by Susan Isaacs
“Atlanta is just something I made up for Mary,” he admitted. “I have to go to Grand Cayman Island.” The Caymans were in the Caribbean, not far from Jamaica, and had become a center for international funny money. I was surprised, because most con men I knew were spenders, not savers. Their lives were a never-ending cycle of scam and squander and scam again.
“Are you going to spend any time down there?” I asked. Not that I was curious, but even if we passed on dessert, we still had to finish our petits pois with mint and get the check. I was afraid of running out of conversation. “Don’t you want to relax, get a little sun?”
“I can’t afford that luxury. I want to see Mary again tomorrow. I’ll see if I can get a flight out on Sunday and do business first thing Monday and get back here by midday to visit.” He sighed and got lost in playing hockey with his fork and a pea. His goal seemed to be a curlicue of carrot, but before he got there he looked up. “Is there any chance of bail?”
“No, Norman. Try to understand: she isn’t awaiting trial. She’s confessed to a murder, and she’ll be sentenced by the end of next week. Early the following week, she’ll be off to Bedford Hills.”
“I’m taking out a fair amount of money,” he told me. “I’m buying a house.”
“A house?”
“Yes. Up there, not far from the prison. I’ve already talked to a real estate broker in Katonah. She says she has a lot in my price range. A modest little house. That’s all I need, because it will just be I. I’m viewing it as an investment. When Mary gets out, we can sell it and go to someplace warm.”
“What are you going to do in Katonah?” I asked.
“Visit Mary in Bedford Hills every day I can.” He patted his mouth with his napkin, a little too daintily for my taste. “I won’t try to con you. At this stage of my life, what do you think I’m going to do? Get a nine-to-five job? Do you think I’m like all of you”—he swooped his hand around, indicating everyone else in the restaurant—“needing someplace to go to, something to do every single day? I’ve always enjoyed my leisure. Reading the financial pages, watching a little TV, working out. I like to read. I read an enormous amount of books. If I told anyone I talked to for more than five minutes that I didn’t go to college, they wouldn’t believe me.” He was waiting for me to confirm this was true, so I nodded. “In any case, I have the wherewithal. I can live pretty nicely on what I’ve got socked away.”
“You’re a rarity,” I told him.
He knew what I meant. “You mean most men working the con—I hope you’ll pardon my language—piss it away.”
“That’s right.”
“Not me. I have plenty for now, and I’ll have a nice chunk left for Florida or wherever we wind up.”
I signaled to the waiter for the check. “What about the con?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“You sound like you’re thinking of retiring.”
“Let me tell you something,” Norman said, leaning forward, looking me straight in the eye. “I didn’t do it just for money. You must know that. I used to love it. The travel, the setup, playing out the game. And the ladies: All you legal types and all the shrinks think it’s just because I want to fuck them or, more to the point, fuck them over, if you’ll excuse the vernacular. You’re right in that the money is incidental, although I made a pretty penny. What you don’t get is that every single time, it was a thrill. A thrill. I got to fall in love over and over again. You have no idea. What a rush!” He sat back. “But then I met Mary. And sure, we moved around, I did the con. She even assisted me. But from the second I saw her, I knew the game was over for me. I could never fall in love again with one of my marks. Because this time I was truly and forever in love.” He folded his napkin and put it beside his plate. “I lost my gift. I was hardly able to go through the motions. I can’t believe how I pulled it off with the last few ladies. Especially with a smart cookie like Bobette. She must have been so desperate.” He shook his head. “Poor, pathetic thing.”
Having gotten Norman off, I didn’t shout “Whee!” and run around, giddy and gay. But I did feel relieved. Except just when I thought I was finished with the Torkelson case, I started getting calls from Mary Dean. I refused to accept them, telling Sandi, my secretary, to refer them to Barbara Duberstein. That should have been that, but Sandi was still unhinged on the subject. She would not let go of the idea that Mary was an innocent. Please, she begged me, please speak to her. I told her Mary might indeed be innocent of a great many things, but the crime of murder was not one of them. Mary called twice Wednesday morning and once Wednesday afternoon.
Tuesday and Wednesday, Norman called too. Mary was in a bad way, he reported. Very upset. Not depressed. Angry. She was being irrational, screaming. They had to haul her out of the visitors room and put her in Administrative Lock-in. She kept begging Norman to get her out. He knew he couldn’t do that, he said to me, but was there anything—anything at all—he could do? Could he get her into some mental hospital? A private one would be fine. He had the money. I told him that Mary had already said she would plead guilty to murder. If she wanted to change her mind and plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, he’d have to get in touch with Barbara. But I suggested that given Mary’s videotaped confession, I didn’t think it likely that kind of defense would succeed. It sounded, though, as if Norman was so deeply disturbed by Mary’s behavior that he’d half conned himself into believing she might still wind up in a sanitarium with a rose garden.
By Mary’s third phone call that afternoon, my secretary was in such a froth of distress over Mary and fury at me that I suggested she go home. She told me she didn’t want to. I told her I wanted her to—and not to come back the following day if the pressures of the job were getting to her. Vacation time was due her, and what a beautiful time of year to get away.
Naturally, she was in the office before I was Thursday morning. But she left of her own accord before lunch. She had tears in her eyes: I can’t take it, she said. If you could only hear that girl’s voice. She’s so sweet, so truly innocent, so …
The thought of getting away was beginning to appeal to me. My guy, the lawyer, was about to sum up in a trial in federal court, and was therefore unavailable, to say nothing of useless in terms of human companionship. I called my daughter, who is studying acting (and slinging hash in a restaurant in Tribeca) and asked if she was interested in a long, luxurious, and free weekend at a spa in the Berkshires. Usually she jumped at anything preceded by the word “free.” But she actually had an acting job starting the following Monday, two scenes in a cable TV movie being shot on Staten Island, and she had to prepare. So I decided to settle for an evening in the city and called an old friend of mine at the Manhattan D.A.’s. We agreed on a restaurant in Little Italy.
As I was about to leave, around six, the phone rang. I picked it up, an act that I invariably discover is folly. “Lee?” It was Barbara Duberstein, and she sounded wiped out. Of course, I thought: It’s the end of the workday, and she still has two adolescent children at home.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Did you hear about it?”
“About what?”
“Mary.”
In a theatrical gesture my daughter would have abhorred, I slapped my forehead. But I sensed this was drama. Maybe tragedy. “What happened?”
“She tried to hang herself.” I couldn’t find a thing to say. “They found her just in time.”
“Did she say why she did it?”
“No.” I could hear Barbara take a deep breath. “All she said is that she wanted you.”
Twenty-two
Take any group of associates—girlfriends, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, professional bowlers—and set them to talking about treachery. A single truth emerges: Once someone betrays you, you can never trust him again. You can try to understand the reasons behind the double dealing, of course. Forgive it, even. (You really don’t have much choice if you’re a bishop.) But yo
u can never forget, not entirely.
Hogwash. Maybe in those troubled, dark-souled nations where widows wear black the rest of their lives, they tend perfidy like a living flame. But Americans, those optimists who clothe themselves in bright team colors, are always ready for a do-over. Certainly, in the days and weeks following the discovery of defalcation or adultery, the torment seems unbearable; there is no hurt like being stabbed in the back by someone you trust. But then it is allowed to subside, so superficial relations can resume. In the months to follow, the absence of acute pain feels so good that you begin, now and then, like any good American, to let a smile be your umbrella. And your compatriots, seeing you happy, relieved that you are no longer a loser, pat you on the back and take you out to lunch, and pretty soon—providing the lying, cheating, unprincipled bastard doesn’t act up—you are your old self again.
This is not to say that Lily Rose White would not have been wounded if someone had given her The Collected Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning for her birthday. And Jazz had enough sense, when they spent the evening in Manhattan, not to drive up Madison Avenue; that would have brought them right past the Hotel Carlyle. However, by October of 1980, six months after her terrible discovery, Lee was a happy wife again. Sex, if not as frequent, was again becoming lively and satisfying. Jazz was, she had to admit, a devoted father, coming home early to take pictures of three-year-old Val dressed up for Halloween, in a garish pink costume Lee had tried to talk her out of. But Val had insisted on being Strawberry Shortcake, and so she was Jazz joined Lee in taking the little girl around the neighborhood trick-or-treating. As they stayed back to allow Val to stand on tiptoes and try to ring each doorbell by herself, their shoulders touched and their hands sought each other out. After the neighbors stopped oohing and aahing over Strawberry, they beamed at her young and, obviously, very much in love parents.
By the beginning of November, Lee was thinking it was time to have another child. She even mentioned something to Chuckie Phalen: You know, at some point I’ll probably have another kid. Chuckie said: I thought as much. A little concerned, Lee could tell, and when she told him she planned on taking no more than a three-month maternity leave, he seemed more comforted by the reassurance that everything would be hunky-dory with Phalen & White than dismayed that she was capable of leaving not just one but two little tykes.
A week later, on a Sunday night, sitting on their living room floor before a roaring fire, the first of the season, Lee kissed Jazz and whispered: Do you think it’s time we had a burn-the-diaphragm party? He took her in his arms and said: “Wonderful!” Just like that. No hesitation, no catch in his voice to suggest reluctance. She heard what she wanted to hear, total agreement. “Wonderful!” offered with Jazz’s typical exclamation point. Lee did not allow herself to think: Gee, he’s being pretty casual about such a big decision. Or that “Wonderful!” was the same lyric, the same tune he used with department store buyers from Milwaukee when they upped their order (Wonderful! You’ll see how they’ll fly off the floor!) and with old customers who allowed him to charm them into fun fox for those occasions when their new mink was too serious (Wonderful! Call me in February and tell me how much you’re enjoying it!).
Wonderful? So? She was right between periods. Ripe and ready. But the next night, Monday, was football, played on the West Coast. She understood that. Tuesday and Wednesday, Jazz had to go to Minneapolis and Detroit. They were big accounts, he told her proudly. Now they’re bigger. And Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and now, Sunday, he was exhausted, enervated, fluish, finally just plain out of sorts. Not himself.
So by the time she got a good look at him the following Thursday across her parents’ Thanksgiving table, handsome, broad-shouldered in a cashmered interpretation of a Harris Tweed sports jacket, beaming up at Greta as she served her pineapple-sweet potato casserole, Lee could see: Definitely not himself. “Wonderful!” he enthused to Greta. Yes, Jazz was being the movie star, putting on the shine for the plainest girl in his fan club, but as Greta moved on, Jazz’s light went out. He was not a good enough actor to sustain his role.
Not himself? Then who was he?
Weary. Irritable, losing patience with Kent, insisting on getting rid of him for the holiday. His own brother, who made his home with them: Get rid of him for a few days, he commanded Lee. She had complied, but she felt sick at having double-crossed Kent, sticking him with his parents who did not want him.
Lee watched Jazz staring at his plate. Why wasn’t he able to look into the eyes of her family? Leonard, stroking the sleeve of his double-breasted blazer, a new design by the latest enfant terrible of European menswear. Sylvia, holding her knife and fork daintily between the pads of her fingertips so as not to chip her nail polish: Pure Pomegranate, the latest tropical shade, so she could leave for Palm Beach the next morning and not be seen with northern nails. And Robin, pale and absolutely lovely in layer upon layer of intricate Italian knits, her exquisite little purple and blue and green vest alone costing more than the average day care aide’s monthly salary, waving at Val across the table.
Jazz could not keep his eyes off the food mounded on his plate. He seemed defeated by a glob of cranberry-raspberry relish the size of a human heart. Not himself. This feast was a torment for him. It was only then that Lee permitted herself to understand: Jazz was indeed himself. And that self was a cheat and a liar. But a passionate one. The cause of his terrible pain was deep, deep emotion. Not an emotion like guilt over mere fornication: No, the biggest of all emotions. Her husband was in love. Not with her.
“You’re sure?” Will Stewart inquired. He added more brandy to her snifter so discreetly that she did not notice until she took the next sip.
“Yes.” She set down the brandy.
“Don’t worry. I’ll drive you home. I’ll figure out how to get your car back tomorrow.” She had left Jazz in front of the television, a dead man watching the Giants. When she told him she was running over to the office for an hour or two, his “Fine” was replete with relief.
“He wants out,” Lee said. “That’s what all his pain is about.”
“Pain about getting divorced?”
She heard herself laugh—Ha!—the harsh, snorting noise lonely women make. “Are you kidding? No, he’s in the fashion business. He’s nothing if not au courant. Being divorced once or twice shows you’re not a home-loving, uncool schmuck.” She would have to watch herself. She was sounding so bitter. On the other side of his small living room, Will was observing her with concern. “Jazz has got a bigger problem,” she went on. “Even if he’d made a fabulous impression at his old law firm—which he didn’t—he hasn’t practiced in almost five years. For a good reason; he hates the law. It would be very hard for him to get back to being a lawyer, even with his father’s help.”
“But he’s doing so well in the fur business—” Will stopped and corrected himself. “Your father’s fur business.”
“It’s not that he couldn’t get another job. They’re so thrilled to have someone like him in the industry, they all but raise the Episcopal flag every time he walks into a room.”
Will got up from his chair and threw a couple more logs into his wood-burning stove and poked them in place. Not a plain black iron stove, of course, but a tall ceramic one, yellow and white, an antique he had bought in Sweden. His whole house, on an inlet of Middle Bay on the south shore of Long Island, was like that: modest, manly but simply beautiful, a home for one—but one with very good taste. She had been there only once before, for a Chinese banquet Will cooked for his old crew from the Homicide unit, but she had fallen in love with the place. “So Jazz can leave your father’s company, but wherever else he goes, he’s not going to be the son-in-law.”
“I don’t think it’s only the money that made him hold back so long—although he is getting about three times what he could make elsewhere. It’s the perks. The best restaurants, the best seats in town to whatever he wants to see, the car and driver: He goes in every day with my father, and bef
ore they get picked up, the driver buys two New York Timeses, two Wall Street Journals and two Women’s Wear Dailys—so they don’t have to lower themselves to read already fingered newsprint. It’s a whole way of life he has to give up. He can charge anything he wants to the business. …” She stopped and closed her eyes, listening to the never ceasing rush of water outside Will’s back door.
“You mean his charging his entire affair?”
“Yes,” she whispered, not trusting her voice. Lee was less afraid of crying than of making some hideous gargling sound that would repulse yet another man. Not that Will ever seemed unrepulsed. He was her friend. Her best friend. Not a day went by now that they did not speak at least twice. But not a glimmer, not the faintest undercurrent, at least not on Will’s part. Maybe, Lee thought, sitting up straighter, trying to swirl her brandy in a sophisticated gesture, hoping it did not slop over the rim of the snifter, if I looked more like Maria—a bust of Nefertiti, not an Easter Island statue—he’d want to poke something white beside the damn stove.
She must be drunk, she realized. She did not feel drunk, yet she sensed that under normal circumstances, she would not be so aware that she had nostrils. Jazz loved someone else. She had loved him from the time she was fifteen years old and miraculously, he had married her. He loved someone else. Another woman would be getting dressed and she’d feel Jazz pressing against her back. She’d drop her panties and turn around and kiss him and then lower herself, her tongue trailing down his neck, his chest, his belly.
She might be drunk. She was sensing ears on the sides of her head. Lee fingered her earlobe. Soft, as soft as Valerie’s sweet skin. Soft as a rose petal. Her middle name: Rose.
“Will?”
“What?”
“Do you know what my real name is, the one I was born with?”