The Right to Remain Silent

by Charles Brandt

  “Good. Bring Figaro to me. Alive.”

  I got in my car and drove to Honey’s, exhaling heat all the way.

  36

  When I walked in the door we shook hands, and there was no doubt about what we were going to do next. Here was something that didn’t hold the promise of a dead-end brick wall like everything else I’d butted into since my return from exile. There was that same warm bodily energy that passed between us that first night we kissed, which seemed like years ago, the kind of energy measured on a polygraph from wires attached to fingertips. We both felt it at the same time and looked into each other’s eyes when we did.

  “That’s some handshake you got there,” she said.

  I asked, “Is this a come-on?” and we walked together to her bedroom. We first sat on the edge of her bed, fully clothed, and kissed, still holding hands. The tingling feeling of excitement in our hands had not gone away. Our kiss was riveting and sent the first waves of warmth through us.

  Our hands reached around for each other. I could feel the heat of her hands on my back. It was more intense than our embrace at the hotel the night Shy was killed. Our lips became hot and our cheeks flushed. I wanted to drink her in. She put her head against my shoulder.

  “I never felt anything this strong,” she said. “My heart is racing.”

  “Mine too.” I found her lips and kissed her firmly.

  We made love repeatedly and with a sense of adventure. It was so clearly perfect that we didn’t have to say anything about it, ask any questions, or wonder what the other liked. I can’t remember ever kissing as much or feeling so good from head to toe.

  It was also clear when it was time to lie still. We held each other the way runners in a close race wind down together after passing the finish line.

  “I had a thought that maybe you led some kind of monastic life in Brazil,” she said, “but it appears you’ve been keeping in touch with things.”

  She lay on her back with her orange hair spread out on the pillow. I was propped up on one arm beside her, lightly stroking the bare skin below her breasts with my fingers.

  “Well,” she said when I didn’t say anything about my life in Brazil. “So you won’t talk, eh? Ve haf vays to make you talk.”

  She turned toward me and tickled my belly. I grabbed her wrists.

  “I never remarried if that’s what you’re wondering. I could never figure out how to say ‘I do’ in Portuguese.”

  “It entered my mind that you might be a married man, but I decided to wait to ask until after we’d made love. We are finished for a while, aren’t we?”

  “I came here for food and conversation. The sex was your idea.” I let go her wrists.

  She laughed and got up and put on a bright snow-white terry-cloth robe. It fluffed out on her body. I put all my clothing back on. We left the bedroom and I could see that she had a nice little apartment. Very colorful. On one wall in her living room she had one of those posters that you see in movie theaters. It was framed. I’d never seen one outside a movie house before. Pretty good idea, I thought. It was Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I remembered seeing it as a boy with my mother, and I remembered being disappointed because I thought it was going to be a war movie and it turned out to be a love story. My mother had loved it.

  Honey had a stereo, with a couple hundred record albums on a shelf, arranged alphabetically. Cannonball Adderley. Mildred Bailey. Count Basie. Art Blakey, with the legendary Clifford Brown from Wilmington on trumpet. Jazz like that. My stuff.

  And she had books. It reminded me of Carlton’s library. Only her books were mostly paperback and looked like they’d been read. They were everywhere.

  “I feel like I’m on vacation,” I said. “I’m so happy to be here.”

  She came up and kissed me.

  “Read any good books lately?” I asked.

  She went to a shelf and handed me In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

  “Any good?”

  “Very,” she said. “There’s an interrogation scene in it I’d love to hear your comments on. I doubt the murders could have been solved today with Miranda and Bruton. It reminds me of the Stevie Morris case without Mrs. Smotz’s role, and I hope you don’t think I’m just trying to make you feel good.”

  “The Morris case would probably have been solved with today’s rules if I hadn’t done the solving, and you may be just trying to cheer me, but it’s well meant and I appreciate it.”

  “Anyway, I’d be curious to watch you go about solving murders like those in Capote’s book.”

  “Where? In America or Brazil?”

  “Are you really going back?”

  “Eventually.”

  She turned and went to the kitchen, and as I browsed through In Cold Blood, she got dinner ready.

  In a little while she came out and said, “I thought we’d eat in the kitchen.”

  There was a candle on the wooden butcher-block kitchen table, and my bottle of expensive Chianti. She served up a sizable portion of some eggplant Parmesan and followed that with an excellent baked lasagna.

  “I haven’t had Italian food in years,” I said. “This is really good.”

  After dinner she put out some Bosc pear slices on a plate with Brie cheese. She switched to white wine and asked me if I wanted some, too. I switched with her.

  We scraped plates at the sink and nibbled on the pear and the cheese.

  “Everything’s been so good tonight,” I said. “My dear, you have been responsible for the two best times this tourist has had in the old country. Tonight and eating the stuffed pineapple.”

  She turned from the sink and said, “Lou, come away with me this weekend.”

  “Where to?”

  “New York, for the Tall Ships on Sunday.”

  “Fourth of July Bicentennial?”

  “Yep. I’m driving up tomorrow and staying overnight at the Plaza Hotel and getting an early start on the Fourth for a good view of the ships. Let’s do it. My treat.”

  I sang the words to “Just a Gigolo,” nodding yes.

  “Bravo,” she shouted, and clapped and whistled.

  “Louis Prima. Before your time.”

  “Up yours,” she said and pushed me toward the bedroom. When we got there she undressed me and held my hand, and we lay down together and she began kissing my abdomen very softly, causing tension I didn’t know was there to come out in great quakes and tremors and nervous ripples. It scared me, embarrassed me really, but she acted as if it were normal. She made love to me once I settled down, and we went to sleep with all the lights on in the apartment. Talk about heaven.

  37

  “Shh,” said Honey, “I want to hear this.” She tilted her head closer. Wisps of orange hair gently touched the glossy brown plastic of the clock radio on the kitchen table.

  “This is history,” she said, turning up the volume and sipping on her black coffee.

  I stopped talking and helped myself to a mouthful of the peppers and eggs she had fried for breakfast.

  I began listening:

  “…by a five-to-four vote overturned the mandatory death penalty statute of the State of North Carolina while at the same time upholding the discretionary death penalty statute of the State of Georgia. The United States Supreme Court decision makes it clear that some form of the death penalty is permissible under the Constitution. It appears that those states wishing to have the death penalty must now model their death penalty statutes after Georgia. More on that story at eight. The time now is a rise-and-shine six-thirty. We’ll have the sports and weather in half a minute as we count down to one day before the Bicentennial, but first —”

  She turned off the radio.

  “What does this mean?” I asked, holding on to Honey’s hand.

  “I’m not sure, but it’s a landmark case. I can’t wait t
o get a Sunday Times tomorrow to read the decision. Lucky we’ll be in New York.” She put a forkful of her eggs into her mouth.

  “What does it mean for Harrison Lloyd,” I asked, “if by some remote chance they make him for murdering Shy Whitney?”

  She looked into my eyes. “You’re pressing my hand into the table,” she said.

  “Sorry.” I removed my hand.

  “It means he wouldn’t hang. That’s all. He’d get life. There’re nine men on death row in Delaware right now that are celebrating. I put one of them there. Delaware’s death penalty is gone until the legislature passes a new one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Delaware guessed wrong after the Furman decision in ’72. Georgia guessed right. Delaware and North Carolina and I guess some other states guessed wrong. We all made death mandatory because that’s what we thought the court wanted.”

  “What do you mean ‘guessed wrong’? You have to guess?”

  “Sometimes, Lou, to use your favorite lawyer word, they rule by ‘indicating.’ Relax, Lou. The Furman decision in ’72 was worse. That decision kept Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan alive. You should have been around a few years ago when a new decision came down every week.”

  “I was just thinking of Mary Whitney.”

  She bent over to kiss my cheek. I felt my stomach start to flinch. It hadn’t done that since last night. She pulled away before her lips touched my face.

  “Finish your eggs,” she said. “Let’s go to New York. Look, Lou, why don’t I take a few vacation days next week? I’ll call Morris Dershon and get some time off. He’ll give it to me. I think he’s got a little crush on me anyway.”

  I got up from the table and then realized there was no place to go in the small apartment but back to the bedroom.

  “I need some time alone,” I said.

  “Sure. I planned on going to New York by myself anyway. I’ll miss you, but I’ll see you when I get back. See, that was easy. And they say Jews are pushy.”

  “I want to go with you. I just need a little time now. I’ll drive us to New York. And I want to see you next week, too, if you can get the time off. How about if we meet at the Howard Johnson’s near the bridge at, say, eleven? I need to get my things anyway for the trip.”

  “That’s fine. I understand.” She took my hand.

  “I’m not so sure I do. Crazy cloud formations are rolling around my brain, and I’m just not sure of myself for the first time in a long time. I just need a couple or three hours to myself. I know we haven’t talked about it, but I keep thinking about Johnny Mastropolito. Cruset thinks it’s my responsibility.”

  “That bastard,” she said and kissed me on the cheek, and I left.

  38

  Honey sat locked inside a yellow Subaru in the Howard Johnson’s parking lot near the entrance to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. She saw me pulling up and she got out of her car and relocked it. She probably wouldn’t believe, I thought, that when I went to jail no one in D-WOC locked his house, much less his car. But no one in 1961 would have believed that in fifteen years the whole U.S.A. would be unsafe. So it was even on both ends.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I hope you’ll add ten minutes on at the end of the weekend. I don’t want to miss any of my time with you.”

  She tossed her overnight bag on the backseat and got in beside me. It was clear now, but gray clouds were in the north and rain was expected in New York.

  “Spiffy,” she said. “New threads?”

  “Just bought ’em, but I’ll need more when we get to the Plaza. Traditionally, I charge small items of jewelry and clothing to my escort’s room. I assume you have no objection, but if you do I want it ironed out right now before we cross the bridge and I become a white slave.”

  “Clothing is okay, but jewelry depends on how good you are in the sack.” She kissed me on the cheek. “What’s that smell? Have you been smoking cigarettes?” She pulled a partially used pack of Luckies from my shirt pocket, crunched them into a ball and tossed them overhead into the backseat, and said, “You have got to be watched every second or you become one royal pain in the ass.”

  “I had a couple. For old time’s sake. You can’t get Luckies down my way.”

  “Lou” — she looked troubled — “I guess you heard by now they found Johnny Mastropolito under a fallen tree in the woods next to Shelton High. Strangled.”

  “I heard it on the radio just after I left, but we knew it anyway, didn’t we?”

  “Is that why you bought the cigarettes?”

  “I bought them first, but maybe that’s more or less why I smoked them. I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  I started the car, drove out of the parking lot, and headed for the highway and over the twin suspension bridges that cross the Delaware River. Chemical plants are close to the bridge on both the New Jersey and Delaware shores. White smoke. Gray smoke. Take your pick. This is the same river that Washington crossed at Christmas a hundred and ninety years ago. I kept thinking that, despite my efforts, my thoughts were tinged with darkness like the chemical smoke. Negative. Gloomy. I didn’t dare open my mouth too often.

  While we were crossing the Delaware, Honey said, “Do you want to play a game?”

  “Not really.”

  “I admire your courage in standing up to me, but we’re playing anyway. If you had seen a face last night when I kissed you, when your stomach convulsed from the tension, who would it have been?”

  “Covaletzki,” I sighed, trying to be sociable. “With a smirk on his thin lips. And behind him would be everybody else in single file except you.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Harrison Lloyd, Marian, Sarah, Carlton, DiGiacomo, Tim Gronk, Agent Mendez, the whole board of directors, and especially John Figaro.”

  “Crap,” she said. I guessed she didn’t think I was taking her Psych 101 very seriously. “I can understand the rest,” she went on, “but why DiGiacomo and Sarah on your list and not Gandry?”

  “Honey, I’m grateful for what you’re trying to do for me. Open me up and all that. You’re a very nice person and very sincere. Very honest.”

  I pulled her closer to me and put my arm around her. We sat as teenagers going to a prom.

  “Yucch. You smell of cigarettes,” she said and moved away to face me. “Are you really going back to Brazil eventually?”

  “I’ve got a business there,” I said. “And a pet monkey.”

  “Do you really have a pet monkey?”

  “Roberta.”

  “Oh, God, that’s neat, but it sounds like stiff competition. I’d better start pampering you. You look a little tired. I know just what you need before you start getting cranky. It’s nap time. Why don’t I drive for a while?”

  “Now that’s something Roberta can’t do.” I pulled over to the shoulder south of Camden. We switched places, and she drove with the newsradio station on while I slept.

  * * *

  —

  I woke up near Newark and with one eye open said, “What the hell is a drug abuser?”

  “Huh?” she said with surprise.

  “Is it somebody who treats drugs mean? Beats up on his cocaine? Talks nasty to his heroin?”

  “Did you dream that up while you were sleeping?”

  “All by myself.”

  “I shouldn’t have had the radio on.” She turned the station to music — “Feelings” by Morris Alpert, a hit in South America before it came to the States. “I have to be careful what your little ears pick up.”

  “I prefer the term drug addict,” I said.

  “How about dope fiend?”

  “That’s my girl. Promise me you’ll dedicate your life to stamping out ‘drug abuser.’ ”

  “I’m having enough trouble with ‘indicate.’ Now shut your eyes and go back to sleep. No more newsradio for
you today. I should have learned my lesson earlier this morning. Schmaltz is all you get on the radio.”

  39

  Dinner at the Algonquin Hotel that night was New York, New York, and the rest of the world was just the rest of the world. The sole with white grapes and cream sauce was excellent, but it was something they just tossed your way. You were paying for the privilege of being there, and gladly. They had a skinny guy in a tux playing the piano and singing sophisticated songs in a high-pitched voice. The gays in the audience clapped the loudest after each song and shouted, “Bravo.” It was the Big Apple to the core.

  When we left, it was a little after two. Honey wanted to walk up Fifth Avenue in the warm night air rather than take a taxi. It was all right with me. It was her city.

  “When we get to the Plaza let’s take a hansom cab through Central Park,” she said as we turned left onto Fifth Avenue and started walking north.

  “Bravo,” I said. “I had my afternoon nap thanks to Mother, and I’ll have no problem getting up at six for the Tall Ships.”

  “Neither will I, my relic.”

  “Relic? Hell, by the time I was born, women already had the right to vote for twelve long years.”

  We walked on the other side of the street from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and window-shopped along the way. We turned into Rockefeller Center to look at the golden statue that overlooks the ice rink. We came back out and ambled north again. We stopped in front of 666 Fifth Avenue, wondering if we could get a drink at the Top of the Sixes, and walked into the outdoor hall of windows leading to the building entrance. No soap. The entrance was closed. Before we got back out to Fifth Avenue we stopped to look at a travel agency’s pictures of Italy. We were somewhere on the Amalfi Coast when a white male in his thirties with a few days’ growth and an old-fashioned light brown crew cut stepped up to us. He was a couple of inches taller than me and wore a black Ban-Lon shirt, dirty dark-blue pants rolled up at the cuffs, gray tennis shoes, and a red handkerchief tied around his neck.