard Law School was filled with future governors and senators, men and women who thought they could, in that phrase that now seems so quaint, make a difference. Two members of the class in which I graduated had been elected to the United States Senate, though one of them had been defeated for a second term. There had also been two governors, both of them in the Rocky Mountain States, and three—or was it four?—Cabinet officers, including one attorney general. Two had gone much farther. One, Elias James Reynolds, was an associate justice on the Supreme Court. The other one… Well, the other one was the reason I was here.
The crowd kept growing until whichever way you looked you were in someone’s way. Holding my empty glass against my chest, I mumbled apologies as I turned toward the nearest bar.
“Hello, Joseph Antonelli.”
I looked up into the tired, exhausted eyes of a man I did not know. A frail, well-intentioned smile lurched across his gaunt, troubled face.
“James Haviland,” he said in a quiet, unassuming voice. The smile grew broader, more confident, as we shook hands. “Jimmy,” he reminded me.
My first reaction was astonishment; my second, regret that I had not been able to hide my surprise.
“You didn’t know I came back and finished, did you?”
I could never forget his name, but I did not remember his face. Cheerful and outgoing, everybody’s friend, somewhere in the great amorphous middle of his class, but the first person anyone who knew him would think of when they needed someone they could trust, he did not look anything like this cautious, hesitant man who could not look directly at me for more than a fraction of a second at a time. Everyone looked different—everyone was twice as old as they had been—but age alone could not account for this. Something had happened to Jimmy Haviland, and I knew what it was. What had happened that winter day in New York, that day Annie Malreaux died, still had him by the throat.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, realizing only too late that it was the last thing I should have said. Under the din of the enveloping crowd perhaps he had not heard me—or perhaps he had. From the distant expression in his furtive eyes, I could not tell.
