by Susan Isaacs
"There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a burglary attempt," I said, as softly as I could.
"How was he killed?"
"Shot. From some distance. Most likely with something like a .22. It doesn't look like an impulsive act." We had a long moment of silence. "Listen, one of the other guys will interview you, probably tomorrow. Go on home."
He shivered again. "He was really good to me."
"Yeah. Listen, I'm sorry. Oh, East, one more thing. Forget nglits, threats. Did Sy give any indication that he was having problems with anybody?"
To give him credit, my brother really seemed to think about it. "I've only been working with him for three and a half months. I can't set myself up as an expert. But from what I've seen, when you're producing a movie, you have problems with everybody. You're dealing with a cast and crew of a hundred prima donnas—and their agents, and their unions. And then you have the moneymen, who always make life a living hell. A producer has to be tough-minded—and tough. And Sy was. He never backed off from a confrontation. He just kept going." A small, affectionate smile passed over Easton's face for a second. "Sy was like a steamroller. He wouldn't stop. You either moved or got crushed. At some point, just about everyone involved probably told him, or wanted to tell him: Drop dead."
"Son of a bitch!" Carbone blew up in front of me and Robby Kurz. He was yelling about Eddie Pomerantz, Lindsay's agent, now safely on his way home, who, two minutes earlier, had informed him that Lindsay had taken a couple of Valium and was out like a light, but who then admitted, when Carbone started screaming at him, that she'd had four or five. Possibly six, although he wanted it clearly understood that his client was seriously not into drugs. Carbone explained to us: "I had that doctor from the M.E.'s office—the one with the Dumbo ears—go up to her room. He says she could be genuinely knocked out for more than eight hours. Passive-aggressive bitch." We sat in Sy's office, a room on the second floor that had probably been a kid's bedroom. You knew it was an office because there was a phone with so many buttons that it looked like it could launch a satellite, and a small computer. But that was it for modern stuff. The rest of the room looked like some fish-crazy English gentleman's study: there was a stuffed marlin on the wall, some washed-out paintings of salmon leaping out of the rapids, a bunch of gleaming, never-used rods, perfectly, casually arranged in a corner.
Carbone scanned his notepad. "Now listen, no matter when we get out of here tonight or tomorrow morning, I want both of you back at ten to interview Lindsay Keefe. I'll probably be stuck in a meeting with Shea on how to handle this thing. This thing's bigger than Newsday. It's national. International. Now, Robby," Carbone went on, "before ten, get what you can from Steve's brother, Easton. Then meet Steve here, for Lindsay. After you're through with her, you work on Sy's business associates. First from this movie. Then start working back.
"Steve, you concentrate on all the nonbusiness-type movie people. Oh, and his women. Look into if he was currently involved with anyone besides Lindsay. And check his ex-wives. He had two of them. One lives in Bridgehampton, so maybe you can get to her before ten." He glanced down to his pad. "Bonnie Spencer."
I shook my head. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I was sure it wasn't anyone I'd actually met.
"A movie writer." He handed me a piece of paper with an address. "You know where it is?"
"About two minutes from where I grew up."
"The other ex lives somewhere in the city. She was the first, and we'll have a name and address on her by tomorrow. All right? We'll use Southampton Village's squad room as a command post for the next day or two. I'll meet up with the two of you as soon as I can get out here tomorrow." He stopped, looked right at me, and sighed. "I think this is going to be it. The case where I find out that I'm too old for this kind of work."
I stood in Sy's gym, talking to Lynne from his wall phone. All the not-fun stuff I'd been bugging myself about since the afternoon now seemed stupid. Engaged-guy nerves, a last-ditch defense of bachelorhood. Because, objectively, Lynne was so terrific.
One of the things that had always knocked me out about her was that she acted as though I had a normal, not-terribly-exciting job. I could be a manager of an Aamco transmission franchise. She deliberately did not focus on what I actually did. I understood why; homicide is the ultimate breakdown of law and order, and Lynne's whole life, as a teacher and as a person, was dedicated to being constructive. She was there to give someone a chance, not take it away. Murder wasn't exciting. It was sinful, and it was also outrageously unfair. In the deepest sense, killing wasn't nice.
Another thing: despite her career and her really astonishing competence, she was enough of a traditional female not to want to hear the details of a fatal beating, or how the scalp is peeled back from the skull during an autopsy. So she concentrated not on the subject of my work—the dead and how they got that way—but on the living.
So we were not chitchatting about the murder, other than the briefest summary of what had happened and where I was. Instead, we were talking people. We'd done thirty seconds on how Carbone managed to be an intrusive pain in the butt and a terrific guy at the same time, a minute and a half on why I couldn't stand Robby, and now we were on to my brother.
"Did you say anything like: 'Gee, Easton, I'm sorry about Mr. Spencer. I know how much you liked him and how important he was in your life'?"
"Don't bust my chops, Lynne."
Except for the floor, the entire gym was mirrored. I was the only thing in the room that didn't gleam. Besides a stationary bike, a treadmill and one of those stair-climbing things—all with glowing red or green digital displays—there was a bunch of Nautilus equipment. I stood up straighter; either Sy had a lot of vanity to work out in front of all those mirrors, or he needed tremendous incentive.
"Steve," she said patiently, "did you say anything at all to comfort your brother?"
"Yeah. I said I was sorry."
"That's all?"
Just when I thought I looked okay in one mirror, I'd see my reflection in another. I pulled my shoulders back. I knew I didn't have a gut, but in the ceiling mirror I seemed to, so I sucked it in. "Don't get on me about Easton now. I just called to say good night and I love you."
"Well, good night and I love you too. It's just that I know how much you want a decent relationship with him. Wouldn't this be the perfect time to reach out?"
I told her I guessed it was, and then we did the good night and I love you business again because I'd been on with her for almost five minutes and wanted to get back.
After we hung up, I lay down on the gray-carpeted floor and closed my eyes for about ten seconds, probably my total rest for the next forty-eight hours. I know it was sentimental—and probably inaccurate—to say Lynne had saved me, but I really felt she had. Sure, I'd been staying sober with AA. And since getting back into Homicide I was working better than I ever had before.
But by the time I met her, I was feeling scared. I was standing all alone, no crutches. No booze. No drugs at all. Two months after I got out of South Oaks, I got the flu. I sweated out a hundred-and-four-degree fever rather than risk becoming a Tylenol junkie. Hardly any women either: I had lost almost all desire. In the old days, almost anything that produced estrogen could get me going if I was in the mood to get going, but most of the time now I couldn't seem to find anybody who made me want to unbuckle my belt. And yeah, there was football—the Giants, who I liked a lot. But no Yankees: it was January. I was running at least five miles a day to stay in shape and get that chemical going in the brain; I forget the name of it, but at South Oaks they told us it was the body's natural narcotic and was okay. Running ten, twelve, sometimes fifteen miles on my days off, to get that high—and to exhaust myself because I was nervous about what I'd do with too much time and energy.
See, at the funny farm the shrink talked to me about what deep down I always knew—or, if I didn't know, sensed. That the drinking and the drugs and the womanizing were a
ll pretty much the same thing, part of what he called my self-destructive pattern. Sure, I had been going for the high, but (a big but) the high hadn't been my real goal. What I'd really been searching for all that time was to feel nothing. Oblivion.
So there I was, finally, trying to turn my back on oblivion, to face the world, to take one day at a time.
But all that summer and fall, after those first heady years of sobriety, I started having nightmares: I was drinking again. I'd wake up from a dream about taking a bottle of icy, syrupy vodka out of the freezer, pouring it—almost against my will—and taking a deep, desperate sip. I'd feel panicked, sick to my stomach with despair. Because I knew how fragile my stability was. And I also knew I wasn't a resilient kid anymore. If I lost my grip again, I could fall into a bottomless pit, and I wouldn't have the strength or the courage to try and climb back out. I would be lost for good. I would die. Talk about oblivion.
And suddenly there was Lynne, standing by the trunk of her car, assembling the jack. She was cautious as I pulled over, but she looked me right in the eye and said, "Thanks. I can handle it." I showed her my shield and told her that was fine with me; I'd hang around and watch. I liked watching women change tires.
She handed me the jack, and when I finished I took her out for a hamburger. All of a sudden, I found I was having a genuine, normal conversation. Not just talking to a woman to prove I wasn't only out to screw her. Real discussion. About the emotional problems kids with dyslexia can get. About whether a person's body language can make them more or less likely to be the victim of a crime. About public schools versus Catholic schools. And about how I was an alcoholic.
And two weeks later, we went to bed. I lay there afterwards and thought: Oh my God! I'm having a relationship.
*3*
Bonnie Spencer's dog barked with joy: Hiya, hiya, wonderful to see ya! Its tail made giant circles of jubilation: Whoopee! We got company! It was a huge, happy thing, like a fat, black English sheepdog.
"Steve Brady," I called out, and flipped open my ID.
Her dog interrupted its woofing only long enough to lick my hand and my shield: Hiya! Love ya! But Bonnie Spencer stood silent and motionless in her front doorway—and gaped. It was seven forty-five, the morning after her ex-husband had been murdered. She obviously hadn't been expecting condolence calls; she was wearing turquoise second-skin biking shorts, a huge, shapeless faded pink cotton T-shirt and sweat socks. A pair of sneakers dangled from her hand, as if she'd been about to put them on for a run.
"I'm a detective with Suffolk County Homicide," I added.
Her lips rounded as if she was going to say Oh!, but she didn't. She didn't do anything, not even glance at my ID. She simply gawked. "Bonnie Spencer?" The dog poked her leg with its snout, as if to say: Come on, talk to the guy. But she didn't.
I put my ID away, stuck my hands into my pockets. Even though it was a warm, end-of-summer morning, the moist, leafy smell of fall was in the air. Bonnie Spencer didn't seem to want to look at me; instead, she seemed mesmerized by my car in her driveway. Listen, the '63 XKE is a truly great car, but when there's a detective from Homicide on your doorstep first thing in the morning, that should be the attention-grabber. "Are you Bonnie Spencer?" I repeated.
She blinked, shaking off her daze. Her eyes brightened. "Am I Bonnie Spencer?" She laughed. But then she did an awkward box step of embarrassment, probably sensing her manner wouldn't win any awards for Most Seemly Display of Wistful Sadness in a Situation in Which an Ex-Spouse Has Been Offed. She switched to subdued. "Of course I'm Bonnie." Then she added: "Gee."
Gee. Bonnie Spencer.
Okay, picture the ex-wife of a celebrated movie producer. What comes to mind? A cold, elegant bitch with tobacco-colored arms who wears jewelry to the beach. A stunner with pointy, polished nails that tap all the time, sending out the coded message: Fuck you; I'm dissatisfied.
But Bonnie Spencer didn't seem dissatisfied. And she definitely didn't come across as elegant, especially with that goof of a dog slobbering with happiness at her side. Looks? No glamour girt, not by a long shot. More like one of those girl-buddy types, tall—five eight or nine—broad-shouldered and clean, probably from some clean town where all the girls said "Gee." Nothing to write home about. Not much to look at. But the weird thing was, I couldn't keep my eyes off her.
Her best feature was her hair, glossy and dark, pulled back into a ponytail. Other than that ... well, okay features. Deep laugh lines around her eyes. She had the high, healthy color men have more often than women: that rosy brownness that comes to the naturally fair-skinned who spend a lot of time out of doors. In other words, Bonnie Spencer, sneakers in hand, looked like someone you never really got to know in high school: the big, strapping girl jock who gets over mourning the end of field hockey season by spending the winter stroking her lacrosse stick.
Except she was no girl—not anymore. The strong body and the shiny hair were deceptive. At first glance I had put her in her early thirties. But her neck was a little too lined, her lips a little too pale. She was in her late thirties, maybe even forty.
In relation to Sy she made absolutely no sense. To have seen the compact, richly robed, perfectly groomed Mr. Spencer and his exquisite world of hand-painted pool tiles, and then to look at big, all-American Bonnie standing on the planked wood floor of a pretty but definitely not show-stopping old salt-box house ... The question was not why Sy had dumped her, but how such a man had come to marry such a woman in the first place.
She was staring at me again. Her eyes were dark gray-blue, a deep, mysterious color for such a straightforward girl, the color of the ocean. I looked into them; that how-come-you're-here expression had returned.
"Ms. Spencer?"
"Please," she said, almost shyly. "Bonnie."
And then, once more, ka-boom, her mood changed. Suddenly she became friendly, easy. She gave me a smile. A great, generous smile. Perfect white teeth, except for a slightly crooked one in front, as though her parents had run out of money a month before the orthodontist had finished. Listen, it can make you so happy to get a warm, uncomplicated smile like that. But why the hell was she smiling? Why the hell was her face lit up like that? What did she think I was going to do? Ask her to the senior prom?
"You've heard about your former husband, Seymour Spencer?"
"Oh, God," she breathed. The smile vanished. Her eyebrows, the kind that slant up, like a bird's wings, drew together; they were eyebrows meant for a more delicate woman. "It was on the ten o'clock news last night. One of those god-awful stories about famous people you don't know. Except it was about Sy." For a minute, her expression reflected the normal disorientation of the average citizen confronted with murder: a flash of horror, then a fast flare-up of incomprehension. "You probably hear this all the time, but I can't believe it." Her voice was filled with fervent emotion. "I'm so sorry."
Too much emotion. Too goddamn fervent. Look, I'd been in Homicide a long time. Every working day of my life was spent with the distraught, the agitated, the grieving, the indifferent. And so I knew that something wasn't right about Bonnie Spencer. First of all, her "I'm so sorry" was overly personal; it's hard to explain, but even the world's most extroverted person doesn't respond to a cop with that kind of familiarity.
And another thing: just standing there in the doorway, she kept changing her mood. Not in the usual way, like a dazed person trying to come to grips with a too-terrible reality, but as though she were searching for the perfect, appropriate emotion to show off to me.
How did I know all this? Any decent detective knows when to turn off his mind and tune in his gut. And my gut was saying: Something's going on with this woman.
So all of a sudden, instead of a routine interview with a dead hotshot's ex-wife to see if I could come up with any leads, I was on the alert.
"Would you like to come in?" she was asking.
"Thanks."
It was a good-size, solid house, built for a farm
family. I followed her—and the dog—into a roomy kitchen and, naturally, said "Yeah, great" when she offered to make me coffee. (Saying yes to coffee during an investigation makes people feel you've accepted them; it makes them relax, open up. Unfortunately, half the time you wind up drinking stuff that tastes like lukewarm liquid shit, but in the long run it's probably worth it.)
She cleared the morning's papers—the Times, Newsday, the Daily News—aft with their stories about Sy's murder, off the table. She must have gone out for them when the coffee shop opened, at six; they'd all been read. I tipped the chair back and sat quietly, the way I usually do. I wanted to see what Bonnie Spencer would reveal. But she turned away to put the water up to boil and measure out coffee, so for a few seconds the only thing she revealed was nice thighs—a little overdeveloped, but muscular, tight. Meanwhile, the dog put its head on my lap and gazed up into my eyes—the soulful look a dumb girl who wants to be taken seriously would give in a bar.
Bonnie turned around. "Moose," she ordered, "go to place!" She pointed toward one of those small, oval braided rugs. The dog ignored her. Bonnie shrugged, half to herself, half in apology: "The dog has the IQ of a cockroach." Then she opened a cabinet and took out a little white pitcher shaped like a cow. She was waiting for me to begin questioning her. I didn't. She asked: "Did Sy..." She stopped and started over. "The TV said he was shot." I nodded. She held open the refrigerator with her hip while she poured milk into the pitcher. I glanced inside: no chilling white wine or goat cheese in there. God knows over the years I'd made it with enough summer women to recognize that, at least in the food department, Bonnie was not a typical New York woman. She was either on a budget, on a diet, or had given up all hope of visitors; she had a pint container of milk, whole wheat bread and a big, Saran-wrapped glass bowl that looked like she'd gotten overenthusiastic about broccoli. "Was his death instantaneous?" Her voice was high, hopeful.