“Until Trinity had them killed.”
It was Sabrina’s turn to look stunned. “The deaths were accidents. I never read anything suggesting they weren’t.”
“The police in Pennsylvania were ready to write off Dominique’s and Gary’s deaths as accidents,” Desmond said. “Carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t uncommon. The only reason I knew it was foul play is because Dominique called me.”
“You think Trinity arranged for her brothers to die?”
Desmond considered that. “Who else benefitted from their deaths? She went from sharing a multibillion-dollar fortune to having it all to herself.”
Chapter 34
After Sabrina left, Desmond rushed out of Grand Central, heading north. He hoped his head would clear by the time he reached Zachary Amberson’s office on Park Avenue. Desmond hated lawyers, as a rule. If his own experience with them, and his mother’s, had taught him anything, it was that when the chips were down, all a lawyer cared about was saving his own ass. It didn’t matter where they went to school, though he reserved an extra dose of contempt for the ones with Ivy League degrees on their walls and cushy Italian shoes on their feet. He’d had one of those once, when he was fourteen and he’d gotten into serious trouble. He’d been caught holding drugs for a dealer, and his court-appointed attorney was a shark in a slick suit who was doing some pro bono work in the war zone of Chicago’s South Side. It only occurred to Desmond later that the man was probably being punished for some transgression of his own, and that was why he listened to Desmond’s mother talk with his eyes glazed over. All the boy has to do is roll over on the dealer, the lawyer explained in his oily voice. It’s that simple. The prosecutor doesn’t give a rat’s ass about him. He’ll get some community service and you’ll be done.
Until someone firebombs our house, his mother pointed out.
In the end, Desmond got lucky. The dealer turned rat, and Desmond was mostly off the hook, since no one needed his testimony anymore. When he looked back, he wondered what was going on inside his childish head then. How could he have put his mother through the things he did? But then he remembered what happened the day that the court lost interest in him. Once his stepfather realized the boy didn’t need to show up for any more interviews, he took his old leather belt and beat Desmond with it for a half-hour. He didn’t stop until long after Desmond started bleeding.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. That was Marcus Aurelius. Desmond focused on the words until the past receded and he was fully in the present again.
Amberson’s office was at a predictably expensive address in Midtown. The building looked like a movie set. In the lobby there was some weird, twisty sculpture that probably cost a million bucks. The place reeked of money.
“I’m here to see Zachary Amberson,” he told one of the uniformed guards at the security desk, an elderly man who looked like he’d rather be elsewhere.
“You have ID?” The guard’s eyes were dark, almost as brown as his skin.
“Yes.” He fished into his pocket for his wallet and pulled out his driver’s license.
“Hammond, Indiana?” the guard read aloud. “Never heard of it.”
“It’s a suburb of Chicago.”
He typed Desmond’s name into a computer. “You have an appointment?” He sounded dubious.
“No.”
“That lawyer don’t see nobody without an appointment.”
“He’s going to want to see me.”
The guard’s eyes were flat. “We’ll see,” he muttered, picking up the phone and tapping in a code. “Hello. We’ve got a Desmond Edgars here to see Zachary Amberson.” The guard listened for a moment, glancing up at Desmond. “She says you don’t have an appointment.”
“Tell her it’s about Dominique Monaghan.”
The guard repeated this into the receiver. “She still says you don’t have an appointment.”
“It’s also about Gary Cowan.”
The guard’s eyebrows crawled up his creased forehead, and he dropped his head forward in obvious disbelief at Desmond’s obtuseness. Still, he passed the message along. Then he rolled his eyes and hung up the phone. “She hung up,” he told Desmond.
“But how do I get up there to see him?”
“You don’t.” The guard picked up Desmond’s ID and started to hand it back, but he glanced at it again and his expression softened slightly. “You were in the service?” The Indiana driver’s license made that fact hard to miss, with its Veteran designation.
“Combat Aviation Brigade, Fourth Infantry Division.”
“Iron Eagles.” The guard nodded at him. “What’d you fly?”
“Apaches and Black Hawks.”
“My father was one of the original Red Tail Angels. You know about them?”
“The Tuskegee Airmen? Of course!” Desmond didn’t have much regard for actors or sports stars, but he revered the Tuskegee Airmen. They were the first African-American aviators in the armed forces, serving with supreme distinction in the Second World War. He fought the urge to tell the guard that the fire-breathing panther on his left deltoid was based on their unofficial emblem, and it was in their honor.
The guard smiled at his boyish enthusiasm and handed back his license. “Don’t take it personal. They don’t see nobody up there. Amberson’s secretary, Marina, is like a pit bull. Got a lot of mileage on her, but she’s not slowing down. She wouldn’t let the Pope up there.” He hesitated slightly. “That lady you mentioned, she a relative of yours?”
“My sister.”
“She’s been in here a couple times. She’s a model, ain’t she?”
“She was a model. About three years back, she became a stylist. But she still looked like a model.”
“You couldn’t miss her,” the guard said. “Or forget her. Nice girl, too. Raised right. She doing okay?”
“She died over the weekend.” There was a catch in Desmond’s throat as he said the words.
Something shifted in the guard’s face. “She was in an accident?”
“Carbon monoxide poisoning.”
The guard shook his head slowly. “What a tragedy. I am sorry.”
Desmond nodded dumbly before he found his voice. “Do you remember when she
