“Since he reopened the custody suit?”
She nodded. “It was very difficult for Guillermo, very upsetting. And then I heard Gregory’s voice on the machine and I just… picked it up.”
“What happened then?”
Ines lit a fresh cigarette and shivered. “It was terrible. He was angry and mocking and cruel, and he was… triumphant. He talked about Guillermo coming to live with him, and sending him away to boarding school, and he thanked me for it… for making it possible.”
“Thanked you why?”
Ines blew out a cloud of smoke. “He said it was because of me that he would win the custody- that no judge would leave Guillermo in a household with me.”
I shook my head. “Being a lesbian is hardly grounds for-”
“That is not what he meant, detective. He meant something else.” Ines looked down at her smooth right arm and ran a finger over the fat shiny scar just below her elbow. “It seems like such a small thing now,” she said.
“What was he talking about, Ines?”
“It was in Spain, when I was much younger. I was a fool, and I did a foolish thing. I carried a package for a friend, from Istanbul back to Madrid. I was stopped at the airport. It was heroin, and there was over a kilo. I was in prison for almost two years. I had never done anything like it before, and I never have since.” Ines poured the rest of the wine into her glass, and took a drink. “Years later, when I came to this country, I made sure that none of that appeared on my immigration forms or came to the attention of the INS.”
“Danes found out?”
“When he started again with lawyers, he hired detectives of his own, detectives in Madrid. They found records.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. I thought about the business card I’d found in Danes’s desk: FOSTER-ROYCE RESEARCH. “Gregory thanked me for my help, detective, and wished me a good trip back to Spain.”
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “What did you say?”
“I… I pleaded with him… for Guillermo’s sake. I said we all wanted what was best for Guillermo, and that destroying the home we had made for him could not be for the best. I said if he wanted more participation in Guillermo’s life, we would welcome that. And I asked if we could meet, to work something out. I pleaded with him to meet me, detective.”
“And he said yes?”
Ines shook her head. “At first he was angry. He called me filthy names and said how dare I talk to him about what was best for his son. He said all I cared about was not being deported. But I pleaded and… I cried, detective, and he enjoyed that. He said if I wanted to waste my breath, why not, and he told me where he was staying.”
“And you went up there?”
“A few days later.”
“And Nina had no idea?”
“She thought I was visiting the gallery in Kinderhook.” Ines sighed deeply. Her gaze fell to the desk and wandered across its surface and came to rest on the gun. It seemed to exert a gravity of its own on her, and her eyes were drawn to it again and again. She placed her hand on it once more.
“Why did you go there, Ines? What did you think would happen?”
Ines started to speak and stopped. She looked up at me, and tears were falling from her almond eyes. “I do not know, detective.”
“Did you think that you could talk to him- that he would listen and be convinced?” She shook her head slowly. “You had that with you?” I pointed at the gun.
She slid the gun across the desk until it was in front of her. She looked at it as if it might speak. “Yes,” she said.
“Where did you get it?” I stepped closer to the desk.
“It is mine,” she said, and she picked up the gun and put it in her lap. “I have owned it for years.”
“And you took it with you- why?”
“I… I do not know, detective, I-”
“Were you afraid of Danes?”
She nodded vigorously. “I was terrified of him. He was a small man, and full of anger and bitterness and fear. Even before Nina and I became lovers, since the time we were merely friends, he has hated me. I have always been afraid of him.”
“And that’s why you took the gun?”
Ines looked up at me and made a small and very tired smile. “Is that what you want me to say, detective? Is that what you want to hear- that I did not go there to kill Gregory? That I had the gun with me because I feared for my life?”
I shook my head. “I just want to hear what happened. What happened when you went to see him?”
Ines took another drink. “It was terrible- worse than on the phone. I tried to be very friendly. I brought wine and he opened it and poured glasses for us both. We sat at the table and I talked. I talked again about wanting only what was best for Guillermo, and how Nina and I had made a good home for him. I talked about this being a difficult time for Guillermo, a difficult age, and that he needed all of us to help him. And Gregory nodded and smiled and I thought… that he was listening to me. Then he went into the next room and came back with a stack of booklets. They were from different boarding schools, and he laughed and asked if I wanted to help pick the one that Guillermo would go to.
“He called me a drug addict bitch and said the drugs must have made me crazy or stupid if I thought he would ever allow his son to be raised by a spic bull dyke. And then he told me never to call his son by a spic name again- that his name was William or Billy or Bill and not Guillermo. And then he asked me if I was going to cry again, because he had really been looking forward to that.”
“And then?”
“And then I threw my wine in his face and called him a dickless little weasel. And then he punched me.”
“He hit you?”
“In the stomach. I fell down and he stood over me and laughed and
… that is when I shot.”
“Did you think he was going to keep hitting you?”
She shook her head wearily. “I do not know what I thought, detective. I do not know what he would have done.” Ines rubbed her eyes and raked a hand through her hair.
“And afterward?”
She shook her head. “Afterward, nothing was real. I walked out of the house and I was… surprised. I was surprised that I could still walk, and that my car could start, and that I could drive. It seemed to me that people should stop and stare, or that the police should come, but they did not. I drove all the way to New York- all the way home- and everything was very ordinary and no one noticed me. And then I saw Guillermo and found that I could not breathe.
“He was as he always is, sweet and funny and bright- and difficult- and he spoke to me about his school and his comic books, and he had… no idea. He had no idea that everything had changed.” Ines pressed her fingers to her eyes, and her shoulders shook. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“No one had any idea. I woke, I ate, I worked. I spoke and people spoke to me. I could even laugh. It all was as before- but of course it was not. There were moments I told myself that it could go on this way, that no one would find him… but then I would see Guillermo, walking around, not knowing…
“I try to tell myself that I saved him, detective, but I know it is not so. I know that I have lost him. I know I have destroyed him.” She ground the heel of her palm between her breasts, and her voice became choked and desperate. “And the weight is so great, detective… I cannot breathe.”
Ines put her arms on the desk and her head on her arms. The sun was nearly set and street light could not penetrate the window shades. I stepped closer to the pool of light around the desk and put my hand on her shoulder. It was bony and trembling, and after a while she reached out and placed a cold hand on mine.
We stayed that way for a while and then Ines raised her head and pushed back from the desk and away from me. She took the gun from her lap and held it in both her hands and turned the muzzle inward. My heart began to pound.
“I was scared when Nina hired you- terrified. But a part of me was relieved that someone had come… to take all this from me. And now you have, and I thank you for that, detective.”