CHAPTER 10

It’s just before nine-thirty on Tuesday morning. I’ve returned from court to find a stack of telephone messages in the center of my desk, a pile of grief. A client wants a continuance; Nikki has called and wants to know if I will be by to see Sarah this weekend; the DA won’t deal on a plea in a small drug case. Tucked in the stack of slips is a note that Tony Skarpellos has called. He wants a meeting-his office, two this afternoon. Curiosity gets the better of me.

This afternoon there’s an alien air about the offices of Potter, Skarpellos, more formal, subdued. I attribute it to a proper demonstration of mourning for the founding partner.

Before I left the firm, the offices of P amp;S were always a familiar place. I would breeze past the receptionist stationed like a concierge at the ornate mahogany counter outside the elevator, past Ben’s office and the inner reception area held by his secretary, to my digs down the hall.

The firm occupies three floors of the Emerald Tower, the most prestigious commercial address in Capitol County. Caught up in financial scandals for more than three years during its construction, the building is a mammoth curved monolith, its translucent green-tinted windows rising toward the clouds on a site beside the broad meandering river at the west end of the Capitol Mall. It’s become the architectural and political counterbalance to the state capitol building situated at the opposite end of the mall. While the capitol houses two branches of the state legislature, the Emerald Tower has become the bastion of the legislature’s “third house,” an army of lobbyists who regularly ply their trade seeking favor with legislative committees and government agencies. Potter, Skarpellos is the first law firm of any consequence to venture into the building. I have, on more than one occasion, weighed the relevance of this location and its significance on the future direction of the firm.

As I approach the receptionist-her name is Barbara-I smile. It’s a grin of familiarity. Today it’s met by cool efficiency.

Her greeting is stiff, her smile plastic. The seeds of insecurity have begun to germinate among the staff. Corporate transitions in modern America, from the multinational down to the corner shoe store, now resemble a changing of the guard after a coup in a banana republic. The firm’s employees have begun to dwell on their own personal fates. The king is dead, but the dust of uncertainty that clouds the fortunes of those affected has not yet settled. Barbara offers me a seat in the reception area and assures me that she will inform Florence that I have arrived.

In the far corner of the reception area are two deep-cushioned sofas that spread like twin dark clouds across the broad expanse of wall. Here the visitor feels the need to check his briefcase in favor of a machete and pith helmet. The furnishings are lost in a jungle of ficus, philodendrons, ferns, and rubber plants, all rooted in hip-high planter boxes. A faint odor of moist earth permeates the area. I decline a seat on the sofa and instead muse about the spacious reception room, examining the rich wall hangings and two modern ceramics set on pedestals near the center of the room. They are new, since I left P amp;S, the usual symbols of commercial affluence used to set the stage for what routinely follows in the private inner chambers of any large firm. They are employed like some artistic emetic to lubricate and ease the disgorging of substantial fees by clients who at times might wonder if they are receiving full value for their money.

As I stand gazing out of the window at the panorama of the city spread before me, there’s a rippled reflection in the glass. Someone has walked up behind me.

I turn.

“Hi,” she says.

Talia has a small box in her arms filled with books and memorabilia. I recognize the marble pen set from Ben’s desk. Given all of my most turgid fantasies of Talia, this is one role I could never have conjured-the widow performing the wifely duty, removing Ben’s personal items from the office.

“Hello.” My voice is flat, empty.

“Just a moment.” She walks back to the reception station, places the box on the counter, and issues instructions to Barbara. There are more boxes in Ben’s office. They are too heavy. She will need help. I make no effort to move away. Finally she turns and looks directly at me standing there, lost in a philodendron. For an instant we simply look at each other. It’s like ice cracking around our feet on a frozen pond. Each waits for the other to make the first move. I win the contest. She comes closer again.

“How have you been?” she says.

“Good.”

Her hands are clasped neatly together just below the waistband of her very tight, brightly colored skirt. With Talia, at least in private, mere will be no pretense of mourning. This woman who bedded me for the better part of a year under the nose of her husband is now the picture of polite reserve. We stand here eye to eye, staring in silence at each other. Barbara, the epitome of clerical servitude, appears oblivious to the tension that fills the room.

“Here for a visit?” she asks.

“To see Tony.”

“Lucky you.”

“How are you holding up?” It’s all I can think of to say, the obligatory caring question.

She makes a face. “Making out,” she says. “It’s difficult.”

I nod.

“The police just allowed us back into Ben’s office yesterday. I guess it takes a long time for them to finish whatever it is they do after something like this.”

“Sometimes.”

“A lot of unanswered questions,” she says. “I suppose we’ll never fully understand it.”

I flex an eyebrow in inquiry.

“Why he did it? Ben had so much to live for.”

With anyone else I would be surprised, but knowing Talia as I do, I have no doubt that she will be the last to hear that her husband’s death is in fact now the subject of a homicide investigation. I do not shatter the illusion.

“I suppose,” I say.

“I’ve turned it over a million times in my mind. A friend who lost her son to suicide a year ago keeps telling me to stop asking the same question over and over again: “Why?’ She says it gets worse every time you ask it. I think she’s right.”

It’s a true measure of the difference in how each of us perceives life that before I was told that Ben’s death was attributable to another person, I had asked the same question of myself, only once, and had had little difficulty arriving at a single and unassailable answer: This was no suicide.

As she speaks, I listen. There’s not a hint of reticence in her manner, though her eyes wander, taking in nothing in particular. This is the Talia I know, standing here in a public place, speaking unbridled with a former lover, her partner in adultery, unable to muster even a single theory as to why her husband might have taken his own life. Talia has a gift for viewing reality through a torpid haze, like a film shot through gauze.

We stand, she speaking and I forming a listless audience. A face from the past approaches in the hallway behind Talia. I’ve seen this face but can’t place it.

“I need your help with some papers in the desk. A decision on what to do with …” He cuts it off in mid-sentence as he sees me.

Talia turns.

“Oh, Tod.” Her voice becomes brighter. “I want you to meet an old friend. Paul Madriani, Tod Hamilton. You remember, I told you about Paul.”

He extends a hand. I give it a quick shake. There are knowing glances exchanged between the two. A kind of psychic titter invades the conversation as Hamilton looks for something to do with his hands. It’s clear that at some point I’ve been the topic of conversation between the two. I sense that perhaps Talia has not extolled my virtues. Tod, it seems, is my most recent replacement. Then I remember. The cleft chin, Wong’s. Tod was at Talia’s table the night I talked to Ben.