Swindlers (11 page)

Her reaction was immediate. She sat straight
up, a look of icy contempt in her blue-green eyes, and with slow
precision parted her red painted lips, ready on the instant with
some withering reply. But I was past the point of caring what she
thought or what she felt.

“Every time I ask you to tell me what
happened that night,” I shouted over her, “there’s always something
missing, something you’ve left out. You haven’t told the same story
twice - and you think I’m so stupid I don’t notice it?”

I was standing a few feet away, staring at
her with all the built up frustration of months of what seemed
useless effort, a search for the truth that had only gone in
circles.

“You swore you’d never lie to me, and that’s
damn near all you’ve done!”

Her face turned white, her eyes were wild
with rage. She was on her feet, starting for the door, determined
not to listen to another word. I grabbed her by the wrist and would
not let go, and the harder she tried to get away, the tighter I
squeezed.

“You…!” Her eyes burned with a proud, defiant
intensity, daring me either to take her, or let her go. “At least
Nelson knew what he wanted and how to get it!” she shouted with
naked candor into my face

Everything - all my hard-earned resolution,
all my honest, well-meant intention to treat Danielle St. James
like any other client and think only about the case, - went the way
of all illusions. I wanted her, and nothing else now mattered. I
kissed her, but she twisted away, a look of triumph in her eyes.
She had won, taught me that whatever else I thought I wanted, I
wanted her. And then she kissed me back and my hand was off her
wrist, moving down around her waist, while her long arms curled
around my neck and her lithe body pressed against my own. We
stumbled blindly toward the bedroom, tearing at each other’s
clothes.

We were wrapped around each other, just about
to start, but I had to see her, I had to see how she looked I
raised my head, and in the moonlight, streaming through the window,
that gorgeous face of hers, bright and shining, was staring past
me, her mind on something else. Swearing under my breath, I rolled
away.

Danielle’s face was a study in confusion.

“I thought you wanted me.”

“You didn’t want me back.”

“I thought you wanted to make love.”

“I would have been having sex alone,” I said
with a cold stare. “This was a mistake.”

I got out of bed and started putting on my
clothes, disgusted with everything, and especially myself. Propped
up on one elbow, Danielle seemed puzzled by how abruptly I had
changed my mind. It was a rare, and for all I knew, unique
experience, one she did not know quite how to handle, a seduction
that had failed in the last moments.

“Why did you come here tonight?” I asked
while I buttoned my shirt. “Did you think you had to sleep with me
to make sure I’d do everything I could to win? I’ve won cases for a
lot of people charged with murder, and, believe it or not, I didn’t
sleep with any of them!”

Her knees were pulled up, the sheet tucked
under her chin. Something I had not seen before, a wounded,
frightened look, entered her eyes.

“I’ve watched how hard you’ve worked these
last few months. I wanted to give you something before the trial
began, before it ever goes to the jury, before they come back with
a verdict, so you’d know it wasn’t out of gratitude for what you
had done. I wanted to give you what I thought you wanted, and I
thought you wanted me.”

It almost did not matter that she looked the
way she did, her voice alone was irresistible, something you did
not so much listen to as feel, like a soft warm wind in the evening
of a perfect summer day, reminding you of every good day you ever
had and, more than that, all the good days you had somehow missed,
the days you wished you had had and never did. That was what drew
you toward her: not just the face that graced the cover of so many
magazines, but the promise of things you had not known and had
never quite thought possible. She was the girl you saw in a crowd,
the girl you never met, the one who could have made everything
right, who would have made you happy with the life you had, made
you forget forever the restless search for something new and
different. She was the girl with whom sex would be the beginning,
and not the end, of what you felt, what every man was looking for
and felt foolish to admit.

“You were never in love with him, were you?
Ever?”

“Nelson? No.”

“You’ve never been in love with anyone, have
you?”

A bashful smile slipped unbidden across her
soft and girlish mouth, and she bent her head to the side.

“Not since I was sixteen, no.”

Finished with the last button on my shirt, I
did not bother with socks or shoes, but barefoot and disheveled
left her in the bedroom and padded out to the kitchen, threw open
the refrigerator and looked for something to drink. It was after
midnight and I had a trial in the morning. Angry with myself, angry
with the world, I muttered a few mild obscenities, slammed shut the
refrigerator and made a cup of coffee instead. If I was not going
to be able to sleep I might as well try to work.

I had told Danielle to get dressed, that she
had to leave, but when she came into the kitchen all she had on was
one of my abandoned shirts, a shirt she had not bothered to button.
She sat across the table, holding a cup of coffee next to her
mouth, waiting for me to say something, but I would not look at
her. I took a sip of coffee, but, still too hot, it burned my
mouth. Already too much on the defensive, I ignored the pain,
crossed my arms and, finally looking at her, tried to assume an
attitude of indifference.

“I don’t want you. It was a mistake. It isn’t
going to happen again.”

She ignored me.

“I wasn’t in love with Nelson, but that
didn’t matter to him. He thought I’d never been in love with
anyone, and that I never would be.” Raising her head, she gave me a
significant look. “He thought I wasn’t capable of loving anyone
more than I loved myself.” A smile that seemed to know everything
moved bright and golden across her lips. “I imagine a lot of women
have fallen in love with you, besides me, when I was sixteen. Have
you fallen in love with any of them – other than my sister?”

I did not understand what she was saying,
where she was going with this. I was not kept in the dark for
long.

“Tell me the truth: with all the women you
must have slept with, have you always wanted them as much as they
wanted you? Are you going to tell me that you never slept with a
woman you weren’t in love with but who was in love with you?”

When I did not answer, her eyes glittered
with vindication at this brief summary of my life as a failed
romantic. She bent forward, eager to press her advantage.

“Are you going to tell me that you never made
love to a woman and for just a quick, passing moment, thought about
something else.”

“Or someone else,” I reminded her in a cold,
determined voice.

“I wasn’t thinking of someone else,” she
replied, quick to deny it; but then, just as quickly, she changed
her mind. “Or maybe I was. But not because I was wishing I was with
someone else. It wasn’t that at all. Tonight was the first time
since….”

Her eyes clouded over, and in a brooding
silence struggled with her emotions, the conflict she felt. Staring
straight ahead, a pensive expression darkened her brow. Finally,
after what might have been only a few seconds but seemed like a
very long time, she turned again to me.

“Tonight was the first time I’ve been near a
man since the night he died.”

She said this without remorse, without
regret, without, so far as I could tell, the slightest sense of
responsibility or guilt. I understood what she wanted, understood
it as clearly as if she had taken the time to explain it: She
wanted to know if I believed her, believed what she had told me
about what happened the night she killed her husband. She kept
looking at me, searching my eyes, too proud to ask and, beneath it
all, perhaps too scared not to want to know.

“I suddenly remembered,” she started to
explain. “I suddenly saw it all over again: the way he felt, hard
up inside me; the way his body tensed the moment he finished –
started to finish. That look he had in his eyes, the look that was
there every time he did it, every time he had me; that look that
said -”

Her eyes were wild with – I was not sure
what: anger, fear, excitement? – Or all of them at once, the long
suppressed reaction to what she had done.

“He did that, he always did that – that look
that said he owned me, that no one else could ever have me, that he
was better than everyone because of it. They say that men rape
women to show they have power over them. He had sex with me to
prove he had power over other men.”

More than with resentment, she said this was
something close to pure hatred. She fed on it, took pleasure in it,
the thought that what he had done to her was as bad as rape, and
maybe worse.

“You could have made love to me, but you
didn’t, because you thought I didn’t want you as much as you wanted
me, because you wanted something more than sex. Nelson didn’t want
that, he didn’t want to make love. He didn’t know what that was.
Nelson wanted what we did that day in his office: he wanted to
fuck! That’s all he knew. Beneath all that money and charm and that
handsome face of his, beneath all the expensive clothes and private
school manners, all Nelson cared about was what he owned. Nelson in
love with me? – It’s what he told you that weekend on Blue Zephyr:
the only thing he loved was the knowledge that everyone else wanted
what he had. Make love with me? – All I was to him was a dressed up
whore!” she cried, becoming more agitated with each word she spoke.
“And that look he had on his face! I couldn’t stand it anymore.
That lie he told me before we were married, that there was nothing
worse than a man who mistreated a woman! That promise he made me
make that I would never let him mistreat me! I wonder if he
remembered all that when he looked at me like that again that night
and I pulled out a gun and shot him.”

She began to cry, hot, bitter tears, and I
held her close and did what I could to comfort her until, finally,
she told me she was all right and with a brave smile said I better
get some sleep. I waited while she dressed in the other room, and
then I walked her back to her hotel the other side of Nob Hill. We
stood just outside the entrance, away from the doormen with their
whistles and all the noisy cars, and she kissed me on the side of
my face and said she knew that everything would work out the way it
should. And then I walked back and tried not to think about what
was going to happen in the morning when we started the first trial
I had had that I knew I could not win.

CHAPTER Seven

Intrigued by the marriage of money and beauty
that had ended in murder, reporters came from all over the country,
and as far away as Europe, to cover the trial. Sex and violence
always sold papers, and brought higher ratings to television, and
never in such numbers as when power and celebrity were involved. In
the tabloid mentality of the age, it was a simple question of a
woman’s greed. From the time Danielle St. James was arrested it was
all about the money and nothing else. It was obvious, plain on the
face of it, that she was guilty as charged. The morning the trial
started, the always impartial Philip Conrad, waiting patiently at
his machine, may have been the only one in the courtroom who had
not already reached that conclusion. The first words out of the
prosecutor’s mouth only repeated what everyone claimed to know.

“She murdered him for the money, it’s as
simple as that.”

Robert Franklin struck a combative pose. With
small, pudgy, grasping hands, thick black hair plastered to his
skull, and small, black, impenetrable eyes, he had at times the
look of a fanatic. Shrill and insistent, he rose up on the balls of
his feet, jabbing the air to emphasize the crucial importance of
what he was saying.

“This was not one of those so-called crimes
of passion, an act of violence when an argument got out of hand.
This was cold-blooded murder carried out for gain. Nelson St. James
was one of the wealthiest men in America. With his death, his widow
inherits everything he had.”

Franklin turned slowly toward the table where
Danielle was sitting next to me. Pausing for dramatic effect, he
raised his arm and pointed.

“She murdered him in cold-blood, and then
tried to blame it on someone else.”

Robert Franklin had the habit of precision,
an addiction to taking each thing step by step. This gave his
argument a relentless, logical quality, but it also narrowed his
focus to what was right in front of him. He was about my age,
perhaps a few years older, and like most lawyers of our generation,
much of what he knew of courtroom dialogue had come from movies he
had seen, and much of what he knew of courtroom theatrics from all
the television he had watched. Though a seasoned prosecutor, the
murder trial of Danielle St. James was the most important case of
his career, a chance to make a name for himself. Anything would be
possible after this: a seat on the bench, elective office, things
he had dreamed about since law school, if only he did everything
right. He must have rehearsed his opening statement for days, or
even weeks, gone over it so many times he could give it backwards
in his sleep. He was flawless, every word, every gesture, exactly
the way he had planned it, and then, five minutes into it, he
suddenly stopped. The next word, the next phrase - which from the
look on his face was going to be the most devastating thing he had
said so far – had somehow, unaccountably, vanished from his mind,
and what came after that he did not know. The silence became
uncomfortable and then embarrassing. Philip Conrad looked up from
his machine.