Eyes of a Child (34 page)

‘Ramon was on his knees, naked to the waist, staring down at me as I lay on the bed. I looked him in the face and, as clearly as I could, said, “You're not man enough to have a son, Ramon. You're just a man who beats up women.”'

Rosa seemed to shiver at the memory of her pain and hatred. ‘And then,' she said quietly, ‘the man who was your father beat me until I lost consciousness.'

Terri closed her eyes. ‘When I awoke,' Rosa went on, ‘my vision was blurred. But it was morning; I knew that I should get you to school. And then I heard him downstairs, explaining to you that I was too sick to get up, that he would walk you to Mission Dolores for school. A few minutes later, I saw him crossing the street with you and Maria and Eva, hands linked together and looking both ways for cars. A nun at the crosswalk, waiting for children, smiled at him. The dutiful and loving father.' Rosa's voice turned cold. ‘It was very important, you see, that no one know what happened in the privacy of our home. So important that Ramon threatened to kill me if I ever told.

‘Watching him cross the street with you, I decided to call the police. Before he killed me for
not
telling.'

‘That night, two uniformed police came to our home and asked for Ramon. They took him outside on the steps; I went upstairs, listened through the window. I could barely hear them, but it was enough. They'd had a complaint, they said; they wouldn't make trouble for him this time, but he should know better than to beat me. And then one cop patted him on the shoulder, and they left.

‘I could hear his footsteps on the stairs. I was so frightened that I found myself counting each step. But then the sound of his steps turned from our bedroom. For a moment, I was relieved, and then I realized that he'd gone to
your
bedroom. To make sure that you and your sisters were asleep.'

Terri swallowed; she had a fleeting memory of her father leaning over her bed to kiss her good night. ‘What happened?' she asked.

Her mother looked away, toward Elena. ‘Ramon hit me, of course, and then he turned me over on my stomach. He'd thought of a new way to have me, he said. One that involved no threat of pregnancy.' Rosa's voice softened. ‘I never called the police again.'

Terri flinched; all at once, she was at the foot of the stairs again, watching her father take her mother from behind. Only now she understood what she had seen.

‘Oh, Mama . . .'

‘You wanted to know, Teresa.' Rosa's voice was clear again. ‘After that night, I never knew how much money we had. Ramon hid his checkbook, gave me just enough for food. No one, not even your friends from school, was to be allowed in the house unless he had consented. And I was to tell you, as I did, that no one was to discuss our family with others.

‘Ramon was very clever. He knew that if I asked this of you, you were certain to obey. Because
I
was the one you loved, and he was the one you feared. His father, come again.'

‘People
knew,'
Terri said. ‘I could feel it.'

Above her ironic smile, Rosa's eyes were curious. ‘But did you tell them?'

‘No. Never.'

‘Then they could
pretend
, Teresa. That's all people want. Because, just as Father Anaya told me, the family is sacrosanct.'

Terri shook her head. ‘I can't accept that people are like that.'

‘Deep down, we
want
them to be like that. We want to help them not to know.' Rosa turned to her. ‘Just as you did with
your
family, year after year. Helping Richie hide who he was, and others not to see him. You were so determined to marry him, to build the family you thought you'd never had. Only gradually did I see it.' Her mother's tone grew softer, and a little sad. ‘I hadn't given Ramon Peralta a son like him, Teresa. I'd given Ricardo Arias a wife like
me
.'

‘But I
left
, Mom.'

‘Yes. You did.' Now Rosa's tone became sardonic. ‘It's an independent woman who can make such choices for her children. But then everything is so different now, isn't it. And Elena has reaped the benefits.'

The edge in the words was only the surface, Terri knew, of a grief and anger that Rosa found hard to express. It was that knowledge, and the story Rosa had told, that caused Terri to soften her answer. ‘And we were better off,' she said quietly, ‘because you stayed.'

‘Yes. And because I would
threaten
to leave.' She turned to her daughter. ‘You remember, I'm sure, that there were periods of peace in our home, when Ramon did not drink. When he would play with you, even take you places he wanted to go. Perhaps you wondered why, and hoped it would last.'

Slowly, Terri nodded; the thought of Fleet Week came to her again, or watching the stars with her father. ‘I
knew
why,' Rosa said. ‘Just as I knew that it would never last.' She smiled a little. ‘You see, there was one other thing that scared Ramon – being without me. Because deep down inside, just like Ricardo, he was weak. So every few months, when things got too bad, I would tell him I was going away.

‘The tears would come, and the begging. “Please,” he would say, “I'll change.”' Rosa's voice became ironic again. ‘If you think about these periods of peace, Teresa, they always began with roses. A gift from your repentant father, sent with a card promising to love me all his life.'

All at once, Terri remembered. A dinner: Ramon, smiling at Rosa, had placed roses on the table. At that moment, Terri had thought him wonderful.

‘Jesus,' she murmured.

Rosa looked at her, as if trying to fathom her feelings. ‘But he never harmed you, did he?'

‘No, Mama. Not with his hands.'

‘There are men who do worse. Ramon was jealous of me because he was so frightened. And he was right about one thing: when I married him, I was not a virgin.

‘One drunken night, when I was fourteen, and more terrified that I can ever tell you, your grandfather found me alone. We never spoke of it again.' Her voice was quiet and bitter. ‘So you see, Teresa, Ramon Peralta was nothing special. My own father taught me that.'

Chapter
13

From her first few moments in the office of McKinley Brooks, Caroline Masters knew there was something wrong.

It started with Brooks himself. His smile was a little tight; his eyes did not smile at all; and his manner – the easy bonhomie of the city's most successful black politician – for once could not obscure the constant workings of his mind. But what concerned her more was that the assistant D.A. with him was Victor Salinas.

To look at them, Brooks and Salinas were opposites. Brooks was rounding amiably into his mid forties; a decade younger, Salinas had the leanness and intensity of a man who played his daily squash games not for exercise but to win, and his carefully trimmed mustache and handpainted tie lent him a touch of the dandy that Brooks was careful to avoid. But Salinas burned with an ambition as deep as Brooks's own and far less well concealed; there were few in the D.A.'s office who did not know that Salinas was waiting restlessly for a chance at Brooks's job. That Brooks would give this case to Salinas told Caroline that it was something special: either Brooks the lawyer had decided that his need for Salinas's relentlessness outweighed the risk of giving him exposure, or Brooks the politician had decided that the situation called for an assistant as political as he – in which instance, Caroline reflected, Brooks had indeed begun to imagine some higher and better office. To Caroline, either prospect suggested that Christopher Paget was in trouble.

Brooks passed her a cup of the coffee he brewed fresh in his office. ‘This really
is
a treat, Caroline. I thought you'd gone to a better place, as my granddaddy the Baptist preacher used to say.'

This was delivered with a touch more satire than usual: Brooks referred to his Southern roots only as a humorous affectation, and his down-home pronunciation of ‘Car-o-line' somehow suggested that Lady Bountiful had come to visit the plantation. But what it told Caroline was that Brooks was a little on edge, and that her handling of the Carelli case still rankled him.

‘I'm sure your grandfather was referring to the dead, McKinley. I've just been resting.'

From the side, Salinas flashed her a quick smile; like many of his gestures, this seemed his idea of what was appropriate rather than something felt. As a trial lawyer Salinas was not a natural, but he made up for this with a ferocious preparation. Caroline found it easy to imagine him in a gym, pumping doggedly on a bicycle with a grimace on his face and a faraway look in his eyes, planning his day in minute detail.

‘Whatever,' Brooks was saying to Caroline, ‘you certainly
look
wonderful. After a while, folks here at the Hall of Justice begin to look like a Hogarth painting – grotesque and a little stooped. Maybe it's the fluorescent lights.'

He
does
want out, Caroline thought. Certainly it was ambition, not amenities, that kept Brooks in this job. The Hall of Justice was a rabbit warren of worn green tile and crabbed quarters, and even Brooks occupied a charmless rectangle with a view of a highway overpass. But Caroline doubted that Brooks could easily imagine himself in her place, with no audience to applaud him.

Caroline smiled. ‘You wouldn't like my new life, Mac – having to perform your wonders in private. That's what makes
your
life so exciting: the high-wire act, with all those avid voters and ambitious rivals waiting to see if you fall off. Or, for that matter, seek higher office.'

As he listened, Salinas's eyes seemed to narrow; it struck Caroline that if Brooks fell off the wire on
this
case, Salinas might go with him. ‘Indeed,' Brooks responded, folding his hands across his stomach. ‘But I'm sure I can count on you to steer me right, Caroline. I always have.'

The comment, amiable on the surface, changed the atmosphere abruptly; the reference to the Carelli case was so unsubtle that Caroline wondered if Brooks was trying to distract her. ‘I don't have any advice,' she said amiably. ‘Just a question. Is there some sort of pent-up demand for Christopher Paget's scalp that I've managed to miss? Or has it become the new style to badger defense attorneys, harass their girlfriends, fingerprint their children, and trash their homes like some mob of French peasants in search of Marie Antoinette?' Caroline smiled. ‘Oh, and make off with their sports cars – a particularly nice touch, I thought.'

Brooks shot Salinas a quick glance. ‘We don't tell the police how to carry out their job.'

Caroline smiled again. ‘Bullshit.'

Brooks leaned back in his chair. ‘Are you suggesting, Caroline, that we should intervene to make sure that Chris Paget is treated
better
than the average citizen?'

Caroline rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, McKinley, come
off
it. Name me a multimillionaire from an old family who isn't treated at least a little better than a drug dealer, let alone a famous lawyer and senatorial prospect from the very same political party
you
happen to grace. You can't possibly be
that
livid about the Carelli case.'

Brooks shrugged. ‘Any favors I owe Chris Paget have long ago been discharged. Put it that way.'

The failure to deny a grudge was so unlike Brooks that Caroline was sure of her ground. Softly, she said, ‘It's not the Carelli case, Mac. Please don't insult me.'

Salinas, she realized, was giving her the fixed look of someone hoping to learn something. Brooks shifted in his chair and then glanced sideways at the other man.

‘Chris has a problem,' Brooks said finally. ‘As you say, he
is
prominent. A possible race for Senator makes him more so. Which makes any case involving him a potential embarrassment to me.'

Caroline appraised him. ‘I wouldn't concern yourself,' she said coolly, ‘with charges of favoritism.'

Brooks seemed to sit straighter, as if she had turned the screw another notch. ‘I can't let people think I'm affected by who he is,' he said blandly. ‘Or what he might become.'

‘Really? I would have thought by now that you'd have had a conversation or two about the very seat that Chris may run for. Perhaps someone seeking your support for some candidate other than Chris.' She paused. ‘James Colt, for example.'

Salinas gazed out the window as if this did not involve him; what Caroline felt was his intense interest in learning – or guessing – what Brooks had kept to himself.

‘I can hardly take a position,' Brooks answered, ‘in a race where one of the prospective candidates is involved in a case under active investigation. It's not an inspiration to play politics, Caroline. It's an inhibition.'

Caroline smiled. ‘I never suggested that you were playing politics. Merely that someone with lesser ethics might have an interest in Chris's downfall. So do be sensitive to that particular nuance, Mac. Lest some cynic think that your public-spirited hounding of Christopher Paget is politics in disguise.'

Brooks spread his hands in a show of wonder. ‘Seems like anything Monk does, or doesn't do, must have some hidden meaning for this office. And all because the dead body in question comes with a widow whose boyfriend happens to enter politics.'

The last observation, seemingly random, struck Caroline as carefully planted. ‘Are you suggesting,' she asked, ‘that Chris might be better off if he
left
politics?'

Brooks's eyes widened. ‘Who am I to say? The only thing I know is that
I'd
be better off. But that's no reason for Chris to
want
to, is it. So I'll just have to keep myself on the straight and narrow.' He fixed Caroline with his most candid smile. ‘A tightrope, just like you said.'