Uncorked Page 7

  “I’m…” I cleared my throat and managed to refrain from glancing at the onlookers. Their attention made me fidgety. It’s possible that the senator no longer noticed when he was the epicenter of attention, but I rather suspected he was not entirely oblivious. “I’m well,” I said, using my best diction. It always came out when my hair was curled. “How are you?”

  He shook his head, looking somber and wise and paternal. It was an impressive performance, considering his history involving young women and old scotch. “Let us not speak of me. It is you with whom I am concerned.” That’s how he spoke. Not like an everyday, on-the-street kind of guy, but with an old-world charm that left the great unwashed masses, of which I was just one mass, hanging onto every word. Sometimes I wondered if he had to spend extra time slumped in his easy chair at home, wearing nothing but his whitey-tighties and cursing the TV just to offset his public demeanor. “I know this is not easy for you.”

  “Senator.” The maitre d’ appeared with shining obsequiousness. “Might you wish for your usual seat?”

  “Ahh, Antoine. Si, gracias.” And touching a hand to my back, the senator ushered me toward the inner sanctum of one of L.A.’s snootiest restaurants. If I were paying for the meal we would have been throwing down French fries at Micky D’s by then, but the senator had picked the spot and therefore, I assumed, also planned on making the payments.

  The maitre d’ pulled out my chair. I eased into it, remembering, before I sat down, to tuck my skirt against my thighs like an honest-to-goodness lady. The ensemble I wore was one of my favorites. The skirt was a cute little silky number, popsicle green with a ruffle around the hem just for fun. My blouse was just as adorable. It was strappy and form fitting and topped off with a funky beaded necklace that my sister-in-law had made while pregnant. She and my brother’s ensuing offspring was proof positive that it doesn’t take a shitload of brain cells to create motile sperm.

  “Antoine,” the senator said, “we shall have a bottle of your ‘95 Chateau Margaux, please, and a few minutes alone.” The maitre d’ left with a slight bow. The senator turned toward me. “Christina…” he said, and reaching across the table, took my right hand in his. His fingernails were prettier than mine. “You look more lovely than ever.”

  I refrained from clearing my throat but couldn’t quite resist fiddling with the silverware with my free hand. Each piece weighed half a ton and if hocked, could probably pay my second mortgage. “Thank you.”

  His expression sobered even further, which was quite a miraculous feat. “I cannot tell you how it pained me to hear that you and my son had gone your separate ways. I have, for so long, thought of you as my daughter,” he said, and stroked my knuckles. A little shiver of something less than familial raced up my spine. It was difficult to identify. In fact, maybe it was best not to try. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the senator had become engaged to one of his son’s ex-girlfriends. Even more recently, said girlfriend had been found toes up on the senator’s well-polished hardwood floor.

  The Rivera family closets come fully stocked…skeletons being liberally scattered amongst the Armani suits.

  “Thank you,” I said again, and coyly dropped my gaze to the tablecloth. “But that’s not what I wished to speak to you about.”

  “Of course not.” He drew a deep breath, making his nostrils flare dramatically. “Of course it is not, Christina, for you are a wonderful, caring woman.”

  I stared at him. I’ve been called a bunch of things. Wonderful, caring…not so often.

  He shrugged, eyes sparking a little at my obvious uncertainty. “Even though you and my son are no longer lovers, you still care for his well-being, si?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that one. I mean, I had no intention of saying that I retained any sort of feelings for Rivera. He was an ass, remember? Then again, it seemed kind of wrong to tell the senator that his only son was a cheating piece of dog poop and I didn’t care if he burned in hell for all eternity. I hedged carefully. “Do you know where he’s being held?”

  He stared at me for a second, saying nothing, then, “Christina…” His paternal voice was one of his best, but my knuckles hadn’t forgotten the stroking. “I know you only wish to help, but this wound…” He shook his head gently. “…it is not yours to heal.”

  “I know, but Rivera…” I paused and adjusted my phraseology to fit the audience. “Gerald and I were…” What were we exactly? “We were friends, and it only seems right that I help him.” I leaned forward, hands fisted on the table, emotions circling like angry buzzards inside me. “I need answers, Senator. Why was he arrested? What kind of evidence do they have that he was involved? Where is he?”

  “Ahhh…” He shook his head and stroked my hand again. “Such is your kindness even though he broke your heart.”

  “He didn’t break my heart,” I said, even though he had kind of broken my heart. “We simply decided it would be best if we went our separate ways. I mean, we’re too different. But that’s not the point. The point is, he’s been unjustly accused.”

  He smiled with kindly understanding. “You are a generous woman,” he said. “And I am certain you are right. I am certain that the other woman meant nothing to him.”

  Who was talking about the other woman? I certainly hadn't. I hadn’t even been thinking of the other woman…mostly. Still, I felt my face heat up, felt my anger flare like an acetylene torch. “You know about her?”

  His smile lifted a little more. “I have been planted in the City of Angels for a long while, Christina. My roots go deep. There is little I do not know, especially if it concerns those for whom I care.”

  “I care for him, too,” I said, but if Rivera had been standing right in front of me at that precise moment, I would have been hard pressed not to smack him in the eye with the just-arrived bottle of whatever the hell it was. “Not in a romantic way,” I hurried to add. “But more like a…” I was going to say brother, but I detest my own brothers. Besides, the idea of doing the things with a brother that I had done with Rivera made me want to heave up my ovaries. “Senator…,” I said, changing tack. Leaning back slightly, I carefully withdrew my hand from his grasp. “Do you know where your son is being held?”

  He stared at me with doleful earnestness. “I am afraid I do not.”

  Like most politicians, Senator Rivera was an exemplary liar. I mean, I’m good, but I may never have the opportunity to hone my skills to the razor-sharp edge he has achieved. Practice, you know, is everything.

  “As you said, your roots go deep,” I reminded him. “Therefore, I find it somewhat difficult to believe—” He held up a perfectly manicured hand.

  “Perhaps I should have said that I do not wish to know where he is."

  “Senator, please,” I began, ready to plead in earnest, but in that instant I realized what he had just said and canted my head in his direction. “You don’t want to know?”

  He shrugged, a ridiculously graceful lift of his ridiculously expensive shoulder pads. “I am certain that seems harsh, Christina, but the truth is this…” Another deep sigh of paternal patience. “I believe now that I was wrong to fight my son’s battles for so long. I did him no favors, I think, by disallowing him to pay his debt to society.” It was said that Rivera Junior had spent some time in juvie…but only until Rivera Senior could pull the necessary strings to get him out. How he had, later, been accepted into cop class with no questions asked was not much of a mystery. “I fear it is time for Gerald to pay his own debts.”

  “His own debts?” Something bubbled in my innards, but I calmed the digestive juices. “You’re not saying you think he’s guilty.”

  “Ahh, Christina…” He stared at me with tender understanding. “How it warms the cockles of my heart to realize your loyalty even after all he has done.”

  I scowled at him. I didn’t really care what it did to his cockles. The man’s son was in trouble. And a father was supposed to care about that sort of thing. Wasn’t he?

&
nbsp; “This isn’t about what he’s done to me,” I said. “This has to do with the fact that he’s innocent.”

  He leaned toward me, and though he didn’t glance right or left, I got the impression that he was sensing those around him, making sure none were listening…or perhaps making sure they were. “And are you so certain he is innocent, Christina? Are you really?”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “He’s not a murderer.”

  The senator watched me in silence for a moment, then shook his head. “I do not wish to degrade your faith in him, Christina, but perhaps you do not know him as well as you think. My son, though I care a great deal for him, can be a very difficult man.”

  I stared at him, keeping my expression bland and managing to refrain from reminding him that his son had been the bane of my existence for more than five years. He’d accused me of murdering my would-be rapist, for God’s sake. “All right,” I said carefully. “I’ll grant that he can be difficult. But being a police officer is extremely important to him. He would never sabotage his career.”

  “Christina, my dear…” He sighed heavily and shook his head once.

  I gritted my teeth. Patience is not my first virtue. I can name a couple dozen other qualities that aren’t right up there at the top of the list as well. I considered telling the good senator, before things got out of hand, that self control was amongst them. But he blissfully continued in his increasingly irritating patient tone.

  “I know it may seem, at times, that Gerald does not care for you as you deserve, but I believe, in my heart”—he curled his long fingers against the left side of his chest–“that he does.”

  I shook my head, unsure what that had to do with the price of tortillas. But he went on to explain.

  “Think on it, Christina. My son is a good man in his own way. But he is, sometimes, impulsive. Rash, even. Does it not seem that he might well be capable of doing something…” He shrugged again. “…illegal, if he felt it would accomplish his goals?”

  “Goals?”

  A flicker of sympathy zipped across his fatherly expression. “He has, for a long while, been extremely concerned with your safety, my dear.”

  “What?”

  “Surely you have considered the possibility that he has done this to make certain that this Jackson Andrews does not harm you.”

  I blinked. I honestly had not considered that. And I really didn’t care to consider it now. I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Perhaps you do not realize how very much he cares for you.”

  “I…” I shook my head again. It still didn’t do much good.

  “We Latinos,” he said, “It is a problem of ours, but …sometimes we love too much.”

  One of my eyebrows rose of its own volition. “What’s that?”

  “The fact that he was with another…” He shrugged. “It does not mean that he cares any the less for you.”

  I blinked. “So you’re saying your son doesn’t care enough about me to keep his pants zipped, but he cares enough to spend the rest of his life in prison?”

  The senator lifted his hands, palms up, as if to say he had finally found a woman who understood his kind. I stared at him.

  “This actually makes sense to you?” I asked.

  “Well, my dear, I care a great deal for Rosita.”

  “Your ex-wife.”

  “Si. She is the light of my life.” He placed both weirdly expressive hands over the place where his heart might have been if he hadn't thrown his hat into the political ring. “The flame that ever burns in my-”

  “Do you always cheat on the light of your life?”

  “I did not cheat…so much as…” He lifted his shoulders, letting his hands drop to the table. “Stray.”

  “You—” I stopped myself before my head began spinning like Linda Blair’s and icky things came spewing out of my mouth. Although I’m a firm believer that cursing is our God-given right and an excellent stress reliever, I have yet to see documentation that it improves inter-personal relationships. I cleared my throat, smoothed a wrinkle from the pristine white napkin in front of me, and gave him a prim smile. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what this has to do with your son.”

  “He…strayed from you.”

  “Okay.”

  “The culture of our people…the passion of our people makes us…” He wobbled his head back and forth as if searching for the perfect word. The term assholes popped into my mind but I held it captive pending later release. “There are times when it makes us wander.”

  I waited.

  “But the American culture…” He shrugged. “It suggests we should confine our passions to but one woman forever.”

  I remained spectacularly silent.

  “This…what is the word? This dichotomy…it tears at us,” he said, and made a ripping motion with his hands. “There is the passion we feel in our hearts that must be quenched. But once our ardor is sated, then there is the guilt.”

  I settled back in my seat, took a deep breath and wondered if it would be wrong to stab him in the nuts with my sterling silver fork.

  “Let me get this straight.” I narrowed my eyes at him. He watched me steadily. More cowardly men, I have to admit, have dived under the table at less provocation. “You believe your son cheated on me, then felt so guilty about it that he attempted to murder a man in an attempt to save me from him.”

  He shrugged. “As I have said, Christina, we are a passionate people.”

  I opened my mouth to spew forth the aforementioned venom, then closed it judiciously and smiled a little. “All right. Well…” I spread my hands and did not consider how it would feel to tighten them around his throat. “Wouldn't that same passion guarantee that you would try to exonerate your only son?”

  His sigh was heavy and long suffering. “I would so love to, Christina. Truly I would, but as I’ve said, I feel it is time for Gerald to fight his own battles, to—”

  “Senator?”

  I turned my head at the sound of a female voice. The woman standing beside our table was in her late thirties. She was round on top, small on the bottom, and disappeared to practically nothing in between.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt.” She sounded a little breathless. Maybe I would too if I had no in-between. “But could I bother you for a photograph?”

  The senator delayed just a moment, as if debating whether it would be better to insult a potential constituent or to interrupt a conversation concerning the continued well-being of his only son. In a fraction of a second, he graced her with his million-watt smile. “Certainly,” he said.

  She gushed. They stood. Someone took about forty-seven pictures.

  “Thank you so much,” she crooned.

  “My pleasure.”

  “And I hope the rumors are true.”

  “Rumors?” he asked.

  She leaned in close. “A little birdie told me you might yet run for president.”

  “Well…” He smiled. “Let us keep that between us and the sparrows, shall we?”

  “Of course,” she said, and giggled as she made a motion to zip her lips.

  He smoothed a hand down the front of his thousand-dollar suit coat, sat down and sighed. “How I long for a simple life,” he said.

  I still didn’t stab him. “You could move to Nelson, Nebraska,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Population four hundred and twenty-seven. I hear it’s very picturesque.”

  He stared at me a moment, as if trying to ascertain if I was kidding, but I kept my expression deadpan, and he sighed again. “There are times when I would like nothing better than to return to my agrarian roots, Christina, but I feel that this great country of ours…this wonderful, sprawling land”—he waved one benevolent hand at the world at large as if blessing it with his presence—“it is not finished with me yet. And I cannot in good conscience leave—”

  “You’re selling him out.” The idea struck me like a thunderclap.

  “Wh
at?” He looked both shocked and appalled. “Christina—” he began, but I huffed a laugh.

  “You’re hoping for another public office and you want your constituents to believe you’re so honest, so unbiased, that you won’t even pull any strings to save your own son.”

  “Christina, you cut me to the quick!”

  I jerked to my feet, finding, with some surprise, that my fork had come with me. But he was still talking.

  “You wound me to the core.”

  “I might,” I snarled and tightened my grip on the sterling silver handle, “if you don’t even try to the learn the truth!”

  He held my gaze with steely steadiness. “Is it the truth you want, Christina? Is it really?”

  I blinked. “Of course it is.”

  He nodded once, as serious as death. “Sit down, my dear.”

  I felt an odd premonition tingle the soles of my feet, but remained as I was, bent at the waist, leaning into his face like a slavering hound. “I prefer to stand,” I said.

  “Very well then,” he said. “The truth is this; Gerald was at Andrews’ house the night he was shot."

  “What?” I felt myself weaken at the knees.

  “Sit down, Christina.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. My tone sounded fuzzy.

  “Sadly, I am not.”

  I searched his eyes, his expression, his body language. He looked old suddenly and hopelessly honest. “How do you know?” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “I know because Gerald told Captain Kindred that it is so,” he said.

  I blinked, nodded, took a deep breath and drifted back into my just-abandoned chair. "What else did Kindred tell you?"

  "He said it would do my son no good if I got involved."

  Chapter 9

  Reality is for guys who don’t know how to make shit up.

  —Michael McMullen, who made up quite a bit of shit

  “So Rivera was seen hanging around Andrews’s house on the night of the shooting?” Elaine was sitting in my kitchen, nibbling on an organic lettuce leaf like an environmentally friendly French Lop.