by Buffa, D. W.
“But it wasn’t a lie,” she insisted, “when I told you I loved you. That was always the truth.”
My resolve began to weaken; all my clarity of purpose disappeared. I could not trust her, but I could not hate her, and revenge, if I could have had it, seemed suddenly stale and stupid and enormously cruel. I began to notice things, small things I had not noticed at first. Her hair was a different color, or rather a different, lighter shade, cut much closer than it had been before. There was something else, something that at first I could not quite grasp; something that worked even more of a change. Then it hit me.
“Your eyes! – They’re not the same color.”
In the middle of the dance floor, less than a foot apart, I watched in amazement as she tossed her head back and laughed.
“I was Justine when you first knew me, and then I was Danielle. And now….”
The color had changed, but her eyes were still capable of that strange combination of open defiance and wistful regret, as if she were proud of what she had done but wishing she could have done – what? Perhaps she did not know, except that once she had made a change, she could not go back.
“And now,” I said, ready to finish for her. “Now you’re Gabriella?”
She raised her chin in an attitude of formality. Her eyes became distant and remote, banishing, as it seemed forever, anything that had happened between us. Whether she had really loved me, whether that had been true, it had become, like everything else, part of a replaceable past.
“Yes, Gabriella – Gabriella Orsini.”
She said it as if she were just getting used to it, a line in a new part she was learning to play. She seemed to test the inflection, looking for just the right ring. She moved her lips a silent, second time, making certain of the effect.
It was so unexpected - I was so stunned by her easy assumption of a wholly new identity - that it took a moment before I understood the full significance of what she had done.
“You’re – married! You married Orsini already?” I could not conceal my anger, the sense of outrage at what she had done. If I had had a knife I might have used it; instead I fixed her with a piercing stare. “That was the reason you killed him, - the reason you wouldn’t talk about: You were in love with someone else!”
The couples closest to us on the dance floor looked to see what the trouble was. Danielle darted a worried glance at the table where her friends were watching with puzzled faces. I pulled her closer and held her tight, forcing her to pay attention.
“You murdered him – Why? – Because Orsini was not rich enough: you had to have Nelson’s money too!”
“No, that’s not….” She shook her head, afraid to finish what she had started to say. “You don’t understand; you don’t understand anything,” she said, throwing me a look that seemed a warning, though a warning about what I could not have guessed. “I didn’t lie to you – about what I felt; about you and me!”
“That’s right!” I replied with an angry, caustic laugh. “You loved me so much the first thing you did – after you got your hands on everything St. James ever owned – was to run off to Europe and marry someone else, the man you had been seeing for months before you committed murder!”
I looked around, across the dance floor, to the table where Danielle – Gabriella! – had been dining with a half dozen well-dressed and obviously well-heeled Europeans. The women had long noses and too much make-up and affected an air of indifference; the men had hooded eyes and jaded mouths and the look of easy tolerance by which money and experience conceal arrogance. They were exactly the kind of crowd I would have expected to see her with when she had been married to Nelson St. James. Other than speaking a different language, they could have been the same people I had been with the weekend we sailed down the coast of California on the Blue Zephyr. Change the color of her hair, change the color of her eyes, change her name, change the name of her husband, change the place she lived or the yacht she sailed on, it was not change at all – it was endless repetition, like the constant itching of an old wound, one that would never heal: the illusion that life was full of chances and that if only you kept trying, you would finally have it all.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked as the music came to an end. “Never mind; it doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t have come. You should have left things the way they were.”
She smiled at me as, along with the others, we applauded the orchestra, but only because we were being watched. We walked toward her table, but before we got there, she turned and, loud enough so that her friends could hear, told me how glad she was that I was here, in Palermo, and how anxious she knew her husband, “Niccolo,” would be to see me.
“Tomorrow, then, at lunch,” she added, as she extended her hand and wished me a formal, and quite final, good-night.
CHAPTER Nineteen
The motor launch was waiting at the bottom of the seaside steps behind the Villa Igeia. Under a broiling mid-day sun, the far horizon lost in a choking haze, the sea had become a smooth metallic mirror. The light was unendurable; the air heavy, still, and ominous. There were boats all around, the marina full of them, but there was no movement anywhere. They might have all been abandoned, their owners fled to safer places, afraid the sea itself might catch on fire, for all the life you could see in them. It was silent, quiet as death, the only sound the muffled echo of the motor as the launch cut through the glass water, heading straight for the blinding black hull of the Midnight Sun.
I put on dark glasses and leaned back in the leather seat, remembering the last launch I had seen, the one that had taken Danielle and her husband from the Blue Zephyr to Santa Barbara the morning they left on their way to New York. I could still see her, the moment she turned around to take one last look, and I could still feel the hope, the sense of excitement, at the thought that she might be trying to catch one last glimpse of me. I remembered everything that happened that weekend, and nothing so much as how the meaning of everything had changed. What had seemed a harmless flirtation had been in reality the beginning of a heartless, lethal seduction. Or had it? Had I been invited along because Nelson St. James thought he might soon need a lawyer, or because Danielle had already decided she was going to kill him and might need me to defend her? Had I been invited because Danielle wanted to show me what I had missed seeing years earlier in Justine, a final end to a schoolgirl fantasy; and then, only later, after she had done what she did, came to me because, having known me all those years before, she thought she could trust me? The questions were endless, and even if she had wanted to tell the truth, I was not sure Danielle could have done much more than guess at the answers. There may not have been a reason for anything that happened. There frequently is not one, when all we are doing is reacting to events. It is only afterward, when it is all over, that it seems to make sense.
A steward in a white jacket and Bermuda shorts was waiting for me when I climbed up a three step ladder from the motor launch to the deck of the Midnight Sun. There was no word of greeting; nothing but a dumb, acquiescent look, as of one who knows his narrow function and not much else besides. For all the chattering he must have done with members of his own race and language, he remained silent and inscrutable as he led me up a flight of stairs to the upper deck where, under a dark blue canopy, a table had been set for lunch. There were, oddly enough, only two chairs.
The steward nodded toward one of the empty places, held the chair while I sat down, and then, before I noticed, disappeared, vanished so completely that it left a doubt whether he might have been a mirage, an insubstantial thing created by the heat.
A chilled bottle of wine sat uncorked in the middle of the table, and, right next to it, a golden bowl filled with purple grapes. On opposite sides of the table, the two places were set with crystal glasses and the finest china, alive with color, I had ever seen. The silverware, engraved with the letter O, the insignia for the House of Orsini, had the feel and the luster of a priceless, ancient heritage. The linen nap
kins felt like silk to the touch. I picked up a knife and turned it around in my hand, marveling at the perfect balance and the perfect fit. Everything was perfect, one of a kind, and nothing more expensive.
“I’m glad you were able to join us,” said a voice from just behind me. Taken by surprise, I jumped to my feet and turned to meet Danielle’s new husband, Niccolo Orsini.
And then, to my amazement, I was face to face, not with Niccolo Orsini but with an impossibility.
“You - !” I cried, staggered by what I saw.
It was the same man I had seen the day before, a brief glimpse through a pair of small binoculars - the same jet black hair, the same mustache, the same bronze skin – but how different the impression, how different the effect, seen, not from a distance, but close enough to touch. I was staring into the eyes of a dead man, murdered by his wife, his body lost at sea. Nelson St. James was alive! And the sight of him almost killed me. I struggled to catch my breath, to somehow get my bearings, to find some stability in a world that had gone insane.
“You’re alive - ! But how? Why?”
He treated me like a convalescent, which in a sense I was, having lost the ability to distinguish what was real from what was not. He placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and smiled sympathetically.
“I know it must be a shock, seeing someone you thought was dead. But I’m afraid I’m very much alive. I’m only sorry you had to find out.”
“Sorry…that I had to…?”
He guided me back to my chair and stood next to me for a moment, as if in doubt how he wanted to proceed.
“Danielle won’t be joining us,” he said finally.
There was no explanation given for her absence, nothing said in words; but the look in his eyes suggested that there were important matters to discuss and that the discussion should be between the two of us alone.
“Perhaps later,” he added vaguely.
The same steward who had met me earlier, reappeared, waiting unobtrusively off to the side. The moment St. James reached for his chair, he was there, pulling it out for him. With a deft movement of his smooth, dark hands, he placed a napkin on his lap. St. James then said something to him in what may have been Arabic. Immediately, the steward looked at me.
“What would you like to drink?” asked St. James. “I’m having ice tea, but there’s wine on the table, and anything else you might like, I’m sure we have it on board.”
I heard the question, but I could not think of an answer. I don’t mean that I could not decide; I could not get beyond the words to what they meant. I knew what he said, I knew what he asked, but I had the uncanny sense that I was observing something that was happening to someone else. I did not say anything; I did not know how. Nelson St. James seemed to understand. He dismissed the steward with a few more words in that exotic language that was almost as unintelligible to me as English had suddenly become.
“I thought we might talk for a while before lunch – unless you’re hungry, of course; in which case we can….” His voice trailed off and he glanced down at his manicured hands clasped together in his lap. Dressed all in white –his pants, his jacket, even his shirt and shoes – his face looked even darker than it had before and his eyes more alive than I remembered them. Though he did not make a sound, he seemed to be laughing at some colossal, private joke.
“Tell me,” he said, slowly lifting his eyes, “how exactly is it that you come to be here?” But almost before it was out of his mouth, he dismissed the question with an abrupt and emphatic movement of his head. He bent forward, his hands on the table. “You didn’t know I was alive, did you? No, I could tell from your reaction. You came looking for Danielle. Yes, of course; that makes sense. Or did you have a suspicion, a doubt, that the story she told you wasn’t quite true; something she may have let slip late one night while the two of you were in bed?”
I began to recover my senses; the world began to take on a definable shape. St. James was only guessing about what had happened.
“Is that what she told you?” I replied, pretending indifference as I sipped on the ice tea. “That we slept together?”
I wondered if he would press the point, admit his ignorance and ask directly. He said nothing, and we sat there, in the breathless silence of the summer heat, trying to read what was going on in each other’s minds.
“You must be angry, Morrison - given the way you were treated. But then, it wouldn’t have made any sense to tell you the truth, would it? And really, when you think about it, what do you have to be angry about, except perhaps a little injured pride.”
“Injured pride!” I exclaimed bitterly. “You and your wife made me party to a fraud, a massive deception; destroyed everything I believed in – and for what?”
“For what?” he laughed. He looked at me to make sure I was serious. “Don’t you understand? They’re still talking about it – ‘the perfect murder’ – How Danielle St. James murdered her husband and, thanks to that brilliant attorney, Andrew Morrison, got away with it. But it’s really much better than that, isn’t it?” he asked, with a knowing, ruthless grin. “People have gotten away with murder before, but no one has ever done this – no one ever had the wit or daring even to try! Try? – No one in their right mind would even think of it. That’s why it worked – Because it’s the last thing anyone would ever suspect. Think of it, Morrison – You can’t help but admire the sheer audacity of it!” He was full of excitement, thrilled by his own achievement. “Have your own wife stand trial for a murder that never happened, stage your own death, and do it all in a way so that after she’s acquitted everyone will be so certain that she really did it, so convinced that she got away with murder, that no one will ever think to wonder whether you might still be alive!”
Pushing back from the table, St. James folded his arms across his chest and stared down at the deck. He swung his foot, back and forth, over and over again, until, gradually, the triumph in his eyes began to give way to a different judgment. When he finally looked at me he seemed almost apologetic.
“No one was hurt; no one was killed. You defended a woman charged with a crime she didn’t commit – and you won. Are you going to quarrel with the result?”
He lifted an eyebrow in tribute to what he wanted me to admit had been a perfect scheme: no one killed, no one punished, and the whole world fooled into thinking he was dead.
“And instead of going to prison, or spending your life a fugitive, you get to keep all the money you ever stole!” I spat out in contempt.
“Sent to prison, made a fugitive, for doing nothing but what everyone does every day!” he said with scorn for what had, unfairly as he thought, been done to him. “They call it a Ponzi scheme, but what is that except what everyone on Wall Street – everyone in business – does: paying what you owe to some with money you get from others? You don’t believe me? – What do you think would happen if everyone owed money by a bank asked for it back? The bank doesn’t have that much money – most of it has been loaned out. That’s what no one seems to understand: in business you either grow or die! As long as I kept making profits – as long as I brought in more business, more clients – as long as they stayed happy with the money I made them – no one complained.”
I took off my dark glasses so I could look St. James straight in the eye. I wanted to preserve at least that much of my self-respect.
“I was used, and I don’t like it; I don’t like it one bit.”
With a knowing shrug, St. James threw up his hands.
“Everyone gets used, Andrew! It’s the way of the world.” Furrowing his brow, he bent his shoulders and searched my eyes, looking for something he was convinced I could not quite hide. “And if you were….I wonder – did you really mind it?”
It hung in the air, this second allusion to what he suspected, but apparently only suspected, I might have done with Danielle, while he continued to watch, daring me to search my own conscience for how much I may have been the willing victim of deceit.
“Used,” I insisted, staring back hard. “Lied to, told something that never happened.”
St. James would have none of it. His eyes gleamed with eager malice.
“You can’t tell me that it’s never happened before, that no one has ever asked you to take their case because they’re innocent and you’re the only one who can save them. How many times? How many times did you believe them, and then because you were the only one between them and a life in prison – or their execution – work yourself into a state of sheer exhaustion, only to realize, after you had won, after the jury had set them free, what you had really known all along: that they were guilty and that because of you they had gotten away with it, got away with murder! Used? – I think not.
“Danielle told you she was innocent, told you she hadn’t committed murder; and she was telling the truth – she didn’t murder me, she didn’t murder anyone. You did what you always do – what you were paid a great deal of money to do – you defended someone charged with a crime. She was charged with a crime, remember, before she ever asked for your help. Your job was to hold the government to account, show that the evidence wasn’t sufficient for a conviction. And you did that; you did it very well. You aren’t going to complain that the verdict wasn’t the right one, are you? You surely aren’t going to say she should have been found guilty!”
I turned on my hip, shoved one leg over the other, and wrapped both hands around the wooden corner of the canvas chair and held it tight. What he had done, the way he now tried to defend it, was so outrageous, so astonishing in its open duplicity, I was afraid I might hit him.
