"Gail—"
"Couldn't have been you."
"Don't change the subject, Gail."
"I didn't ask a stranger to do this," she said. "Felix is a friend. Isn't he?"
"Cono. Okay, okay." Anthony added, "But you should have talked to me."
Gail said, "All right. I didn't. I'm sorry."
There was a pause. "Okay." Then an exhalation of breath. "Did you get my other message about dinner? I was thinking we could look at some engagement rings first. Mayor's in Coral Gables is open until nine o'clock. Karen can come. Two of us against one, I might have a chance."
"Oh, we can't. Karen has a soccer game." Gail turned her back on the lobby and leaned a shoulder against the wall. "Come to my house after. We can forage in my refrigerator. I have a cold bottle of champagne."
"You do?" She heard the squeaking of chair springs. He would be leaning back, looking at the ferny, sun-dappled atrium through the big window in his office. "I don't know. It would be dangerous to drive after having champagne."
"Well ... I could make up the bed in the guest room," she said.
"No. That one's too small for what I'm going to do to you." His low chuckle sent a flutter through her stomach down into her legs. Then he asked what time she would be home, and they agreed he would arrive at eight-thirty.
Gail was about to drop the telephone into her purse when she remembered the other call she had to make. "Damn." She looked at her watch. Already close to five-thirty.
She found Seth Greer's number in her address book.
He had left an hour earlier. Gail explained who she was, the attorney for the Miami Opera, and that she was supposed to pick up some papers. "Perhaps he left them for me. Could you look?" Past the windows, long shadows extended eastward, but the sky was still that clear, saturated blue found only on late afternoons in winter, a trick of light or variation in humidity.
The secretary came back to say she couldn't find anything with Ms. Connor's name on it. "He must have taken them with him." When Gail made a small groan, the woman said, "He went home. You could go by and get them."
"If he's there."
"He should be. He said he had somebody coming over for dinner."
"Really." The glass door swung open as two young men went out with a huge black box, possibly a tympani case. "I'll just drop by, then. Could I trouble you for the address?"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The streets in Coconut Grove were narrow and shady, with expensive walled condo communities gradually pushing out the small wood-frame houses where the original inhabitants had lived. Gail had gone to school in the Grove when real artists and crazies had studios there, before it became too aware of itself, too commercial, with some of the worst crime statistics in Miami. Gail made sure her doors were locked as she drove slowly south looking for the right road.
Twenty years ago Anthony had lived here. He and Rebecca and Seth. It was possible that after school Gail had walked with her friends to the little deli on Main Highway to buy a soda. Anthony might have been standing in line ahead of her, his long hair waving past the collar of his green army jacket. He might have paid for his beer and, as he turned to leave, glanced without interest at the skinny fourteen-year-old girls chattering behind him, wearing their Ransom-Everglades uniforms, neat little sky-blue jumpers. Girls heading for deb parties and class trips to Paris, daughters of Miami's late-seventies social elite. What would he have thought if someone had told him he would someday fall in love with one of these girls? Or how would the girl have reacted, looking up into that bearded face, those angry black eyes?
The number for Seth Greer's house was tacked to a sabal palm tree, and under the sign, a stern warning from Brinks Home Security. The driveway was un-paved and overgrown into a tunnel of foliage that opened up to reveal a low, rectilinear house with overhanging eaves. Through glass panels under the flat roof, Gail could see the top of a stone chimney and an open-beam ceiling. A dense stand of bamboo threatened to take over what little yard remained. In the gravel turnaround were two cars—a small black BMW and a silver Jaguar.
In the fading daylight Gail walked across a mildewy plank porch. A wind chime of temple bells, green and pitted with age, tinkled softly from the far corner. Gail pressed the doorbell. She waited. Beside the door was a yellowing fiberglass panel with a Japanese design of twisted pine boughs and a snow-capped mountain. A shadow in the shape of a person moved across it. Probably checking her out through the peephole. The shape went back in the other direction. She pressed the bell again. Waited some more. Then heard shoes on a floor. She wondered what he had been wearing— or not—the first time.
The door opened. Seth Greer in business shirt and gray slacks. Not happy to see her, but smiling anyway, pretending she couldn't have noticed Rebecca Dixon's car in his driveway. "Well. Hello, Gail." He was not inviting her in.
"I don't want to disturb you—"
"No, it's okay." Then he dropped his forehead onto extended fingers. "Oh, Christ. The research."
"Your secretary said you might have taken it home."
"I'm sorry. Something came up and I don't have it finished. But look. I can courier it to your office by noon tomorrow. All right?"
"Oh, great. The appointment is in the morning."
"The morning? You should have told me."
"I did. Seth, you wanted to help out. That's why I called you."
He held up his hands. "All right. I'll go downtown early and get it from the law library."
"No, never mind." She could do that much herself. Or not do it at all.
Over his shoulder she noticed that Rebecca Dixon had come into the entrance hall. The little luncheon suit was gone, replaced by stretch pants and a black sweater. "Seth, for heaven's sake, don't keep Gail out there on the porch."
"I was just leaving," Gail said.
"No, you don't." Rebecca reached past Seth to tug on her wrist. "I have something to say to you. Come in here for a minute."
Seth stepped back and lifted an arm. "Please."
The living room had a conversation pit, an architectural touch Gail had not seen since her childhood. The furniture was a weird combination of oriental and unadorned modern, and the walls were done in rice paper. Sliding glass doors opened onto a wood deck under a vine-draped trellis. A pool pump hummed in the gathering darkness, then shut off.
Rebecca took the two steps down to a U-shaped arrangement of leather sofas, moving carefully, keeping her balance. "Seth, fix Gail a drink."
"I can't stay long. My daughter has a soccer game."
"You can stay five minutes." Rebecca sank into a corner and curled her legs to one side. She was barefoot.
"What would you like, Gail?" Seth asked.
"Nothing. Thanks." She sat down and put her purse on the coffee table—a black lacquered square with dragon's-claw feet and a scaly bas-relief tail around the perimeter.
With one elbow on the sofa, Rebecca rested her head in her hand. Heavy bangs and the black sweater framed her pale face. Her mascara was smudged. "I want to apologize for my behavior today outside the opera. I am not normally a rude person. I feel so bad."
"Please. There's nothing to apologize for," Gail said.
Rebecca reached for her drink, a red concoction in a big martini glass. Her long nails grazed the stem and sent the liquid sloshing close to the rim. She settled back with the drink on her angled knee. "Are you shocked and scandalized, finding me here?"
"You said you and Seth were friends, so I don't think anything about it."
"Very diplomatic of you. I don't do this very often. Whenever I need cheering up. Good old Seth."
"Don't let your coach turn into a pumpkin," Gail said.
It took Rebecca a second to figure that out. She made a soundless laugh. "Lloyd's in Cuba." "Cuba?"
"I thought you'd get a kick out of that." "What's he doing in Cuba?" Her eyes closed for the length of a little shrug. "No idea."
She didn't know or wouldn't say? Gail would have pressed to find
out, but Seth returned with his drink, something in a rocks glass. He remained standing, either for the sake of not appearing too chummy with Rebecca or because he did not want to encourage Gail to linger.
Gail would have said good night, but there was another issue to take care of. "Rebecca, I talked to Tom this afternoon about Felix Castillo being his bodyguard. He said you'd told him about Castillo's past in Cuba. I don't know exactly what you said, or how accurate it was, but you really shouldn't have. If it became public knowledge, Castillo could have some trouble."
"God forbid," murmured Rebecca, her lips at the rim of her glass.
Seth asked, "Is Tom going to use him?"
"I'm not sure. I gave him Castillo's business card, and he said he'd call him."
"What would it take to unhire Felix Castillo and find someone else?"
"Why would we do that?"
"Are you serious? Becky called me up. I couldn't believe it. Could not believe it."
Gail looked at Rebecca. "I asked you. I said if you don't want Castillo, say so."
"It doesn't matter. Seth, please-"
"No, let me talk." His attention was still on Gail. "I assume by now that Anthony filled you in on our little sojourn to Central America."
"Yes, he told me. Felix was there as an advisor from Cuba working for the rebels. That was twenty years ago. He's like Anthony—he stays out of politics now, and I think that's what we need. I'm sure he'll do a good job."
As if she had spoken in Chinese, Seth stared at her from the other side of his black dragon coffee table. "You know about the girl who was with us?"
"Yes." Gail said slowly, "Anthony told me what happened to her. She was shot by the Sandinistas—by a man named Pablo. And after . . . her burial, you escaped."
"Jesus H. Christ!" Seth put his hands to his head. "How can you be so goddamn insensitive? You don't think it matters that Felix was there? That he knows who we are?"
Gail stared back at him. "He was there . . . when she died?"
"Yes! He came with Pablo!" Dropping his arms by his sides, he said, "Oopsie. Looks like Quintana missed that one little detail. He called me, you know. Called both of us. Said, 'I'm going to tell Gail about Los Pozos, I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to her yourself.' Well, you just tell him I fucked up here. Sorry, Tony."
Still trying to make sense of this, Gail said, "I— I'm sure Felix won't talk about it to anyone. Anthony wouldn't use him as an investigator if he weren't discreet."
A soft laugh came from the corner of the sofa. Rebecca said, "We should have a party, Seth. A twenty-year reunion party."
"Come on, Becky."
"Oh, we should. All of us together—Almost all of us." She laughed again, more like a hiccup. But it wasn't a laugh. She was crying. Seth put down his drink and rushed over to her. "Don't. Becky. Sweetheart." He put his arms around her head and kissed her hair. She leaned against his chest.
Gail stood. "I think I should go." Neither of them seemed to notice.
Daylight had diminished to a faint wash of gray through the trees. Gail was unlocking her car when Seth called to her from the porch. If his tone had been hostile, she might have fled.
Gail waited. "Is Rebecca all right?"
"Sure. She said I ought to walk you out. Sorry for yelling at you, Gail. It's not your fault. I'm going crazy with this."
"What should I do?" she asked. "My God, I feel so terrible. If I'd known—"
Seth took her hand and patted it. "Don't worry. Like you said, Castillo has no profit in bringing it up. We could do the same to him, right? I bet the exiles would have him for lunch."
"He wanted Emily Davis dead? He knew she was Anthony's girlfriend, didn't he?"
His face tightening as if in pain, Seth said, "There wasn't a whole lot anybody could do about it. Not even Felix. It's not one of my favorite topics of conversation. Do you mind?"
"Oh, God, what a situation," Gail said. "Are you sure Rebecca's okay?"
"Yes." Then he shook his head. "No, she isn't. If I could get her out of Miami, it would help. But there are a few complications, including the fact that the lady is married."
Gail had heard nothing further from Rebecca about wanting the name of a divorce lawyer. She said, "Rebecca mentioned just now that Lloyd went to Cuba. You don't happen to know why, do you?"
He made a short laugh. "Maybe for the women. They hang around the tourist hotels. Supposedly they'll do anything if you take them to a dollar store for a pair of shoes."
"You don't believe that's why he went," Gail said. "Rebecca really doesn't know?"
"She doesn't tell me everything," Seth said.
"Did she ever mention that Lloyd knows Octavio Reyes?"
"Reyes is a customer, I know that much. Is there more?"
"I'm not sure."
Seth laughed. "Wouldn't that be a news flash on Octavio Reyes's radio show? Damn. You know, I've been thinking of going on the air. He's been asking for one of us to debate him. I could tell his listening audience that he's a hypocritical blowhard."
"You bet," Gail said.
"I mean it. Somebody should stand up to him. My Spanish is still good enough."
"No, Seth. Absolutely not. Jeffrey Hopkins is handling all media relations—if you can call Octavio Reyes a serious member of the media. Tell me you won't."
"It was a thought." He looked up at the pallid sky. The bamboo swayed and whispered in a faint breeze, and the wind chime answered from the porch. "If not for now, when do we live? Socrates said that, for what it's worth. It seemed to make sense when everything I owned would fit into my Volkswagen Beetle."
Gail said, "Maybe you should talk to Rebecca. It's not too late for either of you, Seth. People can start over."
"Sho nuff?" He laughed. He was angry, but not, Gail was certain, angry at her. "No, I think Los Pozos might've done us in. We were okay—more or less— before that. What we had is buried right along with Emily Davis." He patted Gail's shoulder. "That's what Becky thinks, and if she thinks, therefore it is. I can't get her to accept that Emily's death wasn't her fault."
"Why would she blame herself?"
"Because she's the one who reported her. She saw her with the American agent. We were friends with some of the men who died, so Rebecca was furious. She talked to the other nurse in the clinic, and then the rebels heard about it." Seth's glasses lifted when he rubbed his eyes. "Can I say this? The problem was, and is, that Emily should never have gone with us. She was a dumb, sweet kid. She couldn't take it, she wanted out, and Quintana wouldn't let her go."
Gail frowned. "He said there wasn't money to pay her airfare back to Miami."
"Oh, bullshit. All he had to do was phone home from La Vigia. Eat a little crow, beg a little bread to get her out of there. What happened to her, I blame Anthony Quintana. She was a toy to him. He didn't care."
"That's not true." Gail could remember clearly what Anthony had told her about Los Pozos. He had not mentioned Felix, but his anguish over Emily Davis had been real.
Seth was smiling again, that thin cover for anger. "Why do you think he brought her along?"
"He isn't like that at all."
"You did not know the man then, Gail. I did. Here's how he met Emily Davis. We saw her jogging on campus. She was a cute girl with a great body. A nice girl, you know? She had long blond hair and loads of freckles. He had a thing about American women, his little joke. He said it was his way of screwing the U.S. We had a standard bet, twenty bucks if he could get the girl into bed within two days. He lost with Emily. It took him a week."
Turning away, Gail leaned on her car. "All right. As a young man he was generally pissed off about everything—"
"Yeah, Gail, I'm sure that's what it was. Rebecca and I were living together over on Elizabeth Street. I was practicing law, she was in pre-med. We had a nice little apartment. When Tony got into trouble with his granddad, I let him stay with us. One day I came home early, they're going at it in the bedroom. I tried to be cool about it. In the seventies, peo
ple weren't as uptight as now. We never heard of AIDS, and sex was actually fun. Anyway. He moved out, she went with him, and I said, Becky, when it's over, call me. Tony had no guilt about it. He dumped her inside a month. She came back, and Tony and I made up. We were fairly progressive in those days."
Struggling not to show a reaction, Gail stared straight into Seth's face.
He seemed to crumple. "Jesus, what am I doing? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry." With each word he hit his forehead lightly with the heel of his hand. "You didn't need to hear that. I swear to you, I don't mean to bash the man. He saved my life, mine and Becky's. He got us out of there, and God knows I couldn't have done it." Hands on his hips, his face ragged with fatigue, he looked back at the house. "I should go check on her."
Seth opened Gail's door and made sure she knew which way to turn at the end of the driveway. "Good night, kid."
On the field behind Biscayne Academy, blazing lights made an island of color and motion. Children raced across the field in their yellow or red jerseys. Cleated shoes thundered over the ground and kicked up bits of grass, and the soccer ball shot ahead, a dizzy spin of black and white.
Biscayne made the goal and the parents whistled and cheered. Gail waited for Karen to look her way, then waved and gave a thumbs-up. Karen grinned, bounced up and down excitedly in her big yellow jersey, then spun around to line up with the rest of her team. She had fallen down a few times. Her knees were scraped.
Dressed in jeans and sneakers, Gail walked along the sidelines, avoiding conversations with other parents. She was waiting for Anthony to return her call. Five minutes ago she had left a message on his beeper. He might be at dinner with a client or another lawyer in his firm. He would feel the beeper at his belt, glance at the number, then excuse himself to find a phone. And Gail would say, Anthony, I'm so sorry. This isn't a good night for you to come over. The soccer game started late, and Karen just told me she has a book report to do. A lie, but she didn't particularly care if he believed her or not, the mood she was in.
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