Identical Read Online Free Page B

waiting at the home.” Mrs. Gianis was still saying ‘Herakles’ while the attendant wheeled her away. Paul turned back to Hal with a ripe expression, something between bitterness and bemusement, his lips drawn tight.
    “Don’t give me the evil eye, Paul,” Hal responded. “Your mother was always kind to me.
She
didn’t murder anybody. Which I’d never say about you.”
    At the last remark, Paul’s mouth actually fell open and he took a step back.
    “Jesus, Hal.”
    “Don’t ‘Jesus’ me. You got away with it, but I know you had a hand in Dita’s murder. I’ve always known that.”
    The three reporters wrote furiously on their spiral pads. Paul’s brow collapsed toward his eyes. His public image was of an eternally measured person and he was not about to let that go, no matter what the provocation. He stared Hal down for only an instant longer.
    “That’s nonsense, Hal. You’re upset.” He gestured to the two young people who’d accompanied him and threw on his overcoat as he hustled off down the corridor.
    The reporters immediately surrounded Hal. Maria Sonreia, from Channel 4, who was in her heavy camera makeup, her eyebrows so perfectly defined that they could have been pasted on, asked Hal several times, “What exactly do you believe Senator Gianis’s role was in your sister’s murder?”
    Tooley, who like Evon had stood by speechless, finally intervened, grabbing Hal by the arm and pulling him away.
    “We have nothing else to say at the moment,” said Mel. “We may have a further statement tomorrow.”
    Evon called for Hal’s car on the way to the elevator, and the limo, a Bentley, whose caramel leather always made her feel as if she were inside a jewel box, was at the curb when they got there. Delman, the driver, held open the door, smiling amiably as a traffic officer in an optic vest waved her lighted baton at him and told him to move. At Hal’s instruction, Evon jumped in. Delman would drop Hal at the office, then bring Evon back to pick up her car.
    “Hal, what the
hell
was that about?” Tooley demanded, as soon as they were under way. Mel was a childhood friend of Hal’s. Among Hal’s many myths about himself was that he was ‘a city boy’ who had been raised in a bungalow in Kewahnee, not the Greenwood County mansion to which his father moved them when Hal finished junior high. He had no taste for the well-heeled suburbanites with whom he’d attended high school and college, and among whom he’d now raised his children, preferring a few grade school friends, like Mel, who truth be told had probably shunned Hal back then like everyone else. Unctuous by nature, Tooley nonetheless was direct when need be with Hal, who in the right mood could tolerate straight talk.
    “You know you’re on page one tomorrow,” Mel said.
    “Obviously,” said Hal. You could never forget with Hal that despite the emotional magma that frequently forced its way to the surface, he could sometimes be cunning.
    “There isn’t any chance, is there, that I can talk you into issuing a public statement this afternoon retracting what you just said? If we get something out fast, then Paul may not sue you for defamation.”
    “Defamation?”
    “Hal, he’s running for mayor. You just called him a murderer. He’ll sue you for slander. He can’t ignore it.”
    Hal was heaped inside his overcoat, arms across his chest, looking a little like a molting bird.
    “I’m not retracting anything.” Having a billion dollars had an odd effect on people, Evon had come to learn. In Hal’s case, it often made him a baby. “Let him sue me. Don’t I have the right to express my opinion about somebody running for mayor?”
    “Even with a public figure, Hal, the law says you can’t make accusations that show a malicious disregard for the truth.”
    “It
is
true. Mark my words. The twins were in this together. I’ve known those two all their lives. There is no way one of them could have done something like this