Blood Relations (7 page)

Everyone in the room must have tossed their pockets when the police came in.

Victim was transported to the Rape Treatment Center by a friend, WIth Caitlin Dorn, 35 (see attached witness list).

Sam stared down at the name. Took a breath, let it out.

Felt the blood squeeze through his chest.

The last time he had seen Caitlin Dorn she was wearing a jade-green silk bathrobe with nothing underneath. He had gone to her apartment, but it was to tell her that he wouldn’t be back again. Their affair was over. When he tried to explain, to tell her he was sorry, Caitlin grabbed a lamp off a nightstand and hurled it at him, missing his head by inches.

Sam turned the report over on the kitchen table as if the woman to whom the name belonged might otherwise float up from the page.

aidin Dom had set up her camera pointing north. It was attached to a fat telephoto lens, and the lens was mounted on a tripod. A beach umbrella shaded Caitlin, the camera, and a cartful of photographic equipment.

Through the viewfinder she could see a backdrop of sparkling ocean, golden sand, and white hotels, all converging at a misty blue point. The sand sloped gently to the shoreline, where the turquoise water broke into frothy waves, a continuous shushing sound. Puffy clouds floated lazily in the perfect blue dome of the sky, and seagulls wheeled and dipped. Slightly to the left, waiting for a signal to begin, stood a family of idealized tourists. Woman in sun hat and flowery dress, sandals dangling from her hand. Man in khaki pants rolled to mid-calf, shirt hanging open. Some chest hair, not too much. And a little boy, five years old, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. All of them with medium-brown hair, an allpurpose ethnicity.

The idea was that they had just escaped to Miami Beach from the frigid blasts of Chicago or New Jersey or Montreal, had taken off their shoes, couldn’t wait to feel the tickle of surf on their toes. This shot would go on the cover of a brochure for potential investors in a new resort designed to lure families down from Disney World and Universal Studios to the international playground of the chic and beautiful, safely across the bay from dark, urban, crime-infested Miami.

Caidin stepped aside to let her assistant take the shot.

Tommy Chang was a student at the local community college, working mostly for the experience, which was about all Caitlin could afford to pay him. He had a bandanna for a headband, sunglasses, a collection of silver pendants around his neck on cords, a water bottle at his waist, no shirt, baggy shorts, and Velcro-strapped sandals.

She had never seen a photographer’s assistant dress much differently.

Tommy pulled out the proof. This camera held instant film so they could check the lighting and composition.

She raised her sunglasses to look at it while Tommy changed cameras. They would shoot three or four rolls of 120-millimeter film, 30 exposures per roll.

Caitlin had been a model till a few years ago. She had picked up photography as a hobby in New York, but on South Beach it had become a way to survive. Getting this job had been a stroke of luck: her boyfriend knew the man in charge of the project. Caidin knew she was good at what she did, but nobody was down at her end of the beach kissing her ass, as they did with most photographers. The two girls in swimsuits she had finished shooting earlier were hanging out on weathered, wood-slatted beach loungers, smoking. They had showered the salt water out of their hair in the production van, which was parked in the metered lot next to the beach. They sipped water out of bright containers with plastic lids and bendable straws. Caitlin could hear bits of chirpy conversation. The van owner sat in a folding chair reading the paper, a fishing hat to keep the sun off his bald spot. It was his kid playing the son in the tourist family.

The art director, a blond woman named Uta, was fussing unnecessarily with the female model’s skirt. The model smiled at her. Yes, kiss the art director’s fanny, Caitlin thought. Everybody did that.

Tommy took off down the beach to hold a reflector and passed Rafael Soto, the hair and makeup designer, coming the other way. Rafael trudged through the sand in high-top red canvas sneakers.

Stopping under Caitlin’s umbrella, he dug a lighter and cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one. The flame reflected in his big round sunglasses. He asked, “How’s her hair look?

I sprayed the hell out of it.”

She told him it looked fine. Caitlin had last seen this model half-dressed in a magazine ad for a South Beach lingerie boutique, but Rafael had made her look like a Girl Scout troop leader from the suburbs.

Holding a meter to the light, Tommy called out the exposure. “Eightfive, eight-two. Wait. There’s a cloud. Just a second. Okay, coming out. Eight-eight. Eleven. Blue sky, here we go.”

The camera whirred and clicked at two frames per second. The models walked along the same few yards of sand again and again, backing up, going forward, pretending to have a fabulous time. Swinging the little boy by the hands. Laughing. Kicking up the surf.

The art director yelled to the man not to get his trousers wet.

Rafael gossiped with Caitlin while Tommy reloaded the camera, marked the film canister, and sprinted back to the models. Tommy scooped up a reflector and tossed it up and caught it, a giant silver circle. Caitlin took her cap off for a minute to redo her hair into a ponytail.

“Uh-oh. Your roots are starting to show,” Rafael scolded, standing on his toes to look. “Want me to fix it for you sometime?”

“Yeah, do me a new head.” She looked longingly at his cigarette. “Let me have a drag. One?”

“No! You told me not to.” He held it out of reach.

“Selfish. You should quit, too, you know.”

“Why? Everyone needs at least one vice in order to remain humble.” Rafael smiled, putting the cigarette to his lips. He inhaled greedily.

Sighing, Caitlin peered through the viewfinder again.

“What the hell?” She cupped her hands around her mouth.

“Tommy!” He looked around. “Tell him to take off his nipple ring! Every time the wind opens his shirt, I can see it.”

“He wore that to a shoot?” Rafael laughed.

“Better than the time that girl showed up with a spider tattoo on her butt, and we were doing swimsuits, remember that?”

“WOW, “God, yes. I had to put on the Dermablend with a putty knife!” His laughter trailed off into a muttered “Oh, shit.”

Caitlin turned to see what he was staring at-a man standing by the production van, a tall blond in loose khakis and a white shirt with the cuffs rolled up. Caitlin recognized him: Charlie Sullivan, one of Ford’s top male models. British, but living in the States. She wondered what he was doing here. It wasn’t for this gig, not playing Mr. Middle America. If Sullivan were on a beach, he’d be lying half-nude in the surf, pulling an equally stunning female slowly up his torso, his mouth pressed to her throat, the sun bouncing off every welldefined muscle in his body. She had seen his model composite, a variety of poses and outfits. A tux. Tweeds.

Business attire. A cashmere coat over an Italian suit. Or nothing but low-slung jeans and rippling stomach muscles. He was big time now, double-page editorial shots in Details and GQ.

Caitlin glanced at Rafael. Under the big sunglasses his mouth was compressed into a tight line. She said, “You want me to tell him to get lost? I could say it’s a closed set.”

“No, forget it.”

She touched his arm. “You all right?”

“Peachy.”

Until a few months ago, Rafael had been staying at Sullivan’s beach front condo, keeping the place neat, even paying the mortgage. Sullivan returned from a trip to London and kicked him out. Caitlin had tried to warn Rafael, but he’d been deaf and blind.

She went back to her camera. The man and woman and child filled the viewfinder. The boy had a little Miami Marlins cap on now. Cute kid. Rosy cheeks, round tummy.

Draping an arm over the telephoto she shouted, “Uta!

Did you get a release from the Marlins?”

Uta yelled back, “For what?”

“The hat.”

Uta put her hands on her hips, then trotted back toward the water. She had long, tanned legs, and her blond braid bounced on her back. She motioned for Tommy to take off the boy’s hat. He sailed it toward her in an arc and she ran to catch it one-handed. Coming back up the slope, Uta caught sight of Sullivan and held out her arms. Caitlin heard her voice sliding down the scale. “Hi-i-iiii.` They kissed lightly, and Sullivan left his arm around her shoulders.

“Such a whore,” Rafael said.

“Which one?”

“Both of them. I saw them at Follia last night with their hands all over each other. Where was her husband, I’d like to know?”

“Sullivan’s in his hetero phase,” she said. “Next week it will be dogs or something.”

Rafael said, “If he comes over here, I’m leaving.”

But when Sullivan headed in their direction, Rafael didn’t move. The two swimsuit models trailed along behind him, one barefoot, one in thongs. One from a town in Alabama, the other a light-skinned Haitian whose father, according to rumor, had fled to Paris with a big chunk of the island’s treasury.

Sullivan sat on a wooden beach lounger a few yards away from the umbrella. The sun gleamed on his dark blond hair. “Hello, everyone.” He smiled, showing his perfect white teeth.

One of the models dropped down beside him. “Comment Ca va, mon cher? When did you get back?”

He gave her a peck on the lips. “Forever ago. Two weeks, at least. I was in Oslo, where I nearly froze my bum off.”

The American girl bumped his shoulder with a hip. “I heard something about you.”

“Should I ask?”

“You’re the runway feature model in Milan for DolceGabbana’s winter collection.”

“Yes, my agent called last week, and I’m still in shock.”

Rafael said coolly, “And here you are, slumming on a shoot for a resort designed for the bowling-alley crowd.”

“I came to watch your hair-spray technique.”

He glared down at Sullivan through his sunglasses. “By the way, You still have several of my CDs. I would like to come pick them up.”

“Whenever you like. I’ll leave them downstairs with the doorman.” Sullivan smiled.

Rafael spun around and headed up the beach.

Caitlin said, “I don’t think it’s such a hot idea, your being here. It’s upsetting Rafael.”

“Everything upsets Rafael. Actually, it’s you I came to talk to.”

“What about?”

“The thing at the Apocalypse last week, what else?”

The Haitian girl sat cross-legged on the sand and lit a cigarette. Her toenails were painted red, and a thin gold chain glittered on her ankle. “Everybody is talking about it. They say you were there.”

Sullivan nodded. “Yes, sorry to say. Having nothing better to do that night, and being in the mood for something trashy, which George Fonseca’s parties always are, I went along.”

The American girl adjusted the straw in her insulated tumbler. “I can’t believe it was rape. I mean, Ali Duncan is such a slut.”

Caitlin said, “Excuse me? She’s a friend of mine. And not a slut.”

The girl raised one slender shoulder.

“I was there, too,” Caitlin said, “and I’m not going to talk about it. Sullivan, you shouldn’t either.”

The Haitian model said, 1 read the article in the New Times, but they made it to be that everyone was drunk and this happens all the time, every night.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?” Sullivan drawled. “The tourists will be so disappointed.”

The other girl said, “A friend of mine was there with her boyfriend, and she told me that the lights came on and the music went off, and everybody was like, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“

Sullivan said, “Caitlin, after you and Ali left, a policeman barged right into the VIP room. He was screaming, ‘Get back, turn on the fucking lights! Nobody move.” Klaus’s bodyguard tried to push him out, but he drew his gun and called for some backup. They came in like storm troopers, blocking the exits, taking names.

Everyone looked quite dazed. Never, never turn on the lights in a nightclub. The carpet alone will make you in.

And meanwhile Klaus Ruffini was pouring himself another glass of champagne and smiling as if he’d never had so much fun. They didn’t arrest him because, well, look who they’d be arresting, but I personally know that the matter is now under investigation.”

The Haitian girl nodded, excited to be in on this. “The police want to raid the Apocalypse for a long time. I heard they have arrest many people that night for drugs. They might close it down because of letting girls in so young, do you think so?”

Caitlin refocused the telephoto, then circled her hand in the air to signal she was ready. Tommy called out the exposure. “Eleven … eight-seven … eleven … Okay, holding at eleven.”

In a hushed voice, the American girl said, “Sullivan, tell us. What did they do to her? Like, with a champagne bottle? Ewww!”

“Sorry, I’ve been instructed not to discuss that. But I distinctly heard George tell Klaus that he had arranged a surprise for him. He meant Ali, of course, as if she were an hors d’ouevre. Then Klaus said he wanted to see Marquis Lamont do it to her first.”

“He didn’t!”

“He offered George five thousand dollars to see the big black guy have sex with her. But he said it in words too crude to repeat.”

The American model shrieked. “Oh, God! That is so gross! Five thousand dollars? You lie!”

“It’s true, I swear.” He broke into laughter. “Oh, stop, that tickles.”

“You’re a lying sack!”

Caitlin spun around from the camera. “All of you, shut up! I’m trying to work.”

The models climbed off Sullivan, and with a sigh he leaned back on the lounge chair, locked his wrists over his forehead, and closed his eyes. There were suffused giggles from the women, then silence.

Caitlin looked through the camera. Little boy digging in the sand with red plastic shovel. Mom looking at a shell.

Dad on one knee, hand on mom’s shoulder. Everybody smiling. Tommy and Rafael holding the reflectors just right. No harsh shadows. Perfect.

Then the man swung the little boy onto his shoulders.