"Sounds like you're covered."
"Except the cops say there wasn't an Alan. They say Jack never heard of him, which is weird because Alan knows Jack. I called Jack and he doesn't know what I'm talking about. What a lie. I saw him in the living room looking through Jack's old record collection."
Gail reached for another cracker. "Someone else must have seen him—unless he was a ghost. When you and he walked to the seawall, no one saw you together?"
"I don't think so. There was this black drag queen from Brazil with a red wig on, and she was showing people how to do the samba." Bobby laughed. "I said to myself, man, I'm outta here before she grabs me, so that's when I left. It's about fifty yards to the water, but you can't see it through all the trees and bushes, then it clears out. The moon was straight up, just about full. So I sit down with my feet hanging off the edge, and about a minute later—not even—I hear somebody say, 'Oh, hello!' like he didn't know I was there."
"Are you saying he followed you?"
Bobby's foot was on his knee, and he flexed it one way, then the other. Under the fuzz of dark hair, muscles bunched and released. "I think so."
"He's gay?"
"He was pretty drunk—I know that. He said he used to be married, but I've had married guys hit on me. You can't always tell. It doesn't bother me, unless they push it. Alan stood kind of far away at first, like, oh, I'm not really here, we're not having this conversation. But he was cool. I think he'd back me up, if you could find him."
"Tell me what he looks like."
"Uhhh . . . bushy gray hair. Round glasses. About five-ten, kind of skinny."
"How does he know Jack?"
"He didn't say."
"What did you and he talk about?"
"Jeez." Bobby let out a breath. "I remember he said he was getting away from the music, which was pretty loud. I said, yeah, me too. He went to school in Chicago, and he said how much weed they used to smoke back then. Pot. That's what he called it. And ... oh. He said his wife was an artist, but she passed away. Then he starts talking about the meaning of life and death and all that. He recited this poem about athletes dying young, then he cracks up laughing. Hey, maybe he's a professor. That could be. Jack knows some professors at UM."
Gail twirled her pen by the ends, then lifted her eyes. "That beer you were drinking—"
He looked back at her. "Yeah?"
"You sure it wasn't a joint? I don't care, but I'd like to know."
He made a guilty smile. "Somebody gave it to me. A friend of Jack's. But I wasn't, like, hammered. I remember everything."
"You shared it with Alan?"
"He took a few hits. He said he doesn't do it anymore. I don't either, but this guy gave it to me, and—"
"It's okay. Is there anything else? Really, you have to be up front with me."
"No. That's it." Bobby cleared his throat again— only a nervous gesture, Gail thought. Bobby Gonzalez seemed as healthy as a young stallion. What else was he holding back? Gail had interviewed enough clients to know that they routinely skipped over awkward details. Not a lie, exactly. They simply wanted the attorney to like them, not even aware, sometimes, of this filtering process.
"All right. Did you and Alan go back up to the house at the same time? Maybe someone saw you then."
"No. Sean beeped me and I said I had to make a phone call. Alan just, like, rolled back into the grass and looked up at the sky and said good night, take care of yourself, young man. That was it. I didn't see him again."
"And would Sean confirm that you called him at a certain time?"
"Definitely."
Gail tapped her pen on her notes. "Tell you what. You sit right there for a few minutes and write down names of people at the party, as far as you can recall them. Write down everything you said to the police. And everything you know about Roger Cresswell. Put that down too."
"I'm not a great speller."
She tore her pages off the pad. "That doesn't matter in the least. If you need anything, ask Miriam. I'll be right back."
In her office a few floors above Gail's, Charlene Marks sat at her desk with minestrone soup from the deli downstairs, delicately eating, avoiding drips on her skirt. "Did I not tell you so?"
"Charlene, Bobby's in the clear. He has an alibi for every moment. He arrived before Roger Cresswell, he was busy in the house, and when he wasn't, he was with this man Alan."
"Who either doesn't exist or doesn't want to be found. A man, possibly a university professor, probably in the closet, who was smoking dope with a twenty-one-year-old ballet dancer at a wild—very wild—party.” Charlene tapped her watch with a perfectly manicured nail. "It's eleven-thirty. Just a reminder."
"Yes, all right." Gail stole a piece of her bread. "You know more about the Cresswells than I do. You've talked to Roger. You've been following this case in the news."
"I don't know who Alan is, and don't even try to get the guest list from the police. They won't give you bupkis in an open investigation."
"Alan said his wife was an artist, and she died. Wasn't there something in the paper about Roger Cresswell's sister? She was an artist, and she committed suicide?"
"Yes. She overdosed on pills. You're correct, it was in the paper. 'Tragedy again strikes Cresswell family.' You think Alan was married to Roger's sister."
"It would explain how he knows Jack. What was her name, Charlene? I need the last name. If she used his, we've found him."
"What was it?" Charlene lowered her plastic spoon. "An artist. Cresswell. Something Cresswell." Rolling her chair back, Charlene stood up and looked around her office. "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." She strode across the thick carpet to one of the bookcases and ran her finger along a line of magazine boxes. She tilted one out.
"It's funny what sticks in your mind, isn't it? I spoke at a seminar a few years ago on battered spouses, and there was a judge who did a section on restraining orders. He wrote an article about it for the Florida Bar Journal." Charlene sat in an armchair and flipped open one magazine after another, dropping the discards in a disorderly pile. "His wife had recently committed suicide, and by way of condolence, I suppose, I mentioned that I'd seen her obituary in the New York Times. She'd been an artist, apparently quite well known. Where in hell—? Ah!"
She flipped pages as she walked back across the room. Folding the magazine open, she thrust it in front of Gail, who saw a page of text and a small, black-and-white photograph of a man in his forties with graying hair and tortoiseshell glasses. The caption read, Nathan A. Harris, Judge, Eleventh Judicial Circuit.
"He transferred into the criminal division after I'd left, that's why I didn't immediately hear bells going off." Charlene tapped the photo. "You do notice the middle initial, don't you?"
"A is for Alan. I've met him, Charlene. He was at a cocktail party that Anthony's office threw last Christmas. He was on our invitation list for the wedding! Anthony said his wife was deceased. Oh, my God. A judge. He's going to be just thrilled to talk to me."
"It gets worse." Charlene's brows rose. "Nate Harris is on the short list of candidates for federal district court."
"You lie."
"Don't you keep up with anything? Tricky, tricky. Cause problems for a judge, he will never forgive you, and his friends in the civil division, before whom you appear, will never forgive you either."
"What do I do now?"
"Oh, it's simple." Charlene laughed. "Send Bobby to some other lawyer."
Bobby Gonzalez studied the photograph, then looked up, openmouthed, at Gail. "Where'd you get this?"
Gail had cut out the photo—minus the name—and taped it to a plain piece of paper. "Never mind that now. Are you sure it's him?"
"I'm positively sure."
"How are we coming with those notes?" Scratchy handwriting filled two pages, and continued onto a third.
"Fine, but I need to go pretty soon. I have rehearsal, and it's a long way back to the beach."
A hand on his shoulder, Gail said, "I'll be righ
t back. Maybe I can drive you." Leaving Bobby in her office, she went around the corner to her secretary's desk. Miriam had gone to lunch, and her size-two sweater hung on the back of her chair.
Gail sat down and picked up the telephone, dialing a number from memory. When the receptionist answered, Gail told her that an emergency with a client had arisen. "I'm so sorry, but I can't possibly come in this afternoon . . . Yes, I realize that, but there's nothing I can do. Please tell the doctor I'm sorry. . . . Well, could I come in early next week?"
The voice reminded her that if she rescheduled to next week, the procedure would cost more.
"Yes, I understand. That's no problem."
Did she really want to do it? Was she having second thoughts?
"No, it's just not convenient today. Could you hold on a minute?"
Quickly Gail flipped pages in the desk diary, seeing what was on the schedule for next week. Something would have to be shifted. "God, what a mess. I'm going to have to call you back later."
She hung up and sat for a minute with her fingers pressed against her lips. Her breath had stopped, and a tremor had worked its way to her knees. She stared at a box of pastel paper clips. A pencil jar Miriam had decorated with lace. The heart-shaped photo frame with her husband's picture in one side, their toddler, Berto, in the other. A little stuffed teddy bear to Miriam from Danny held up a rose. I love you.
Karen would be home on Saturday, flying in with Dave on a flight from Puerto Rico. By then everything would be fine. Back to normal. As if this had never happened.
Gail picked up the phone and called Charlene. Her secretary said Charlene was on another call, but hold on—
"No, don't disturb her. Just say . . . my appointment's been rescheduled. I'll call her later."
Gail drove Bobby Gonzalez to the ballet's rehearsal hall on South Beach, and he asked if she'd like to watch. He put a folding metal chair in the corner of the large, high-ceilinged room. The wood floor gleamed, and one wall was mirrored. A TV and VCR were pushed to one side among the portable barres the dancers had used for their warmup. Sunlight poured through big uncurtained windows. A few pedestrians walked by, some pausing to look in.
The accompanist was playing runs of bright notes. He stopped when the ballet mistress clapped her hands. She explained a combination of steps by walking through them, then called for one of the women to demonstrate. The dancers tried it. She nodded, then told them to find their positions for partnering work. The accompanist turned a page in the sheet music and brought his hands down on the keys.
Four men moved in a diagonal line across the floor, the women coming toward them from the opposite side. The lines shifted, split apart, and dancers broke into pairs. Their eyes were glued to the mirror. With no audience to play to, faces frowned in concentration. Lips moved, counting beats.
The dancers' clothes were rag-tag and worn. The ballerinas were thin, long-legged creatures. Their toe shoes were frayed and stained, and one girl had a rip in the side of her leotard. Nothing matched. The men wore tights or knee-length gym shorts, and soft, faded T-shirts, a few with gaping holes. Their bodies were gorgeous, Gail decided. Powerful arms and legs. And fabulous backsides. It was hard not to stare.
Gail found herself smiling. They were all wonderful, but she felt a keen pleasure in watching Bobby. He was just as good, she thought, as the most accomplished male dancer in this group, who must have had ten years' more experience.
Leaving her building, Gail had offered to buy him lunch, but he'd wanted only a Diet Coke at a drive-through to go with the granola bar he'd brought in his backpack. In traffic, the drive to the beach had taken forty minutes, and Bobby had talked about how he got into ballet. At the studio he introduced Gail to one of his former teachers, a woman about fifty whose career as a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet had ended with a hip replacement. While Bobby and the others did their warmup at the barre, the teacher came over to where Gail sat and unfolded another chair. Bobby had confided in this woman, and she knew who Gail was.
Robert Gonzalez was the fourth of five children. His parents had rented a fourth-floor walkup in East Harlem. Gloria had worked in a hardware store on Second Avenue, and Willy had taken the 6 train downtown before dawn every morning to work as a street cleaner. Bobby had gone to Central Park East Elementary.
Bobby had never considered dancing a particularly feminine art. His father and uncles danced the merengue or mambo right in the small living room, and every weekend they put on silky, open-necked shirts and gold jewelry and took their wives to a ballroom on West Fifty-eighth. A man who can dance, his father said, will always have women. One floor below lived a man with the Dance Theater of Harlem—a very beautiful black man with elongated muscles, who had seemed eight feet tall to the boy. He had laughed when Bobby imitated his movements, and lifted him high in the air.
Not a perfect childhood. They were poor. Gloria explained away her bruises as a fall on the stairs. When they had to take food stamps, she wept. Bobby's oldest sister became pregnant at fourteen. Bobby shared a mattress on the floor with his brother, and in the winter they slept in their coats.
A man by the name of Eliot Feld, a former dancer and choreographer for the American Ballet Theater, offered tryouts in elementary schools. He wanted to pull out the ones with potential and give them a chance at his ballet school. One afternoon, with nothing better to do, Bobby tagged along with one of his sisters. The next week Feld himself showed up, ignoring the sister and calling Bobby aside. What had they seen in this child? His energy, his speed, his body type—long supple limbs, a certain proportion of torso to leg.
At ten years of age, Bobby Gonzalez started formal training in ballet. His bones were still soft enough. A dancer who starts too late will not develop turnout. The foot must arch properly, the hip sockets must be mobile enough to allow for the outward rotation of knees and thighs. Without this, he might become a modern dancer, but he would never succeed in classical ballet. At twelve Bobby went to Harbor Junior High for the Performing Arts, where he was known as a show-off. The girls fought to dance with him. At thirteen he was the young prince in a local dance school's production of The Nutcracker.
In January of that year, Willy Gonzalez was fired from his job. He came home drunk, and when Gloria yelled at him, he broke her jaw. Willy spent a few weeks in jail, then left for San Juan. Gloria's brother in Miami offered to take them in, and they moved to his old two-story stucco house in a largely Puerto Rican section of the city. Gloria promised Bobby he could continue his lessons, but he knew it was hopeless. There was no money, even if there had been a ballet school in that neighborhood.
The first time Bobby mentioned ballet on his street, the other boys laughed, and the biggest attacked him. Bobby scarred his knuckles on the boy's teeth, but never talked about dancing again. He threw away his practice clothes. He acquired tattoos, a swagger, and a string of arrests. The police had his photo on file at the station.
At fifteen, on the point of being sent to the alternative school for delinquents, Bobby was herded with the rest of his homeroom into the auditorium at Edison High. The Miami City Ballet was giving a demonstration of classical dance—girls in tutus, men in slippers and tights. Some of the kids in the audience slept. Boys snickered. Girls whispered to friends and passed notes. What must Bobby have thought, sitting in the dark auditorium, eyes fixed on the stage? One of the male dancers took a microphone and talked about the ballet school. There would be tryouts for scholarships in a month. When the students clattered out of the auditorium, had Bobby lingered behind? Had he gone outside to watch the dancers leave through the stage door, get into their cars, and drive away?
He let a week go by, in which he hardly slept. One night, telling no one, not even his mother, he took a bus to Miami Beach. He looked through the windows of the old studios on Lincoln Road, seeing a rehearsal of what he knew was the pas de deux from the last act of The Nutcracker. When it was over he walked to the beach a few blocks away. It was cold that night,
and a wind blew off the ocean. He stood on the firm part of the sand and stripped to his boxers. And danced. If anyone saw, he didn't care.
Two years away from ballet, how hard had it been? His legs must have ached. How tender were his feet? He wouldn't have practiced where anyone could see. He'd have waited till late at night and gone behind the house, or he'd have sneaked into an empty building.
He showed up at the school three weeks later to try out for one of two places open, and borrowed a pair of slippers from a box of discards in the dressing room. The teacher who talked to Gail had been there that day.
She said, "There were twenty boys trying out. Some had been dancing steadily for years, and they were all good. Bobby fell a couple of times simply because he was trying so hard. He had such a raw edge. So tough. It was quite compelling, really. We all started watching him. Here was this boy we'd never seen before, with a tattoo and a horrible haircut, but with this perfect body, perfect proportions. Very strong, very quick. Other boys in the group had more finesse, more training, but Bobby . . . when it's there, you know. Someone must have called Eddie, because he came downstairs to see."
Laughing softly, the teacher leaned closer to Gail. "When Bobby was trying out, he was so serious. At the first class, after he'd been accepted in the school, he couldn't stop smiling. There was a discoloration on his front tooth, and I asked him, what is that? You should get that fixed. The next day, that one tooth was so white, and I said, Bobby, come here, let me see. He'd painted it with Liquid Paper because he didn't have money for a dentist. Well, we have a dentist on the board of directors, and he fixed it. But that's Bobby. He makes do—sometimes to his own detriment. He doesn't eat well. I feed him sometimes. He doesn't get enough rest because he's always working. His mother has some kind of disability, and his sister is on her second or third baby, and the younger ones are always after him for things. The men in the family think he ought to get a real job, and Bobby has that to contend with. We pay better than most regional companies, but it's still hard. He makes a little extra money teaching in the outreach program. The students like working with him, I suppose because he speaks their language. He's lucky he came to Miami. It's hard to get noticed in New York, even when you have a great deal of talent, as Bobby does. The top of the pyramid is so tiny. So few of them make it."
Suspicion of Malice Page 8
