“So shouldn’t the judge see me so he knows that’s not true?”
She hesitated. “We do want that testimony about her planner, but putting you up could backfire.” She sounded so apologetic, as if the issue were my ego rather than the case. “We genuinely have enough with the blood. That’s the core of our argument. You’re one person who should’ve been interviewed, but we have others. They’re building up to hitting you hard on cross, and if we don’t put you up, it signals we have plenty without you.”
I said, “That makes sense.” It did, but I could hear the devastation in my own voice and certainly Amy could, too. I said, “We won’t have a chance to name Denny Bloch, then.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “But at this point, I think it dilutes the case.” She sounded so careful, so conciliatory. Not for the first time, I worried Amy thought I was hung up on my own agenda.
I said, “Can I come watch the proceedings, then?”
I already knew the answer: I’d be a distraction there, too. What she said, though, was “You’re still on our list; nothing’s definite. If you can stay in town that’s great, and you’re still sequestered.”
“Right.”
“We’ll probably rest late Monday or early Tuesday, and then you can go.”
I calculated that I could use the next few days as a writing retreat. I was deep into my research on Marion Wong and the Mandarin Film company. I could lose myself in that all day. But writing time was a sorry consolation prize. All I wanted was to be on the stand.
Your name had been sitting in my throat for four years, waiting to get out. I’d been waiting four years to see Omar, to look him in the eyes. I didn’t want or expect anything from him; I just wanted to see his face.
I lay on the bed a long time, listening to the elevator let people off on other floors.
12
I sat on my cracked balcony chair in my coat that evening, staring out at the long, snowy lawn and the river it sloped to. A gazebo partway down, one that might have been used for weddings in summer, sat desolate—a place to break up with someone. The sun was setting, lending everything a golden glaze and a flimsy illusion of warmth. Jerome had texted to wish me luck tomorrow, and I didn’t know how to explain that I was out here for nothing. Yahav, following the case closely via Twitter and getting updates from Alder, didn’t need to be told; not long after I hung up with Amy, he’d texted, They might feel it’s a risk now to put you up there. Any word?
I was thinking of going inside when a man came into view, pacing by the river and talking on his phone. I was fairly sure it was Geoff Richler, although this person strode confidently, with purpose, and didn’t slouch like the teenager I’d known. He wore a fleece, but his shoulders seemed built for a blazer. They were architectural supports that something expensive ought to hang from. When he returned the phone to his pocket, I called out and yes, it was Geoff; here he came leaping up the lawn. He jumped and tried to catch the lower rim of the balcony, which didn’t work the first time but worked the second—and then he was hauling himself up, getting his whole body not over the railing but outside of it, so he stood face-to-face with me, the railing between us. I put my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. He couldn’t hug me back without letting go of the railing and plummeting to the ground.
I said, “Look at you!”
He said, “Look at you!”
Social media had made him enough of a presence that it didn’t seem possible I hadn’t seen him since 1995.
He said, “Fill me in!”
“On . . . the case? My life?”
“Start with the hearing.”
I shook my head. “I’m sequestered, but I don’t think they’re actually having me testify.”
This was not the devastating news to him that it was to me. He said, “They’re not putting Denny Bloch up there? That’s all I wanted, was for them to subpoena him. Why can’t they?” Geoff had developed the variety of crow’s feet that made him look kind and wise and mischievous. He’d kept his freckles.
“I know,” I said, “I know. But the strategy—the thing is, if they get him on the stand and ask, Hey, were you sleeping with Thalia Keith?, he goes No, what the hell. They say, Some kids thought you were. He goes No, never. And he comes off sincere and gentle. End of story, and it looks like we’re grasping at straws.”
“Sure. Okay. As long as I get to knock on his door when this is over and punch him in the face.”
While we’d been cagey on the podcast about what we knew, what we suspected you of, I’d told Geoff everything. Geoff believed you were involved in Thalia’s death even more than I did—which is to say one hundred percent to my ninety-five. And while I felt some combination of betrayed and horrified when I considered you taking her life, Geoff seemed filled with a more primal rage.
The sun was sinking fast, almost gone. I said, “Are your fingers going to freeze to the railing?”
“It would be a noble death.”
I filled him in on Carlotta—he’d only known bits of it—and he closed his eyes against the news. He said, “I was always in love with her.”
“I know.”
“What it was, I had a crush on the two of you together. Not in a porny way, not like—it was the two of you as a duo. You were always having so much fun.”
I understood, even if I didn’t want to: Geoff and I would banter for hours, make each other laugh, but I was an oily-faced schlub and couldn’t flirt in the slightest. Carlotta would strum her guitar and look stunning. Together, we filled all his needs.
“We were never a duo,” I said. “There was Fran.”
“Sure. Fran was who I talked to about it.”
I said, “You know my absolute favorite memory of Carlotta?” I told him the story, which he’d surely once known: I’d been hanging out in the art studio as she finished a clay bust of Frida Kahlo, when Dorian Culler invited himself in, sat on the edge of the big metal table, tried juggling some of the thick acrylic paint tubes. We ignored him as we’d ignore a mountain lion we met in the woods, hoping our silence would cloud our scent.
“Carlotta,” Dorian said, “if I may call you that. I’m worried about our friend Bodie. You see, I’m in a serious relationship now, and I’m not sure she can handle it. True fact: That’s not even eyeliner around her eyes, she’s just been crying over me.”
While I stood frozen, Carlotta reached under the counter for a tube of blue oil paint. She squeezed some onto a brush and, stepping toward Dorian, painted a thick blue streak down his forehead and nose.
“Jesus!” he said, and hopped off the table and wiped at his face with his sleeves, but now the paint was all over. “You fucking psychopath.” He left the studio.
Carlotta said, “The best part, he’s gonna wash that with soap and it won’t work.” She laughed loud enough that he could surely hear it all the way down the hall.
At dinner that night, he was still pale blue.
“He looked like a Smurf,” I told Geoff.
Geoff laughed gleefully. He said, “That guy had issues. Miserable little dude.”