by D. W. Buffa
I drove back with Tangerine in almost perfect silence to the house on the hill in Sausalito. She did not know what to say, and I did not want to talk about the trial, or anything else. We drove over the Golden Gate in the dying light of early evening and I looked back at the city, shining as bright and eager as all the best yesterdays you could remember, and then I looked at her and knew that tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that, I would think each new yesterday better than the last.
“We’re still going to France?” she asked as she pulled into the drive.
“Do you still want to?”
“More than ever.”
We spent a month in Paris, idle tourists, wandering from place to place, stopping for a glass of wine in some cafe we found deserted in the afternoon, sitting together on a bench in the park behind Notre Dame just above the river in the cool warmth of the October sun. With a guidebook in hand, we went everywhere and saw everything, and were so entranced with each other that at the end of the day we could not remember what we had seen. History was all around us—the Bastille and the French Revolution, the Arc-de-Triumph and Napoleon’s wars—and the only history we cared about was ours. We had dinner late at night, and made love until morning. We never spoke about the trial.
Jean-Francois Reynaud was waiting for us at the station when the train from Paris arrived. He seemed glad to see me; he was thrilled to see Tangerine.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” I remarked as we walked outside and headed for his car. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you without a coat and tie.”
It was more than that. He had nothing more to worry about. There was no more official business to conduct, no more late night clandestine meetings with an American lawyer he had, perhaps without the entire knowledge or approval of his government, decided to help. There was a new spring in his step, and his smile, at least when he looked at Tangerine, was incandescent.
“Chantel can’t wait to meet you—both of you,” he said as he drove through the streets of Agen in his new Peugot.
The castle was only a few miles away. We turned off the two-lane highway and a few blocks later passed through a gated entrance to a mile-long dirt and gravel road that wound through a thick hillside forest and across a short bridge to Jean-Francois’s idyllic three-story country home. His wife, Chantal, tall, thin, elegant and quite beautiful, had heard the car and was waiting on the front steps.
Chantal greeted Tangerine with the open generosity of long-time friends. Their laughter echoed behind them as they followed Jean-Francois, who was carrying our two suitcases under his arms, up the staircase to the enormous bedroom on the second floor.
I stayed outside for a while, looking out over the lawn and the garden, the fountains and the green sculpted hedges, the only sound the laughter from the open window above. I thought about Kevin Fitzgerald and the choice he had made, and I thought about how many lives had been destroyed in the trial. History could write about what had happened, and the story would be nothing like what Kevin Fitzgerald or Michael Donahue or any of the others so eager to leave their mark on time had wanted and expected. They wanted to do something great and memorable, and became not the heroes they imagined, but fools and charlatans, criminals and imposters. If there was such a thing as history, its main purpose seemed to be to treat with violence and contempt anyone who thought he knew its meaning.
I heard Tangerine’s laughing voice calling from the window, and in that moment the mystery of time’s meaning disappeared.
D.W. Buffa was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. After graduation from Michigan State University, he studied under Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey and Hans J. Morgenthau at the University of Chicago where he earned both an M.A. and a Ph. D. in political science. He received his J.D. degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Buffa was a criminal defense attorney for 10 years and his seven Joseph Antonelli novels reflect that experience.
The New York Times called The Defense 'an accomplished first novel' which 'leaves you wanting to go back to the beginning and read it over again.' The Judgment was nominated for the Edgar Award for best novel of the year.
D.W. Buffa lives in Northern California. You can visit his Official Website at dwbuffa.net.
The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by D.W. Buffa
Cover and jacket design by 2Faced Design
Interior design and formatting by:
www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com
ISBN 978-1-947993-25-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930270
First hardcover publication April 2018 by Polis Books, LLC
1201 Hudson Street, #211S
Hoboken, NJ 07030
www.PolisBooks.com