The Anonymous Source (18 page)

“
HOW’D YOU
FIND
the number?” Alex asked.

“Called the c-county c-clerk in Kona and pretended I was a cop following up on some 9/11 stuff about her h-husband. Couldn’t get an address but the woman gave me a number.”

Alex took down the number. “Thanks,” he said. “I promise we’ll be in touch soon.”

He dialed Sonia and got no answer. “Now what?” he asked Camila.

Camila’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and walked out through the sliding door to the balcony. Alex sat at the desk and listened.

“Mama? Yeah, hi. What’s going on with Papa? Yeah . . . Yes, I’ll talk with him . . . Hi Papa . . . Yes, Mama told me, I’m so sorry . . . I’m going to try to come . . . Yes, okay, go rest, Papa . . . Hi Mama. Let me try to figure some things out. I’ll see if I can make arrangements . . . Yeah, bye.”

She walked back into the room and closed the sliding door behind her. “My father is going to die this week,” she said.

Alex tried to catch her eye, but she was staring at the carpet. After a moment, she picked up her purse and walked out of the room.

* * *

Alex didn’t see her the rest of the afternoon.

He called Sonia every half hour and finally left a message at around 3 p.m. In between calls, he worked at the business center. First he looked up Damian Bale, who was listed on the Web site of the Old Rhino Bar as a wine expert, and even had a one-page Web site of his own at nycchocolatebar.com. Alex knew there was no way to confirm what the bartender had said about New Year’s Eve, but he had a feeling the guy was reliable.

At 4 p.m., he checked the homepage of
The New York Times
for news on the Santiago trial. That day, prosecutors had called two police officers and both had testified that they’d searched Martin’s apartment within hours of the murder but hadn’t found anything helpful. The next day, they’d retraced Martin’s steps from his apartment, to the Old Rhino Bar, to his walk across the park. By the end of the first day of the investigation, their only clue had been a law student who’d said she had seen a strange-looking kid in the park that night. After police questioned her, the strange-looking kid had become their only lead.

Canvassing the neighborhood the next day, they’d traced Santiago to the adult theater. They were in his room by noon, where they’d found the spray bottle of fentanyl. At that point, they hadn’t had a cause of death for the professor. But when Santiago produced what had looked like fake prescriptions for numerous drugs, he’d been held and questioned. Once they’d had Santiago in custody, the police had ordered a fentanyl test on Martin’s body. And when the test had come back positive two days later, they’d known they had their man.

As Alex read the AP story
The Standard
was running where his own work should have appeared, his phone rang. He flipped it open. “Mrs. Hollinger?”

Silence.

“Sonia?”

“No, this is Juan Carlos.” The man’s accent was thick and Alex thought it sounded Cuban. “I am her assistant. Is this Alex Vane?”

“Yes.”

“You have called many times.”

“Yes I—”

“What do you want with Mrs. Hollinger?”

“I am a reporter with
The New York Standard
but I am not here on an assignment. I believe she may be able to help us solve the murder of a friend of her husband. His name was Professor John Martin.”

“I thought the police already solved that murder. You say you are a reporter or a police?”

“Reporter. But it’s a long story. Please. We will only need a few minutes of her time.”

Alex heard Juan whispering to someone. Finally, Juan said, “You can come by tomorrow morning around eleven. We are on Alii Drive, 1616.”

CAMILA SAT
ON THE BEACH
, listening to the waves and watching a pair of surfers far out in the water. She saw a giant turtle and wondered whether it was the same one she had seen that morning. She remembered the cold chair from earlier in the day, then relaxed as her butt sank into the sand. She thought she could feel the weight of the earth pushing her up from below. She wondered whether it was because there were no pipes, subways, or people below her.

She dug her toes into the sand. A warm wind blew her hair across her face. Her body felt light as she closed her eyes.

“Cam, what are you
doing
?” Her father’s voice in her head. She felt the words as an inner recoil, a tensing that started in her legs and moved through the rest of her body. It was like the phrase contained all his anger, all his cruelty, as well as that of his parents and their parents. A stabbing sadness coursed through her chest. She doubled over and cried for a few seconds, then sat back up, wiping sandy tears from her face. She dug her toes deeper into the sand.

She felt him throughout her body, and felt his parents and grandparents, too. Generations of congealed suffering moved through her. She opened her eyes. The beach and the sea were still there. She heard laughing in the water and saw blurry surfers through her tears.

She breathed deeply and felt her father drift through her. Maybe he was dead already, and this was him trying to move into her. She shivered and closed her eyes. Her father’s mother appeared to her in a black dress, scowling on a dock in Buenos Aires. The cruelty had been in her grandmother, too.

She lay in the sand and covered her eyes to block the bright sun. She felt her father and grandmother settle over her, her sense of self crowded out until she could no longer track what was happening. They were both full of a sadness that came from a time before she was born.

She was too hot. She writhed in the sand, feeling that the sadness would kill her—that years upon years of cruelty had finally arrived within her, to take her away. She’d let it take her. She spread out her arms and legs in the sand and sobbed as the sadness stabbed at her chest. After a few minutes, her sobbing quieted into a soft whimpering and she became still. The heavy earth pushed her up and a lightness came into her. Her mind was empty and her father and grandmother were gone.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes clear of tears, and looked out at the water. Light glimmered on the edges of waves. The turtle was gone. She imagined it swimming away under the surf.

She felt new to herself. Light and unburdened.

She stood, stared at the water for a few minutes, then reached into her pocket and retrieved the coin her grandmother had given her. She flipped it.

* * *

She walked for twenty minutes before returning to the room.

“I need to see my father,” she said to Alex, who greeted her at the door.

“Have you been crying?”

“Yes, but it’s okay. I do that sometimes.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s . . . hard to explain. But I’m okay now. Really. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Did you reach Sonia?” She sat at the desk and stared out the window.

Alex stepped toward her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You have sand in your hair.” He brushed it gently onto the floor. “Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know. I’m fine. Just tell me what happened with Sonia.”

Alex told her about the call with Juan, then, sensing that she wanted to be alone, he went to the balcony and did twenty minutes of yoga.

When he came back into the room, Camila was emerging from the bathroom, her hair wet from the shower. “I’ll stay until after we meet Sonia,” she said. “After that, I’m going to see my dad.”

SONIA HOLLINGER’S
estate sat high on a bluff just outside the town of Kona. The taxi turned up a thin road cut into a rock wall. They were buzzed through an iron gate and took the long, steep driveway toward the house, passing trees heavy with pomegranate, mango, and avocado.

“Feels like we’re going through a tropical jungle,” Alex said.

Camila leaned her head out the window. “We kind of are.”

At the top of the driveway, the taxi stopped in front of a sprawling, glass house. Alex took the driver’s card as they got out and stared at the house’s thick glass walls supported by stainless steel beams. The day was hot but not yet muggy.

They could see through the front of the house into the entryway, kitchen, and dining room, and out the back to a patio and garden. The house slanted sharply from front to back, giving the appearance that it didn’t have a roof.

“Talk about modern,” Camila said.

“I didn’t know houses like this actually existed.”

On the left, beyond a low fence covered in flowering vines, they saw a disappearing-edge pool tiled in light blue granite. They opened a small gate, walked between the pool and the house, and found a small glass door. Camila knocked.

When the door opened, Sonia Hollinger stood before them in layers of flowery silk robes that half-covered a yellow bikini. She wore full makeup and her blonde hair was held up with pins, exposing her long, tan neck.

“Good afternoon, darlings,” she said, sipping a bright pink cocktail from a tall, narrow glass. “I’d invite you in but I prefer to be outside.”

She led them around the side of the house to the pool, which was surrounded by tomato plants, banana trees, and patches of basil and cilantro. They sat at a glass table supported by a single piece of stone shaped like a giant octopus.

“You seem to have a lot of good things to eat here,” Camila said. “What’s the growing season like?”

“Aren’t you sweet, honey,” Sonia replied. “We grow all year here. Do you garden?”

“No. I live in a tiny box in Manhattan.”

Sonia frowned and studied Camila. “You’re Argentinian?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

“I’m Brazilian-American. You have that look about you.”

“I was born here,” Camila said. “Never actually been there.”

Sonia gasped into her hand with feigned shock then smiled. Just then, Juan emerged from the glass door on the side of the house wearing a red Speedo and no shirt.

“Juan, darling, yes,” Sonia called, waving him over. “Drinks for our guests, please. They’ve come all the way from New York City to see me.”

Juan walked over to the table and looked at Alex. “Hola,” he said. “You want I should make you two of those?” He pointed at Sonia’s drink, then placed his hand on her shoulder.

Camila and Alex looked at each other. Alex frowned. “I usually don’t do juice,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, honey,” Sonia said.

Camila smiled at Juan. “Two of whatever fruity cocktails you like to make.”

Juan headed off to the kitchen and the three of them spoke for a few minutes about the weather, Manhattan, and the Santiago trial, which Sonia was following.

“The news you poor New Yorkers think is important is so . . . limited,” she said, looking at Alex and sipping her drink. “We have thousands of men and women in Afghanistan and will soon be after Saddam. And you run front-page stories about a little imbecilic killer from NYU. I know you’re just doing your job, but your bosses really ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Juan appeared with their drinks, set them on the table, then sat in a chair by the pool about ten feet away.

“Mrs. Hollinger,” Alex said, “let me tell you a little bit about why we’re here.”

Her face tightened. “You’re here because of Mac. You’re not the first people to show up, you know. First there were the estate people and the lawyers. Then journalists, journalists, and more journalists. Then that little bitch Green. She called for weeks before I agreed to see her.”

“Sadie Green?” Alex asked.

“Yes.”

“Sonia,” Camila said, “the man Santiago is accused of killing knew your husband.”

“A lot of people knew my husband. So what?”

“Your husband taught John Martin at Tulane,” Alex said.

Sonia pulled a cherry from her drink and sucked on it. “Yes,” she said. “I met Mr. Martin briefly at Mac’s funeral.”

“It’s the day of the funeral we want to ask you about,” Alex said.

Sonia finished her drink and nodded at Juan, who stood and walked toward the kitchen.

“I was there as well,” Camila said. “I went with John. We were together then.”

“He was a little old for you, no?” Sonia looked at Alex and smiled, passing the cherry stem between her fingers. “This young man is . . . much more suitable.”

Juan returned and refilled their drinks from a tall pitcher.

“
Comida por favor
,” Sonia said. She looked at Alex and Camila. “Are you hungry?”

Alex said no and Camila said yes, but Sonia wasn’t listening and Juan was already gone.

“Sonia, please,” Camila said. “At the funeral, we spoke with a man named Denver Bice.”

“Yes, I know Mr. Bice. He was one of my husband’s more successful students. No offense to Mr. Martin, of course.”

“John and Mr. Bice were making polite conversation,” Camila continued. “But then John said the strangest thing.”

“Did he now?” Sonia said, sipping her drink. “You know, Juan is the most amazing cook. He came from Cuba as a boy, but I think a piece of his soul comes from each Latin country. He can cook anything. He worked all morning preparing lunch for you.”

Juan walked out from the kitchen carrying a metal platter covered with thinly sliced steak, roasted vegetables, chunks of mango and mounds of grapes, salad, two loaves of bread, and three kinds of cheese.

“Please, help yourselves,” Sonia said. “I barely eat.”

“Sonia, if I can just tell you about what happened,” Camila said.

Sonia nibbled a grape. “Please continue, honey.”

“At the funeral, John said it was lucky for Mr. Bice that Mac, your husband, died when he did.”

Sonia put the half-eaten grape on the table and sipped her drink. As Alex ate a slice of steak wrapped around a lettuce leaf, he watched Sonia closely. He thought he saw a slight flinch in her cheeks as she drank. When she put the glass down, she said, “Hmm, that could mean a lot of things.”

Camila reached across the table and took her hand. “You know something.”

“Yes, but. . . ”

Juan appeared behind her and held her shoulders. “Sonia, maybe it’s time for your rest.” He held her arm as she stood, but she wobbled and tripped on her chair. He caught her before she could hit the ground and led her into the house.

Alex looked at Camila. “What the hell do we do now?”