Impulse (10 page)

Marcus held his hand under his elbow to keep stress off his injured shoulder. He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him, her pace steady and smooth. He frowned, wishing that for just once he could be alone, just once not have to make inane conversation with a guest. He slowed just a bit. The woman had long legs; he’d let her get far ahead. She disappeared around a curve about a hundred yards ahead.

When he rounded the curve, he looked around instinctively.
He didn’t see her. Had she speeded up and already run through the jungle paths back to her villa?

He hoped so. He continued, his breathing steady, his heart rate even, sweat soaking his hair. Still he found himself looking for her. Could something have happened? She hadn’t been running that fast. Then he stopped short.

The woman was seated between some large rocks near the shoreline, her legs drawn up to her chest, her head buried in her hands. There was some sort of book lying on a rock beside her. She had red hair—no, actually more auburn, with some brown and blond in it—drawn back in a ponytail, a red stretch sweat-band around her forehead. She was wearing red shorts and a baggy cotton top.

She was crying. Low, deep sobs that sounded like they came from her gut, like she couldn’t bear it. Wrenching sobs—soul sobs his mother, Molly, would have called them.

Well, shit. She hadn’t heard him. He considered leaving her be. Then he knew he couldn’t. He stopped and approached her quietly.

He dropped to his haunches in front of her.

“Are you all right?”

Her head snapped up and she stared at him, surprise in her eyes.

“I’m sorry to startle you. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” she said, and he saw it was true. Her eyes were a pale blue with perhaps just a dollop of gray in the early-morning light.

“Excuse me for bothering you, but I saw you here. Are you all right? Is there something I can do?”

She was young—mid-twenties, he guessed. Her face was blotchy from the tears. She was amazingly lovely, even with her nose running, her eyes red and swollen from crying, and her hair sweat-soaked, her face clean of makeup.

“I’m quite all right, thank you. It’s very beautiful
here. I thought no one in his or her right mind would be up and out here this early. You just never know, do you?”

“No, you certainly don’t. I was pretty surprised to see you too.”

She scooted back just a bit, then rose to her feet. She wasn’t all that tall, coming only to his chin.

“Forgive me for disturbing you,” he said, wondering what the devil was wrong with her. A man, probably. It usually was. There wasn’t a ring on her left hand. Yeah, man trouble, for sure.

He nodded and trotted away from her.

Margaret’s Journal
Boston, Massachusetts
March 1991

I’ve met a man who isn’t a crumb. Nor is he a liar. I’m sure of it this time. And you like him, my darling girl. His name is Charles Winston Rutledge III. How do you like that for a handle?

He’s very rich—older money than even my parents’—very kind, and something I simply can’t believe: he appears genuinely to love me.

He’s forty-six years old and he’s got two kids of his own, the girl married, and his son, Benjamin, at Harvard. He’s a widower. His wife evidently died of cancer four years ago, poor woman. He owns newspapers, I don’t know how many yet, and he hates the thought of the groups like Remington-Kaufer buying up papers, making them all the same. I tease him and ask him how his are any different. Doesn’t he influence policy? Doesn’t he tend to have his own political slants, and his papers reflect them? Ah, that gets him going. All this takes place after you’ve gone to bed, Rafaella.

Then we start kissing and he’s good, very good. I’m a thirty-six-year-old-woman, I tell him, and I’m in my
prime. I’m concerned, I continue, that he’s over the hill and doesn’t have any interest anymore in physical things. Ah, Rafaella, it’s wonderful!

I met him on the beach at Montauk Point. I had simply driven out there because I’d heard it was interesting and it’s at the very end of Long Island. Remember that weekend? We were visiting the Straighers in Sudsberry. Anyway, he was running and he ran into me, literally. Knocked me flat. And when he stretched out his hand to pull me up, something came over me—something crazy. I giggled, took his hand, jerked him off balance, and pulled him down. He was so surprised he didn’t say anything for at least three minutes. And I just lay there giggling like a fool.

Then, of all things, he grinned at me, rolled over on top of me, and kissed me.

That was three weeks ago. He’s asked me to marry him and I told him I probably would because he barbecues a good steak, stays awake most nights to make love to me, and he doesn’t snore too much. I’ll talk about it this evening with you. I know you’ll be happy for me—this time.

Ah, let me stop a moment with all this true-love gushing. I got him, Rafaella, I finally got Gabe Tetweiler. I finally hired the right detective, a sleazeball named Clancy, and he turned up Gabe in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was still a land developer, of sorts, and he had money. Clancy discovered he’d come into it suddenly, and he figured he’d blackmailed some married woman when he’d been in New Orleans. In any case, Gabe was having a very good time with a local woman, but more particularly, with her eleven-year-old-daughter. Clancy plays no holds barred. He didn’t interfere; he just took lots of pictures of Gabe molesting the little girl. Then he went to the mother and the both of them went to the Shreveport police. Gabe’s in jail, trial pending.

It makes me feel very good, as if, finally, I’ve done
something right in my life. I hope you’ve forgotten that experience. You’re so bright and happy, even with all those teenage hormones wreaking havoc in your body.

April 1991

I saw him today, in downtown Madrid, coming out of a boutique, a beautiful sloe-eyed, olive-complexioned woman on his arm. Here I am on my honeymoon and I have to see Dominick. It doesn’t seem fair.

I haven’t told Charles a thing about Dominick. He believes that my first husband, Richard Dorsett, was an honorable man whose life was cut tragically short. He accepts the story that I changed my name and yours back to my maiden name—Holland.

And there was Dominick, laughing and taking a shopping bag from the woman, and then he looked up and straight at me. His eyes flickered over me, a man’s casual checkout; then he turned back to his companion, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. He didn’t recognize me. I was a complete stranger to him.

I stood there under the hot Spanish sun, staring after him, not moving, tears streaming down my face, and then Charles was beside me, and he was scared something had happened to me.

I’ve become the liar now, a very good one, as a matter of fact. I told Charles I had this sudden awful cramp in my left calf and it hurt so bad, and he picked me up in his arms, sat me down in a chair at a sidewalk cafe, and rubbed the calf until I told him it was gone.

What’s wrong with me? I hate the man, I swear it to you. I hate him, I fear, more than I love Charles. But not more than I love you, Rafaella.

I’ve got to stop this! Dammit, he’s been out of my life for years upon years. Yet he looked immensely wonderful. He must be at least Charles’s age, but the years hadn’t changed the basic man. He looked like an
aristocrat, that long thin nose of his, his long slender body, those narrow hands with the exquisitely buffed nails, his immaculate dress, his hair as black as it was then, except there was white in the sideburns, and it just added to his magnetism. And his pale blue eyes. Your pale blue eyes, Rafaella, with just a touch of gray, maybe, if one looks very carefully.

He didn’t recognize me. He stared right through me.

Giovanni’s Island
March 2001

Rafaella watched the man run down the beach. Another guest up at dawn. Well, at least he’d been polite enough to leave her alone quickly enough. It had also been kind of him to stop when he realized she was crying.

She pulled her loose shirt free from her shorts and rubbed her eyes. Crying, of all the stupid things. Crying for her mother’s pain that had now become her pain. But mixed with that was the other—
her
father, the man whose blood was in her. Why did it hurt so much?

Her mother had protected her all these years. Her mother, who still lay in that hospital bed with all those obscene tubes in her body, was now helpless. Well, she—Rafaella—wasn’t helpless.

Rafaella jumped to her feet. She became aware of the beauty surrounding her. It was morning now, the sun brightening, the air soft as her face-powder brush, the breeze from the sea salty and light. She drew a deep breath, picked up the fourth volume of her mother’s journals, and began her run back to the resort.

The place was incredible. The airstrip couldn’t accommodate jets, so she’d flown to Antigua yesterday afternoon, then hired a private helicopter to fly her to Giovanni’s Island, otherwise known by its resort
name, Porto Bianco. She’d found out in Antigua that most people bound for the island had their own private planes. As she ran steadily, she remembered when she’d dropped in to visit her travel agent to get reservations to the island. When she’d told Crissie she wanted to book into Porto Bianco, the agent had dropped her jaw.

“Porto Bianco? You want to go
there
? Do you know how much it costs? And there’s probably a waiting list a mile long—good grief, Rafaella, did you just inherit a fortune? Oops, I forgot about that trust fund of yours. Well, in any case, the club’s private, members only.”

And Crissie carried on and on about all the gold-plated faucets in the bathrooms and how even the Jacuzzis had gold-plated jets. And there were many security guards so that all the wealthy women could drip with their diamonds and rubies without fear they’d be stolen. And the casino was more elegant and understated than the casinos in Monaco. It was the most exclusive, most expensive resort in the Caribbean. Did Rafaella know it had been built back in the thirties by one of the Hollywood movie moguls? Crissie thought it was Louis B. Mayer, or maybe Sam Goldwyn, she wasn’t sure. But she’d heard he’d bought it from the estate of this American merchant who’d had this French aristocratic wife who’d left him for a fisherman on Antigua.

Rafaella had listened to her carry on; she hadn’t bothered to tell her that Dominick Giovanni had bought the resort, the entire island, back in 1997. She asked if there were any photos of the place, and was told that no, there weren’t. This wasn’t a place that wanted new business. Their business was mouth-to-mouth from old money to more old money. It was exclusive; it was private; it was members and their guests only.

“Ah,” Crissie said, her voice lowered to wickedness,
“I know what it is. You want yourself a handsome playmate, right?”

“I don’t think so. I just broke it off with Logan.”

“Forget Logan—he’s got hang-ups, right? You probably broke off with him because he acted like a jerk, right? I heard that Porto Bianco has gorgeous men and women there for the guests, if you know what I mean.”

That was a kicker. A giant pleasure palace, replete with male and female playmates.

“Do you know anything else about the place, like how I can get in?” How difficult it was to keep her voice light, uncaring.

But Crissie had just shaken her head. “Do you know any members? That’d be the only way. What I told you, I’ve just heard gossiped about by other travel agents. I don’t have the foggiest notion of how to get you there, Rafaella, without being a member, sorry. I remember now that it changed hands back in the eighties—it was all run-down then. Then somebody else bought it just a few years ago—a rich Arab or a rich Japanese, something like that, and he poured millions into it and got it back up to what it had been in the thirties. I’d give a year’s pay or my virginity to get in there, just for a week.”

“You’re not a virgin, Crissie.”

“You’ve been in the men’s room again, Rafaella.”

But it had been so simple, in the end.

Al Holbein wasn’t a dummy. He’d found out about Rafaella’s access of their information service and her search through the
Trib
’s library. And since all topics were either on private arms dealers, or Dominick Giovanni, or Porto Bianco, he didn’t have to strain to come up with some of the answer. He was toying with the idea of demanding what she was up to when she walked into his office.

“What is it, Rafe? You can’t handle the heat out there in the newsroom? You’ll get used to all the jealousies.
Goodness, you’ll be jealous yourself before too long.”

“It isn’t that.”

“Logan what’s-his-face at the D.A.’s? He giving you a hard time?”

“Logan’s history. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with work or men. I decided I needed
more
than just a vacation. I want to take a leave of absence, Al.”

Al stared at her, nonplussed. “I beg your pardon?”

Rafaella tried to get her act together. What to say?

“Is this about your mother? You want to be with her?”

She started to lie; he’d given her such a fine opportunity. In the end, she just stared at her shoes and shook her head.

“Does it have anything to do with Porto Bianco?”

“So, you know.”

“Just about your research. Why the interest in the island? Or in arms dealing? Or is it Dominick Giovanni?”

Rafaella drew a deep breath. “Can you get me in at Porto Bianco? As a guest?”

It was Al’s turn to study Rafaella Holland. She could have asked her stepfather, Charles. He could have snapped his fingers and gotten her on the next flight to the Caribbean. But she’d asked him, Al. Slowly he nodded. “Yes, I can get you in. Senator Monroe’s a member, and he owes me. It’s important?”

Rafaella rose. “It’s the most important thing in my life.”

Rafaella stopped running. She was on a narrow, winding path, one of a dozen that led from the resort to the beach and back. She walked now to one of the main paths that led to her small villa. There were forty villas in addition to the lavish main facility, and Al had managed to get her one of them.