Life Among Giants (24 page)

I took the next afternoon off, drove up there. Jack answered the door the way I'd first seen him, wet and wrapped in a towel, might have been forty again, though of course he was close to sixty by then. “We've made up,” he said simply. He looked pretty relaxed, not what I expected. Shortly he was back, dressed for his errands in pressed jeans and flannels, worn Topsider shoes. “Kate'll be down. She's still in the shower. Just, please, I know it's not your fault and I know it's not easy, but please don't entertain or encourage any of that crap. Talk about cooking. Have her help you make lunch. We shopped just this morning. I shopped, I mean. She sat in the car. But we've fixed it. Crested another hill. Sorry no wine in there. Talk about those friends of yours. Anything but you-know-what.”

“RuAngela sends her best.”

And Jack actually laughed, made the first joke I'd heard from him in months: “I've never wanted a man so much.”

“Everyone loves RuAngela.”

Kate sang a loud phrase upstairs.

Jack said, “Nothing. About. Turkle.” He put a finger to his lips:
shhh.
And then flew out the door and to his glimmering new Volvo and away in a cloud of safety.

Kate singing upstairs, something indistinct, cheerful as Jack, it seemed.

In the kitchen, piles of new groceries. I dug through, imagining a pretty elaborate late lunch after a very long walk, that kind of appetite. I pared a couple of carrots. I peeled onions. What would it be? Something simple.

Eventually Kate came down, hugged me, kissed me, had a look at me at arm's length, smooched me again.

I said, “Let's put something on the stove before our walk, yes?”

“Lentil stew,” she said. “We got stuff at the market this morning. Or Jack did. I sat in the car.”

“Just as he said.”

“Because he won't let me talk about my evidence, biggest fight ever.”

“Well. It seems like you softened him up some.”

“Enough to get you here. And I know he made you promise not to let me, but you're going to like it.”

I cored brussels sprouts, pulled them apart into leaves—very nice in a spicy stew. “No, Katydid, I'm not going to like it.”

“Oh, well. You cook, I'll show you some things, and then you can tell me who's right.”

“Kate. I think we know who's right.”

“ ‘
Th
e trial was definitive,' ” Kate said, channeling Jack. “ ‘
Th
at has to be our mantra. We can't just keep it going forever, Katherine dear! A respected court has ruled on the case.' ”

Th
ere. Just like that, she'd pulled me in. I said, “Respected court, my ass.”

And Jack was no more. Kate got the wickedest look, the look of the girl on the stairs at fourteen, that boy in her room, Dabney not yet in her sights, the scar on her lip pronounced. She said, “He let me take things. Anything I wanted. He had the authority to close the case and discard everything—they can do that after
x
number of years, once it's been adjudicated and any appeals are in.
Th
ey're switching to electronic everything, so all the old shit must go! I've got boxes and boxes of
stuff.
All the paperwork, or some of it. And the sweater, and . . .”

“Kate. Who are we talking about? Who let you take things?”

“We're talking about a friend of mine. Who's a friend of yours, too.”

“Detective Turkle?”

“You said the forbidden words, not me!” Triumph. “I'll be right back.”

I got the darkest feeling then, alone there with the work, the feeling that I was cooking for Mom and Dad, that they'd attend this meal, that they'd want to know I'd done well, that I knew what I was doing with this crazy restaurant thing. Dad, of course, would approve of the money I'd skinned off the dancer, Mom of the way I'd followed all the rules.
Th
ere'd be plenty to talk about, and yet nothing—we'd never bring up Kate's illness, not a peep; we'd never even say the two of them were dead.

I splashed a generous half-cup of Jack's elegant olive oil in his big, unused Dutch oven, put the heat too high, cut the rest of the mirepoix energetically. I was still an athlete—my folks would recognize me.
Th
ey'd want to know whom I'd married, that I'd avoided the “Negress.”
Th
ey'd play with their grandchildren, the ones they didn't have, and wouldn't ever.

Onion into the hot oil, ten minutes.
Th
e food would shield me, and not in some vague way—this was literal, working on the far side of the granite island in the kitchen so I could face the door, see them when they came in.
Th
ey wouldn't be like zombies, nothing like that, they'd only be themselves, Dad so careless (he'd throw his coat over Jack's priceless vase), Mom so judgmental (who can live in a church!).
Th
ey'd want to know what a Princeton degree was doing hidden in their closet, what two homosexuals were doing in their room back at home,
Negro
homosexuals. I slipped off my Super Bowl rings, put them in my pockets, separate pockets so they wouldn't clank together and give themselves away.

A little frantically I rinsed a cup of red lentils, then a half cup more, left them to a brief soak in salted water: always make a lot when you're expecting guests. Add the mirepoix to the onions, develop those flavors.
Th
is was my game, untainted. My folks forever in my restaurant. Mom, a tour of the gardens. Dad, a special drink in the walk-in with the men.
Th
e guard oiling the snap on his holster, oiling it again, testing it, pulling the gun, lightning draw.

Tomatoes chopped fine, two whole bulbs garlic, one handful raisins, couple tablespoons raw rice to bind, cumin ground in the coffee beaner, a nice bay leaf crumbled fine so no one would choke, couple of grinds pepper, a bouquet garni, which I couldn't wait to explain to Mom: basil tied up, stems and all, one sprig rosemary, pull it before service.
Th
ick pinches of salt. Taste, like blood. And finally, Dad and Mom, a cup of vermouth, the last alcohol in the professor's house, aged under the sink fifteen years at least, or call it nineteen: same vintage as your deaths.

I
HAVE A
memory of going upstairs at that juncture to look at the Bonnard, a clear image of the extraordinary light of the thing, the shadowy male figure behind the woman standing ready at a large table set for dinner in the garden, but this can't be right—I wouldn't have left the meal prep at that point, for one thing, and for another, right about that time, primarily for insurance reasons, Jack had arranged a permanent loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kate was nowhere to be found.

Th
e stew needed some body. Back of the fridge I found a packet of baby portobellos, washed them luxuriantly, sliced them very thin, pretty shapes to anchor the stew.

Kate reappeared in her hiking boots, an armful of legal-size file folders, cobwebs in her hair: original documents from our parents' case and the cases around them, all the legal proceedings, all the failed prosecutions, no one ever convicted in the multiple homicides, a lot of mistrials. Her theory hadn't changed: Dabney's death and our parents' had been related somehow.
Th
e “somehow” came down to an increasingly paranoid view of Sylphide, that this world-class ballerina had done something awful, arranged to have Dabney killed. Really? Her own beloved husband? And having rubbed him out, the world's most accomplished dancer had ordered our parents killed, too.

“But, Katy, why?”

“To punish me.”

“For what?”

“Don't be stupid!” Katy cried.

“For Dabney?”

“Of course for that. He was about to leave her! For me!”

“Maybe so.” Better soften that: “Probably so, I mean definitely.” Go for the logic: “But, Kate, it was a car accident.”

“A car, David, but not an accident. And not ‘maybe' or ‘probably definitely,' either—why do you think he was giving me those beautiful paintings?”

“So you could give them to Dad?”

“Don't be a fucking prick.”

“And, really, Kate, what about Perdhomme?”

She shouted, “What about him?”

“Perdhomme,” I said more sharply than I meant. “Him and Kaiser.”

Kate trotted back upstairs.
Th
e stew, honestly, I could throw it away. I cored a few Brussels sprouts, dropped them in a leaf at a time, calming myself. Nice color, a little texture.

She returned shortly with another precarious pile of folders, produced a stapled sheaf of documents—knew exactly where in the profusion to find it, pressed it into my hands.

“Perdhomme was strongly implicated,” I said not looking. “Whereas Sylphide, not at all. Kaiser, Kaiser was right there.
Th
is far away from me.”

“Perdhomme and the hit man, is that all you ever think about?”

“Just that they were involved,” I said. “It's the plain truth.”

“I haven't worked all that out. But Perdhomme did well in court, right?”

“He prevailed, if that's what you mean, in our case and in all of them.”

“All of them what?”

“
Th
ere were other Dolus execs killed, remember? And that lawyer, what's his name.”

“Dick Fortin, in case you think I forgot. Okay, brother. You want to know what I think? I think Perdhomme was just pulled in to deflect attention from the real killer, everyone knowing he'd get off.”

“And it wasn't just Fortin.
Th
ere was that milquetoasty guy in Chicago.”

“Pervis.”

“Who was a Dolus executive, Kate.”

“So?”

“And the two guys in the hotel in New York?”

She glowered at me. “Insufficient evidence. And your man prevailed in the civil suit, too.”

“Don't call him my man!”
Th
e civil suit was a famous disaster, brought at great expense by the several grieving families (though not ours—too broke) who in the end had been ordered to pay Perdhomme's legal costs. Cold.

She said, “You're the one who keeps bringing him up.”

“And that assistant D.A.”

“I adored that guy. A great investigator.”

“He liked you, too, Kate. He liked you a lot. And he died falling off a roof at a party in SoHo.”

“People have accidents.”

“During the trial?
Th
e day after he'd told Turkle he was going to meet an informant? Someone from Dolus?”

“Which you didn't believe at the time. I was the one who fucking told you, don't forget.”

“But Katy, at the time, we didn't know what we know now. And at the time you certainly believed it! Who could think you'd deflect attention by implicating the head of a major corporation?”

Her lip drew up almost sinister, that scar. “Someone even more major, that's who.”

I said, “Jack's going to hate me. Talking to you about this.
Th
e stew can simmer. Let's walk. Let's get outside. Take me out to the beach.”

“You're just as excited as I am.”

I shook my head: No, no, not me. And then I flipped through the pages she'd handed over, a police report, it looked like, formally addressed to that weasel of a D.A. in Danbury, sick memories of the cinderblock courtroom. Mom and Dad were at the door. I felt their presence at the door. Kate knew what she was doing, knew how to draw me in against thin resistance.

“Kate.”

“ ‘Kate.' ”

“Don't mimic me.
Th
is isn't even our parents' case.”

“Keep looking.” She flipped the pages for me, pointed to a specific paragraph near the end of the blunt and grotesquely graphic report:

Mr. Stryker-Stewart's death must be treated as suspicious. Grand Jury inquiry warranted in this officer's opinion. Deceased found in wooded area .43 miles from site of collision. Presence of a second party neither established nor disproved. Actions of second party neither established nor disproved. Further investigation warranted and recommended.

And so on. A further page under a different letterhead had a dissenting opinion written by an officer of the Connecticut State Police, but that wasn't why the hair of my neck stood up.
Th
e hair of my neck stood up because until that moment I hadn't realized that Dabney's death had been ruled suspicious by anyone official, ever. I'd always thought the rumors were just that, the conjecture of distraught fans.
Th
ere'd never been any kind of official inquiry, no grand jury, nothing. Whole books had been written on the subject of Dabney's death, and all but the most sensational dismissed foul play.