Jenna’s anger reasserted itself. All right, if that was the way he wanted it, she could live without him. Couldn’t she?
O
She needed to go home. Laila was in competent hands. There was little more Jenna could do except be a good aunt. Besides, she was weary of the lazy warmth of southern California. Only a few more weeks and the air would be turning crisp in Boston.
“For you, Cousin,” said Farid, bringing a phone. It had to be Brad. “Hello?”
“Whoa, Mom! Way to go!” “Karim! Where are you?”
“Athens. You’re all over the papers here, Mom. Malik Badir is like some kind of local god. I think he owns about half of Piraeus.”
“I’m not seeing him, Karim. I’m visiting him.” That didn’t sound right. “Uh-huh. I thought you told me you didn’t know him.”
“It’s … it’s a long story. I knew him a long time ago but haven’t seen him for years—since you were a baby.” That didn’t sound right, either. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I … I just didn’t think it was important at the time.” “So what’s he like?”
“Karim, listen. Don’t believe what you read in the papers. Things … aren’t what they seem.”
“Uh-huh.” He sounded vaguely disappointed. “Well, he sounds like a pretty impressive guy. I’d like to meet him. Look, Mom, I gotta go. There are a bunch of people waiting for the phone.”
“Karim! You’re well? Everything’s all right?”
“Sure. Why should anything be wrong?” The infinite optimism of the very young man. “Gotta bounce, Mom. Love you.”
How ironic. Her son finally approved of a man in her life—and the man was her brother. It was like a French farce. She had to tell Malik.
He laughed uproariously. “My God! Can you imagine what the papers would be like if they knew the truth? “Billionaire Badir in Love Nest with Long-Lost Sister.” They’d put Elvis in the story before they were through. A ménage à trois.”
Jenna laughed, too. But she went to sleep that night missing Brad.
O
It was hard to keep track of time in the eternal balm of southern California.
Had another week gone by?
Jenna was edgy. Time to go home. She wasn’t really needed here. Laila was doing well; although she still tended to avoid others and to sleep a great deal, she hadn’t missed a single appointment with the psychiatrist in Los Angeles, Jabr driving her there and back. She had even asked Jenna’s opinion about writing a letter of apology to the banished boyfriend.
“Don’t apologize,” said Jenna. “Explain. Tell him how you felt then, and how you feel now. If he’s the man you think he is, he’ll understand.” The reunion with Malik was winding down, too. His business was reclaiming his attention— meetings, international phone calls and faxes, discussions with Farid late into the night. And there were his racehorses. Soon, too, Karim would be home, a new school year beginning.
And there was Brad. Surely, she could find a way to make him under- stand. Her words to Laila echoed in her thoughts.
O
Finally, on yet another hazy blue-and-gold desert afternoon, after dis- cussing her plans with her brother and Laila, she booked a flight to Logan for the following day.
Malik was on his way to the track, where his favorite three-year-old was entered in a major stakes race. “Come with me,” he invited. “We’ll make a little good-bye party for your last day.”
“No, thanks, Brother. I don’t want to end up on the front pages again. Go and enjoy yourself. I’ll relax by the pool. Who knows when I’ll get a chance like this back East?”
“You’re sure?”
“Will you please go?”
He departed with Farid, both of them still inviting her, even as the door closed.
She chose a bathing suit from among the dozen Malik had insisted on buying. Surely, she’d have the best collection in Boston. A call to the kitchen brought a cooler of lemonade and snacks. As a finishing touch, she found a novel with absolutely no redeeming value. Thus armed, she stretched out in the sun.
For a while, it was exactly the pure, mindless luxury she needed. But then the heroine of the novel had a terrible falling-out with the man who was obviously destined to be the love of her life. It was all a misunderstanding— totally contrived, thought Jenna disgustedly. But was it really any crazier than what was going on with Brad?
Maybe she should write him, just as she had advised Laila to do with her friend. Don’t apologize. Explain. Tell him the truth. The truth about Malik, at least. But, of course, that would raise more questions—and more, leading finally to questions she’d have to refuse to answer. Or to answer with lies. God, she was tired of lies.
It was quiet with Malik gone, Laila upstairs. The house staff wasn’t in evidence. Some of the bodyguards would have gone with Malik and Farid, of course. Still, that left half a dozen others, and even though they weren’t obtrusive men, she normally would have spotted one or more of them checking on her by now.
Ah, there was one of them now, at the sliding door. Squinting in the brilliant sun, she couldn’t see just who it was. Coming towards her. A message? A call from Brad? Or Karim? Malik must pay his men very well—look at that suit. A new man? She still didn’t recognize him. Smaller than the others. Older, too, gray at the temples. Oh, no. It couldn’t be. Please, God, no.
“Hello, Amira. Don’t freeze like a rabbit before a snake. Say something.’’ “What do you want, Ali? You don’t belong here. When Malik comes back—” “I won’t be here that long, my dove, my heart. And no one else will interrupt our little chat, either—I’ve seen to that. But don’t look so frightened. I’m not going to hurt you. Not today, not here. But someday, Amira—bitch—maybe when you’re just walking down the street. Think about it. Think about it often. Will you be able to run and hide again?’’
“Just go away. Please.’’
“Ah, beg. I like that. And my son, he’ll go with me.” “Don’t you dare touch him!”
“I won’t have to. Do you think he’ll stay with you, whore, after he finds out how you’ve lied to him?”
“Yes.” It was all she could say.
“Do you know how I found out about you? Your picture in that trash paper. You look different here. But brown hair is black in a black-and-white photo. And … green … eyes are just dark eyes. And, of course, you were with that thieving brother of yours. It all became clear to me in a flash.”
Suddenly, Malik’s voice came from the house, calling to someone: “No, the horse had an inflammation of some kind. Had to scratch him. They got me on the car phone.” In a moment, he was outside. “Who’s this, Little Sister? You!” He strode straight to Ali and slapped him backhanded. “How dare you enter my house! Out!”
It happened so quickly. Ali reeled with the blow. Then, with a snarl, he was on Malik like an animal, like the time he beat and raped Amira. And suddenly, Malik, with only one arm, was down, gasping for breath as Ali’s hands clenched his throat.
Even at that moment, and always after, Jenna knew that she could have screamed for help. Someone would have been there in seconds—Farid, Jabr, someone. But pictures were flashing through her mind, the way people supposedly saw their whole lives when they were drowning: Alexandria, the hospital in al-Remal, Ali’s sneer just now when he threatened her life.
She didn’t scream. She dashed inside, took the heavy blue-black little revolver from the chess table, pressed the safety lever, walked back to where Ali was choking Malik, aimed at her husband’s back, and fired three times.
After that, everything was confusion. Malik was holding the gun, and people were swarming: Farid, bodyguards, the chef, and two strangers who turned out to be Ali’s men and had to be disarmed themselves. And Laila.
Malik, his voice a hoarse croak, was telling everyone, “He tried to kill me. I had to shoot.” Then, while someone called the police and a bodyguard hopelessly tried CPR on Ali, he took Jenna aside. “I’m going to handle this, do you
understand? No, not a word. Do you remember how I swore to protect those I love? I’ve failed everyone but you. You owe me this chance.”
She was too numb to answer. Two questions battled in her mind. What would this do to Laila? And what would she tell Karim?
Retribution
Arrest. Indictment. Sensation.
From the beginning, things went badly for Malik. At his arraignment, bail was denied on the ground that his resources would make it easy for him to leave the country. Meanwhile, the publicity was like a poisonous cloud. Almost daily, the media trumpeted some damaging aspect of Malik’s past—the espionage case, the fate of Laila’s true mother, even questions about the circumstances surrounding Genevieve’s death. Every story mentioned his vast wealth; the message was that here was a man who considered himself above the law. Well-timed leaks from the office of the district attorney, who was in a close race for reelection, fed the fire.
By contrast, Ali was portrayed as a Remali national hero and a friend of America, a royal prince with progressive ideas who might one day have been king. Whereas the photographs that the networks and newspapers used of Malik seemed to have been culled from a file of the most unflattering images possible, those of Ali showed a handsome, dashing pilot in his air force uniform. His grieving widow and children were interviewed.
The story of Amira’s disappearance and presumed death was retold with sympathy for Ali: he had known tragedy in his foreshortened life. The fact that the lost princess had been the killer’s sister was treated as the kind of bizarre interrelationship that occurred often in the backward, byzantine Middle East. Malik’s defense was straightforward. He had come home unexpectedly and found his old business enemy, Ali. They exchanged words, and Ali attacked him. Nearly strangled, Malik managed to fight his way free. Ali fell to his knees, his back to Malik, but his movements made Malik believe he was reaching for a weapon. Malik drew his gun and began pulling the trigger.
He could offer support for this version of events. First, Ali undeniably was in Malik’s home, apparently uninvited. Second, medical evidence showed that Malik had indeed been badly choked. On the other hand, no weapon had been found on Ali. And more damning than anything else, three bullets in the back didn’t look like self-defense, even for a one-armed man.
The district attorney, making a great show of fair-mindedness in a tele- vised news conference, announced that he would not seek an indictment for first-degree homicide, only for second-degree.
That was the charge the grand jury brought.
Unlike some of the notorious trials in recent California history—the Menendez brothers, the Simpson case—People v. Malik Badir would not be a long, drawn-out proceeding. Malik not only admitted to the shooting but ordered his two celebrated and very expensive lawyers to use no delaying tactics. The questioning of witnesses would be brief. In fact, no one claimed to have seen the struggle or the killing.
True, one of Malik’s bodyguards had vanished and was rumored to be in al-Remal, as were Ali’s two men—who, it turned out, had diplomatic immunity anyway—but none of this was admissible as evidence.
All of Malik’s other employees had been elsewhere than at the pool. His daughter had been asleep.
His houseguest, Dr. Jenna Sorrel, had been in the library, searching for a book, when she heard the shots. She knew nothing else of the matter.
That was the story Malik had whispered to her in the minutes before the police arrived.
“Promise me you’ll tell them that, Sister. This can’t hurt me. An inconve- nience. But it could ruin your life—and Karim’s.”
It was so simple and easy, and she was terrified and in shock. Then, once she had told the lie for the first time, she felt as if there was no going back. Through hours of questioning by homicide detectives, she never wavered.
Now she was wavering.
She had killed Ali. And she was, at last, free of the fear that haunted her for so many years. Why should Malik risk ruin, no matter what obsessive ideas he had about protecting his loved ones? He was confident of acquittal, but what if he were wrong?
Just tell the truth—the whole truth. Let it all out. Get it over with— finally, finally over with.
But what about Karim? The truth would send him out into life branded, the man whose mother had killed his father in a case that would be remembered for decades.
So maybe Malik was right after all.
She was a wreck. She had never before taken a tranquilizer, but now she downed Valium more regularly than she ate food. Sleep was a stranger.
She couldn’t go back to the Palm Springs house. She would see the blood- stains by the pool, even if they had disappeared. She took a hotel room for the duration of the legal proceedings. The staff were accustomed to celebrity patrons who expected privacy, and they kept reporters at a distance.
Outside the hotel, Jabr took over, his countenance and the set of his thick shoulders giving pause to even the most determined camera operator or micro- phone-waving broadcast journalist from Eyewitness News. Jackals. She had come to hate them all. Look at the way they had savaged Malik.
Her practice had all but disintegrated. Ironically, her remaining patients now sustained her more than she them. Colleen Dowd offered to fly out and help in whatever way she could; the offer was sincere and, for an agoraphobic, incredibly courageous. Toni Ferrante did fly out. She walked right over Jabr’s initial distrust. Within twenty-four hours, they were all but partners, an improbable but highly effective security team.
Jenna visited Malik daily—he was unfailingly cheerful and optimistic— and Laila, whom Malik had forbidden to come to the courtroom or the jail. She conveyed messages to Farid and the lawyers and did what she could to aid the defense. During the voir dire, she studied prospective jurors closely as they responded to questioning. Body language. Hesitations in speech. A blush. A blink. After each session, she reported to the lawyers.
They were quite a team: one a tiny, tough Donna Karan-suited New Yorker named Rosalie Silber; the other a tall, tanned, white-maned Texan, J.T. Quarles, given to string ties and snakeskin cowboy boots. In their profession, both were superstars. Cordially jealous of each other, they nevertheless worked together like a championship doubles team.
Toward Jenna, their attitude, at first, was one of amiable condescension. They had their own experts for juror analysis—and their own tried-and- proved intuition. But there came a moment when the Texan turned to the New Yorker and said, “You know, Rose, there’s a lot in what Dr. Jenna here says. Maybe we should take another look at number fifty-four.”
“I concur in both statements,” Rosalie replied.
From then on, Jenna was an unofficial aide in the defense camp. It felt good to contribute. At the same time, she had never felt worse. What did it matter that she was helping to prepare for Malik’s trial, when with a few words, she could set him free? It was as if there were two Jennas, one a loving sister and dedicated professional, the other a hypocrite who lied with every breath.
“It’s not too late,” she told Malik in the jail’s visiting room. “Why won’t you let me …” She left the question hanging.
“Absolutely not. Listen. I’m going to win this thing, and then it will be over with.”
No, it won’t, she thought. It will still be going on—forever.
“Laila asked me again if she could visit.”
“Tell her I’m sorry—but no. I don’t want her to see me in this.” He indicated the orange jumpsuit, then broadened his gesture to include the room, the jail, the courthouse. “I don’t want her involved in any of this. Don’t forget that her own experience with the law was … very hard on her.”
Jenna went away feeling as if she were only treading water in an endless, empty sea of moral ambivalence.
The first days of the trial did nothing to ease her mind. The forensic evidence was literally sickening. Photos of Ali’s body, with blood everywhere. Close-ups of the wounds. The shocked looks on the jurors’ faces told her how they saw
it.
A string of police testified, from the Palm Springs officers who had answered the 911 call to a noted homicide detective brought in from Los Angeles.
The district attorney, Jordan Chiles, was trying the case himself. It was a risky tactic—he was far more of a politician than a trial lawyer—but it would bring priceless publicity for his reelection campaign. Tanned, athletically trim, he could easily have been one of those slightly over-the-hill actors who still turn up full of hope at every casting call.
“In your experience—your expert experience,” he asked the Los Angeles detective, “how would you characterize the shooting?”
“We see a lot of this in drug situations,” the man replied. After a rain of objections from the defense, the jury was instructed to disregard the reference to drugs, but the witness was allowed to continue. “I would characterize it as an execution-style shooting,” he said.
No! Jenna wanted to shout. You don’t know what you’re talking about! Yet, in a way, hadn’t it been an execution? She tried to make herself answer that question. She couldn’t.
After a few pro forma witnesses, the prosecution rested. The point of the state’s presentation was not that Malik had committed the killing—the defense had stipulated that from the first—but that he had done so in a way that precluded self-defense.
Three shots in the back. Sometimes Jenna could almost hear the jurors counting.
But now, Rosalie Silber of Manhattan and J.T. Quarles of Houston had their turn. They called a few of Malik’s employees—Farid, Jabr, a maid, a horse trainer, a pilot—to establish that Malik had not been expecting Ali, and indeed had not expected to be at home that fateful afternoon.
Jordan Chiles’s cross-examination could have come from the daily papers. At every turn, he pounded the theme that Malik was an obscenely rich inter- national scoundrel who took what he wanted—including lives. Objection after objection from the defense was sustained, but the jury could not have missed the message.
Jenna was not brought to the stand, nor would she be. Malik had ordered Rosalie and J.T. not to call her for the defense, and the district attorney’s office had decided that she was worse than useless: she had not seen the shooting and could only create sympathy for the defendant.
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