Men of Intrgue A Trilogy (92 page)

Where had he gotten it? He must have gone to some trouble to find it. It was beautifully framed, covered with thin glass and edged in chrome. There was a small card stuck into the lower left hand corner of the frame.

Angela lifted the flap on the card.

“
Je reviens
,” it said. I’ll be back.

She had once told Devlin that she thought French was the most expressive and moving language on earth. No matter what you said it always sounded more significant, more important, in French.

He had remembered. And he’d found someone to translate the phrase for him because he didn’t speak French himself.

Angela stared at the gift for some time, thinking, and then bent to pick up the wrapping from the floor. She was about to toss it into the garbage when something fell out of the bundle and struck her foot.

It was a tape cassette. She held it to the light, examining the writing on its side.

Willie Nelson. It was a Willie Nelson album.

Devlin was, as she had often said, a thoughtful man. He was full of thoughts. He knew exactly how to disarm her.

I don’t care, she told herself fiercely, I’m going to throw this stuff out and never look at it again. It doesn’t negate what he did, nothing can. But she found herself carrying both items carefully up to her room, where
Romeo and Juliet
replaced Charlton Heston as
Ben Hur
on her wall. Sorry, Chuck, she thought as she stuck him behind a chair. I’ll find another spot for you.

Then she put the tape into her player and lay down on her bed.

Listening to the album was a big mistake. The words of the first love song hit too close to home. Nelson sang about his deep feelings for a woman, feelings that were always with him even if he wasn’t very good at showing them. That sounded familiar. And during another song which described a boy growing up in the West and the admiration he felt for the freedom and strength of the cowboy lifestyle, Angela buried her face in her pillow, her eyes running with silent tears.

No wonder Devlin liked this artist. He vocalized the loneliness and inarticulate longing that was so much a part of Devlin’s personality. She got up and rewound the cowboy number, listening to it again and seeing Devlin riding Blossom, leaning forward on her neck to whisper in her ear. In another time, another place, he might have been one of the subjects of Willie’s song.

But instead he’d been plucked from the campus of a college and set on the path to a different life. That path had crossed with hers and there were times when Angela fervently wished he’d stayed in Kansas. She would have been spared a lot of pain.

But she would have missed quite a bit of happiness too. She had to admit that, on balance, she would go through everything again to have the memory of those nights in Devlin’s arms. They would sustain her in the future even if she had to live without love for the rest of her life.

Angela wiped her eyes with a corner of the pillowcase and got up to turn the tape to the other side.

* * * *
 

The following afternoon Josie was dusting in Angela’s bedroom while Angela busied herself cleaning out her closet. She always took refuge in organizational activity when she was troubled; it soon appeared that she would have the neatest wardrobe in town.

“I notice that you have a new poster,” Josie said casually.

Angela paused with a sweater in her hand and then put it back on the shelf. “Yes.”

“Isn’t that the one you’ve been trying to get, the one you couldn’t find anywhere?”

“Yes.”

Angela’s monosyllabic responses and the expression on her face convinced Josie that her suspicions were correct.

“Brett sent that to you, didn’t he?”

Angela sighed, buttoning a blouse and settling it on a hanger. “He must have. He’s the only one besides you who knew I wanted it.”

“No note?”

“Just a card, with ‘I’ll be back’ written on it in French.”

“That boy doesn’t give up easily.”

“I wish that he would give up. This contest of wills is wearing me down.”

“In a contest of wills with him you’re going to lose,” Josie said matter of factly.

“Thanks for the moral support.”

Josie refolded her dust rag and rubbed at a spot on Angela’s dresser. “Why don’t you just surrender? You know that you love him.”

“After what he did?” Angela said, turning to face Josie, her expression becoming hostile.

“Don’t get mad at me. I’m merely telling you that you’ve put yourself in an impossible position. You miss Brett so much that you’re miserable, but your pride won’t allow you to forgive him for misleading you. So you’re stuck.”

“He did a lot more than mislead me, Josie. I don’t have to tell you how he deceived me. You were here to witness it.”

“I was here to witness all of it, young lady, everything. And there was one area in which he never deceived you, and that was concerning his love for you.”

“You don’t lie to someone you love.”

Josie tossed her rag into the bag at her feet. “How self-righteous you sound, and how immature. What would you have done if he’d come to you and told you the truth before he completed his mission?”

Angela was silent, smoothing a seam on the blouse she was still holding.

“Did he really have any choice once he got here?” Josie went on. “Don’t you know that the reason he tried to resist you for so long was that he didn’t want to have it all end this way? He knew how you would react and you’re behaving exactly as he anticipated.” Josie folded her arms. “I saw how he struggled with himself. You’re acting as if he just breezed in here and conned you into his bed, then dropped you once he got what he wanted.” Josie leaned forward, her voice getting softer. “That isn’t how it happened, Angela, and in case your memory is faulty mine is excellent.”

“Oh, he has everybody buffaloed, even you,” Angela said bitterly.

Josie threw up her hands. “Okay, have it your way. Keep it up, but you’re not hurting anyone but yourself. And Brett, of course, but it’s clear you don’t care about him.”

“He’s your best friend now, I suppose.”

“He’s your best friend, Angela, if only you would admit it.” Josie picked up the bottle of spray wax from the dresser and moved to one of the end tables. “I don’t know how I got into this anyway. I promised myself I was going to stay out of it and keep my mouth shut.”

“That would have been a first,” Angela teased, smiling slightly.

Josie didn’t reply and Angela hung the blouse back in the closet.

* * * *
 

Devlin rode the elevator up to the sixth floor of the Chrysler Building and got out when the doors slid open with soundless precision. He nodded to one of the secretaries sitting at a desk outside a glass cubicle. Her eyes followed him with interest but he didn’t notice. He had something on his mind.

“The Patria file come in yet?” Devlin said to the man inside the office as he opened the door.

The other man was about Devlin’s age. He was seated behind a desk, his feet up, sipping from a paper cup. He shook his head with exaggerated patience.

“Will you get off that, Dev?” he said. “You know how the lawyers procrastinate. It’ll be days yet, so relax.”

“I can’t relax,” Devlin said, pacing around the room.

“That’s nothing new,” his companion said dryly.

“I need a copy of the indictment, and I need the prosecutor’s evidence and arguments.”

“You’ll get them eventually.”

“Eventually is no good.”

Matt Hendley examined his friend with concern. Devlin was always itchy, but since he’d gotten involved in this Patria thing he was a bundle of raw nerves. More was going on than Devlin was willing to say, and until Devlin confided in him there was nothing he could do to help.

“I’m going to photostat the file when it comes in,” Devlin said.

Hendley sat up straighter. “You know you can’t do that, Dev. That stuff is strictly confidential. It can’t go out of this office until the trial is over and the verdict is final.”

“I want you to help me do it. There’s someone who has to see the case against Patria right now.”

“Would that someone be Patria’s niece?”

Devlin glanced at him quickly, then away. He said nothing.

“I thought so,” Hendley said. “I saw her picture in the papers. Very nice. And she was at the house the whole time you were there, right?”

Devlin met his eyes.

“She’s a lawyer too, or almost,” Hendley went on. “She would be able to understand that file and see how it stacks up against Frank. She’s the one you want to convince, huh Dev?”

Devlin nodded.

“She must be plenty mad at you right about now.”

“Plenty mad doesn’t quite describe it.”

“Let me guess. She’s convinced that good old Uncle Frankie is as pure as the driven snow.”

Devlin reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “All she knows is how he treated her and by all reports he was very good to her. She can’t believe that he was, is, a criminal.”

Hendley snorted. “Why not? Didn’t she see
The Godfather
? All those guys bouncing babies and running to bakeries for their wives were also shooting people in the head when the occasion warranted it.”

“I don’t think she can apply that logic to her only living relative.”

“But you think she won’t be able to argue with the evidence in that file.”

“That’s right.” Devlin struck a match and put the cigarette he held into his mouth. He lit it and inhaled deeply.

“You’re smoking too much,” Hendley said.

“Thank you. I didn’t know that.”

Hendley drained his cup, crushed it, and tossed it into the trash. “All right,” he said, “what do you want me to do?”

Devlin met his gaze and smiled slowly.

“I’ll need a lookout while I’m copying the stuff. We’ll do it at night after everybody’s gone. Just in case security comes by or somebody else shows up I want another pair of eyes and ears.”

“It can’t wait until the trial?”

Devlin exhaled a stream of smoke.

“I’ll lose her if I wait,” he said simply.

Hendley shrugged. “Then consider it done.”

Devlin, never comfortable with emotion, put his hand on Hendley’s shoulder as he passed, squeezing it briefly. Then he walked out of the room.

The secretary who had seen him before looked up again as he strode by her desk. He fascinated her; he was always polite, courteous, but he gave nothing away. She wondered what his position was in the organization.

Then she shrugged philosophically and picked up the letter she was about to type. She was in the dark about a lot of things that went on in this office. But no more so than the public, who thought that the floor was rented to a company engaged in research for a new encyclopedia.

She fed the sheet of bond paper into the machine before her and began to type.

* * * *
 

Angela knocked on the door of Holly’s apartment, shivering in the chill salt wind that blew in off the bay. Holly lived in a bank of apartments that faced the water. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge loomed in the distance, tall and imposing, glinting in the sunset, rising above the gray river like a giant crane.

Holly answered the door eating an apple.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m glad you called. I could use a little help with T and E.”

“Trusts and Estates was never my strong point,” Angela said, walking inside and unbuttoning her coat. “You know that.”

Holly raised her brows. “Two heads are always better than one,” she said. “Unless one of the heads is occupied with something else,” she added pointedly. She took Angela’s coat and hung it in the entry closet. “You still look like a walking funeral.”

Angela hugged herself, glancing around the small chaotic apartment. It was furnished in a style Holly called “early marriage” and featured odds and ends of every description thrown together in eclectic disarray. Angela always felt more comfortable here than in her own house.

“I’m doing all right,” Angela answered shortly.

“Oh, I can see that,” Holly said dryly. She led the way into the living room where she had left a pot of tea on the coffee table. “We miss you at school. When do you think you’ll be able to come back?”

“I don’t know. As soon as this dies down. I won’t have to take exams until January.”

“Lucky girl.”

“I won’t think so in January.”
 

“That’s true.” They sat and Holly filled a cup, handing it to Angela. “I saw your uncle’s new lawyer on television last night.”

“Yeah. He’s really bringing in the big guns. That guy costs a fortune.”

“Well, your uncle has a fortune to pay him.”

“I offered to help prepare the case but Uncle Frank doesn’t want it. This whole thing is driving me crazy. I haven’t been able to see him and I haven’t a clue as to what’s been going on.”

“I’m sure everything is being done to help him.”