Widows-in-Law

by Michele W. Miller

  “I’ll help,” Emily said.

  Jessica hugged Emily. “Thank you, Emmy.”

  “We’ll both help,” Lauren said. “You’ll definitely need to live near us.”

  Jessica smiled broadly, really starting to believe she could do it. “Okay.”

  The train stopped at Union Square, crowds pushing out and pushing in.

  “So, you haven’t heard from Carl?” Jessica asked.

  “Oh, God, he is so ugly,” Emily said.

  “Everyone’s ugly when they have a broken nose,” Lauren responded. “Emily and I saw him at the US Attorney’s office, and he didn’t speak. I think he has to stay away from me. It’s still hard to believe it was all a lie between us, but I don’t know why a guy lying still surprises me.” Lauren turned to Emily, “Not that there aren’t decent guys.”

  “I know, Mom. I get it.”

  The three left the subway at Grand Central Station and walked to their Metro North track through the vast Main Concourse. Lauren gave Jessica and Emily long hugs, only reluctantly letting them go before they missed their train to Westchester.

  CHAPTER 41

  Friday, November 29

  Before dawn, Lauren’s zip car headed north on the New York State

  Thruway, a slash of blacktop cutting through mountain ranges massed darkly on the horizon. By 7:00 a.m., signs appeared for the Clinton/Dannemora Correctional Facility, a prison made famous by a headline-grabbing breakout a few years before. At 8:00 a.m., Lauren waited in line amongst wives, children, and parents. She placed her pocketbook on a metal table where a corrections officer searched it. A female CO patted Lauren down lightly after she walked through a metal detector.

  Lauren filed into a large room along with the other visitors. She tried not to think about the horror stories she’d read about Bobby in the true-crime book. Round plastic table-and-chair groupings were set up at intervals in a room the size of a high school cafeteria. A moat of empty space around each seating group permitted private conversations and easy access for the corrections officers in case of funny business or violence. Dozens of visits had already begun, and the voices formed a low hum like the background music in a meditation video.

  A CO directed Lauren to sit at an empty table to wait for her prisoner to arrive. She took in the room: the officers stood watching at the perimeter; behind them, vending machines full of microwaveable meals lined the walls; in one corner, prisoners and their loved ones could pose for photos in front of a sunset printed on a tarp pegged to a wall. Or they could choose a photo of a palm tree and pretend to sit under it. Lauren couldn’t say what she was feeling at that moment. It was as if she’d been riding waves and been clobbered too many times. She was exhausted, and not just because she’d had only a couple of hours sleep the night before.

  Prisoners filed in from a door at the far side of the room. When Bobby walked in, Lauren felt as if she were seeing time-lapse photography. From afar, he was a version of the thirty-year-old man she’d known, but as he walked closer, he morphed into a balding, fine-lined fifty-year-old with muscled arms and belly paunch. He wasn’t shocked to see her.

  “I was surprised I was on your visit list,” Lauren said to him after he sat down and said a neutral hello. A prisoner had to submit the name and address of any proposed visitor, so the prison could do a security check, and the prisoner wouldn’t have to see unwelcome visitors. Lauren was already on the list when she called the prison to inquire about visiting.

  He smirked. “You’ve been on it for twenty years. You look good.”

  “Thanks.” She didn’t feel revulsion or fear the way she thought she’d feel when she saw him. She didn’t feel as if she were talking to the sadistic serial killer described in the book, or to a guy who had put a contract on her. There was no evil energy that distinguished Bobby from anybody else.

  “You come for dispensation?”

  “Bobby, I had nothing to do with you getting busted. I didn’t even know anything to tell the cops.”

  He glared at her. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  Lauren tensed up, thinking he might punch her, fast, before the guards could stop him. Worse than the idea of being hit, she was afraid that if he hit her, it would end their visit before she convinced him to cancel the contract.

  “I left for drug treatment,” she said. “And, really, I couldn’t stomach the Life anymore.”

  “Word was that you were in the Witness Protection Program. Not just the Feds, but the word on the Street. A guy I knew saw you at the Federal Building.”

  “It was a ruse, Bobby. They bullshitted you. The guy you knew was probably the one working for them. If I were in the Witness Protection Program, I wouldn’t have ended up going to NYU in the Village with my real name. I was in drug treatment upstate when you got busted.”

  “That was a surprise, when I heard you were in New York all that time. I heard about it a few days ago.” He sat and thought, his face turning ruddy as he processed how the Feds had gotten it over on him. “They had enough on me anyways. Fuck it. At least with the plea bargain, I’ll be out for my golden years.”

  Lauren couldn’t tell whether he was being facetious about his golden years. She doubted they’d give him parole before he was on his deathbed, probably not even then. But knowing Bobby, he had some cash stashed away to give him a future worth dreaming about.

  “Mom and Pop both passed already,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Bobby.”

  “We could start up again together. You could visit, and one day we could live our old age in Florida. I’ve got a place in Delray next to a golf course.”

  You’ve gotta be kidding, Lauren almost said it aloud. Putting to the side that he was a murderer, which was like putting aside an elephant beamed into your living room, she was light years away from even the idea of Bobby. He was locked up in a mental time warp, not just a physical prison. “I can’t make this trip all the time, Bobby. It’s a long way. I have a kid and a job.”

  He smirked. “Sure, you’re right.” But he let it go.

  They talked for a while without rancor, mostly small talk about his family and friends who Lauren hadn’t thought about for years. She walked away from the visit with the promise that the contract was canceled. She believed Bobby about that despite her rejecting his proposal, one that still boggled her mind.

  ***

  Purple twilight reflected off a tall glass building when Lauren rounded a curve in forest-lined Palisades Interstate Parkway. The peaks of the George Washington Bridge appeared. She filled up the car’s gas tank at a roadside station before heading over the bridge into New York City. She returned the zip car on 183rd Street and walked west, carrying a grocery bag filled with fruit she’d bought from a sidewalk vendor. Commuters flowed out of the subway entrance as she reached her block.

  Lauren approached her building. She would have expected to feel happier, now that she was safe. She was pretty much broke, but she had gotten her life back, and Emily was doing great. Lauren felt sure she’d find a way to pay the bills. After traveling a bizarre memory lane with Bobby and after all she’d just been through, the miracle of her life had been catapulted into the forefront of her consciousness. She no longer took it for granted, and the first half of her life had ceased to be a distant dream she was running from. She could at last appreciate that her past was responsible for who she’d become. And that was a good result, whatever happened next.

  Yet the illusion that she was satisfied with her life had shattered, too. She couldn’t keep playing life neurotically safe the way she had for the last twenty years, shadowboxing with her fears. She’d been half living, or maybe three-quarters living, but there had to be more. A beautiful sunset like tonight was nice, even though she was alone, but sharing a sunset photo on Facebook was nothing like pointing it out to a warm-blooded human being. She’d felt lonely and discontented before Brian’s death
and hadn’t even known it. Jessica had been right that there was no going back to her old life, or at least not to the oblivion of it.

  She neared the glass door to her building. She put down her grocery bag and rummaged in her pocketbook for keys. A low shadow bounded at her, and she took a startled step back. Mookie tried to jump on her but quickly landed on all fours, his back half wagging in an off-balanced jig.

  “Mookie!” She laughed aloud, petting him and looking around.

  Carl walked toward her from where he’d been leaning on his car. She felt a long inner exhale, weeks of pain and yearning lifting. In that moment, even with his fading bruises, he looked like the finest specimen of a man she’d ever seen.

  “Me and the Mook were in the car,” Carl smiled at her, “and I kept getting these strange pictures flashing in my head: squirrels, then trees, then dog runs, and then I got it—Fort Tryon Park. Mook was trying to tell me: Lauren Davis lives near Fort Tryon Park. They have a great dog run there.”

  Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Mookie?”

  “Absolutely. Mook said, ‘Carl, you go over there right now—to 181st Street—you’ve got to beg her forgiveness, tell her everything just got out of hand, tell her you’re sorry for lying to her and following her and—’”

  “Saving her butt.” Lauren stepped toward him.

  Carl moved closer to her. “I tried, Lauren.”

  She put her hands on his chest, feeling the leather of his jacket and smelling the just-showered scent of him. “What about the FBI? I thought you’d get in trouble if you were seen with me.”

  Carl looked around and pulled her into the shadow of her building. “The case is over now.” He brushed the hair from her face, smiling down at her. “So if you’ll just refrain from future criminal activities, I know they’ll get over it.”

  She laughed. “You’ll have to keep a close eye on me.”

  “I promise.”

  Lauren thought he’d kiss her then, but he paused, strangely, as if conflicted again. Lauren tried not to overreact to it—she’d been a terrible mind reader when it came to him. “What?”

  “There’s one other thing I need to do … before I go absolutely by-the-book straight.”

  Lauren frowned, even more confused.

  “Come here.” He brought her into the outer vestibule of her building, bringing Mookie along. “Can we step into the lobby?” he asked.

  The way he was acting unnerved her. “Sure.”

  She keyed the lock and they entered the empty, prewar lobby with its ornate plaster moldings and high ceilings. They were alone there and out of sight of the street. Carl pulled a couple of pieces of paper from his vest pocket. The pages were folded in three like a letter. “When we search a computer,” he said softly, “we dig deep. Nothing is ever truly deleted. You’ve probably heard that.”

  Lauren’s heart beat hard as she looked quizzically at the folded papers in Carl’s hand. “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  “We came across this on Brian’s computer,” he said, handing the pages to her. “If anyone asks, you printed it up before we impounded the PC.”

  Lauren unfolded the papers. She quickly scanned the first page then took in the second page with Brian and Steve’s signatures. “Oh, wow.”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, wow! Brian’s agreement with Steve.” A smile spread across Lauren’s face. She looked down again. “Brian is supposed to get fifty percent of the fees on the cases he brought in! Millions … tens of millions!” Catching her breath, laughing, Lauren grabbed her heart as the reality hit her. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God, thank you!” Tears filled Lauren’s eyes.

  Carl watched her. “This was my last foolish act.”

  Lauren reached for Carl, pulling him toward her. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

  Carl’s lips met Lauren’s, and he wrapped her in his arms. Mookie sat heavily against their legs, nearly bowling them over.

  EPILOGUE

  Steve’s Jaguar barreled through the Midtown Tunnel toward Long Island. Snow flurries melted on its windshield. Strips of tunnel light passed swiftly overhead and disappeared, tile walls seeming close enough to touch at each bend. Steve glanced sideways at Nicole.

  “You’re a fucking idiot, Steve. I can’t believe you tried to cheat them, when you’d left that kind of ammunition around. A signed agreement with Brian? I don’t mind that you’re greedy, but being stupid is inexcusable.”

  “I don’t understand why you insisted on settling so quickly,” Steve said, fury thickening his voice. “I could have worn them down, stretched out their legal budget. Nine million dollars? I could have settled for half that in the end despite the agreement. We don’t even have the Etta Houses money yet. The firm will be strapped for months.” Steve turned on the windshield wipers to swat away horizontal snow as they exited the tunnel. “I can’t believe you care so much about gossip—you hooking up with Brian. I barely care. Not to the tune of nine million dollars.”

  Nicole felt nauseous just remembering the call from Steve when he said Lauren and Jessica knew everything. She got off on danger. But, like a compulsive gambler, her downside risks became steeper as time wore on. She couldn’t afford the price on this one. Thank God Lauren and Jessica only thought they knew everything.

  When Nicole didn’t answer, Steve raised his voice, “Get this, if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll back out of the settlement. I’ll make them fight for it. That means every detail will come out in open court—with daily recaps in the media.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  He looked forward, the car speeding faster. “Don’t try me.”

  “You can make back the money,” she growled. “I didn’t go to so much trouble just to have those bitches ruin us.”

  “What are you talking about? Spit it out, Nicole.”

  She took a deep breath. “When I went to him at the hotel that night, I didn’t pass the reception desk. No one saw.” Steve took a curve too fast, the tires slipping sideways. Nicole held on, fearful but excited by the nearly sexual thrill of telling. “Brian was so surprised to see me, although he was drunker than I’d ever seen him. I wondered whether he was doing heroin or Oxies—it was so unlike him. He could barely answer the door. We had a wild fuck anyway,” she said, sadistically, “even wilder for him because I was his second woman of the night. Wild for me like a snuff film, frankly. Incredibly hot. Then we had a nightcap, and he fell asleep.” She paused for the drama of it, making Steve wait. “If the medical examiner had noticed the drugs I put in his drink, the police would have blamed it on the prostitute. I took Brian’s wallet, so they’d think it was a robbery. But I don’t think the cops got that far. That’s because when Brian passed out, I really did start the fire with a cigarette.”

  Steve cut his eyes to look at Nicole, his cheeks blotching with shock. “He was leaving you? You said you didn’t give a shit about him.”

  She grimaced. “Come on, Steve.” Nicole turned and rubbed her bare foot against Steve’s crotch, noting his response. “Brian was leaving you. He said he’d have the cash soon to start his own firm. Or, get this, open a bar on some godforsaken desert island. But before he did, he planned to out you for that crazy deal you made on the Etta Houses.”

  “What?!”

  “What did you think, Steve? That Brian would spend thousands of hours on discovery, combing through documents, interviewing witnesses, and not figure out that our congressman was on the take? He told me the congressman had taken a payoff, decades ago, to get Etta Houses built on that lead-infested dump. For God’s sake, Steve, Brian wasn’t going to put up with you and the congressman burying that case and underpaying those poor people.”

  ***

  Two women, FBI agents from the Chicago field office, sat at a PC listening to audio in a sun-filled room. They leaned back in their chairs as if thrown there. The Etta Houses case
had heated up fast. It was an investigation prompted by documents sent by an anonymous hacker who’d broken into Steve Cohen’s computer network. The FBI had obtained warrants for taps on Cohen’s home and car. But no one had expected this. One of the women wiped a sheen of sweat from the back of her neck as they listened.

  “He didn’t even tell Jessica about the Etta Houses problem,” Nicole Cohen said, meanly. “Jessica was apparently too fragile to handle the stress.”

  “That’s why you had a hissy fit about the burglary complaint against Jessica and Emily? You didn’t want the attention? But why didn’t you tell me Brian knew about the Etta Houses?”

  “Why didn’t I tell you?” Nicole Cohen asked, her voice edgy and sarcastic. “Because, Steve, you don’t think outside the box when it comes to handling difficult matters. You’d have gone to prison and pulled my life down with you.”

  “I never thought he’d do that to me.”

  “If it’s any consolation, Brian rivaled you in the nonthinking department. You should have seen him that night. He’d already told me he planned to report you, but he still believed I came to Miami to have sex with him.” She chuckled. “He thought his sexual prowess bought far more female loyalty than I have to give to anyone.”

  A long pause, and Steve Cohen laughed. “I hated that bastard.”

  In the Chicago FBI office, the two agents laughed with him.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my extraordinary agent, Susan Ginsberg, for her wisdom, guidance, and warm support. To Richard Marek, who brought us together and believed my work merited it.

  To the entire Writers House and Blackstone teams, especially my editor, Peggy Hageman (a true New Yorker and truly a pleasure).