by Lis Wiehl
“You want a babysitter,” Dani said.
Fish smiled. “At $160,000 a month, you can call it what you will, but that’s a lot to pay a babysitter.”
“He’d have to rent me a DVD of my choice too,” she said. “Plus snacks.”
Davis Fish was not amused. “Mr. Gansevoort is also, obviously, concerned with possible future legal problems. He’d like you to evaluate the sanity and competence of certain potential witnesses. And it goes without saying that he wants you to evaluate Logan to determine whether he has mental problems severe enough to render him not responsible for his actions.”
“So you want to buy me off and then hire me to turn the tables on the prosecution,” Dani said. “I’ll give your boss credit. He has a strong sense of … entitlement. Like the child who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.”
“That’s an inappropriate analogy,” Fish said.
“That’s an inappropriate offer,” Dani said. “And unethical, if not actionable.”
She was about to go when she saw an elegant man approaching, mid-forties, fit, tanned, and familiar—she knew Andrew Gansevoort from the pictures she’d seen of him in the paper, though she’d never seen him around town. He rarely left his property, and sent other people to do things for him like buy groceries or shuttle children. His hair was light brown and full and swept back. He wore a pink shirt, with a silver cashmere sweater draped over his shoulders. He smiled at Dani, showing her his whitened and veneered teeth, and offered her his hand.
“Miss Harris,” he said, smiling. “I was hoping I could catch you and meet you in person. Please tell me you and Mr. Fish have come to an understanding.”
“Oh, I think we have,” Dani said, rising without shaking the man’s hand and pushing her chair in. “Haven’t we, Mr. Fish?”
25.
“Am I catching you at a bad time?” Dani said.
“One word,” Tommy told her. “Borassus aethiopium.”
“I think that was two words … but excuse me?”
“African fan palms. A woman out in Willow Pond Estates imported African fan palms for her solarium,” Tommy said. “They’re very decorative, but I think she got them on the black market because the root balls were infested and now her house is full of grasshoppers. Technically, desert locusts. She wants us to come in and spray. You’re on your cell—where are you?”
“Why doesn’t she call an exterminator?”
“She’s done business with my dad for years,” Tommy said. “I think she feels bad because she didn’t order the palms from us. I got a call in to a guy we use.”
“Tell your guy to spray for botflies too,” Dani said. “There’s a bug going around. Literally.”
“What’s up?”
“I need help,” she said. “I’m at the country club. In the parking lot. I locked my keys in the car.”
The nursery was ten minutes from the country club. When Tommy arrived on his motorcycle, he found Dani on a bench by the driving range.
“They wouldn’t let you wait inside?” he asked.
“I walked out of my meeting to make a point,” she told him. “It would have been too embarrassing to slouch back in and say, ‘Excuse me, um … I’m locked out of my car.’ ”
He walked to where she’d parked, bent over, and cupped his hands to the passenger side window to look inside the car, where he saw the keys, still in the ignition.
“At least they’re right where you need ’em,” he said. “If you rode a motorcycle, this wouldn’t happen. You want me to call my friend Ray?”
“I just want a ride home,” Dani said. “I have a spare set of keys. I can get my sister to give me a ride to my car in the morning.”
It occurred to Tommy that she could have called her sister now. Maybe she had and her sister wasn’t home … or maybe he’d been the first person she thought of. That had to be good. He handed her his helmet.
“Put this on,” he said. “I only have one.”
“You want me to ride on that?” she said, pointing at the motorcycle.
“Unless you want me to go to my house and get a car,” he said.
“No,” she said. “This will be … fine.”
“Good thing you’re wearing pants,” he said.
“No wheelies,” she said, pulling the helmet on and climbing onto the back of the bike. He showed her where to put her feet.
“Hold on tight,” he shouted above the engine noise. “If your hands get cold, just put them in my jacket pockets. I promise I’ll take it easy.”
Her hands were cold in a matter of seconds. He knew they would be. When she put her hands into his jacket pockets and held on as they leaned gently into a turn, he went with the illusion that she had her arms around him for other reasons. They’d gone less than a mile when he felt something cold sting his face, and then again. It was raining.
“Hold on,” Tommy shouted, speeding up to outrun the rain, but it was no use. It seemed as if the sky opened up all at once. He slowed to a stop beneath an overpass.
Dani dismounted and stepped back as Tommy turned the engine off and lifted the motorcycle back onto the kickstand. He helped her remove the helmet. Her hair was dripping. His was too.
“Well, that was refreshing,” he said. “You all right?”
“Am I all right?” she said. “Do I look all right?”
“You look wet and cold,” he said, taking his jacket off and wrapping it around her shoulders. “Take it. I’m good. Hang on.” He opened a saddlebag and found his Gore-Tex rain shell.
“There,” he said as he put it on. “I think we’re going to be here for a while.”
“Looks like,” she said. The rain was hard and steady, but they were dry beneath the bridge.
“Let’s get out of the wind,” he said. “Come on.”
He spied a rock ledge, higher up beneath the overpass. She followed and took his hand when he turned to give her a pull. They sat side by side. When she shivered, he put his arm around her and moved closer to share his body warmth.
“These boots are ruined,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This rain will probably stop.”
“Ya think?”
“That was stupid,” he admitted, realizing that something had changed. He could still say idiotic things to her, but he no longer feared losing her good opinion. She might even be starting to like him.
“I’m also starving,” she said. “I didn’t eat anything at the country club because it would have given Davis Fish the upper hand.”
“Wait here,” he said. He ran to the motorcycle, opened a saddlebag and reached inside it, then ran back, clambering up the incline.
“Here,” he said. She held out her hands. He gave her a ProteinPlus PowerBar, a Rice Krispy Treat, half a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers, a box of Mike and Ike candies, and a bottle of Gatorade. “Sorry if the menu is a bit limited. I just throw stuff in there when I’m traveling and empty it out every few years.”
“This,” she pronounced, ripping open the PowerBar, “is a feast.” She chased the power bar with the Rice Krispy Treat, followed by the Goldfish, then washed it all down with the Gatorade. She split the Mike and Ikes with Tommy.
“I can’t believe I just ate the contents of a motorcycle saddlebag,” she said. “Which one’s Mike and which one’s Ike?”
“It’s a mystery,” Tommy said.
“An ambiguity you can live with?”
“Yup.”
“What’s another?”
“What’s another?” Tommy thought a moment. “Why you love somebody.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Not why in general, but why one particular person and not some other person.”
“They’ve done studies—” Dani began.
“Stop,” Tommy said. “It doesn’t matter what the studies say. You mentioned you’re reading Moby Dick—did you get to the part where they slice the whale up and boil it down in the try-
works?”
“I didn’t know you’d read it,” Dani said. “Parts of it are hard to get through.”
“Three times,” Tommy said. “You can chop a whale up into a million wafer-thin slices and boil it down to the purest essence, and you still don’t understand the mystery of what makes it a whale. So don’t slice love down into a million pieces and reduce it to science. It’s bigger than that.”
“Point taken,” Dani said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” Tommy said. “You’re my boss. Remember?”
She shivered.
“Are you cold?” he asked her. Another stupid question.
She couldn’t stop shivering.
He crab-walked up the embankment to move behind her, then slid down so that she was sitting between his legs. He put his arms around her and squeezed her with his legs. She nestled in. The rain fell even harder than before.
“That better?” he asked.
“Much.”
“What did you want to ask me?”
“Well,” she said. “It’s none of my business, but I wondered if you were in love with Cassandra Morton.”
“You heard about that, huh?”
“Heard about it?” she said. “It was in all the trashy celebrity magazines for months. Not that I read trashy celebrity magazines.”
“I was kidding.”
“Never mind,” she said. “I know you don’t talk about that. Which I admire. I’m not big on men who kiss and tell. Or women, for that matter.”
“Can I hire you as my therapist?” he asked. “For one dollar? Which you already owe me as your assistant, so let’s just call it even.”
“I normally charge twice that,” she said, leaning her head back to look at him, “but sure. Though usually when I see a patient, I’m not sitting under a bridge in the rain with the client’s arms around me.”
“This isn’t how Freud did it?”
“Not usually.”
“Okay,” Tommy said. “So what I’m telling you is confidential, patient to doctor. The answer is yes, I was in love with her. At first. It’s pretty heady to be with a woman the whole world thinks is glamorous and wonderful and perfect, and everywhere you go people take your picture and stare at you. It’s annoying too, but it’s heady. You think of who you’re with and realize she loves you and she chose you out of the literally millions of guys she has to choose from. But it’s also confusing, because you can’t be sure what’s making you feel what. Cass is a really loving person.”
“But … ?”
“But nothing. She was all those things. That part was real.”
“But … ?”
“You wanna hear something really weird?” he said. “I went fishing with some buddies, up in Canada, in lieu of a bachelor party, and I was sitting in the boat and I thought, If she’s the one for me, show me a sign. It’s not like I was praying. I just thought those words. If she’s the one for me, show me a sign. Split second later, I caught the biggest northern pike I’ve ever seen. I thought at first it was a muskie. Twenty-one pounds. Big as my leg. And I’m thinking, Is this a sign, or is this just a fish?”
“Which was it?”
“It was just a fish,” Tommy said. “I’m thinking you don’t believe in signs.”
“In premonitions?” Dani said. “No. Or put it this way—I think I probably have a thousand premonitions a day, projecting my thoughts into a variety of possible futures. When one comes true, I don’t slap my forehead and say, ‘Oh my gosh—I had a premonition about that!’ What about the other 999 that didn’t come true? Don’t those deserve equal weight? Were you superstitious when you played football? They say a lot of athletes are.”
“I never sat down during a game, but that wasn’t a superstition.”
“What was it?”
“If you sit down on the bench without looking, the guy next to you might set his Gatorade cup on the bench and make you sit on it. Football humor.”
“You had no superstitions? None whatsoever?”
“Maybe a couple,” Tommy allowed. Not washing his socks during the season, keeping a raw egg in his locker, never eating anything red before a game, never leaving a hat on the bed in his hotel room … Just a few. “And you don’t have any?”
“I try not to,” Dani said. “Which isn’t to say there aren’t a lot of things in the universe that are beyond our understanding. I guess I just think, if there isn’t an explanation, don’t make one up just because the ambiguity makes you uncomfortable. Just embrace the ambiguity. And wait. Then again …”
“What?”
“You were saying,” she reminded him. “The fish was just a fish?”
“There’s more to Cassandra Morton than anybody knows. Don’t get me wrong—the whole America’s sweetheart thing wasn’t just because of the roles she played. They suited her. She could be a total sweetheart.”
“But … ?”
“But,” Tommy said, “there were some ugly parts behind the public persona. Ugly isn’t the right word. Damaged, maybe. You can use your imagination to fill in the blanks, but this was a girl who looked like a grown woman when she was twelve years old, with a stepfather who was an alcoholic who had his alcoholic friends over …”
“I get it,” Dani said.
“In public she was America’s sweetheart,” Tommy said. “On film she was America’s sweetheart. In person the whole America’s sweetheart thing was a house of cards. She could turn violent and abusive … It was like she couldn’t stop herself. No one would have ever believed me if I told them. I thought I could help her. You tell yourself, ‘I’ll be the one who can help her get past the demons.’ But eventually you realize you can’t. Only she can do that. Finally she called off the wedding—”
“She called off the wedding?”
Tommy nodded. “I wasn’t exactly surprised. But we made a deal,” he said. “She needed to maintain the image. I told her I’d make it look like I called it off and be the bad guy. She’d get her picture taken being publicly heartbroken and bravely carrying on with her head held high, and I’d get myself photographed dating Playboy bunnies or whatever, and then she could go on being America’s sweetheart.”
“What did you get out of it?”
“What did I get out of it?” Tommy said. “Nothing. I had nothing to lose, and she did. She still needed to be a public figure. I just wanted to disappear. It’s tough when it’s all so public. Things like that take on a momentum …”
A car passed in front of them beneath the bridge. He watched the headlights approaching and the taillights receding. He listened to the Doppler effect as the sibilance of the tires against the wet pavement turned from a hiss to a fading sizzle. She’d felt tense in his arms, but now her body relaxed as she leaned back into him. They were safe and out of the rain where they were, even when the wind picked up, strong gusts driving the rain almost horizontal.
“Are you still in touch with her?” she asked, resting her head against his chest.
“Once in a while,” he said. “On the phone. You can imagine what would happen if we had lunch and somebody took a picture.”
“I see why you never said anything,” she said.
“The New York Star offered me a lot of money for the story,” Tommy said. “That’s also confidential.”
“My lips are seals, as my niece is fond of saying.”
“Can I tell you something else?” Tommy asked.
“Okay.”
He realized that for the first time in as long as he could remember, he trusted someone completely. The feeling that he’d known Dani his entire life wasn’t quite true—he’d been aware of her for most of his life, but he was only getting to really know her now. Everything she told him made him want to know more. She got all his jokes. She didn’t necessarily like all of them, but she got them. Mostly he knew that with Dani, what you saw was what you got, and he really liked what he saw. She wasn’t hiding anything. She was such a decent person.
“I swore I wouldn’t tell an
ybody, but given the circumstances, you’ll understand. I can’t swear you to secrecy because it’s relevant to the case, but I know you’ll do the right thing.”
“Okay,” Dani said.
“It’s about Liam,” Tommy said. “He told me in confidence, and I told him I wouldn’t tell anybody. Summer before last, he had sex with a girl. They were both lifeguards at Lake Kendell. The point is, Liam didn’t turn sixteen until the end of August, and the girl had just turned eighteen. So he was a minor and she wasn’t.”
“And he felt weird about it?” Dani asked. “According to the law, he’s not considered capable of giving consent at fifteen.”
“I know,” Tommy said. “All he knew at the time was that this girl who was older and cool liked him, and he liked her. He was … let’s just say he was consenting. But she was extremely aggressive. So much that it really scared him. And afterward she got weird. She started calling him, but he wouldn’t go out with her again. He thought she was crazy. Eventually, she said she was going to go to the police.”
“That makes no sense,” Dani said. “She was the one who—”
“I know,” Tommy said. “That’s how little he knew about what was going on, but she said she was going to claim he’d been the aggressor.”
“What did Liam do about it?”
“He told me,” Tommy said. “He couldn’t tell his parents. The girl was the daughter of his parents’ best friends. I handled it.”
“How?”
“I talked to her. Privately, but in a public place where I had witnesses.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her she was being unreasonable,” Tommy said. “I’m telling you this because there’s a possibility someone is going to say Liam had trouble with a girl before. He sent her a letter that said, ‘Leave me alone or else.’ He was trying to sound tough, but a prosecutor could turn that around and use it against him. That’s why he called me instead of his mother when the police brought him in for the Bull’s Rock Hill murder. He knew I knew all this, and Claire didn’t.”
“How did you explain to the girl that she was being unreasonable?”