the Second World War. She positively hates Naomi Sanders.”He hesitated just long enough to wink. “Which of course is the reason I invited them both.”
Craven introduced me next to a couple that looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Charles and Dana Hendricks each had chubby friendly faces and tiny hands and feet. They ran an art gallery where Craven apparently was a frequent client. After the Hendrickses, I met Clifford Overbeck, a young associate in Craven's firm, and his wife, Nancy.
With a few well-chosen words, Craven described the essential trait or the major accomplishment of each of his guests and, with a slight change in the way he said it, introduced me as the famous lawyer who was about to conduct the most famous case in San Francisco. It was flattery, pure and simple, but Albert Craven had a gift for it. He made you feel far more important than you were and did it in a way that made you start to believe that you had perhaps seriously underestimated your own achievements. He appealed to your vanity and made you think yourself modest in the bargain.
With his hand on my arm, Craven steered me toward a large, round-shouldered man with a few strands of gray hair combed neatly over his gleaming round head. There was a curious indentation high on the upper right corner of his forehead, as if he had been dropped as a baby or cruelly beaten as a young man. He had a full face that at first gave the impression of someone slow-moving and lethargic. I say at first, because as soon as he looked at you with those piercing blue eyes you knew you were in the presence of someone with a mind as quick as anyone you were ever likely to meet.
Holding a drink in his hand, he was engaged in conversation with a woman whom he had apparently just met. She had large dark oval eyes and a rather long straight nose. Her hair, shiny black, was pulled tightly back and her head was tilted high. Her mouth seemed always on the verge of laughter. She was tall, with long elegant fingers. She stood with her weight on one foot rather than balanced on both, the posture of a ballerina at rest. She was interesting and exotic, like something out of a painting by Gauguin: one of those silky-eyed women of the South Seas, graceful, seductive, more mysterious than any product of a civilized education.
“Joseph,”said Craven with a gleam in his eye, “allow me to introduce Marissa Kane. Marissa is a wonderful dinner partner. I thought you two would enjoy each other.”
“Hello, Joseph Antonelli,”she said as she held out her hand.
I kept looking at her, holding her hand, watching the laughter in her eyes, while Craven began to introduce me to the man next to her.
“Andrei Bogdonovitch,”Craven was saying. “Andrei,”he went on as I finally turned toward him, “is—or I suppose I should say was—a Russian spy.”
I glanced at Craven to see if he was serious. Then I looked again at the imposing figure directly in front of me and realized without quite knowing why that what Craven had just said was probably true. Bogdonovitch denied it.
“It's not true—what Albert said. I am not a spy,”he insisted in a dark, deep voice that seemed to come from all around me. He glanced at Marissa Kane. “I never was,”he assured her, beaming with the amused indifference of someone for whom the truth and the lie are merely different aspects of the same thing. “I was only a lowly member of the Soviet Consulate.”He turned back to me and explained, “Albert likes to exaggerate my importance.”
It was time to go in to dinner. Wedged between the living room in front and its view of the bay, and the kitchen in back where the chef had been working for hours, the dining room had no windows. The absence of natural light had been remedied by hanging a crystal chandelier between mirror-covered walls. Whichever way you looked, you saw your own endless repetition, and the room, barely large enough for a table for twelve, seemed to
Craven introduced me next to a couple that looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Charles and Dana Hendricks each had chubby friendly faces and tiny hands and feet. They ran an art gallery where Craven apparently was a frequent client. After the Hendrickses, I met Clifford Overbeck, a young associate in Craven's firm, and his wife, Nancy.
With a few well-chosen words, Craven described the essential trait or the major accomplishment of each of his guests and, with a slight change in the way he said it, introduced me as the famous lawyer who was about to conduct the most famous case in San Francisco. It was flattery, pure and simple, but Albert Craven had a gift for it. He made you feel far more important than you were and did it in a way that made you start to believe that you had perhaps seriously underestimated your own achievements. He appealed to your vanity and made you think yourself modest in the bargain.
With his hand on my arm, Craven steered me toward a large, round-shouldered man with a few strands of gray hair combed neatly over his gleaming round head. There was a curious indentation high on the upper right corner of his forehead, as if he had been dropped as a baby or cruelly beaten as a young man. He had a full face that at first gave the impression of someone slow-moving and lethargic. I say at first, because as soon as he looked at you with those piercing blue eyes you knew you were in the presence of someone with a mind as quick as anyone you were ever likely to meet.
Holding a drink in his hand, he was engaged in conversation with a woman whom he had apparently just met. She had large dark oval eyes and a rather long straight nose. Her hair, shiny black, was pulled tightly back and her head was tilted high. Her mouth seemed always on the verge of laughter. She was tall, with long elegant fingers. She stood with her weight on one foot rather than balanced on both, the posture of a ballerina at rest. She was interesting and exotic, like something out of a painting by Gauguin: one of those silky-eyed women of the South Seas, graceful, seductive, more mysterious than any product of a civilized education.
“Joseph,”said Craven with a gleam in his eye, “allow me to introduce Marissa Kane. Marissa is a wonderful dinner partner. I thought you two would enjoy each other.”
“Hello, Joseph Antonelli,”she said as she held out her hand.
I kept looking at her, holding her hand, watching the laughter in her eyes, while Craven began to introduce me to the man next to her.
“Andrei Bogdonovitch,”Craven was saying. “Andrei,”he went on as I finally turned toward him, “is—or I suppose I should say was—a Russian spy.”
I glanced at Craven to see if he was serious. Then I looked again at the imposing figure directly in front of me and realized without quite knowing why that what Craven had just said was probably true. Bogdonovitch denied it.
“It's not true—what Albert said. I am not a spy,”he insisted in a dark, deep voice that seemed to come from all around me. He glanced at Marissa Kane. “I never was,”he assured her, beaming with the amused indifference of someone for whom the truth and the lie are merely different aspects of the same thing. “I was only a lowly member of the Soviet Consulate.”He turned back to me and explained, “Albert likes to exaggerate my importance.”
It was time to go in to dinner. Wedged between the living room in front and its view of the bay, and the kitchen in back where the chef had been working for hours, the dining room had no windows. The absence of natural light had been remedied by hanging a crystal chandelier between mirror-covered walls. Whichever way you looked, you saw your own endless repetition, and the room, barely large enough for a table for twelve, seemed to
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