Suspicion of Deceit (7 page)

He put the scores on top of the piano and opened
Don Giovanni.
"Here Leporello shows Donna Elvira, one of the Don's victims, a catalog of women his master has loved. He invites her to read along with him. There are over two thousand names!"

Leaning over the keys, Nolan pounded out a few bars of introduction. Then his voice burst from his throat with such startling force that Gail took a step backward.

Madamina, il catalogo è questo

delle belle che amò il padrón mio,

un catalogo egli è che ho fati' io.

Osservate, leggete con me—

He stopped as suddenly as he had begun and removed the music from the piano. "Do you know the story?" he asked. "Don Giovanni, the lover, the deceiver of innocent women. He seduces them all, every rank and age, simply for the pure pleasure of adding them to the list. A man who lives only to satisfy his own unquenchable appetite. He remains unrepentant even as he is dragged into the flames of hell."

Gail found herself unable to look away.

Thomas Nolan picked up the scores. "Come upstairs. I'll.sing the entire aria for you."

"No, I—Thanks, but I need to get back to my office just now. Will the invitation stay open?"

"Of course." He turned off the light and closed the door, checking to make sure it was locked. "I take the stairs. The elevators are impossible this time of day. Come on. You can get to the lobby from here."

He pushed open a metal door leading to a stairwell that echoed with footsteps and voices. Students with backpacks and instrument cases rounded the landing and clattered downward. Others went up. Hard surfaces of concrete and metal magnified each sound.

A young man yelled, "Hey, Mr. Nolan!" Others were standing with him on the landing below, waiting with grins on their faces.

Thomas Nolan looked over the painted pipe railing. He scowled darkly. Pointing at the young man, he sang out,
"Pentiti! Cangia vita, è l'ultimo momento !"

Gail caught her breath. It was frighteningly loud.

Nolan glanced at her. "I'm telling Giovanni to repent. It's his last hour. Let's see if he remembers the next part."

There was whispering from below, then the young man's deep voice boomed upward from the landing.
"No, no ch'io non mi pento. Vanne Ionian da me!"

"The cad. He will not repent. He says to go away." Once more Nolan's expression became fierce, and his voice thundered.
"Pentiti!"

"No!"

"Si!"

"No!"

"Ah! Tempo più non v'è.
^f
"

The student gave an agonized scream that rattled the light fixtures, and the others in the stairwell laughed as he writhed on the floor of the landing.

"Too late." Thomas Nolan smiled, then said to Gail, "I'll hear from you about this other matter?"

"Yes."

He nodded, then turned and went up the stairs, surrounded by students. Once more he sang, and they joined in. They moved upward, bodies, then legs and feet disappearing. Gail listened until the steel door on the third floor clanged shut.

CHAPTER SIX

A superb property, no? Six bedrooms, seven baths, plus maid's quarters."

With these words, the realtor swung open the mahogany and etched-glass doors to the house in Cocoplum. "The living area has elegant marble floors, as you see, and there is carpeting in the bedrooms. We'll go up in a minute. Look how impressive the stairs are. Twenty-foot ceiling in the living room. Look, the wall there, all mirrors. Ms. Connor, you will love this kitchen—European cabinets, stainless steel appliances. Okay, follow this way, please. Formal dining room, the chandeliers go with the property. All the windows are double-insulated glass, very secure. Saves you money on the air-conditioning bill, too. Look through here, Mr. Quintana. Such a lovely terrace, all Mexican tile. Ceiling fans, bar, hot tub. Up there—you see?— a security camera for keeping an eye on the children in the pool. You have just the one girl, Ms. Connor? Someday maybe you'll have more, you never know. She's so cute. What's your name, honey? Karen? Look at that backyard, Karen. Look. Incredible. The boat goes there, you see? The davits I think need to be fixed, but it's only a motor, no problem. Can you believe the landscaping? The owners are in Venezuela, very motivated. I believe you should offer them three."

Silvia Sanchez had been waiting on the porch. Not a porch but a portico, a two-story extension over the circular drive and broad curving steps to the entrance. She was around fifty, superbly coiffed and made up, and her brilliant pink suit was a moving spot of color against white walls.

White walls that still had holes where paintings had been taken down. There were two black leather couches shoved into a corner. Beside them sat a zebra whose stripes were made of shards of silver and black glass. Gail pulled Anthony closer and whispered, "That zebra. I must have it."

It had been Anthony who suggested that Karen come along, although Gail had planned to leave her with the sitter. Clever man. Get the kid to like the house, Mom would put up less of a fight. Karen herself was walking along with her mouth open. The bill of her baseball cap would turn this way or that.

In a low voice Gail said, "Why did the owners clear out so fast? Were they one step ahead of the DEA?"

"That could be," Anthony replied.

Their reflections moved in the long mirrored wall. Woman in a tailored brown dress, man in a suit, girl in jeans and a sweatshirt from Biscayne Academy. These people, she concluded, would not fit in here no matter what the kid happened to like.

"Mom, this is the most awesome house. It's huge."

"You could skate in here," Gail said.

"I could?"

"Karen, your mother is kidding."

"Believe me, I
know."
Her sneakers squealed as she took off for the wall of glass doors leading out to the terrace. "Can we go outside?"

Silvia Sanchez turned to her prospective customers. "We can see the backyard now, if you wish."

Gail smiled. "In a few minutes. Mr. Quintana and I need to discuss a couple of things. Would that be all right? Karen, you can go outside, but stay in the yard."

With a small shrug, then a smile of acquiescence, Silvia Sanchez said she would be on the terrace. Gail took Anthony's hand, and they curved up the carpeted staircase to a balcony on the second floor.

He asked, "What do you think so far? It's more modern. You said you didn't want an old house."

"Six bedrooms plus maid's quarters? We couldn't live in a place like this, I don't care if it was only one million. Ha.
Only.
Anthony—" She tugged on his hand. "Come on. I have to talk to you."

"Oh? I thought you wanted to find the master bedroom."

"We'll do that, too."

They opened a door and peered into a room with a swirly plaster ceiling and built-in laminated cabinets and shelves. The carpet was so thick it snagged her heels. Anthony said how easy it would be to redecorate. He pointed out how secure this house was—the windows were all wired with burglar alarms. There were security cameras, an electric gate—

"I saw Thomas Nolan today."

"That's right, you did. What happened?"

"It was perfect. Nothing anyone could object to. He went with some friends and paid nothing for his hotel room. College kids attended his performance. Fidel didn't show up. I was moved, hearing him talk about Havana in ruins. And he didn't earn a peso."

Anthony shrugged. "I suppose it's possible."

"Oh, really? Isn't this suspiciously like what you said at the party at the Dixons' on Friday? If somebody coached him, and it's all a He, we might have trouble later."

"You'll have trouble either way," he said.

"Well, what should I do?"

"There's nothing you
can
do."

"I had sort of hoped for some help here," she said.

"Gail, it isn't your decision. Tell the board and let them decide."

"Fine."

He opened the door to a walk-in closet, and his voice was muffled. "Look how big this is." The shelves and drawers and rods went on and on. Someone had left a few padded pink satin hangers.

Gail leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed. "On my way to see Tom Nolan, I ran into Seth Greer. He wanted to talk about Nolan, which we did, and then he said something odd. He said that in 1978 you and he and Rebecca went to Nicaragua together."

Anthony looked around at her, then closed a drawer and came out. "What did he tell you?"

"That you were there one summer as volunteers. He gave me the impression it must have been a pretty bad experience for all of you. You never mentioned it to me. Why not?"

"Are you angry? It was so long ago, I don't think about it anymore."

"I'm not angry, I'm just wondering what's going on. You pretended not to know Rebecca Dixon. And then Seth said you called him over the weekend, as if you had to get your stories straight."

"Honey—" Anthony was shaking his head. He slid a hand down her arm, then held onto her wrist. "I called Seth to say hello, to catch up on the last twenty years. Then I said, 'You know, I never told Gail about our time in Nicaragua. I should do that.' All right. Seth and I went there to help build a school in a town in a rural area of Jinotega province. Rebecca worked in the clinic. It wasn't a safe place to be. Sandinistas were in the area, and government troops came through looking for them. We saw dead people in the fields. I think for the first time in our lives, we were afraid. It was a complicated experience. I wasn't consciously trying to keep it from you."

She put her arms around him. "Okay. I just wanted to know. You can tell me about it someday. I'd like to hear what happened."

"When we haye time."

"Time? I wish. That's in awfully short supply lately."

He hugged her and whispered, "After the party on Saturday, I'm going to kidnap you to my house and carry you upstairs."

"I'll be screaming all the way."

"Come on." He took her hand. "Let's see the master suite before we go downstairs."

They found it at the end of the hall. Light leaked through heavy curtains drawn over a wall of windows that would otherwise look out to the bay. Indentations in the plush cream-colored carpet marked the position of furniture. A chandelier in the shape of a fireworks explosion hung over a raised platform designed to hold a king-size water bed. The wall behind the bed was painted black, and the wall opposite was mirrored.

Gail stared into it, watching Anthony's reaction to all this. He stepped onto the platform where the bed used to be, looked through a crack in the curtains, then came down again.

She said, "Why do I have a sudden urge to tell you to take off your clothes?"

His image was behind her, hardly more than a silhouette. His face disappearing to a curve of forehead and nose when he lowered his mouth to her neck. Hands and the edge of white shirt cuffs moving over her dress. His voice at her ear. "Come into the bathroom with me."

"You're crazy."

"Now. Hurry up."

Their footsteps echoed on the tile floor. He pushed the door shut. There was a huge bathtub with water jets and gold fixtures. A separate shower room, a long marble vanity with two basins.

Anthony set her on the edge of it. They were both laughing. He told her to be quiet. She clung to his neck. Her purse fell off the counter and spilled open. Things clattered and rolled.

Going down the staircase, they could see Karen by the seawall examining the lines that would lift a small boat out of the water. They crossed the cavernous living room and slid open one of the glass doors. Mrs. Sanchez, who had been sitting by the pool conducting other business on her portable phone, concluded her call, then escorted them along the paved walkways.

She pointed out the security fence. The sprinkler system. The flowers, the fruit trees, the tropical plants that grew in lush green profusion, even now, in winter. The property was on a canal, much better than being right on the bay, in case of storm surges. Anthony agreed. He wanted security more than the view.

The sun had moved behind the poinciana tree, leaving the thick grass dappled with patches of light. He told Gail that by late spring the tree would be heavy with red-orange flowers. He used the Spanish word.
Framboyán.

Karen was walking along the seawall, and Anthony went over to make sure she didn't fall in. No chance of that. She was as surefooted as a cat. The wind played with his tie and flipped the edge of his jacket.

Already he owned this place in his mind. Not the house. It was ridiculous, and he knew it. If only they could bring in a huge helicopter crane, hook the house to cables, and drop it into the bay for an artificial reef. He wanted the
framboyán
tree, the electric gate, and the burglar alarm. No one could come in and by force or trickery take him away.

Several months ago they had been taking a walk after dinner, and he had told her about his childhood in Camaguey. How idyllic he had made it sound. An Eden—but it had not been his own sin that expelled him, but a mother's desire for her child. And a grandfather's power.

He had lived in a small house outside Cascorro with his father and sister. There had been a garden and chickens to tend. He made his own toys out of wood. His first girlfriend had lived down the road. Yolanda. He had not mentioned much more than her name. No reason. The rudderless conversation had simply drifted to a story about working one summer in the orange groves with the other boys. A young blond Russian with a permanent sunburn forced them to sing songs as they rode back to camp in carts pulled behind tractors. They made up obscene verses, falling over themselves with laughter while the Russian screamed at them to shut up. A happy childhood.

Now Gail found herself thinking about the girl. Yolanda. She would have been pretty. He might have walked her to school on the road alongside the fields, then over the wooden bridge that crossed the river where his father had taught him to fish—before his father lost his sight in an exile raid and retired from the army. Endless green fields of sugarcane that turned brown before harvest. Palm trees, banana,
framboyán ...