"They were out together," he says. "He and Isabel."
"He's always out. And never alone, let me add."
"They were out that night."
"What night?"
"Saturday night."
"Who told you that? Saturday night Isabel was dead. What are you saying?"
"I can't get into that."
"Oh, no, please do."
He rakes his fingers through his hair. "This is ridiculous."
"Nothing, you should know, if it's about Nathan, is ridiculous," she says, then stops and tilts her head, as if to inspect from another angle. "Christ, Errol, you're investigating him. Now look, listen to me. Nathan is a lot of things but he's no"-she laughs nervously-"murderer. He couldn't have done tbat. He doesn't have it in him. He talks and talks and has all these grand plans, but he never goes anywhere except to the opera, and that ridiculous mansion of his. He's steeped in gooey nostalgia. He's lost in it. He wouldn't harm a fly."
"I want to know one thing. I want to know if you ever in the back of your mind believed that Isabel was-"
She puts a hand to his chest, stop: "Are you asking me if he and your sister could have been sleeping together, because as unpleasant as the thought might be to you, knowing Nathan and that father of his, I'm sure you don't need me to give you the answer. After all those years of you and him running wild. It was inevitable. I don't know why you let her work in that place."
"I know they were sleeping together. That's not what I'm asking you."
Her breathing slows with the realization of someone who has considered all avenues of attack except this one, the one great perilous possibility, unspoken and unaddressed and feared all the same.
He says, "Nathan told me she is-was-related to him." Then, looking at her, seeing the change in her face, in the shape of it, the color, he stops talking, bows his head.
"Interesting," Claire says scientifically. "I thought you were about to ask me if your sister was Milton Stein's daughter."
"That is what I'm asking you."
"You're right, this is ridiculous."
"You know what I'm saying."
"You bet I do. Is that what he told you? Because you know how he lies. You know how he creates his life as he walks down the street. It's all that opera he listens to. He thinks he's Rudolfo, he thinks he's Marcello, he thinks sometimes he's Romeo."
"I am not talking about opera. I am not talking about a story. This is real. You know them as well as anyone. Everything you've heard, everything you've seen, could it be possible-?"
Claire leans forward, whispering, "I would like to know what it is you imagine you're saying."
"Just tell me if it's possible and I'll tell you what it says."
She lurches. Her hand appears, as someone else's, an attacker's, from below, clamping over her mouth, choking off a cry.
He studies her there in her cage.
"And do you know what that would make you?" she manages to say, her voice hardly a whisper. "I figured Milton had to have children all over town, but are you his, too? Are you and Nathan brothers?
He reaches. "No- I don't know."
"Don't touch me, Errol, you don't know? You mean you might be? Jesus Christ, Nathan had his little senoritas and now you have me, and you've passed me on like frat brothers, passed me on like a little trophy."
"Claire, this isn't about us."
"It's all about everything. It's all a web, a trap. I've waited and I've waited, hoping all the shit would just vanish. And my god, Errol, you want a baby?" She throws out her hands. "You wanted to bring a child into this? You carry around that inhaler all the time, but I'm the one who can't breathe. Why don't you just hang my head on your wall-"
She turns away, waving as if at fire. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm sorry I said that. I know you haven't talked to Nathan in years, not until you saw him yesterday. I know you gave him up. And now Isabel-I'm going to be sick."
Her shoulders bobble. He refuses to run and steps around her and wraps her in, stilling her, his chin on the crown of her head.
"Do you think he can kill?" she asks the air. "He's your, what, your brother for god's sake-"
"I don't know that, I don't know-"
"Of course you do. He is. He has to be. It's the only thing that makes sense now. That nothing at all makes sense. What twisted life is this?"
She turns now, faces him head on. "Did he do it, Errol? Did he do it?"
Santos lifts his eyes to the mural painted on the dome above, helmeted justice atop her horse-drawn chariot, in all her various guises: muse, gatekeeper, executioner.
"Yes.
The prisoners go like dreamers, following a yellow line painted on the floor out the long corridor to a caged school bus with RIKERS ISLAND Scrawled on ripped cardboard in the window. Through the beams of klieg lights pass cyclones of paper and hail and rain. The water on his face is warm and granular, smelling not of the sea but faintly of musty loam, as if whole acres of farm have been scraped up in the Midwest and carried here.
A hand grabs Nathan as he is about to step aboard and pulls him out of line. A guard says, "You're gone."
Wrists pinned in plastic cuffs, Nathan follows him in. Another guard approaches with a pair of snips and frees his hands and leads him to the property desk. There in a cage of wire mesh sits an old friend in a cop's uniform, a ham sandwich before him in creased waxed paper.
A clipboard comes through the slot. "Sign here, Mr. Stein."
"Thanks, Harry."
The sandwich comes through. "I expect you haven't had your lunch.
I'm okay."
"You're welcome to share with me if you like."
"No, no. Thank you, though."
Harry takes back the clipboard and considers Nathan. "I don't know why a guy in your position would put himself in jail."
"It's a living."
Harry considers his sandwich. "How's your father?"
"He didn't come down?"
Harry shakes his head. He slides through the slot a zip-lock pouch. "Well, there you go, then."
Nathan holds it up. His life in a plastic sandwich bag very much like the one they sell goldfish in. One Rolex watch. Four prescription vials. Various coinage and rubber bands, one pair shoelaces. His beeper, his cell-phone. He removes the bundles of hundred-dollar bills and weighs them in his hand.
"Want to count that?"
Nathan purses his lips.
"You ought to count that."
Nathan slips the bundles in his inside pocket. "No one came by for this?"
"Now you know I couldn't do that."
"Of course you couldn't." They exchange a smile.
Harry leans forward over his sandwich. "And I didn't," he adds.
Nathan slips on his watch. "So if my father didn't come down, who sprang me?"
The property man shrugs. "Someone from your office. Very good-looking. You have a new secretary? She said your people called your accountant."
"My accountant?" He has never had a need.
"She brought down your tax returns. Isn't that all they wanted?
Nathan holds his breath. He hasn't filed a return in three or four years.
"What did she look like?"
"Chinese, or Japanese, or something. Great legs."
Nathan squints at the ceiling. "One of Chang's?" he considers.
"Whose?"
Nathan waves his hand. "No, never mind." He bends and snakes his shoelaces through their eyelets and crosses them and ties them. "Okay," he tells himself. He brings up twelve messages on his beeper, Serena, Serena, Amparo. What was Regina Nunez saying about her? Errol Santos. And now Chang. He erases them all. "Okay."
Harry says, "No need to hurry away."
Nathan eyes the wire cage. "I'd better go."
As he gets to the door Harry calls out. "You watch yourself, now. You know what I'm saying."
In continuous guerrilla assaults the rain and snow combine forces. The wind juggles it all back in a swirling stew of grit and road grease. Overhead the sky is the color of bruise, a vertical massing of purple and blue eddies. The storm that came all at once yesterday afternoon and just as quickly seemed to pull apart must be traveling in a circle: the real onslaught is upon us.