Damage

Peter shook his head. "I crashed early. You followed him? Why? Where to?"

"Because I wanted to see where he was going. And guess where that was. Liza Sato's."

This information stopped Peter short until he could finally form the question, "Why did he go there?"

"Why do you think?"

"I think probably because she's his friend and he needed somebody to talk to."

"Yeah, either that or he's fucking her."

"Bullshit! You don't know that. You don't know anything." Then, the fully realized thought of his brother's meaning dawning on him, Peter stepped up close to where Jon sat up on the bed and said, "Are you saying you think Dad killed Mom? Is that what you're getting at, 'cause if it is, that is just such bullshit."

"You think it's bullshit that he's having an affair and nobody's talking about it? I think that sounds to me like the reason he had to kill Mom."

"He didn't have a reason to kill Mom. He didn't kill Mom. He loved Mom." Peter broke into tears. "He loved her, goddamn it. He loved her!" In a sudden fury, he struck out with both hands, slamming his brother's shoulders, knocking him back on the bed. "Fuck you!"

Jon's feet came up off the floor and he kicked out, hitting his younger brother in the chest, knocking him backward as he came scrambling up off the bed, screaming more obscenities, throwing punches wildly. Peter charged back, head down, catching Jon around the waist, slamming him back against the room's wall, knocking over one of the bed lamps in the process.

Jon came back up, swinging and connecting, hitting Peter in the face, at which the younger brother let out an animal scream and, his nose now spewing blood, came at Jon with everything he had. They both went over the bed and fell off the other side and into one of the mahogany end tables, splintering it, knocking down another light, which came crashing down around them. Michael Durbin surveyed the wreckage of the boys' room, at a complete loss at how to deal with this latest disaster. He turned back to Chuck, who stood at his shoulder. "I don't know what to say except I'm so sorry. Of course I'll pay for any damages."

"Payment's not the issue."

"Well, it's at least part of it." He cast his glance back again at the destruction. "Jesus Christ. What got into them?"

"From talking to Peter," Chuck said, "I gather it was about you."

"Me? How could it have been me?"

Chuck rested a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe you should talk to Peter."

"I think I'm a little too mad to talk to Peter."

"If I was going to be mad at anybody, Michael, I think I'd go for Jon."

"I got plenty of mad for both of them." Another sweep of the room. "Christ. It looks like a bomb hit this place. Why should I be more mad at Jon?"

"He evidently told Peter that you had some kind of a hand in Janice's death."

Durbin's head dropped until his chin nearly touched his chest. "How can he think that, my own son? How can anybody who knows me at all…?"

"He followed you last night, Mike. Jon did. When you left here. Over to Liza Sato's."

Durbin turned to face his brother-in-law. "Christ," he said, "not you, too?"

Chuck shook his head. "Not me at all, Michael. I'm just telling you what your son was saying." He motioned to the room. "What started all this."

"I needed to talk to somebody," Durbin said. "I'd leaned on you and Kathy enough. I had to get out of here for a while, that's all."

"You don't have to explain anything to me. As far as I'm concerned, Janice was murdered by Ro Curtlee and that's all there is to it. Look at the paintings, too."

"Jon can't think I'd have done that."

And suddenly a new voice-Peter's, hoarse and choked-from behind them. "He does, Dad. To make it seem more like it was Curtlee."

Durbin turned to see his younger son. He was still wearing his ripped and bloodstained shirt. His face was swollen, his eyes red, his cheeks glistening with tears, his nose flattened and off center, possibly broken. "Peter." Durbin, shocked by his sweet son's battering, spoke more gently than he'd intended. "What the hell?"

"I know. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. Jon just started talking crazy and I went off on him." He looked past his father at the damage he'd done. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Chuck. I'm so sorry."

"Sorry's a good start," Chuck said, "but I've got to tell you, Peter, you've got a ways yet still to go. Do you know where Jon's gone to?"

Peter shook his head no. "He was staying at Rich's, but I don't know where he is now. And I don't care, either. I hope he never comes back."

"No, you don't hope that. He's just reacting this way because he misses Mom. We all miss Mom. And he's really, really angry about it and doesn't know where to put it so he's taking it out on me. And you. And maybe all of us." Durbin touched his son's arm. "But how did he get this into his head, Peter? Just because I went to see Liza Sato?"

Peter nodded. "He believes you're having some kind of a thing with her. I told him there was no way. You loved Mom."

"I did love your mother, Peter. I loved her so much. I still love her."

"That's what I told him. I said you and Liza were just friends, that's all. And that's true, isn't it? I mean, isn't that completely true?"

"Of course it is," Durbin said. "Completely, one hundred percent true."

Hearing his father's emphatic denial seemed to bring some real relief to the boy. He blew out heavily through his mouth and closed his eyes while he let the answer sink in. "Okay," he said. "Okay, then."

36

Eztli and Ro got home at a little after six o'clock.

Ro had originally wanted to get dropped off again at MoMo's, where he could get some food and drink at the bar until Tiffany got off, but this was Friday night and Eztli was cutting it close getting to the Curtlees' home on time when he knew he had to put on his tuxedo and drive them to the Saint Francis Hotel by eight for a fund-raising wine auction of some kind. This had been on Eztli's schedule for the past month and though he got a true rush out of the time he spent with Ro, he also didn't have any nagging ambiguity about who was writing the check every month, and if Cliff and Theresa needed him to be someplace, then that's where he would be.

Stoned, mellow, and buoyed by the positive turn of the afternoon's events with Gloria Serrano, Ro hadn't objected. And so at seven o'clock, Eztli and the three members of the Curtlee family were all gathered in what they called the "little study"-a quiet, book-lined, relatively small room with a fireplace just off the dining room.

Cliff and Theresa in their black-tie garb were sharing a split of Roederer Cristal champagne, sitting hip to hip on the love seat that directly faced the dancing flames of the fire. Ro, on a wing chair catercorner to them, had showered and changed into a blue silk long-sleeved shirt and a pair of khakis. He had his bare feet up on an ottoman, his hands around a large leaded-crystal brandy snifter with a good strong two fingers of Remy Martin V.S.O.P. Eztli stood in his own formal wear, across from both the parents and from Ro, closest to the fire, where he could keep an eye on the one entrance to the room. He hadn't shared any marijuana with Ro on the way up to town, and he wasn't drinking here tonight with the family, either. Since he would be serving double duty-chauffeur and bodyguard-he was carrying a.40 caliber semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his left armpit, nothing like the weapon that he'd used on Matt Lewis.

Ro was regaling his parents with his good fortune today in locating Gloria. "It was amazing to see, you guys. The change in her, which is I guess what living with guilt can do to you," he was saying. "She was like a different person. She told me she had nothing but remorse for testifying against me last time."

"I should think so," Theresa said. "I always thought, before she told those lies on the stand of course, that she was a nice girl."

"Very nice," Cliff concurred. "And I thought one of the prettiest, really."

"She still is," Eztli said.