"Even if there was, it wouldn't be any of your business," he says.
"David's dad tried to help Mom," Robin reminds him.
"Not all that well, considering what happened."
I turn back to Robin. Mark, I understand, cannot be reached. He's the same cold WASPy son of a bitch who hit me a low blow in lower school. But Robin's accessible. Sure, he's screwed up, but he's also got some heart. I like his face, the hurt I see in it, would like to draw it if I get the chance. Mark's smooth, American aristocrat's face doesn't interest me at all.
Deciding there's nothing more to be gained by sitting around, I suggest it's time for me to leave. Mark springs to his feet. It's obvious he hates this house and can barely stand his brother. Robin and I shake hands, then he spontaneously grasps me in a hug.
"You're a good guy, David," he says, holding me tight. "I'm sorry. I really am."
As I hug him back, I catch a smirk on Mark's face. Then just before Robin and I disengage, Robin speaks into my ear in the same raw whisper he used last night: "Mom left a diary and I've got it. Call me."
An awkward moment as the three of us stand silent beside the door. Then Mark and I leave, the brothers not touching or even bothering to say good-bye.
Mark drops me at the Townsend. From the lobby, I step into Waldo's for a beer.
At the bar, Sylvie Brown, the black reporter, catches my eye.
"How they hangin’, David?" She picks up her glass, moves to the stool next to mine. "Deval's telling everyone you're a rude boy."
"I probably am."
"At the risk of inciting more rudeness, would you be willing to do some drawings for my book? Portraits of the principal media types sitting around in here. You know, different cliques at different tables. Also couples like you and Pam who met and paired off during the trial. Might be fun for you, chance to do a job on certain folks."
I know just the kind of portraits she has in mind. Listening to her, I can see the finished drawings in my head. She's right, they would be fun to do, and Waldo's would make the perfect setting.
"Intriguing notion," I tell her. "I'll see what I can work up."
On my way upstairs. I pick up my messages. After a quick shower in my room, I start returning calls.
Jurgen Hoff tells me his lady friend is game to pose.
"She's excited about it. The way I imagine it, she'll be sprawled out on her bed."
"Then the bed should be unmade," I tell him. "Think of Manet's Olympia. I see rumpled sheets."
We arrange to meet at the lady's apartment Sunday evening when Jurgen's restaurant is closed.
Next I return a call from Chip Rakoubian. He tells me he's spoken with his mother and she's agreed to talk to me. Since she's crippled, confined to home, he suggests I meet him at the Rathskeller at five tomorrow afternoon. He'll drive me over to the house, introduce us, then leave us alone.
"She's got a little quirk," he tells me. "I think I mentioned she used to be a professional dominatrix. Thing is she still enjoys the role… so it'd be nice if you'd be extra respectful and address her as ‘Ma'am’."
I tell him, Sure, anything for the cause…
I'm trying to relax, thinking about what I've set up – tomorrow evening questioning ‘Ma'am’; Sunday evening questioning Jurgen while drawing his naked girlfriend sprawled on her bed – when my thoughts turn to Robin Fulraine. I'm about to call him, when my phone rings. It's Pam, excited. Thins are going gangbusters for her in New York.
"Two networks want me. The money being offered is huge! Meantime CNN's upping their offer. My agent says Monday'll be The Day."
She tells me she could fly back to Calista tonight, but she's decided to sweat things out in New York.
"If I'm going to leave CNN, they'll keep me off the air till my contract runs out. The idea being, ‘If she's going to work for a rival network, why give her more exposure?’"
When she gets around to asking how things are going with me, I tell her I've located Susan Pettibone in Connecticut.
"Would you be willing to interview her?" I ask. "You're barely an hour now from where she lives."
Pam goes for it. I fill her in, tell her about Susan's report of what Tom said when, awakened by her call, he thought for a moment that she was Barbara.
"According to Susan he said: ‘God! Did you really do it? or ‘Did he really do it?’ The cop who questioned her didn't follow up. Maybe there's something else she'd have remembered if he'd pushed. Also what hints Tom might have given her when he asked her to come out to Calista. Also whether he ever mentioned the girl who lived next door in the roominghouse."
"Gee, David, how is she going to remember any of that?"
"People often remember their last conversation with someone who died."
"If she remembers, I'll get it out of her," Pam promises.
I set up a Saturday afternoon portrait session with Robin. He seems pleased by the prospect.
"I've always wanted to be drawn by a real artist," he says. "Also it'll give us a chance to talk."
Relieved that he's willing to see me again, I go back down to Waldo's to consider the postures I'll be assuming over the next several days:
The Respectful Supplicant with Chip's mother.
The Empathetic Portraitist-Therapist with Robin.
The Master Draftsman-Interrogator with Jurgen.
So many roles, subterfuges, hidden agendas. Will I be able to stage-manage these performances, keep them straight? Most important, will I be able to achieve my goal… and do I even know what my goal is? Solve the Flamingo killings? Absolve Dad? Discover what it was that tore my family apart? Or is it something deeper, such as understanding the strange woman at the center of the web of conflicting motives and warring loyalties, and, by doing so, perhaps come to better understand myself?
Waldo's is humming tonight. Every table filled. I find a stool at the bar, nod to Tony, my signal I'd like a margarita, then whip out my sketchpad and start making studies for Sylvie's book.
I notice Deval observing me, then turning back to his tablemates, probably to deliver a clever putdown at my expense. I consider trying to make things up with him, then reject the idea. Whatever damage he can do to me has doubtless already been inflicted. Instead I start a caricature of him as Grand Pontificator and Buffoon.
In this respect my pencil has always served me well, sometimes gotten me into trouble, too. It was a caricature, after all, that earned me the enmity of Mark Fulraine… and many others since. Call it my equalizer, for a clever drawing can cut most anyone down to size. Others may brawl with their fists or, like the Flamingo shooter, settle accounts with a gun. I look across the room at the portrait of Waldo Channing. He jousted with his typewriter and cruel wit. The media folks now drinking and laughing in the bar wage war with their dispatches. And I, like artists through history, going back to the days when men first drew with ends of burnt sticks upon the interior walls of caves, know that with a line here, a line there, I can puncture any man's pomposity, wither any man's ego with my scorn.
12
Friday, 5:00 p.m.
The Rathskeller's humming with end-of-the-work-week bliss. Business types sip martinis, working stiffs guzzle beer, and the waitresses in their dirndls pirouette from booth to booth blithely balancing refills on their trays.
Chip looks at me, raises his mug, licks head foam off his brew.
"I brought along Dad's fesse proof book," he says, handing it across the table. It's a thick, heavy, black leatherette album with the words Studio Fesse embossed diagonally in silver across its front.