Sylvie beams. 'I observe. What's interesting here isn't the trial, it's the media battles surrounding it. It's all going into my book. By the way, David – you better watch out. This morning CNN fired Henderson. I hear they're bringing in Washburn. He's good.' She giggles, then turns away.
I step out to the lobby to call Pam on my cell phone.
'Where are you?' I ask when she picks up.
'Production suite.'
'Hear about the fight?'
'Yeah. Boys'll be boys.'
'Is it true Henderson's out and Washburn's in?'
'You've got good sources, David. I'm with Wash now.'
You really call him that?'
'Hey, Wash!' she says. 'It's David Weiss. He doesn't like your nickname.'
I hear a male voice mutter something in the background.
Pam conveys the message: 'Starrett says Wash'll cream your ass.'
So… Pam, her producer, Jim Starret, and their new courtroom artist hire, Lee Washburn, are in a strategy meeting upstairs plotting my professional demise. Chastened, I return to Waldo's for a second Margarita.
Washburn, I know, could be a serious competitor. One of the two or three top courtroom artists in the country, he's known for his powerful compositions and incredible speed. Well, he may draw faster than me, but I'm confident I'm better at characterization. Since this'll be the first time we've covered the same trial, I also know I can expect a battle. And no mercy from Pam, though she's been especially sweet and ingratiating since I dressed her down for snooping in my room.
I'm fairly well lubricated by the time they come downstairs – Pam, Starret, and the famous Wash whom I recognize from photographs that accompanied a profile in TV Guide. He's got himself up like an artist – long, black hair, drooping black mustache, black pants, and black silk shirt billowing around his cadaverous arms.
Pam gives me a quick peck on the cheek.
'Hi,' Wash says, extending his hand. 'Really love your work.'
I nod. We shake. His eyes, I note, are soft and liquid, sensitive artist's eyes.
As Starret pulls him toward a table across the room, Pam perches beside me and orders a margarita.
'Nice guy,' I tell her. 'All he lacks is a beret.'
She grins. 'You're not worried, are you?'
'I wish you'd told me you were bringing him in.'
'Starret's decision. Anyhow I try to keep my private life separate.'
'Yeah, I understand. I do that myself. Which is why I haven't told you my secrets yet.'
'I know something's going on with you,' she says. 'I even think you enjoy cutting me out. You've got that smug, cut-out look.'
I flip open my sketch pad, press a pencil to the paper. 'Describe it.'
'What?'
'That look.'
'Oh… you know.' She shrugs. 'The knowing little twinkle in the eye. The secretive little curl to the lip.'
I quickly draw a pair of eyes and lips. 'Like this?'
'No, worse,' she says. 'The tight I'm-going-to-scoop-you grin.'
This girl's not only smart, she's got me psyched.
'What's the matter, David? Can't draw it?'
'Show it to me.'
She makes a couple of awful faces, then sticks out her tongue. 'Nya-nya-nya!' She drains off half her margarita. 'If you really want to know what I'm talking about, take a look in the mirror.'
At that she lightly pats my shoulder, picks up her glass, and saunters off toward the CNN table across the room, giving me just the flimsiest little wave before sitting down with Starret and Wash, my new rival in the courthouse drawing wars.
Four hours later, after dinner at a seafood restaurant in Irontown and a bout of lovemaking that leaves us sweaty and spent, I turn to her, ask if she's ready to hear my story.
She perks up immediately, props her head on her elbow, and tells me, yes, she's ready.
I lie back, stare up at the blank ceiling of her hotel room, and spill.
'There was a double murder here when I was a kid. I went to a private day school out in the country. Turned out one of my teachers was having an affair with the mother of a classmate. One hot summer afternoon, when they were making love at a sleazy motel, someone burst in with a shotgun and blasted them both to bits. Huge local scandal. The woman was a socialite and a great beauty, divorced in-law of one of the richest families in town. The prime suspect was another man she'd been having an affair with, a guy who owned a nightclub across the county lien. No arrests, nothing was proven, and the nightclub guy himself was gunned down within the year. That was more or less the end of it. Interest wound down. But me and my best friend at school were fascinated by the crime. For one thing, we'd been particularly fond of the teacher. He was a gentle guy – or so we thought. Also because his death was so shocking to us, we spent a huge amount of time talking the murders through, thinking we could solve them like you can solve a puzzle in a mystery novel.'
'There was other stuff. Everyone at school was upset by what happened… as was everyone in Calista society. But the murders seemed to affect my parents to an unusual degree. It was about that time that my family came apart. My mom and dad were at dagger points. Dad was a doctor, a shrink. Turned out he was treating the victim, Mrs. Fulraine. Turned out he'd met her the same day she met the teacher, spring Parents Day at our school. There's the coincidence – this incredibly glamorous woman appears at Parents Day and, within a couple hours, meets a shrink with whom, shortly thereafter, she begins a course of psychoanalysis, and a young teacher with whom, shortly thereafter, she starts a tumultuous and ultimately tragic affair.'
I turn from the ceiling to look at Pam. Fascinated, she peers into my eyes.
'What happened?'
'I told you – they were killed.'
'I mean with your folks.'
'They separated. A few months after the murders. Mom decided she wanted to move back to California where she'd been brought up. I didn't want to leave my school and friends, but Mom was determined. We – Mom, my sister Rachel, and me – left Calista that January in the middle of a blizzard. The following week, I started at a new school in L.A. Six weeks later, Dad committed suicide.'
'They say he lingered in his office after his last appointment of the day, then, a couple hours later when it was dark, leapt out his office window. It was a medical building on Gale Avenue. The window faced the back so no one saw him fall. He landed in the doctor's parking lot. They didn't find him till the next morning. He didn't die immediately, might have been saved if there'd been someone around to call for an ambulance. Instead he lay there all night, body broken, bleeding to death in the snow.'
'My mother brought us back for the funeral, held, coincidentally, in a synagogue in Van Buren Heights for which the son of a man who took a haunting, erotic photo of Mrs. Fulraine is now creating a sculpture for a Holocaust memorial. A couple years later, Mom married another doctor, an internist. My father's last name was Rubin; Mom's second husband's name was Weiss. When he adopted me, I took his name. David Rubin became David Weiss.'
Pam seems moved. 'Thank you for telling me this, David.'
'You've been so good lately about not asking me to spill my guts, I figured it was finally time for me to spill them. You see, for years I believed, and still do, that everything that happened – my parents' breakup, Dad's suicide, the fact that I now have a name different from the one I started out with – had something to do, tenuously or directly, with the strange woman whose life I want to understand, the murder victim, Barbara Fulraine.'
