Suspicion of Deceit (33 page)

That afternoon Gail spent an hour with a reporter from the
New York Times
who had flown down to do an article on the controversy for the Sunday magazine. When he finally left, with photographer, her head felt like somebody was driving a chisel into her eye sockets.

"Oh, God," she moaned to her secretary. "Aspirin." She went into the tiny kitchen, took two extra-strength, and pressed a glass of ice water to her temple.

Miriam had some papers for her to sign. The complaint for injunction in the federal lawsuit had been printed out on crisp white paper. There was a summons for Albert Estrada as city manager. Estrada had called her with his regrets. Not a bad guy. He had suggested it would be good to get all this out in the open. The media would be at the courthouse at ten in the morning to film the festivities. Gail expected that the emergency hearing would take place the next day, or the day after. She hoped that Thomas Nolan's interview would help. She had decided not to be at the opera this afternoon, but to watch the press conference on television from home. Her presence might suggest that someone was holding a gun in his ribs.

He had called at noon, as promised. Not being much help. Expecting her to do it. Long silences, then Gail suggesting this or that phrase, and Nolan saying sure, sure, whatever. At one point she had yelled at him.
This is supposed to sound sincere, dammit.
And he had laughed, that deep chuckle.
Don't worry. I make my living onstage.
Gail had given the notes to Miriam. Miriam had typed them up, then faxed the statement to Jeffrey Hopkins. Done.

Sitting in the extra chair in Miriam's office, Gail slid the signed papers for the federal lawsuit back across the desk.

She tapped the pen in a rhythm and stared at the telephone. She had left four beeper messages for Felix Castillo, progressively more irate. The first had been on the Fisher Island Ferry last night, asking if he had noticed a film canister that might have fallen from her bag when he grabbed her and pulled her into the bushes. Assuming he hadn't been able to get to a phone, she had let it ride until midnight, then called him before going to bed, asking if he had received her previous message, and
please call no matter how late.
By morning, she wanted to know,
Where is the film, Felix?
Driving to the opera, she had spoken through clenched teeth.
I want the damned film.

And where might it be now? Her anger was fueled by knowing exactly where it was. Converted to four by six prints already, in a photo finisher's envelope on Anthony Quintana's desk. If she called him, he would deny it.

Gail rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand, then picked up the telephone. She had another call to make.

Information gave her the number of Ransom-Everglades High School, the main office. When someone answered Gail said who she was, a former graduate of the school with a question about the teaching staff. "Do you have in the music department a teacher by the name of Wells? A woman. She's probably around fifty. . . .No, I'm sorry, I don't. Just Wells. . . . Perhaps back in 1979? She would have been a classically trained pianist." Gail held on while the woman went to ask someone else, a person who had been in the office at Ransom for thirty years. She heard voices. Footsteps coming back. The woman said that no one by the name of Wells had ever taught at the school.

Gail thanked her and hung up.

From the copy machine Miriam asked, "What was that?"

"I'm on the trail of a suitcase from Costa Rica." Without getting into the details, Gail explained that Thomas Nolan had picked it up two years ago and delivered it—so he said—to his piano teacher, whom he still visited whenever he came through Miami.

Miriam laid out copies on her desk and picked up her stapler. "Why do you care about it?"

"Because he's lying to me,
chica,
and with everything else going on, it makes me nervous. I hate to be lied to. I thought she might have taught at Ransom-Everglades. They say they never heard of her."

The stapler bit through the copies. Click. Click. Click. "I bet we could find her."

"I bet we could," Gail said. "How does one find a piano teacher? She could be retired. Call the music schools. They might have professional associations—"

As she wrote a list, the front door opened. The bell tinkled on the counter outside the small frosted window, and Miriam slid back the glass. Gail heard a male voice say he had a delivery for Ms. Connor.

Miriam let him in, a muscular man in walking shorts and sunglasses. There was a pen stuck in his Afro. The cardboard box was about two feet square. It did not seem heavy when he dropped it onto the work table, but Gail felt a tremor of skittish, irrational fear, imagining a package bomb. "Who's it from?"

"Says here Quintana. I picked it up at a law office in Coral Gables."

The man whipped out his pen and Miriam signed the receipt. When the man was gone, Miriam rushed back to the box. Her brown eyes sparkled. "Is it a present?"

The box was sealed tightly with tape. Marked
Personal, Gail Connor only.

Gail picked it up. "I don't know, Miriam. I'll take it home and find out."

"Aren't you going to open it now?"

"No." She headed for her office.

"Why not?"

"Miriam, please." The tone had been too sharp. "I'm sorry. I'll be in a better mood when all this is over." Gail shoved her door closed with her foot. She didn't have to open the box to guess what it contained.

For several minutes she stared at it on the end of her desk. Finally she used a letter opener to slit the tape. She folded back the flaps. There was an envelope on top, which she set aside. She saw her brown cashmere sweater, neatly folded. A negligee, a pair of jeans, some lacy underthings she had only worn at his house. Cosmetics and shampoo in plastic bags. Her hair dryer. Some paperbacks. A pair of shoes at the bottom. And throughout, the faint scent of his bedroom, his closet, the cologne he used.

Pressing her lips together, she took a big breath. Then another, refusing to cry.

The business-size, cream-colored envelope was sealed. Ferrer & Quintana, Attorneys at Law, PA. Her name written in black ink, a line under it.
Gail.

She slowly tore the unopened envelope and the note inside into pieces.

Karen had a soccer game at seven o'clock. At 6:10, Gail was sitting on the edge of her bed tying her sneakers when she heard the TV anchorman mention the words
Miami Opera.

Gail stood up and pointed the remote to raise the volume.

There was the recorded image of Thomas Nolan, talking about how sorry he was. He was magnificent. His deep clear voice, the carefully enunciated words.
Like many others in this country I was unaware of the tragic history of the exile community . . . the anguish of a people divided, brother from brother . . . a country betrayed . . . if this could bring understanding . . .

A perfect combination of dignity, shame, and repentance. When the reporters shouted questions, he was thoughtful and patient. The brow furrowing just right. There was a snippet of interview with Albert Estrada, then some on-the-street quotes from citizens, Hispanic and otherwise. Most of them said the issue was an embarrassment. One woman said Nolan should be put in jail.

Gail hit the remote and the screen went dark. What Thomas Nolan was sorry about was having to do this at all.

She went into her closet for a sweater and had to step around the box that Anthony had sent.

In a sudden rush of anger, she kicked it, then flipped it upside down, shoving her clothes into a corner. Into the empty box she pitched Anthony's shoes, a shiny pair of tasseled loafers. Took some shirts off hangers, his luxurious monogrammed shirts with four initials, ALQP. Two pairs of slacks. A jacket. She wanted them out of her sight.

A Florida Marlins baseball cap. Three silk ties. A heavy robe that slithered off the padded hanger.

She resented the impersonality of receiving a box at her office. He had used a delivery man. No phone call first, nothing. It was rude. Petty.

Into the bathroom. Pulling things off a shelf in the cabinet, tossing them into a shoebox—cologne, razors, aftershave, whitening toothpaste, his toothbrush. Then to the drawer in her dresser where he kept underwear.

What could have been in the note? She imagined the words,
I'm sorry. I still love you.
She laughed aloud. No, he had probably written,
This is to request that you return my possessions forthwith.

"Fine. Take them."

Gail went back into the closet, dumped everything into the box, then leaned on it, interweaving the flaps to keep them closed. There was a roll of wide packing tape in the garage. Passing Karen's door, she called out automatically, "Hurry up, sweetie. We have to leave in fifteen minutes, turn off the TV, get dressed."

In the garage, heading back from the kitchen, tape in hand, Gail noticed the old packing boxes on the metal shelves past the washer and dryer. One of them contained memorabilia from her high school days, including, she was certain, her yearbooks. She hesitated, then pulled the box down and set it on the dryer.

The yearbook for 1979 had a cloth cover, a silhouette of trees. The school was on a shady waterfront campus in Coconut Grove. The seniors had pages to themselves. The younger students were posed in groups, sitting or standing by the water, or on the steps of the library, or under a tree. She flipped to the tenth grade class photos and found herself in a minidress. Long straight hair, like most of the other girls. The boys' haircuts were shaggy, and their pant-legs were flared.

She turned pages till she found the photos of the junior class. Turned another page, looking for Thomas Nolan. He stood with a dozen others on the porch of the old wooden building constructed at the turn of the century, when Ransom School for Boys had taught sailing to the sons of the northeastern elite. Tommy Nolan in the back row in a plain shirt, his blond hair combed to one side, the forced smile of a loner.

Then Gail remembered. "Oh, my God."

There had been at Ransom-Everglades a small wood-frame cottage, painted green, overgrown with vines, and used at that time to store band instruments. Late one spring afternoon in 1979, when most of the other students had gone home, Tommy Nolan had been found unconscious in the bandmaster's cottage, one end of a rope tied to a beam, and the other around his neck.

Gail looked down at the small face in the photograph. For a while there had been speculation. Why had he done it? He didn't have a girlfriend who had just broken up with him. Everybody agreed he wasn't a queer—what they called it then. His grades weren't bad enough that he would get kicked out. They quickly lost interest. He hadn't come back after that, and anyway, he hadn't been one of the popular kids.

Why had he done it? Gail sat on the step to the kitchen, piecing a story together. His father had died when he was eleven years old. Then his mother had decided, when Tom was sixteen, to move back to Virginia. How inconsiderate, even cruel, to take her son out of school his junior year, and worse, to do it a few short weeks before the end of the term—after he'd been told he didn't have enough talent for the piano, but before he really believed in himself as a singer. He must have been devastated.

He had tried to kill himself. Except for a custodian's fortuitous intervention, he would have succeeded. With his life ripped from its moorings, the words of one teacher were all he had to sustain him:
You should sing.
And he had done it, had given himself to music. He had no wife, no children, only this one consuming passion.

Closing the yearbook, she thought of Anthony again. No wife, his children far away. In the space of one hour last Thursday night he had walked away from his family and ended his engagement. She wondered what he had done all weekend. Gotten drunk? Gone home with the first
latina
he could lay his hands on? Would he one day drive to Key West, sit alone in his car gazing toward Cuba, and put his pistol to his temple? Better to have stayed there and married Yolanda, his first girlfriend. In his memory she, like his childhood, remained virginal, innocent, and lost.

Gail had called him a coward.
How brave am I?
she wondered.
How loving and wise?
Her mother had been right. He was who he was because of his history, not his culture. Because of what he had loved that was lost forever.

Her fault. She had not loved him enough.

She put her forehead on her knees and sobbed.

The telephone in the kitchen rang. She ignored it. It stopped.

Then Karen's voice. "Mom! Mom, where are you? Phone!"

Wiping her eyes, Gail cleared her throat. "I'm out here. Coming." She tossed the yearbook back in the box and came inside.

It was Rebecca Dixon.

She had some things to give Gail, very important. Could she drop by the opera?

CHAPTER TWENY-FIVE

The business offices of the Miami Opera were around the corner from the auditorium itself, whose grand windows faced Biscayne Boulevard. Gail came in the side entrance and found the staff parking lot full. This meant that the orchestra was rehearsing tonight. The musicians had taken every space.

In a hurry, she squeezed her rental car between the sidewalk and a tree. Rebecca had said there would be an executive board meeting at eight o'clock, so please arrive as soon as possible. Gail had begged help from Marilyn Perlmutter down the street, whose daughter played on Karen's team. Karen could hitch a ride to the game, and Gail would buy them pizza afterward. It had been the only way to uncross Karen's arms and get the scowl off her face.

The glass doors to the reception area were dark, but lights shone in the windows of the boardroom. Farther along the side of the building, a guard sat by the rear entrance, his chair holding open the metal door. He looked up from the sports pages. Gail explained who she was, and that Mrs. Dixon was expecting her in the office.

Entering the wide corridor, she heard the orchestra and assumed
Don Giovanni
Bright violins punctuated by darker chords from cellos and basses followed her toward the offices, gradually fading. She had purchased a tape of the opera and had listened to some of it in the rental car on the way home. The music had seemed too cheerful for the terrible acts of lust and betrayal that Thomas Nolan had described.