The Garden of Betrayal

16

“I can’t believe it,” I said for the tenth or eleventh time. We were in Reggie’s car, across the street from my apartment building. All he’d been able to tell me thus far was that Alex had been found dead in his bathtub.

“It’s hard,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know he was a good friend of yours.” His phone rang and he checked the number. “This is my buddy at the Nineteenth Precinct. Give me a few seconds here.”

I opened the car door and got out, needing the air. We were on the west side of the street, adjacent to the stone wall bordering Riverside Park. I sat down on a bench and buried my head in my hands, attempting to come to grips with what had happened. I was shivering despite the winter sun on my back. I’d tried to be a friend to Alex-to advise him as best I knew how, and to do what I could to bolster his confidence. Ultimately, though, we’re all alone in the world, and there’s a limit to how much any one person can do for another. I choked back a sob, thinking of Alex as I’d first known him-the intelligence, the warmth, and the promise that had never been fulfilled. Reggie got out of the car a few minutes later and sat down next to me.

“I have some details if you want to hear them.”

“I guess.”

He took a minute to light a cigarette.

“Time of death won’t be officially established until the autopsy, but the tech on the scene makes it sometime early this morning, most likely between twelve and three. There was a half-empty fifth of vodka on the bathroom floor next to the tub and an open bottle of sleeping pills on the vanity. The immediate cause of death looks to be drowning.”

“Jesus.” I had an abrupt, vivid mental image of Alex’s face staring up at me from beneath a rippling sheet of water. I shook my head violently, trying to clear the vision. “Did he leave a note?”

“You think it was suicide?”

“I don’t know.” An accident would be easier for Walter and Alex’s mother to accept. “What do your guys think?”

“They’re withholding judgment. The apartment’s torn up pretty bad.”

“Torn up how?”

“Like someone was searching for something.”

A sudden thought jolted me upright.

“You’re not suggesting he was murdered?”

Reggie shrugged.

“No sign of violence on the body, so it seems unlikely. Maybe he searched the place himself, looking for a hidden bottle or an old love letter. Drunks rip stuff up all the time. We’ll know more when the medical examiner and the forensic guys report back.” He started to take another hit from the cigarette and then flung it away irritably. A woman passing by with a dog gave him a dirty look. “The hard drive’s missing from his computer.”

“So, someone else was with him.”

“Not necessarily.”

I glanced over at him.

“Listen.” He sighed. “A guy gets wasted and starts thinking about offing himself, maybe he begins to worry about what he’s leaving behind. These days, everybody’s secrets are on their computers. Did Alex have a technical background?”

“A master’s degree in economics and an undergraduate minor in computer science.”

“There you go. He must have known that it’s tough to completely erase things from a hard drive. The safe thing to do if you want to cover your tracks is to pop the drive and get rid of it. We’re checking trash cans in a ten-block radius.”

“What kind of secrets are you talking about?”

“What kind of secrets does any guy have? Porn’s always a good bet. He might have been into nasty stuff, like pictures of little kids.”

I flinched reflexively.

“I’m just speculating,” Reggie added quickly. “I’m just saying there might have been stuff he didn’t want his parents or friends to find out about when he was gone. You never know.”

Maybe his secret was that he’d done an under-the-table deal with a U.S. senator to help get him elected president. I rolled the notion around in my mind uneasily, unsure whether to mention it to Reggie. If Alex had been murdered, or driven to kill himself, the police needed to know everything. If he hadn’t, I didn’t want to drag his name through the mud with a lot of wild speculation. I felt as though I needed to talk things through with Walter.

“At any rate,” Reggie continued, “that’s all I have right now. The investigating officers will probably want to interview you at some point. I mentioned that you were a friend of his.”

“That’s fine,” I said apprehensively.

“Good, then. I gotta run. You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. I might sit here awhile, though.”

“No problem. We still getting together with Gallegos tomorrow morning?”

With everything else going on, it had slipped my mind.

“Sure,” I said, not wanting to postpone. “Meet at the diner?”

“Nine o’clock. You talk to Claire and Kate yet?”

“No. I’m waiting for the right moment.”

I left unsaid that just then, I couldn’t imagine when the right moment might be.

Dinner with Claire and Kate and Phil was a challenge. I didn’t mention Alex’s death, not wanting to cast a pall on the evening. I decided to tell them the next morning, before they had a chance to read about it in the paper.

Phil sat in Kyle’s old seat at the dining-room table. The good news for the evening was that he wasn’t shy. He got started on the year he’d spent traveling and told story after story about Third World misadventures, making Claire and Kate laugh. I smiled along as best I could. Claire had a second glass of wine and then a third, something she almost never did. Seeing her animated made my heart ache with nostalgia. Midway through dinner, I caught Kate looking at me with concern, which made my heart ache for a different reason. She was too young to be so finely attuned to unhappiness.

I quickly lost a game of Risk after dinner and retired to the bedroom, leaving the three of them to scheme cheerfully toward world domination at the kitchen table. I was dozing fitfully when Claire came to bed. She reached for my hand in the dark and pressed it to her breast. I unbuttoned the neck of her chemise slowly, desiring her but careful of her mood. She knelt upright and pulled the chemise overhead with a single fluid gesture, and then shifted sideways to straddle me. We made love silently, her head burrowed against my chest.

Afterward, I held her in my arms, my body spooned tightly to hers. I kissed her neck and tasted salt. Her breathing had slowed, but I could tell she was still awake. I felt like crying. I didn’t want to lose her as well.

“I was offered a job today,” I said.

“By who?” she asked sleepily.

“A Russian guy named Narimanov. He’s a big oil tycoon, with operations all over the world. It would be doing pretty much the same thing I’m doing now but working for him exclusively.”

“I thought you liked working with Alex and Walter.”

“It’s a lot more money,” I said, wincing at the mention of Alex.

“Do we need more money?”

“Not really,” I said. The last seven years had been good to me financially. I braced myself for the plunge. “But it got me thinking. Kate’s going to be off to college next September. There’s no reason for us to be tied down here. Maybe we should spend a year in Paris or Rome. You always told me there’s a more robust classical music scene there, and you already speak a little French and Italian.”

She stiffened slightly.

“Or somewhere else,” I added quickly. “I was just thinking a change might be good.”

“I already have a job, at Sloan-Kettering.”

“It’s a tough place to work,” I said, pushing for her to confide in me. “You never think about leaving?”

She shook my arm off her shoulders and edged away from me.

“Claire?”

“It’s late,” she said. “We’ll talk another time.”

I lay in bed next to her, tears starting from my eyes. It felt to me as if she was already gone.