"What?"
"This ain't a quiz show, you know. I'm tellin' you what I can tell you. And it don't matter what it is. All that matters is he's wrong, I don't got it."
"What's the other possibility?"
"Two others. And one is simple: he's pissed at something I did."
"But you won't tell me what."
"Again, it's on a need-to-know basis."
"What's the third choice?" Justin asked.
"You ain't gonna like this one, Jay. The third choice is that he didn't want me talkin' to you."
"What? Talking to me about what?"
"You're gonna have to wait a little bit on that one."
And when Justin looked at him, a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look, Bruno said, "You might wanna be a little careful while you're up here in friendly New England, pal. You might want to think about watchin' your back."
Justin thought about watching his back the whole time he was walking out of Dolce. He was thinking about it when he passed by the table where the skinny would-be assassin had been sitting, and he was thinking about it when he surreptitiously used a napkin to scoop up the Fodor's Guidebook the skinny guy had been reading. And he thought about it the entire twenty minutes it took him to drive to his next destination. He thought about nothing else.
But it still didn't make any sense to him.
15
Justin had not seen Victoria LaSalle since Alicia's funeral, and he was startled when she opened the door to let him into her home. She was as beautiful as ever. Her thick, dirty-blond hair fell down to her shoulders in waves, perfectly framing her pale face. Her skin was smooth and unlined, unmarred by contact with the sun. She was tall and slim and wiry; in her jeans and tucked-in collared shirt, she revealed the body of a teenage girl. And her hands were exactly the way he remembered them-long, tapered fingers; no polish on her perfectly manicured nails; hands that were delicate and gentle but also strong. In the more than seven years since he had last seen her, she had aged not a bit. But that was not what startled him.
What threw him, and what rendered him momentarily speechless, was that as she'd gotten older she'd come to look more and more like her sister. His wife. When he stepped into her foyer, it was as if he were staring at Alicia.
Victoria's neck was taut, and her eyes were angry. Those were the only indications of the strain she was under and the unhappiness that had to have enveloped her.
She made no movement to kiss him hello or even shake his hand. Just a curt nod and-ever polite in the way of all Providence upper-class housewives-a murmured "Thank you for coming."
She was alone, which surprised him. No one around to comfort her. As if she could read his mind, as they reached the living room she said, "There were several people here. I asked them to leave."
He nodded and said, "Okay."
Feeling the need to elaborate, she went on: "I didn't feel comfortable talking to you in front of them. And some of them wouldn't have felt comfortable having you here." She hesitated; and he got the strong sense it wasn't a polite hesitation, it was meant for emphasis, meant to be harsh. "My parents."
"I understand."
They reached the sofas. She sat first, directly in the middle of one couch, making it clear he was meant to sit opposite her, on the other side of the fabric-covered ottoman that served as coffee table. He did.
They sat in silence until he said, "I'm sorry about Ronald."
And almost instantaneously she replied, "I don't really know why you're here."
"I'm here because my father thought I could help you."
"Yes, he told me. And how is it he thinks you can help?"
"Well… at first he thought I could help find Ron."
"He's been found."
"Yes," Justin said. "I think the idea is that now I might be able to find out what happened to him. And why. If you want me to."
Victoria didn't answer. He didn't mind; he was content just to look at her, to fool himself for these few moments that he was looking at Alicia. As hard as he tried to resist, his mind drifted away into the past. To the day he'd met Alicia on campus. It was summer and her legs were bare. But it had also turned cool, and she had goose bumps running up and down her calves. It was the way he had always thought of her, for years, if they were apart and he conjured up her image: tanned, bare legs, a line of goose bumps. That ended when she killed herself. Since then, when he thought of her, the image he conjured up was of his wife sprawled on the floor, bloody, one side of her face gone from the self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Again, it was as if Victoria read his mind. Justin remembered that she'd always had that knack. In some ways, even when she was just a kid, she knew him better than Alicia did. She teased him with references that Alicia didn't understand. She always seemed to know what he was thinking about, particularly when he was thinking about things he wasn't supposed to be thinking about. He smiled at the memory, picturing her as a fourteen-year-old girl, kind of a tomboy, wanting to hang out with him and her older sister because they could do cooler things: drink and go to dirty movies.
"I look like her, don't I?"
Justin nodded. The word "yes" came out like a quick, sad sigh.
"I see it every day. I see her every time I look in the mirror."
Justin closed his eyes for a moment. It made it easier to talk with his eyes closed. "You and I, we used to be good friends, didn't we?" And when she was the one who nodded this time, he said, "It's weird. I don't let myself miss too many things. It's too dangerous. But I miss you."
"Well, I miss my sister," she said. There was an iciness to her voice, a meanness that he would never have thought her capable of. Her words were like a slap to his face, and he sat up straighter and tried not to let the hurt show.
"Is there anything you want to tell me about Ronald?" he asked.
"What should I tell you?"
"Vicky-"
"I'm Victoria now. People call me Victoria."
"Okay," Justin said. "Victoria. Do you want me to find out what happened to Ronald? Or do you just want me and it to go away?"
It was Victoria's turn now to close her eyes. When she opened them, she said, "I'm pregnant."
Startled, Justin said, "I didn't know. No one told me."
"No one knows. Six weeks. That's all. We were waiting before we said anything, to make sure everything was all right."
"It's hard to know what to say. Congratulations doesn't seem to be the right thing, but I'm happy for you."
"If it's a girl, Ron and I agreed we'd name her Alicia."
"I'm glad. It's a nice thing to do."
He could see her lower jaw trembling. Whatever it was she wanted to say was extremely difficult.
"I don't want to know what happened to Ronald. I don't care what he did or who did it or why. All I care about is that he got himself killed." Her whole body was trembling now, beginning to shake violently as if a fever were running through her. "That's all that matters to me. First my sister, now my husband. How can such a thing happen?"
"Vicky…" He moved to go toward her, but she held up her hand, stopping him in his tracks.
She steeled herself. The trembling didn't stop completely but it lessened considerably. It looked as if she might burst from the effort of keeping herself still. "But I'm going to have a child," Victoria now said. "A child who is never going to know his father. And I have to be able to tell him-or her-something about Ron. So I don't want to know the truth… but I need to know the truth."
"Then let me help you."
There was another silence. And finally Victoria nodded.
"Tell me about Ron," Justin said quietly.
"What kind of things do you need to know?" She was calm now. She sounded the way some people sounded after a good cry: both drained and relieved, weak but resolved.
"Remember, I knew him slightly when he was a kid. I didn't know him as a grown-up. I don't really know anything about him. But let's start with work. What did he do?"