Compromising Positions

by Susan Isaacs

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you then.” She hung up without saying goodbye.

  Upstairs in the bedroom, I took off my nightgown and sat on the edge of the bed, letting a wave of guilt flood over me. What kind of a person am I who would use this exhausted, grief stricken widow to satisfy my own perverse curiosity? I lumbered into the bathroom and turned on the shower. That poor, frightened creature. It wasn’t right. Well, I’d make certain to be very gentle.

  The water was hot, biting, and I let it pelt me, listening to it smash against my shower cap, feeling my skin turn rosy under its sharp attack. Ping, ping, ping, it went, smacking the small of my back. Ping, ping, ding. The ding, I realized, was not part of the score. It was the doorbell. I turned off the shower, grabbed a towel, and half dried myself, feeling, as I pulled on my jeans, clammy, wet patches in the backs of my legs. Ding. Again. Who the hell was it? And then I realized: Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only they would ring my doorbell so early. I was the only one on the block who hadn’t slammed the door in their faces, the only one who told them thank you, but no thank you. They took this very minor courtesy as a sign of my salvageable soul, so every month or two they would drop by, first thing in the morning, a wan, blond girl in her late teens and an older Japanese man, to see if I was ripe for conversion.

  Ding. “Just a minute,” I yelled and then regretted it. Had I remained silent, they would have gone away. Now I’d have to go down and reject them again. I put on a bra and quickly grabbed an old red sweater and pulled it over my head. Ding. Ding. Persistent little devils, I thought, and ran a brush through my hair. Ding. I ran down the stairs to the door, and with a force born of pique, yanked it open.

  “Don’t you even ask who it is?” It was Sharpe, leaning against the door frame, looking quite spiffy in a yellow turtleneck and a tweedy sport jacket. “I could have been the murderer.”

  “I was expecting Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I explained. My voice sounded feeble. I thought of my face, without makeup, and took a step back, out of the bright sunlight.

  “You had an appointment?”

  “No. But who else would be willing to come out and freeze their asses off at nine o’clock in the morning?” I looked at him and asked: “Don’t you ever wear a coat?”

  “No. It’s just another thing to worry about. I keep it in the car.” His eyes were fixed on mine, but he let them run down, all the way to my feet. “Don’t you ever wear shoes?”

  “I just got out of the shower.”

  “I was wondering why you took so long to answer the door. I figured you were out.”

  “Or lying in a pool of blood because I didn’t cooperate with you.”

  “No,” he said in his soft slow way, “the murderer seems to lean toward thin, pointed weapons. The medical examiner thinks it was something like an ice pick. It makes a very narrow wound that doesn’t bleed too much.” He paused for a second, waiting for a reaction, but I remained impassive, a look I had cultivated before a mirror when I was eighteen and wanted very much to appear blasé. “Are you going to ask me to come in?” he finally said.

  “Yes, of course,” I answered, opening the door wider for him to pass through. He walked in, missing a golden opportunity to brush up against me. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Please,” he replied, and walked right into the kitchen. I scurried after him. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?”

  The kitchen still smelled of paint, and I saw him looking at the refrigerator door. “I assume you came to browbeat me into talking. Milk? Cream? Sugar?”

  “Cream. One sugar. No, if a killer can’t terrorize you by breaking into your house, what can I do?”

  “Well, the bloodless fatal wound was pretty effective.”

  “Obviously not effective enough,” he said, sipping his coffee and looking at me. “No, I came to save you some time. I figured when you saw the police cars parked across the street, you’d have to spend at least a half hour investigating. So I’ll tell you why we’re here.”

  “What police cars?” I demanded, knowing as I said it how stupid I must sound. I walked to the front door, opened it, and, sure enough, two police cars were parked across the street. Sharpe’s blue car was in my driveway. Silently, I closed the door and came back to the kitchen. “You’re right. Police cars.”

  “And you’re going to tell me you hadn’t noticed them.”

  “I hadn’t. I was in the shower.”

  “And when you were talking to me at your front door?”

  “I guess it didn’t register. I probably associated them with you.”

  “Do I look like I rate a full escort? And you did open the door without asking who was there.” He contemplated me. “Do you have any more coffee?”

  I poured him another cup. “It’s perfectly obvious,” I said firmly, “that you’re getting nowhere fast with the investigation, so you decided to come here and make baseless accusations just to keep your deductive processes in order.”

  He laughed. “Okay. So I just called out two squad cars so I could impress you with the power of the Nassau County P.D.”

  “All right,” I said, leaning against the sink, “why are two police cars parked across the street?”

  “Because we found what appears to be the murder weapon.”

  The motor on the electric clock whirred, the odor of paint permeated the kitchen, and I noticed that Sharpe wore black loafers, not the brown shoes cops wear in police procedurals.

  “Can we go inside?” I asked. He stood, still holding his coffee mug, and led the way into the living room. He sat on the couch and looked at me, his expression bland, blank, unreadable. I set my mug on the coffee table and sat on the floor, about three feet away from him. “You found the weapon? Here?”

  “At your neighbor’s, Mrs. Tuccio’s.”

  “Impossible.”

  “We found it.”

  “Where?”

  “In front of her house, in the grating of a storm sewer.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “We drove over first thing this morning and poked around a little. It was there.”

  I took a long, slow breath and stood. “A little elf came to you in your dreams last night and whispered in your ear that if you looked in Marilyn Tuccio’s sewer you would find a nice surprise, better than a pot of gold? Or did a brilliant application of investigative logic lead you straight to that particular section of gutter?”

  “Jesus, you’re a pisser,” he said softly.

  “What was it? An anonymous letter?”

  “Phone call,” he muttered, gazing at his shiny black loafers.

  “Man or woman?”

  “Couldn’t tell. They called into the precinct and whispered to the desk officer.” He drew his fingers through his hair. “It happened about eleven last night. From about eleven-twenty on, we had someone watching the house, but we had to wait until it was light to search. We’ve been here since early this morning.”

  “Hello, police,” I croaked, holding an imaginary telephone receiver to my ear. “Check out Marilyn Tuccio’s storm sewer. We murderers always bury our weapons in our own front yards.” Replacing the invisible receiver, I peered at him and cleared my throat. “What did Marilyn say when you showed her the search warrant?”

  “We didn’t need one. The storm sewer is public property. The caller was very specific. Told us to look in the grating in the storm sewer at the right front of the house. It was there.”

  “What was it?”

  “An awl. Wrapped in a plastic bag.”

  “Any chance of identifying it for sure?”

  “I don’t know. We sent it to the lab. Can I use your bathroom?”

  “Upstairs. First door on the left.” He moved quickly, taking the steps two at a time. The door closed. I moved to the corner of the couch where Sharpe had been sitting. The cushions were warm. I heard the toilet flush. In a moment, he walked down.

  “Did
you notice anything unusual last night, about nine or ten o’clock?” he asked, sitting right next to me.

  “No. I went to sleep early.”

  “Yeah. I saw your husband leave about six-thirty this morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know why I asked you about last night?”

  “Yes. If someone called you around eleven, it might have been planted right before. Unless you’re assuming that Marilyn put it right into the sewer after she perpetrated the dastardly deed.”

  “Well, it seems to have been placed there fairly recently. The plastic bag showed no signs of wear.”

  “And if it had been there since the murder, it would be encrusted with gook.”

  “Right,” he said. He was leaning back on the couch, his arm casually draped over the back of both his cushion and mine. His face was about a foot away from mine. Sharpe had shaved close that morning; there was a raw, red patch along his left cheek.

  I looked away, down to the gold carpet, studying its flat weave. “And so you think that after she committed the murder, Marilyn hid the awl behind her unbleached flour and then, yesterday, decided to wedge it into the sewer and give you a call, just so you wouldn’t be bored.” I felt him looking at me and glanced at him to check. He was. “That’s a pretty sorry hypothesis.” I paused. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so sarcastic.” He stared at the fireplace, not even acknowledging that he had heard me. “I apologize,” I said softly, putting my hand on top of his. It felt so warm that I pulled my hand away.

  “It’s okay,” Sharpe said. “Don’t feel bad. It’s just that this is one of the toughest cases I’ve ever worked on. Nothing seems to be going right. Every time I think we have a good lead, it turns out not to be a lead.”

  “So you don’t really suspect Marilyn Tuccio?”

  “I don’t know. See, on every case that comes in—other than the really obvious ones—we spend the first twenty-four hours convinced we have it almost wrapped up. We know who did it and all we have to do is tie up a couple of loose ends. And this time we knew it was your neighbor. She had a motive...”

  “What?”

  “Well, it seemed like a motive. She made that announcement to Fleckstein’s nurse that he’d better watch out. And she certainly had the opportunity, being alone with him.”

  “And she always carries an awl in her handbag,” I observed.

  “I know, I know. Anyhow, by the morning after he was murdered, we knew that dozens of people in this town had a motive. Anyway, we’re thinking about quite a few other people now, but she was told to get a lawyer.”

  “She has one,” I said. “Helen Fields, the Assemblywoman.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Marilyn’s beyond subtlety. One of your people thought she might be linked up with Fleckstein’s Mafia connections because her last name is Italian.” I paused for an instant. “Was that you?”

  “Are you kidding?” he asked incredulously. “Do you think I would do something like that?”

  “No, of course not,” I responded, feeling horribly guilty for hurting his feelings again. “Well,” I said lamely, “where are you going to go from here?”

  “Back to my office.”

  “No, I mean in terms of the investigation.”

  “Oh, well,” he said carefully, “that depends largely on you.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m going to ask a favor of you.”

  “Look, would you stop patronizing me?”

  “What should I do? Lose my temper? Alienate you?” he asked testily. “You’re useful. You know this community. You’re observant.”

  “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “Relax,” he said, noticing I was sitting, tense and rigid, at the edge of the couch. “It won’t be too painful. I just want you to look at the photographs. See if you can recognize anybody. Unless you were bullshitting me about not having seen them.”

  “I was not bullshitting you. I don’t know. How would I recognize anybody?”

  “Why don’t you give it a try?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll bring them over tomorrow. You won’t even have to come down to headquarters.”

  “No. I mean, I’m busy tomorrow. There’s no way I could make it,” I said, remembering my date with Norma Fleckstein.

  “Okay,” he said, standing up, “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow then. About nine-thirty?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated. What would happen if I saw Mary Alice in one of the pictures? Could I deny flatly that I knew her? Even if I did, Sharpe would be astute enough to realize I was reacting to something, and then there would be no stopping him. He was intelligent and tenacious. He’d keep after me until I told him everything I knew.

  “Well, don’t worry about it now,” he said. “See you day after tomorrow.”

  “All right.”

  “Bye.” He turned and walked briskly out the front door.

  At times I am capable of tremendous self-control, so I restrained myself from peeping through the living room curtains to watch Sharpe walk to his car. Instead, I remained on the couch and concentrated on his image, on his yellow turtleneck, how it covered him so neatly; he had no paunch, no limp, flaccid pectoral muscles. He was lean and firm and exquisitely compact. The insides of his thighs would never ripple when he sat, his waist and hips would form one taut, fluid line. Suddenly, with no conscious realization of the leap from lust to guilt, I walked to the telephone and called Bob.

  “Hi,” I said to his secretary, Candi, a tall, thin woman about my age who still wore miniskirts and short white boots. “Is he in?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Singer. He’s in conference at the moment. But he told me to tell you if you called that he’ll be working very late tonight. Is there any message?”

  Was there any message? But all I said was: “No. No message. Have a nice day.”

  I didn’t feel hurt or even angry. Bob was far more resolute than I. When we first began dating, we would have staring contests, gazing unblinkingly into each other’s eyes until one of us laughed or averted our glance; it was always me. But this time I couldn’t win because I wasn’t going to join the game. He could fix his eyes on mine forever, but I would have neither a giggle nor a tearful apology to offer him. Or even a plea to please, Bob, let’s call a halt. You win by default.

  The receiver was still in my hand, so I called Mary Alice.

  “Let me get it upstairs,” she said, after I had identified myself. She put me on hold, and I waited for two or three minutes until she picked up the phone again. “My sister’s here,” she informed me, which I assumed was an explanation for the delay.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Actually, Judith, it’s not so nice.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Her husband moved out on her. It’s been an unbelievable shock, as I’m sure you can well imagine.”

  “Which sister is this?” I asked reflexively.

  “Mary Jeanne.”

  “The one from Larchmont?”

  “No. That’s Mary Elizabeth. Mary Jeanne lives in Darien. I should say lived. She says a house without a husband is not a home, and she’s bereft, absolutely bereft. Do you know why he left her?”

  “No.”

  “Because he’s forty-two years old and wants to find himself. Can you imagine that? Forty-two years old, in line for a major vice-presidency at IBM, and he wants to find himself. Never mind about Mary Jeanne. It’s a good thing that all the rest of us married men who work in New York, so at least she had her sisters to rely on. She’s feeling terribly rejected. She was on the phone with her psychiatrist for over a half an hour just to keep from having a complete nervous breakdown, and do you know what he said?”

  “Listen, Mary Alice...”

  “He said her husband was a cad. A cad. And when a psychiatrist says that...”

  “Mary Alice, I have to talk to you about the Fleckstein case.”

  �
��Judith, please. What more can I say? Here I am wrapped up in my sister’s problem. What does she have left to live for? ‘Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.’ Right? How can I concentrate on my own problems right now?”

  “The police want me to look at some pictures they found in Fleckstein’s office,” I said.

  “Judith, no!” she breathed, her voice suddenly thick and heavy. “You can’t. I told you what I did in private. Like the way you talk to a priest or a doctor. Does our relationship mean nothing to you? Does the confidentiality of all the things I said come down to a big fat zero? Judith, I can’t believe...”

  “Mary Alice, shut up.” There was silence. “Now listen to me. Why don’t you call Claymore Katz? If your picture is there, sooner or later someone is going to recognize it. If the cops can’t get anywhere, they’re going to be showing the photographs around to more and more people. Just by the law of averages...”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t want to get involved in all this.”

  “But you are involved,” I said. Again there was silence.

  Finally she spoke. “Do what you have to do, Judith.”

  “Look, Mary Alice, I’ll tell you what. I’ll look at the pictures, but I’m sure I won’t recognize yours if it’s there.”

  “What do you mean? Why won’t you recognize it?”

  “I mean, I realize you were talking to me as a conduit to a lawyer and that makes the conversation privileged.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think I’ll recognize your picture if I see it.”

  “But what if you do?” Actually, she was even stupider than Nancy or I had surmised.

  “I’ll make it a point not to. Do you understand me, Mary Alice?”

  “Yes. Now I do. But still...”

  “What?” I asked, trying to sound patient.

  “How would you like it if I saw pictures of you?”

  She was right, of course. If someone had taken a snapshot of me, even lying supine with my own husband blanketing me, missionary style, I would want no one—not even Bob—to see it. “You’re right, Mary Alice.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “And it’s not as if I’m the only one, Judith. Believe me. He told me some of the people he did things with, and you’d be shocked. I mean, I really didn’t do anything so unusual. Not really.”