“Neither.” Joel was blocking the visitor’s chair. I went around and sat behind the desk, facing him as his father must often have done. “All she said was that you and Rafe were in the same bar mitzvah class. Rafe told me—other things.”
Joel looked behind him at his mother, who couldn’t help turning around to send him an anguished glance. He closed the door and plopped heavily onto the visitor’s chair.
“Did you come here to threaten to tell Eunice and Ira those things?”
I shook my head. “Mr. Previn, your private business is no concern of mine, your parents or any other soul on the planet. Not unless your private business involved concealing evidence in Stella’s murder trial.”
A glaze of sweat covered his face, as if glass had been poured over it. The vodka, the fear, they were hammering his heart; he would be dead before Ira if he didn’t change soon.
When he didn’t speak, I said, “This diary of Annie Guzzo’s—when did you first learn about it?”
“On the news two nights ago.” His voice was thick—another sign of fear, or of lying? On the TV shows, the FBI or the con artist always can tell by body language, or the way the eyes are moving, when someone is lying, but it actually isn’t that simple.
“Stella didn’t bring it up when you were prepping her for her trial?”
“What are you getting at?”
“This diary. Is it real?”
“How should I know?” he said sullenly. “You think she’s smart enough to invent a diary? She never seemed that bright to me, the way she carried on in court no matter how many times I or Mr. Mandel or the judge told her it made her look out of control.”
“She’s angry and volatile, but not stupid. You were in love with Annie Guzzo.”
“That’s a goddam lie! Who told you that? Minsky Buttinsky?”
“I learned it from you. From the way you talked about her yesterday. What no one can understand is why you agreed to defend her killer. I know you were pushed into it by Sol Mandel, but he must have had quite a substantial club to hold over your head. Rafe told me he knew you were afraid, but he didn’t know of what—he assumed you were afraid someone was going to reveal that you and he had a few boyhood liaisons. But it wasn’t that, was it?”
He glared at me, the same look he gave his mother: angry, impotent.
“You’d seen the diary, and Annie had made fun of you. You were terrified that Stella would—”
“That’s not true! I never saw a diary, Annie never made fun of me, she knew I admired her, she knew I wasn’t out to hurt her. Not like some of the others.”
“Who in the office was hurting her?” I asked. “Mr. Mandel?”
“Oh, Mandel!” Joel made a dismissive gesture. “She knew he was an old goat wanting to act like he was still a young stud, she let him kiss her, he gave her money to help with her college fund, it was a game to her.”
“She blackmail him?”
“Annie wasn’t a criminal,” Joel cried. “Don’t make it sound dirty when it wasn’t.”
“Of course she wasn’t a criminal. She was a young woman with a big dream and no resources. She was getting help where she could find it. How much money did he give her?”
“I don’t know. I saw him one night when I was working late, she was in his office and I saw him kissing her, and then I went to the john and he was slipping something into the photocopier. I looked on my way back—it was a hundred dollars, and then Annie came out to copy something a minute later, and she stuffed the money into her purse. I never said anything to her, but I could see it was like a game to her.”
That meant that if anyone had been afraid of a possible diary becoming public knowledge, it should have been Mandel, not Joel. But Joel had been afraid during the trial, at least according to Rafe.
I thought back to yesterday’s conversation. “Spike Hurlihey? Is he the person you were afraid of during the trial? What did he know about you that you wanted kept a secret?”
“Nothing,” Joel said thickly. “Nothing, because there was nothing to know.”
“Were you afraid he was going to talk about you and Rafe?”
“Spike didn’t know about me and Rafe because we were at University High and he was down at Saint Eloy’s. I represented Stella because Mandel and Mr. McClelland told me to.”
“Didn’t that make you wonder?”
Joel’s sullen expression deepened. “I figured Mandel felt ashamed of giving Annie money. I thought he was afraid Stella would start asking questions, or bring up Annie’s—Annie’s behavior. Stella cared more about sex than anything, she couldn’t stop being angry about the way Annie attracted men. I couldn’t get her to shut up about it, it was why she was so hard to defend.”
“Everything you’re saying explains why Mandel might have been nervous during Stella’s trial. Not why you were, or why you agreed to take the case.”
“Everything you’re saying explains why you and Melba Minsky hit it off. You don’t have any grounds for asking me questions and I do not have to answer them.”