by Dianne Emley
“She’s not crazy, Thomas. She’s sad and lost.”
“Whatever her problem is, please don’t help her ruin the DeLaceys. My father is an old man. He deserves better. My mother deserves better.”
“You remember that check I wrote you?” Bill DeLacey called after Iris. He remained as he was, facing the campaign office. He spoke without turning his head in her direction. “There was no statute of limitations on it. It put you through school. You’re still benefiting from that education, aren’t you?”
Iris turned to face him. “Excuse me?”
“When I pay someone, I expect them to follow through on what I paid them for. You should have told me about Paula.”
Iris pulled out her checkbook. She quickly scribbled on a check, ripped it out, and held it in his direction. “With interest, I figure two thousand ought to do it.”
“Iris, this is unnecessary,” Thomas protested.
“It’s very necessary.”
“Take it,” DeLacey ordered Thomas.
She handed Thomas the check. “You’re too big a boy to be under Daddy’s thumb.”
He tore the check in half and handed it back to her. “Meet you in an hour?”
“Why do you keep staring at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to see through me or something.”
“I’m sorry,” Iris said. “I didn’t realize it was making you uncomfortable.”
“Is that why you went out with me, to satisfy your curiosity?”
She sipped her chardonnay and thought about that. “To be honest, I was curious. But I do find you very attractive.”
“But you’re not sure whether you like me.” Thomas took a sip of his Campari and soda. “You seem cooler toward me than when we were talking on the street this afternoon. What’s changed?”
Iris shook her head, even though she knew exactly what it was. She stabbed a poppy seed breadstick into a pat of butter and bit into it.
“I know what happened. My father and brother showed up.”
“Seeing them today was a little jarring.”
“I know. My father wasn’t very pleasant to you. Iris, I can appreciate that you may not like my family, but I wish you’d give me a chance.”
“Don’t you think our families frame who we are?”
“Of course, but that cuts both ways. I’ve worked my whole life to be different from my family when it would have been easier just to go with the flow. I’m sure you of all people understand that.”
She nodded ruefully.
He swirled the cranberry-colored cocktail in his glass. “But as hard as I’ve worked to make a life apart from the…shall we say, eccentric DeLaceys, I do love them. They’re very important to me.”
“Paula too?”
“I’m angry at her but I love her. I’d do anything in my power to protect and take care of my family.” He abruptly stopped and took a sip of his drink as if his mouth had gone dry. He stared down into his glass. When he spoke again, his voice wavered. “I feel guilty about my mother and how she just slipped away. I can’t shake the feeling that I should have done something.” He quickly glanced up at her, then down again.
She reached her hand across the table and pressed it on top of his. “I know. I feel the same way. But maybe no one could have done anything.”
“I don’t really believe that but thanks.”
The owner of the intimate restaurant, a small, neat man with a French accent and a balding pate, stopped by their table and topped off Iris’s wine without asking. Iris started to pull her hand away from Thomas’s but he held onto her fingers.
The owner casually rested his hand on Thomas’s back. “I understand the campaign is going well, Thomas.”
“Going great. We have a good shot at winning.”
He patted Thomas’s back and looked at Iris. “He’s a good man, this one.” He wandered away to another table.
Thomas looked at Iris almost shyly. “See, I’m not all bad.”
She smiled. The candlelight was very flattering to him. She hoped it was as flattering to her.
They looked at each other in that searching way of people in love or angry. He rubbed his thumb across the tops of her fingers. “I loved it when you reached to touch my hand. It was a very warm gesture.”
“Warm, huh? Pretty good for an Ice Princess. That’s my nickname at the office.”
“They wouldn’t call you that if they knew you the way I do.”
She slipped her hand away from his and touched his face, stroking a tiny mole on his cheekbone, then running her fingers down one side of his chin and up the other to his ear lobe. She started to pull her hand away but he grabbed it. With his other hand he shoved the candle out of the way, then pulled himself toward her. She tentatively eased toward him, aware of the diners at a nearby table who now seemed more interested in her and Thomas than their own conversation, but if it didn’t bother him, it didn’t bother her. She met his lips midway across the table. They kissed gently for what seemed like an indecent amount of time.
She was swept up in the moment and was tumbling down, fast and hard. She had wanton thoughts about following him anywhere, spending all her money, telling lies and bad jokes and living for the moment. Her relentless better angel didn’t step in because she knew the most action Iris was about to see in the near future was the waiter arriving to take their dinner order.
Thomas ordered both their meals while she fixed her lipstick and gathered her wits. She noticed he was also wearing her lipstick and had half a mind not to tell him because it looked kind of cute.
“You have lipstick on you.”
He picked up a napkin and wiped it off. “Miss Thorne, what a kiss. You’re full of surprises.”
“I surprise myself sometimes.” So that she didn’t surprise herself any further, she attempted a neutral subject. “So tell me, why did you leave one of L.A.’s top law firms to run for the City Council?” She still found herself looking at his lips.
“I wanted to give something to the community.” He looked at her eyes, her hair, and the cleavage revealed by her low-cut dress. “My family’s ties to the district go back four generations to when Las Mariposas was first settled. I saw how Alvarez was letting the area deteriorate and I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I’ll admit I’m ambitious. I have political aspirations beyond the L.A. City Council.”
Looking at his lips and eyes and only partially listening to what he was saying, she absentmindedly stroked the gold chain that lay on her chest.
“But that means I’ll work hard to turn the Fourteenth around. Unlike Alvarez, my career doesn’t end with the City Council. To move on, I have to do a good job. And I want to. I owe it to the constituents and to all the generations of Gaytans who went before me.” He gulped the last of his cocktail. “Please don’t sit in the front row and do that at the debate.”
“Do what?”
“You’re running your fingers across your chest.”
“I am?”
“It’s very distracting.”
Smiling crookedly, she clasped her hands in front of her on the table.
He leaned toward her on his elbows. “I’m really attracted to you. I’m getting a vibe that you might feel the same way about me.”
She found him intoxicating. “There’s something very squishy about this. It’s like you’re new but you’re familiar too.”
“It’s very sexy.”
“But I don’t want to rush…I mean, I kinda do, but that little witch, my better angel, is telling me to slow down.”
He took her hand between both of his. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for someone like you. I don’t want to screw it up by rushing into something.” He kissed each of her fingertips in turn. “So you’re not involved with anyone right now?”
She shook her head.
“I’m surprised someone hasn’t snapped you up.”
“Men always think they want someone like me but when push comes to
shove, most don’t. It always comes down to power and who’s going to be on top.”
“I’d be very happy to let you be on top.”
She blushed from the roots of her hair to her toes.
“I’m sorry.” He tweaked her chin between his thumb and forefinger.
The waiter brought the first course.
They ate in silence for several minutes.
She stabbed her wilted spinach salad and tried a subject that was certain to douse their passion, “If this will thing is true…”
Thomas finished the sentence. “I can kiss the election good-bye. If the will does exist, I know there’s a darn good explanation for it. But it wouldn’t matter. The press would paint me with the same brush as my father.”
“But Thomas, if it’s a ruse, Paula deserves an Oscar for acting.”
Thomas picked an anchovy from the top of his Caesar salad. “Until I have proof, in my mind there is no will. I don’t know Paula. She left when I was eleven. But I know she feels venomous toward the family. She wrote some nasty letters to both my parents, blaming them for everything that went wrong with her life. I know she thinks I’m the favorite child and had it easy growing up. But she didn’t know what it was like growing up under the burden of my father’s expectations. He had it all planned out for me. Schools, jobs, family. Everything. He didn’t want me to be an attorney. He didn’t want me to study back East. I finally reach a point where I feel like I’m standing on my own accomplishments and all this trash about my grandfather’s murder and my mother’s suicide comes rushing out of nowhere, like some riptide, dragging me back.” His voice was bitter. “If there is a will and I’m held accountable for things that happened when I was eleven…” He slowly shook his head. “I guess all my hard work and hopes and dreams were for nothing.”
After dinner, Thomas walked Iris to her car.
“I had a lovely time,” she said. “Thank you.”
“So did I. When can we do it again?”
“Call me.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Call me when you get home to let me know you got there okay.”
They kissed good-bye. It was brief, but it would be enough to keep Iris feeling warm and fuzzy through the night and most of the day.
He stood on the sidewalk until she was safely under way. At the end of the block, she looked in her rearview mirror and saw him still standing on the sidewalk, watching her depart. He looked very alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
You are on an airline and an executive from one of your competitors is sitting next to you. She gets up to use the rest room, leaving her firm’s business plan on the seat. What do you do?
You are at an industry convention and are having a few drinks with an executive from one of your competitors. He becomes drunk and begins revealing information about his firm’s upcoming product line. What do you do?
Iris refolded the brochure. The title was, “Ethics Seminar for Executives.” She slipped the brochure into her briefcase and mused over a dilemma that was not among those mentioned in the brochure.
You have been asked to manage a valuable investment portfolio for a prominent City Council member. You know that the council member, a former police officer, was involved in the secret beating of a suspect in custody who later died. What do you do?
She picked up the manila folder that contained her research on Gil Alvarez’s investment portfolio, slipped it into her briefcase, and flicked the brass fasteners closed. She pulled her suit jacket from the hanger behind the door, put it on, got her purse from the top drawer of the filing cabinet, hung the strap over her shoulder, grabbed her briefcase and left.
Gil Alvarez’s secretary was filing her nails. She was sitting very erect in her desk chair, her breasts straining against the light fabric of her sleeveless sheath dress. She held her palm out to admire her nails, then bent her fingers toward her again and whacked the edges with the file.
Iris sat on a corner of the couch, flipping through but barely seeing a magazine. She smelled nail polish and looked up to see Alycia applying the final touch-up.
The office door burst open and Gil Alvarez entered, bustling and smiling and looking every bit like a man on top of the world. Jeff Rosen was close behind.
Iris leaped from the couch, virtually at attention. Alvarez breezed past her on his way to the inner office and as he did so, he grabbed her upper arm just above the elbow and whooshed her inside with him.
“So how’s my favorite money manager?”
Iris smelled booze on Alvarez’s breath.
Rosen followed, closing the door behind them. He excitedly rubbed his hands together and began pacing back and forth.
Iris stood her briefcase next to her feet. With all the good humor in the air, she distinctly felt like a party pooper. She grinned, pretending that some of their ardor had rubbed off on her. “What’s all the excitement about?”
Rosen reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to Iris. “We’ve just finished talking with a friend over at The Los Angeles Times. We got the Times’s endorsement—”
Alvarez jutted two thumbs into the air.
“—which we were confident we’d get. And that article’s going to run tomorrow morning.”
Iris unfolded the paper.
WILLIAM DELACEY POSSIBLY INVOLVED IN MURDER COVER-UP
Did Developer’s Plan for Historic Property Lead to Foul Play?
A recent reinvestigation into the 1971 murder of Gabriel Gaytan at the historic Rancho Las Mariposas has uncovered evidence that Humberto De la Garza, Gaytan’s cousin, may have been falsely accused of the crime. A new examination of the case files revealed discrepancies in William DeLacey’s description of the events surrounding the discovery of Gaytan’s body the morning of February 9, 1971.
Alvarez opened an embossed leather box on his desk and took out a cigar and a chrome cutter. “We’ve got him on the run now.” He tipped the box toward Rosen.
Rosen grinned. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Gilbert Alvarez and Ronald Cole were the first two police officers on the scene. Alvarez, now the incumbent in the race for the 14th District City Council seat, told reporters, “I’ve always been uneasy about the outcome of this case. De la Garza simply did not have a motive to murder Gaytan.” Cole, currently an LAPD detective, refused to comment. Humberto De la Garza, who was arrested for Gaytan’s murder, died in custody from injuries reportedly sustained in a fall that occurred when he resisted arrest.
Even after Rancho Las Mariposas fell into William DeLacey’s hands, ground has yet to be broken on his DeLacey Gardens housing project. Environmental regulations and disagreements with the City Council have stalled the project for over twenty-five years.
Iris refolded the paper and handed it to Rosen. “That’s quite an article.”
Alvarez leaned back in his leather chair, put his feet on his desk, and waved his now lit cigar at her. “Gaytan DeLacey started it but we’re going to finish it.”
The phone rang. “Alycia, hold all calls except for the mayor’s.” Alvarez hung up and explained. “He should be giving me his endorsement any day now. How many endorsements does Gaytan DeLacey have? Hardly any.”
“He’s managed to get more than I thought he would,” Rosen admitted.
Iris slowly walked to the window, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, buying time, trying to talk herself out of saying something that she’d regret. She turned to face them, leaning her hands and hips against the window frame.
Alvarez puffed on the cigar and looked at her in the same way he might have looked at a gemstone he was considering acquiring, assessing how it would look in the light, how it would look from a distance, how it would look on his arm.
“I was just a little kid at the time.” Iris held her palm out to indicate her size then. “So my recollection is not great but I remember some discussion among the adults about Humberto and how he got hurt.”
Alvarez rocked his chair
back with his feet on his desk. He smiled indulgently as if he were now speaking to that small child. “What did they say, dear?”
“Well, as I recall, there was some speculation that you and your partner had beat him up.”
Rosen sat on a small couch and crossed his legs. “The police are common targets for such accusations, but there’s no basis for them in this case.” He looked at Alvarez. Alvarez removed his feet from his desk and leaned forward. He centered the diamond ring on his finger. “Iris, you said something very important. Speculation. Just like Jeff said, a prisoner gets hurt, the police get blamed.”
“Why are you bringing this up, Iris?” Rosen asked.
“Simply because I know the DeLaceys and I know they won’t let this go unaddressed. The obvious area for counterattack is the issue of Humberto’s death. The way I see it, you’ll both end up slinging mud over things that can’t be proved. Running this article might do you both more harm than good.”
“Everything in that article is the truth,” Alvarez said. “I’m not backing down from it.”
“Do you think it’s fair to hold Thomas Gaytan DeLacey accountable for something his father may have done when Thomas was just eleven years old?”
Alvarez squinted at her. “So that’s what’s behind all this. You’re a Gaytan DeLacey fan now.” He darted his cigar at Rosen. “Jeff, we’ve got a turncoat on our hands.”
“Gil, c’mon.” Iris smiled and tilted her head. “I’m only considering your best interests. This article takes the campaign to a new level of ugliness and it may not be a place you want to visit.” She walked to a chair facing his desk, sat down, and slowly crossed her legs.