Page 77 of Never Flinch

“If it’s any consolation, Ms. Carstairs—”

“Alicia.”

“Okay, and I’m Isabelle. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think they knew it would be so…” Izzy thinks of the two men sprawled in the bed. Their bulging, half-lidded eyes. “… so rough. I’m not sure what you mean about it being work.”

“You know Ellis was a photographer, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Because of Bill Wilson (or Briggs, or whatever his real name is), Izzy and Tom have gotten thumbnails on all the jurors in the Duffrey case. Finkel’s main studio was downtown, but he also worked in his apartment, where he had turned the spare bedroom into a mini-studio.

“I was his hand model,” Carstairs says, and holds them up again. “Ellis said I had great hands. The pay was good—he always told me what he was being paid for an assignment, and he’d give me twenty or twenty-five per cent depending on the amount he was being paid for the job.”

“For things like nail polish?” Izzy is intrigued. “Hand lotion?”

“Those, but all sorts of other things, too. Scrubbies, dish detergent, Razr phones—that was a good one. Once he photographed me holding a Nook, which is like a Kindle, only—”

“Yes, I know what a Nook is.”

“And sometimes Jabari would model clothes. Sports jackets, topcoats, jeans. He’s very handsome.” She rethinks that, considering what she saw in Finkel’s bedroom. “Was.”

“You had a key to 8-A?”

“Uh-huh. I watered El’s plants when he was out of town. He used to go to New York a lot to talk with ad agencies. Sometimes Jabari would go with him. They were gay, you know.”

“Yes.”

“They met at that trial. The Alan Duffrey trial. Fell head-over-heels for each other. Love-at-first-sight type of thing.”

“Mr. Finkel specifically asked you to check in on him this morning?”

“Yes. I thought he had a hand job for me.” She colors. “That sounds dirty, but you know what I mean.”

“You thought he had a product he wanted you to hold.”

“To display. Yes. I let myself in and said something like, ‘Yoo-hoo, El, are you decent?’ And then I smelled… I didn’t know… thought something spilled… or overflowed… I went into the bedroom…” She’s crying again. She tries lifting her coffee cup and spills some in the saucer and on the arm of her chair.

“Just sit quiet a minute,” Izzy says. She goes into the narrow galley kitchen, gets a sponge, and mops up the mess. She can imagine Alicia Carstairs holding the blue sponge for a photograph, perhaps with soap foaming over her perfectly maintained fingers and nails.

“It’s the shock,” Carstairs says. “Finding them like that. I’ll never get over it. Did I say that already?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll be better,” Carstairs says. “I have two Xanax left over from when I went through the change. I’ll take one of them and I’ll be better.”

“Do you have any idea of why they took their lives, Alicia?”

“I think… maybe… just guessing… that El didn’t want Jabari to go alone. Jay’s wife threw him out, you know, and his family wouldn’t have anything to do with him. This was after they’d been… I don’t want to say sneaking around, but you know, keeping it quiet… for the best part of a year, maybe more. Jay’s wife sent pictures she found on Jay’s phone to all his Facebook friends. I’m assuming some were… you know… graphic. I’m no snoop, don’t get that idea,hetold me that. Stay out of other people’s business unless invited in, that’s my motto. Jay was Muslim. I don’t know if that was part of why everyone shunned him or not. Do you?”

“No,” Izzy says.

“Someone from Jabari’s office saw him and El together, maybe holding hands, maybe kissing, and squealed to his wife. That’s how it started. Why would a person tattle like that, Isabelle?”

Izzy shakes her head. All she knows is that sometimes people can be shitty.

“Ellis was having problems with his own family. Also, he had HIV or AIDS, whichever one is worse. He was managing it, but the medicine he was taking made him feel sick a lot of the time. They must have decided…” Carstairs shrugs, and her mouth turns down in a moue of grief.

“Did they talk about the trial?”

“Sometimes El did. Jabari, almost never.”

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