The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [9]
The mayor, Reggie thought. Christ, if only he knew.
Gold’s widow, Elizabeth, was addressing the medium-size crowd of passersby, neighborhood activists, children in yellow prop T-shirts, and television crew persons. “Solomon would be so proud,” and so forth. The woman must have loathed her husband at the end of his life but was nevertheless forced to praise him in death.
It was something she and Reggie had in common.
“Solomon would have loved this place,” said Elizabeth to the crowd. “He loved children.”
Attractive in her advancing age, Elizabeth Gold was a strong woman with broad shoulders and thin ankles and radical curves in between. During the trial, Reggie had often marveled at the physical differences between Solomon Gold’s wife and his lover. Erica Liu had been such a tiny thing. In photos, she seemed so small next to her instrument that the cello almost looked like it were playing her. Elizabeth Gold had small eyes and an impossibly small waist, but everything else about her—butt, tits, hands, and hair—was outsize. And all sexy, Reggie thought. As she spoke just in front of him and to his left, it took every bit of his concentration not to let his eyes follow the looping S shape that began just under her toned arm and ended at the bottom of her big round ass.
Reggie often wondered why Elizabeth had kept his client’s surname through two unsuccessful marriages, given how consuming her hatred of Solomon must once have been. Perhaps she just enjoyed the celebrity attached to the Gold name—the attention in charity boardrooms and the privilege of good tables in restaurants. Or maybe, Reggie realized, in fifteen years with a personality as strong as Solomon’s, her transformation into Elizabeth Gold had become irreversible. It would have been as unthinkable for her to become Elizabeth Kennedy again as it would be for a butterfly to go back to being a caterpillar.
And then there was the child they’d had together. As far as Reggie could determine, the Gold name was the only connection Elizabeth and Canada still had.
A founding board member of the Solomon Gold Foundation, Reggie attended half a dozen of these things each year—fund-raisers, tribute concerts, school dedications, and, last year a spelling bee. Despite the always-pressing needs of his wealthy and celebrity clients, Reggie never missed a Gold Foundation event. At every one, seated in a conspicuous position of honor, often next to Elizabeth Gold or his own lovely wife, he hoped his eyes wouldn’t hint at the scenes reconstructing in his mind—scenes from the night ten years ago when Reggie had been wounded and his best-known client, the acclaimed conductor and composer and accused killer, Solomon Gold, was murdered in his own home.
The case had been closed the next day when Erica Liu’s father, Michael, the primary “person of interest,” killed himself without leaving a note. There was no trial, no further investigation. Solomon’s murder could have been a crime of passion, or rage, or an assassination, or a revenge killing, or even self-defense. All these years later, Reggie still didn’t know for sure.
He knew it wasn’t an accident.
Exactly two weeks after the acquittal, the phone had rung in Reggie’s LaSalle Street office. It was just before eight and the Polish-speaking cleaning crew, hunchbacked over their vacuums and buckets, had just started their systematic march through the halls. Reggie had spent much of the early evening drinking too quickly from a twelve-year-old bottle of Maker’s Mark and staring helplessly at a pile of pink message slips, an accumulating record of calls from a dead girl’s father.
“Let’s meet,” Gold said.
Reggie had no desire to see his client. He knew it would be impossible to look into Gold’s face without seeing Erica Liu’s lifeless body reflected in his dark eyes.