"But you're so busy with Plan A and Plan B, you start neglecting Plan C-your fiancé, a nice guy who happens to have a nice big nest egg. A big enough nest egg to pay off all your student loans and most of your credit card debt, if it comes to that."
Ava looked toward the lights of downtown and the harbor. "Darryl wasn't a plan," she said in a soft, almost regretful voice. "He was strong. I liked that. I thought he could protect me. He couldn't help me with this, though. I needed my job if we were going to have any life at all together. He makes less than $50,000 a year. How can two people live on that?"
It wasn't a bad speech, possibly even a sincere one. But Tess was unmoved.
"You might have to cut back on a few leather sofas, but it's possible."
"It wasn't just money. Darryl didn't want me to work at all. We fought about that a lot. I was so tired of arguing, I didn't even mind when Abramowitz told me I should use my vacation week to study. I was glad for an excuse to get away from him."
She and Rock had fought? Funny, he had forgotten to mention that small detail. But she had to concentrate. This was the tricky part, the part where she had to admit how clever Ava was, how stupid she was.
"So, one day, some not-too-bright woman pops up." She mocked her own voice, trilling in a falsetto. "'Hi, I'm a private detective and I know you're having an affair.' Of course it's not true. But you're fast on your feet. You see instantly the circumstantial evidence that convinced me-the hotel, the covert meetings-are enough to convince other people, too. Especially the increasingly sympathetic O'Neal. In fact this could solve all your problems. Maybe you'll get a nice fat settlement. Maybe Abramowitz will get fired and you'll get another chance. It was a good plan. With Abramowitz dead, it was an even better plan."
"How do you figure that?" Ava's voice was sharp again, stripped of the velvety tone she had used when talking about Rock.
"If Abramowitz is dead no one can contradict you, right? And I assume a firm that hates publicity would prefer to pay you off, as long as you agree to tell the press a more genteel version of events."
Tess gestured at the new furnishings around them.
Ava sighed. "You're right, more or less, but what's the point? None of this changes the case against Darryl. He thought Abramowitz had forced me to go to bed with him. He went down there and he killed him. Don't get me wrong, I hope he gets acquitted, or manslaughter, but I still think he did it. Frankly it's a little frightening to think I came so close to marrying a man with that strong a violent streak."
For the first time she seemed absolutely without guile. There was no indication that Ava remembered her own pivotal role in this, that her lies had sent Rock to Abramowitz's office, that none of this would have happened if she hadn't been such a schemer. They had both been so clever. But Tess couldn't afford to think about this now.
"There are still some missing pieces. Why didn't Abramowitz have any work to do? Did people in the firm know he wasn't doing anything? Did he have something on O'Neal?"
"I asked Shay about that once." Shay, Tess noted. "Of course, I didn't ask it quite as rudely as you did. He told me Abramowitz had screwed something up, an important case. He didn't really have a lot of experience in this kind of practice, you know. He knew the law, but he didn't have the style the firm's clients expected. He upset an important client. So they stopped giving him work, hoping he would leave. That's how they do things at O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill. But Abramowitz wasn't gracious enough to cut his losses. He was greedy."
Tess could hear the too-hearty voice of Seamon P. O'Neal-no, Shay-reeling off those last few sentences. Ava was a quick study, at least at some things.
"Did everyone know he was being frozen out?"
"No, no one was suppose to know. Not even me-I. They just wanted him to leave; they didn't want to destroy his reputation. But after three months of creating busywork, he began running out of things for me to do. At first I thought he didn't trust me because of my problems with the bar. Then I saw his files were empty, and one day…well, one day I opened his briefcase. All he had in it were a law journal and a ham sandwich."
So Abramowitz had never lost his taste for trayf. Tess liked that.
"He never got mail. Almost no one called, never any clients. The Sims-Kever people were always meeting with Larry Chambers, a young partner at the other end of the office, while I was moving death certificates around in my files."
"No mail or phone calls at all? What about personal stuff?"
"He did get letters from inmates-I saw the Department of Corrections numbers on the envelopes. He said a lot of his clients from his public defender days stayed in touch. He was proud of that, which was odd. Those were the cases he lost."
"Maybe he was proud the men liked him, even though they lost."
"Maybe. One sure didn't, though. He used to call and harangue him, which always upset Michael."
"Did he ever say anything about those calls, who they came from? Maybe a client with a grudge had been released from prison recently."
Ava shook her head. "He'd just get all red in the face and say, ‘I hate that-' Well, I'd prefer not to repeat what he would say."
"Give me a break, Ava. We've established you're not exactly Emily Post. Tell me what he said."
"He'd say…‘I hate that twisted fucker.'"
"Twisted fucker? He called him a twisted fucker?"
"Yes, and it was odd, because he never used words like that, not around me. When I complained he told me everyone called him that."
And when Tess had told Jonathan not to refer to his source by that name, he had said the same thing. "It's not just me. It's practically his nickname." The twisted fucker.
"Ava, this is important. This guy could have been released from prison, he could have come after Abramowitz."
"No way. Not this guy."
"Why?"
"Because this man is on Death Row, I know that much. The only way he's leaving prison is on a gurney."
Death Row. Jonathan's source had been on Death Row, too. It had to be the same man. He had contacted him after he wrote about Abramowitz. The night before he died, Jonathan admitted the source was connected to the lawyer, but not to the lawyer's death. But Jonathan could have been wrong.
Tess stood up to leave. "You've actually been a big help, Ava, although I can't tell you how."
"You're not going to give that letter to the newspaper, right? That was our understanding."
"The letter? Oh, you mean Abramowitz's diary, with all that stuff about you in it? Well, I should tell you two things, Ava. First of all the newspaper could give a fuck about your story. It's not news and only an egomaniac would think it was. The second thing is-I made it all up. Oh, Abramowitz was gay, but he never mentioned you, or your attempted seduction, although he did work out some practice questions for you. I lied to get you to talk to me, Ava. I owed you that much, don't you think?"
Ava dropped the glass of wine in her lap, spilling the dark red burgundy. Tess had been wrong: The wine and the dress were not the same color. The wine made a satisfyingly dark stain across the skirt of her dress, then ran down the sofa to the rug. Yes, that color did look nice next to the green.
"You know, my mom always uses plastic slipcovers on the good furniture," Tess told Ava. "You might want to try that, given your problems holding on to wineglasses."
Chapter 25