Mortal Sins

by Anna Porter

  “He never went back to Hungary?”

  “What for?” Brenda threw her head back so forcefully it hit the back of the chaise longue and rebounded. The canaries set up a wild din in response to the thump.

  Finally Brenda resumed. “First job he got was on the docks. He was big and tough and could carry the weight of two men with one arm. His favorite trick was crouching on the floor, grabbing a chair by one leg, his arm outstretched, and hoisting it over his head. He could still do that last year. It earned him respect on the waterfront. Also made him a large moving target with a funny accent and a long Jewish name. So one day a bunch of them pinned him down, broke his ribs, and stuck a knife in his stomach. They glued him together at the Montreal General. He stayed there for a year washing floors and cleaning toilets to work off the bill.” Brenda smiled. “Last year, he gave them a hundred thou toward the new wing. They never knew why.”

  “He met Eva there?”

  “She was a nurse. Couldn’t resist his looks. Few women did.” She laughed again. “Know what you’re thinking,” she said, her voice a childlike singsong, “but you’re wrong. Not altogether wrong, but mostly wrong, and anyway what does it matter now he’s dead.” She shouted the last word, leaning forward, almost spat it at Judith, then buried her face in her elegant hands.

  “Mommy?” Judith heard over her shoulder. It was a small, uncertain voice, a little shaky. Meredith emerged from behind one of the citrus trees. She must have come in some time ago. Her bare feet made no sound on the tiles as she tiptoed toward her mother. “Mommy?” She wore a tiny pink bikini with blue ribbons, another blue ribbon held up her hair. Instinctively, Judith reached out to comfort her, but Meredith ignored the outstretched hand and went to stand over her mother.

  Brenda looked up and smiled, although she had tears running down her face. “It’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

  Meredith put her arms around Brenda’s neck and hugged her head against her childish rotund stomach. Then she turned her attention to Judith: “We were wondering if you would like to have some lunch,” she said, suddenly every inch in command, with a smile like her mother’s, but without the touch of irony.

  Brenda wiped her face with a white silk handkerchief and took another long gulp of her wine. “Well...,” she said—her elon-gated “well”—“perhaps we should join Philip on the terrace?”

  When Brenda stood, the gold dress unfurled with a soft hiss. “What have you ordered for lunch?” she asked Meredith.

  “Philip wanted lobsters and some garlicky salad with eggs and little green things, so I had Stephie make me a hot dog. Can’t stand all that guck.” Meredith led the way out of the conservatory, around past a baroque German cuckoo clock that was just starting to strike twelve and through a pair of French doors to what Judith assumed must be the terrace, though it looked rather more like an open-air Greek museum, complete with classical statues in various states of undress. The whole thing was covered—and would be until April, said Meredith— by an enormous blue-tinted plastic balloon.

  In the center was a huge bean-shaped pool. Philip Masters, wearing tennis whites, green visor, and gold-rimmed sunglasses, sat at a stone table near the pool. He was working on a pile of papers, making notes here and there, his elbow close to a glass containing frothy pink liquid, Chinese paper umbrella, and long straw. He jumped to his feet to greet them. “Beautiful day,” he shouted.

  Only Meredith found it in her heart to agree with him. The white outfit made him appear both wider and shorter than he was, like some overgrown schoolboy with unnaturally aged features. His knees were very rosy in their nudity.

  While lunch was served Brenda sank into gloomy silence, and Philip extolled the virtues of the island and why Paul had decided to build here. “The terrace is Brenda’s addition,” he said. “It’s rather”—he grinned at his lobster—“original, don’t you think?”

  “Mmm,” Judith agreed.

  “What Philip means,” Brenda said, or rather slurred, leaning forward and fixing Philip with a baleful gaze, “is that it’s gauche, self-indulgent, worthless kitsch, and he doubts Paul would ever have had the lousy taste to install it himself. But Philip is much too polite to say so.”

  Meredith pushed her plate with the half-eaten hot dog to one side, ran to the pool, and dove in with one easy, practiced movement.

  Philip didn’t say anything. Clearly it was his turn to sulk.

  Perhaps because of Philip’s discomfort, Brenda brightened. “You’d like to go for a swim?” she asked.

  “Didn’t bring a bathing suit,” Judith confessed. She was sweating inside the clinging woolen skirt and sticky black pantyhose.

  “No problem,” Brenda chirped. “There’s a bunch of bikinis I keep on hand for forgetful visitors. Let’s see you for size...” She assessed Judith with one eye closed. “Ten, with an outsized top, I’d say,” she pronounced. “Got lots of those.” She lurched out of her chair and floated off in the direction of the French doors.

  For a moment neither of them said anything, then Philip broke the silence: “She’s taking it very hard,” he said. “She’s not used to taking losses. She had a protected childhood, a little princess whose greatest problem was not knowing what to wear to the next birthday party, or whose boyfriend danced with whom. Her acutest problem was whether to mix or match her accessories. She was the only child of middle-aged Jewish parents. A late baby who never lacked for anything. They would have regarded it as a personal failure if she were denied anything they could provide for her. She never even encountered anti-Semitism—and that was when quotas and restrictions were still a way of life for the rest of us, when banks and department stores didn’t hire Jews, when apartments, resorts, hotels, and even beaches were ‘gentiles only.’ Nobody ever beat her up for being a ‘kike.’ ”

  Philip stood up and paced a little, hands clasped behind his back. “I thought, when I was growing up, that experience toughens the man, but it doesn’t, you know.” He stopped and looked at Judith. “All it does is make you aware of other people’s misery. Gives you a firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to be the underdog, a feeling of sympathy for victims. That sort of thing. In my case, there was an additional advantage: I took up boxing. You’re looking at a onetime welterweight champion for Montreal East, my dear.” He poured himself a glass of Perrier. “For Brenda,” he said, “coming here may have been a mistake. I told her so, but she did want to get away from where Paul died. Trouble with Bermuda is they’d had some of their happiest times here.”

  “There’s something I’ve been wondering about since we first met,” Judith said, deciding to put Brenda’s absence to good use. “Mr. Zimmerman remarked on your being a hired gun, working for whoever paid the highest price for your services. What did he mean?”

  Philip played with his napkin. He smoothed it over his knee, folded it into a neat square, monogram side up, then dabbed his chin with it. “That would have been on Thursday, you say...,” he mused.

  “The 26th,” Judith said.

  “Nothing to do with the story, but I guess you’ll see the announcement next week anyway.” Philip placed the napkin carefully beside his plate. “I had accepted the chairmanship of Amco. He took it a little hard. After almost 40 years I suppose he’d grown accustomed to our working together.”

  “Your moving to Amco, would that have meant you’d no longer be his lawyer?”

  “We hadn’t yet resolved how we were going to deal with the long-term association with Masters, Goldberg, Griffiths... He was too angry then to discuss that. So was I, I guess. We were both shouting—” Philip broke off. Meredith had emerged from the water and slipped back onto her chair, a big terry-cloth towel wrapped around her shoulders, her blond hair dripping on the marble tiles.

  “You told her,” she said. “You said there wasn’t any need to tell anybody and then you went and told her.” Her big violet eyes were fixed accusingly on Philip Masters. Her voice shook.

  Masters bent toward her, plac
ing a limp, placating hand on her bare arm. “Honey, it isn’t what you think, I just told her about—”

  “I heard you,” Meredith screamed. “You think I don’t hear things. Just like the last time.” She swung from her chair and set off toward the house, running. Over her shoulder, she gave Masters a parting shot: “You suck.” Then she slammed the door behind her.

  “She is highly strung. Like her mother,” Philip explained quickly. “She’d overheard my discussion with her father last Thursday. We decided to keep it to ourselves till it was absolutely necessary for Brenda to know. Now is not the time to tell Brenda I won’t remain the faithful retainer she’s always said I was.”

  “I don’t think Brenda likes you a helluva lot,” Judith opined.

  Philip smiled. “It’s her way,” he said. “Bantering. Wouldn’t take it seriously. We’ve known each other a long time. Sometimes, I think...” He picked a lump of sugar from a silver bowl and put it on his tongue. He made a loud slurping noise as he sucked on it. “She resented my being so close to Paul. Female jealousy. You know...”

  Judith didn’t, but there was no need to say so because Brenda had returned with an assortment of bikinis, all white, with blue ties, “so you can mix and match,” she said. “There are changing rooms behind the bar.” Brenda herself had changed into an almost strapless pink bikini. The pants were held together by a pair of thin gold chains on each side, exposing her long, brown flanks. Rubens would have gone crazy over her figure: perfect in every detail, only a little too much of it.

  It was clear Brenda hadn’t lied to Who’s Who about her age. Nobody 40 had a figure as seamless as hers. No sags, no droops, no concessions to gravity. Thank God the changing rooms had no mirrors, only oriental birds-on-branch prints, cane chairs, and deliberately rustic woven mats.

  Knowing she’d feel rotten standing next to Brenda, Judith hid in a fluffy blue towel supplied by the maid and let it go, reluctantly, with the same movement she used to leap into the shallow end of the pool. The bikini clung to her like wet tissue paper.

  Brenda, with the practiced motions of someone accustomed to dealing with unsteadiness, cautiously lowered herself down the ladder at the other end, slid into the water with a girlish squeal, and immediately began to swim vigorous strokes—breaststroke. She kept her head well above water. With her blond hair now piled higher on her head to keep it dry, she rather resembled a swan, or some white-tufted wading bird.

  Philip Masters sat on the edge, his pedicured feet lightly dangling in the water. Judith made her way toward him. She slid her soles over the white marble tiles, their touch soft and sensuous to her hot, tired toes. Philip, his visor pushed back on his head, watched her with interest. He was waiting for the next round.

  “Did Paul Zimmerman ever talk to you about his childhood?” she asked, not wanting to disappoint him.

  “Not a whole lot,” Philip said brightly. “Past couple of years he’d begun to get maudlin now and then. Happens to everybody with age. Talked about getting his first bicycle. Happiest day of his life. Biggest deal apparently in that chicken-shit town was getting a new bike. His was orange, except for silver tire guards and the handlebars. Do you remember your first bike?”

  “Yes. Not much nostalgia in it, though. Kept falling off all the time.” Her father had taught her to ride on an old secondhand ladies’ bike with over-elaborate handlebars that resembled oxen’s horns. He had run along behind holding onto the seat as she pedaled. Both of them panted and tried to concentrate. Neither was particularly athletic. Come to think of it, that may have been the only time Judith ever saw her father run. “Fool,” her mother had murmured when she saw the two of them land sideways into the neighbor’s fence. “Serves him right.”

  She must have loved him once, although Judith never saw that. Before she gave up on him. Before he finally convinced her that he had no ambitions to become the bank president, no desire to have, no interest in the things money could buy. He hid behind his newspaper most evenings, seemingly deaf to her sharp tongue. In the ledger he brought home from the bank each night, she later discovered he was writing poetry.

  “Mine was a secondhand Raleigh. I took it to my room the first night,” Philip said. “Paul got to enjoy his fully for a day. Then the Russian invasion came and it made bicycles frivolous.”

  “Did he have any friends?”

  “Only one he ever mentioned. Some kid called Feri. They became best friends when they were six or seven. Inseparable. Paul was shy and reticent, tongue-tied, he said. Feri was confident. A talker. They made a good pair.” Philip laughed. “Paul sure changed a lot.”

  “What happened to the other kid?”

  “Who knows? It was a lousy war.”

  “When I came to your office, you told me Paul wasn’t interested in making money and didn’t want power. Challenge, you said, but you never really explained.”

  “Didn’t I?” Philip mused. “I must have assumed you’d prefer to work it out for yourself. What he wanted, naturally, was to prove himself. Over and over again. He had to make sure he could still do it. It’s kind of a DP mentality, you know.”

  “DP?”

  “Displaced person. It’s what they called wartime refugees. But the syndrome was nothing new. My grandfather came out of Ukraine after one of the pogroms. He was 14 when he arrived in Montreal. Not a penny in his pocket. He never stopped trying to prove he could make it, either. Worked 24 hours a day. Got his first grocery store when he was 20 and kept adding new stores till the day he died at age 82. He had 14 stores by then. Sent all his kids to university, though he never had one day of school himself. Hell, he couldn’t even read.”

  Judith floated on her back, gently fluttering her hands to keep her balance. The water felt warm and bubbly, like champagne, the tiny bubbles crisscrossing her stomach, which had begun to feel smooth and silky like the tiles. Her hair fanned out around her head, luxuriant, little waves caressed her scalp. The sun made flashy rainbows along the sides of the big blue bubble.

  “Nice. Very, very nice,” Philip clucked appreciatively and moistened his lips with his small pink tongue.

  Judith, her ears bobbing in and out of the water, pretended not to have heard. Fact was, while she thought she should protest from a professional viewpoint, she felt quite receptive to the compliment. The light cocoon-like warmth had made her feel sensual. Sexy. And that was not a good way to be feeling around a short, balding married man whom she was supposed to be interviewing for her most lucrative assignment of recent years. She checked to make certain Brenda was out of earshot, then decided it was time for one of her lead gambits.

  “Eva Zimmerman says Paul was murdered,” she announced while watching Philip closely. She hadn’t changed position, she just opened her eyes wide.

  He stiffened as though he’d been hit by a blast of cold air and clutched his hands together in his lap. Then he pushed his dark glasses higher on his nose as he composed his features into an amused expression. Resuming control came easily to him, but the effort had been visible. “When did you talk to Eva?” he asked carefully.

  “She sent me a telegram,” Judith said. “Who do you think would have wanted to kill Paul Zimmerman?”

  “In a telegram?” Philip’s voice rose to its upper ranges. “That’s crazy. And typically Eva. She would have had my letter for a few hours, consulted her lawyers, ignored their advice, and gone ahead with whatever destructive nonsense first entered her mind. She is bad-tempered and impulsive.” He had relaxed enough to resume dangling his toes in the pool. “As to who would kill Paul, nobody. With the possible exception of Eva herself once she saw the will. Paul left a few odds and ends to old friends, a couple of reasonable bequests to charities; everything else went to Brenda and Meredith— in trust.”

  “And Arthur?”

  “Just his allowance.”

  “And that would have caused Eva to send that telegram?”

  “Hell, no. She doesn’t much care for Arthur.” Philip chuckled. “Not an easy target
for love, that guy. Never was, far as I recall. It’s for herself she’d want more money. Eva knows how to spend, and I suspect her investments could use a blood transfusion. Paris is an expensive city, and they don’t have free rooms at the Meurice.”

  “She stays at the Meurice?”

  “No, my dear, she lives at the Meurice.”

  Brenda swam closer, pulled herself out of the pool, sauntered over to Masters and flopped on her stomach on the ledge. Her thighs made a funny little clucking sound as she slapped them onto the stone.

  Among other things, the wet bathing suit revealed that she was a natural blond.

  “Well,” she announced with a sigh, “I do like to think your trip wasn’t a total waste of time. At least you’ve had a swim.”

  “Thanks,” said Judith.

  “To give thanks is good, and to forgive...,” Brenda declared, for no apparent reason.

  “I beg your pardon?” Judith asked.

  “Swinburne, you know,” Brenda said, leaning on her elbows. “A much underrated poet: ‘If life was bitter to thee, pardon / If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; / And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.’ ”

  “Hmm,” Judith said noncommittally and prepared to dive for her towel.

  “Did you wonder what Paul was talking about when he died?” Brenda asked suddenly.

  “When he said ‘Sorry’?” Judith inquired tentatively. She hadn’t been sure Brenda had heard.