Identical

“Auntie Lidia,” he called her. He rested a hand on her forearm, the brown skin mottled with age spots and a skinny white patch, shiny like an old burn. Evon was reminded of the deterioration of her mother’s skin when she was dying. It had seemed as thin as paper, as if you could tear it with your fingers. “Auntie Lidia, it’s Hal Kronon. Zeus and Hermione’s son. It’s so good to see you.” He smiled at her, as the old woman looked about trying to comprehend. Her eyes were watery from age and bald of lashes. In order to help her, Hal switched to Greek. The sole word Evon understood was when Hal repeated his given name. But Mrs. Gianis caught that, too.

“Herakles!” the old lady exclaimed. She nodded several times. “Herakles,” she repeated, and then brought her hand to Hal’s cheek with remarkable tenderness. The door swung outward again and this time Paul emerged, followed by a trio of reporters and his two young staffers. Hal stood up, wet-eyed again, his overused hanky crushed into the center of his face. Paul surveyed all of this for a second, then spoke to the attendant.

“Nelda, I think you should get Mom upstairs. They’re waiting at the home.” Mrs. Gianis was still saying ‘Herakles’ while the attendant wheeled her away. Paul turned back to Hal with a ripe expression, something between bitterness and bemusement, his lips drawn tight.

“Don’t give me the evil eye, Paul,” Hal responded. “Your mother was always kind to me. She didn’t murder anybody. Which I’d never say about you.”

At the last remark, Paul’s mouth actually fell open and he took a step back.

“Jesus, Hal.”

“Don’t ‘Jesus’ me. You got away with it, but I know you had a hand in Dita’s murder. I’ve always known that.”

The three reporters wrote furiously on their spiral pads. Paul’s brow collapsed toward his eyes. His public image was of an eternally measured person and he was not about to let that go, no matter what the provocation. He stared Hal down for only an instant longer.

“That’s nonsense, Hal. You’re upset.” He gestured to the two young people who’d accompanied him and threw on his overcoat as he hustled off down the corridor.

The reporters immediately surrounded Hal. Maria Sonreia, from Channel 4, who was in her heavy camera makeup, her eyebrows so perfectly defined that they could have been pasted on, asked Hal several times, “What exactly do you believe Senator Gianis’s role was in your sister’s murder?”

Tooley, who like Evon had stood by speechless, finally intervened, grabbing Hal by the arm and pulling him away.

“We have nothing else to say at the moment,” said Mel. “We may have a further statement tomorrow.”

Evon called for Hal’s car on the way to the elevator, and the limo, a Bentley, whose caramel leather always made her feel as if she were inside a jewel box, was at the curb when they got there. Delman, the driver, held open the door, smiling amiably as a traffic officer in an optic vest waved her lighted baton at him and told him to move. At Hal’s instruction, Evon jumped in. Delman would drop Hal at the office, then bring Evon back to pick up her car.

“Hal, what the hell was that about?” Tooley demanded, as soon as they were under way. Mel was a childhood friend of Hal’s. Among Hal’s many myths about himself was that he was ‘a city boy’ who had been raised in a bungalow in Kewahnee, not the Greenwood County mansion to which his father moved them when Hal finished junior high. He had no taste for the well-heeled suburbanites with whom he’d attended high school and college, and among whom he’d now raised his children, preferring a few grade school friends, like Mel, who truth be told had probably shunned Hal back then like everyone else. Unctuous by nature, Tooley nonetheless was direct when need be with Hal, who in the right mood could tolerate straight talk.

“You know you’re on page one tomorrow,” Mel said.

“Obviously,” said Hal. You could never forget with Hal that despite the emotional magma that frequently forced its way to the surface, he could sometimes be cunning.

“There isn’t any chance, is there, that I can talk you into issuing a public statement this afternoon retracting what you just said? If we get something out fast, then Paul may not sue you for defamation.”

“Defamation?”

“Hal, he’s running for mayor. You just called him a murderer. He’ll sue you for slander. He can’t ignore it.”

Hal was heaped inside his overcoat, arms across his chest, looking a little like a molting bird.

“I’m not retracting anything.” Having a billion dollars had an odd effect on people, Evon had come to learn. In Hal’s case, it often made him a baby. “Let him sue me. Don’t I have the right to express my opinion about somebody running for mayor?”

“Even with a public figure, Hal, the law says you can’t make accusations that show a malicious disregard for the truth.”

“It is true. Mark my words. The twins were in this together. I’ve known those two all their lives. There is no way one of them could have done something like this without involving the other one.”

Tooley shook his head.

“Hal, man, I’ve followed this case for you for decades. I’ve never seen a word that implicates Paul. And it’s a ridiculous time to make the charge. After twenty-five years, you suddenly pipe up, blaming him for his brother’s crime, just when Paul is odds-on to become mayor, and you’re the biggest donor to the other party?”

Hal considered all of this with a sour expression, his eyes skittering about behind his thick lenses like cornered mice.

“The guy pisses me off.”

Evon was in no position yet to fully comprehend the web of family resentments at play here. But at least one part of Hal’s fury was understandable. Dita’s murder had ended his father’s political career. Zeus had abandoned his campaign for governor within days of his daughter’s death. And here was Paul, scaling Mount Olympus, with the papers already saying that if he won, the governor’s office was likely to be next.

“I always thought he had something to do with it,” Hal said. “My parents would never hear that, neither one of them. My father kept telling us, ‘This is as big a tragedy for the Gianises as it is for us,’ and my mother, especially after my dad died, she just hated discussing the entire thing. And I kept quiet for their sakes. But they’re gone now and I’m speaking my mind. I think I’m actually going to run ads.” Hal nodded decisively. Evon was beginning to recognize that none of Hal’s remarks, here or back in the corridor, were completely spontaneous. He had been considering making a scene, and the potential aftermath, when he’d arrived today.

“That’ll only force him into court,” Tooley said. “You go that route, big fella, you gotta have some proof.”

“Evon will find the evidence.”

“Me?” She couldn’t contain herself. But she had spent three years now extracting Hal from the holes he blundered into.

“Call Tim,” Hal said.

“Tim?” asked Evon. Hal was referring to the PI he’d had tailing Corus Dykstra from YourHouse the day before.

“Tim knows all about this case,” said Hal. “He never thought we had the whole story. I bet he already has plenty of dope on Paul.”

They had reached the ZP Building, and Hal, who had a conference call on the YourHouse acquisition, hopped out so he could get upstairs to his office on the fortieth floor. But he stuck his head back into the car for one second to hand over a slip of paper.

“That’s Tim’s cell. Find him. He’ll help.”

3

Horgan-January 10, 2008

Raymond Horgan’s generosity had been a fair wind at Paul Gianis’s back throughout his career. Stan Sennett, Ray’s former chief deputy, who was Paul’s second cousin, had gotten Paul his first interview with Ray in