by Susan Isaacs
“Unless he’s really poor.”
“—would get involved with a mother of three four-year-old boys? You’ve seen them do it time and again. Evan, Dash, and Mason come in, and they turn a room into a three-ring circus, except ten times noisier. A guy might want me. He might even want them—if he doesn’t have kids and has a zero sperm count. But forget even a long weekend: Three hours with them and he’d run out screaming. And don’t say ‘not necessarily.’” Andrea might have been about to say it, but for once she thought before speaking. “I’ve thought about it,” I went on. “You want to know what the word is for what my life will be? Lonely. My life will be so lonely.”
She didn’t say I was wrong.
True to what Andrea had predicted, my mother-in-law called to apologize four days after she exploded. She said it had happened because she was a wreck, “an utter wreck,” and also had an adverse drug reaction from a new antidepressant that didn’t get along with her medication for arrhythmia. There was no way, she told me, to tell me how sorry she was; she only hoped that I would be generous enough to understand and, hopefully, forgive. I did the expected “I understand totally and there’s no need to ask for forgiveness.” Then I gave what I thought was a pretty moving speech on how I not only treasured my relationship with her and Clive but had always looked up to her as the model of what a wife, mother, and working woman should be. Of course I kept “except that you’re a snob and a cold bitch” to myself.
I was trying to move back into the world. At home, whenever someone called, I tried not to think that he or she had put me on their Outlook calendar right after the funeral and forgotten me until—Oh, dammit!—the day popped up with Call Susie Gersten. When people left messages, I made myself call back, even a woman in my cousin Marcia’s mah-jongg group with a terrible stammer who called everyone because in 1962 a speech therapist had told her that was the way to get over it.
I was so busy. I had tried to put Dorinda Dillon out of my head. Maybe the cops and the DA and Babs were all right about her. The NewsHour, which I still watched so I wouldn’t get caught saying “Huh? Wha?” the next time a teeny country suddenly became important, didn’t carry reports on killer whores. The Times might have had something on the case, but since the only section I read regularly was Style, I might have missed it. Since those first few days after Dorinda’s capture, when I’d watched her perp walk about a thousand times, I hadn’t Googled her or looked on YouTube: too addictive, too tempting to stay in that world and forget my own. Also, there was no one shoving a tabloid into my hands while telling me, “You need to see this.” For all I knew, maybe some fact or new piece of evidence had come out that really sealed the deal on Dorinda’s guilt. But I didn’t read about it or see it. And there were definitely no calls from the DA’s office or Gersten super-lawyer Christopher Petrakis.
One day, studying the olive oils at Whole Foods, I heard a woman in the next aisle tell someone, “I saw her! Dr. Gersten’s wife! The plastic surgeon who got killed. No, here, in the store, a minute ago.” I thought I’d gotten good at stuff like that, but I left my cart—with all its plastic bags of fruit and vegetables, Greek yogurt, and yet another box of organic cereal to challenge Froot Loops—and walked out.
Once I got the kids to bed that night, I filled my tub with the hottest water I could stand, determined to unwind until the water got cold or my finger pads turned to corduroy. I even dimmed the bathroom lights and lit a jasmine candle. I did succeed in forgetting “Dr. Gersten’s wife!” Unfortunately, that left enough room in my mind to think about the photo of Dorinda that I’d seen in a magazine at the pediatrician’s office.
It was a head shot with her looking into the camera, unsmiling. She was wearing heavy eyeliner and chandelier earrings, so it wasn’t a mug shot. What struck me again was how dumb she looked, like someone who’d gotten lower than 400 on her combined SATs because she’d made too many wrong guesses. I opened my eyes and stared at the candle flame to hypnotize myself and clear my brain. But I couldn’t not think. She might be dumb, but was she someone who could as easily stab her way out of a situation than think her way out? After all, she did have enough smarts to slip out the side door of her building and pass on taking a taxi to Port Authority because taxis keep records. She’d stopped in Times Square to buy a wig. True, maybe she’d stabbed Jonah in one insane moment and then was able to think clearly again. But was the DA’s case really so solid, so beyond a reasonable doubt, the way Eddie Huber seemed so sure it was?
But where was Dorinda Dillon’s lawyer? I wanted to know. If people can’t afford a lawyer, they can only get Legal Aid. Dorinda, though, had hired her own lawyer, a guy named Joel Winters. Even if he wasn’t any great shakes, and even without me sitting at the computer ten times a day to Google Dorinda Dillon, I should have heard something about Dorinda’s side of the story. Okay, she was going to plead not guilty. The case would be going to trial. So why wasn’t the lawyer out there defending her? All he had to do was go to the media, talk up some of the issues I’d been wondering about, like her not having a history of violence, like Jonah’s personality: nonconfrontational, generous rather than cheap, a man used to putting women at ease and dealing with them directly.
And a couple of new thoughts. A prostitute and convicted drug offender probably wouldn’t call 911. But if Dorinda really had killed Jonah, why did she bother calling that first lawyer, the woman who had once represented her for drugs? Why bother waiting around for a callback before getting out of her apartment? Why not just run? She’d waited an hour. Was she so stupid that it would take her that long to figure out to put on gloves, take the cash in Jonah’s wallet, and decide it wasn’t a cool idea to hang around with a dead body?
And what about the scissors? If you’re crazy or threatened or in the mood to commit murder, wouldn’t you go to the kitchen and grab a knife? Okay, maybe she didn’t have a big set of Wüsthof, but she must have had at least one killer knife. Why would she instead think to go into the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and take out haircutting scissors she may have used—how often?—only every two, three, four weeks?
Dorinda probably wasn’t paying Joel Winters enough to put a lot of time in. But this had been a high-profile case, all over the news. Wouldn’t even a third-rate criminal lawyer recognize that it was a chance to get himself out there? Even if he didn’t believe he could get his client off, why wouldn’t he grab all that free airtime?
The water was still pretty hot, but I got out of the tub. When I blew out the candle, I was so upset that it was half air, half spit. I’d forgotten to take out a bath sheet, so, shivering, I wrapped myself in a regular towel and thought, Why is Dorinda my problem?
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I knew you’d be happy to see me!” Grandma Ethel announced, a display of either her self-confidence or her self-delusion, since all I was doing was standing in my doorway, my mouth hanging open in surprise. I hadn’t asked to be made happy by my grandmother flying up to New York.
Just like before, she again showed up at my house without calling. Granted, we’d been speaking pretty often. I’d filled her in on both the briefing inside the DA’s office and the drama outside. Sure, I’d wanted her take on it, but more than that, I simply couldn’t stop talking about the People of the State of New York against Dorinda Dillon, aka Cristal Rousseau. Too often I found myself alternately fixated on the Meeting with Eddie Huber and the Big Babs Explosion.
Frizzy Francine Twersky definitely thought they were topics worth discussing—and better at two sessions a week. Now that I’d heard from the accountants that my budget could handle psychotherapy, I had no good reason to put Dr. Twersky off. Andrea was glad to talk about my obsessions, in part to satisfy me, but mostly because they appealed to her need for excitement. Entertainment, too. She gave it all her own spin, so instead of it being an episode of Law & Order with a gut-wrenching family subplot, she made it into a British drawing-room comedy, the kind on PBS. This one was complete with a social-climbing, ov
erdressed mother-in-law, a charming and virtuous young widow, and a she-devil who happened to be the chief of the DA’s Homicide Bureau. Clive and Christopher Petrakis weren’t in Andrea’s version. In fact, the only man in her cast was the one actor who couldn’t make an appearance: Jonah.
Unloading to both your shrink and your best friend generally makes a good one-two combo, but I needed to explain things to someone more objective or maybe more distant. I wasn’t looking for insights into my behavior or “You were right but much too nice to Babs.” I hoped to analyze what I’d gotten, and not gotten, from my meeting at the DA’s.
Maybe my phone calls made it sound like I wasn’t so good at analyzing. All I knew was in the early evening of the day following my fourth or fifth phone call with Grandma Ethel, there she was, standing in my doorway—surprise!—telling me not to worry, she was staying in the city at the Regency because she genuinely enjoyed room service. Sometimes she loved going downstairs to the restaurant and seeing who was having a power breakfast. To be totally honest, she didn’t particularly care for being a houseguest unless it was in a house with other houseguests and many servants. But I shouldn’t take that personally, because when she’d gone to the bathroom during the shiva, she’d been struck with how perfect everything was and how clean—even with all that company!
We talked for almost three hours once the boys went to bed. The good news was that both they and she seemed to find meeting each other interesting. They vaguely understood that someone called Great-grandma Ethel was a member of their family. I was pretty sure they realized I looked like her because their eyes did the “Mommy Great-grandma Mommy” trip at least a dozen times. She gazed at them with some admiration, not hard, since they went from cute (Evan) to beautiful (Mason and Dashiell). She probably credited her genes for their good looks. I was amazed how unrattled she was by their noise and perpetual motion, though from time to time she looked apprehensive, as if she expected them to turn into vicious little monsters, like the Mogwais in Gremlins.
That night’s talk comforted me. It felt relaxed, warm, fun at times, like a pajama party with your best friends in middle school. Mostly, we discussed what I should do about Dorinda Dillon.
“Do you know anything about ethics?” I asked her.
“Ethics?” Grandma Ethel repeated it like a new vocabulary word. “What about it? Yeah, I guess so. Someone on my show, a rabbi I guess, told a story about some medieval scholar. Jewish. Anyway, some evil king or an anti-Semite hooligan said to the scholar, ‘Tell me about the Torah’—or maybe he said the Talmud—‘while standing on one foot.’ I guess what that meant was he’d have to stand for a long time, so it would be torture. But listen, it’s not getting burned at the stake. So okay, the scholar stands on one foot. And you know what he says? ‘What is hateful to you, don’t do to others. The rest is commentary.’ I forgot what happened to the scholar, but it probably wasn’t good. It never was. So, Susie, there you have it: everything I know about ethics. It’s the ‘Do unto others’ thing.”
“Well,” I said, “even though I talked to the prosecutor, I still don’t feel comfortable about the case against Dorinda. I’m not saying she didn’t do it. I’m sure it will come down to finding out that she definitely did. But what do I do with this being uncomfortable business? I told you about that meeting with the head of the DA’s Homicide Bureau. Her bottom line is Dorinda did it. I don’t see her—the prosecutor—being corrupt or lazy or anything.”
“So she’s got ethics?” my grandmother asked.
“I guess. But I wasn’t worrying about Eddie Huber’s ethics as much as mine. What do I do? Do I have to do anything? If the cops and the DA’s office say that this hooker killed your husband, that they did the investigation and have determined X, Y, and Z is what happened to Jonah, then I told them what was bothering me and they said, ‘Okay, but she did it . . .’ Isn’t that enough? If I still think something feels wrong, even though I could be thinking it because I don’t want to admit certain things about Jonah to myself, where do I go with that?”
“You mean, what should you do ethically? I don’t know,” Grandma Ethel said. “I’m at a loss. Frankly, when people think ethics, the name Ethel O’Shea doesn’t usually leap to mind, as you might well imagine. It’s a hard thing to think about, that’s for sure. But listen, I’ll tell you one thing: Don’t be put off by authority. Now, call me a taxi and get some sleep or you’ll get dark circles. God forbid.”
That talk with my grandmother gave me the courage to call Eddie Huber the next morning and ask for a meeting—though I quickly assured her I wasn’t bringing my in-laws or their lawyer.
After a long pause, but without any audible sigh, Eddie Huber agreed to my request. Only then did I add, “Oh, I forgot. My elderly grandmother is in from Miami. There’s a very slim possibility I might have to bring her along. But she’s going to be eighty on her next birthday, so don’t worry about her giving you any trouble.” Naturally, that conversation—with the word “elderly”—didn’t take place in front of Grandma Ethel. I picked her up at her hotel an hour and a half later. By then, she’d had her fill of watching power brokers at the Regency schmoozing and brushing whole-wheat toast crumbs off their ties.
I needed Grandma Ethel along on my visit to the DA not just because her arrival had given me the courage to ask for another meeting, but also as a witness: Had Eddie Huber said what I thought she’d said, or was I misinterpreting? Was she telling the whole truth, a half-truth, or was she full of shit? Was she playing a game with me, and if the answer was yes, what was it?
“Boy, this place stinks like an unwashed twat!” Grandma Ethel announced as we waited to go through the metal detector in the lobby of the DA’s office. In the same loud voice, she asked me, “Did I offend your delicate sensibilities or something?”
“A little bit with the volume,” I whispered, praying we wouldn’t be noticed. Talk about unanswered prayers: An almost-eighty-year-old blonde wearing a pink Chanel suit trimmed in black patent leather and wearing three-inch stiletto heels that showed off still-great legs could not go unnoticed in a hallway filled with lawyers, cops, and assorted shifty-eyed, slobby individuals who might or might not be criminals—especially when she said “twat” loud enough to be heard in all five boroughs. “It doesn’t stink that much. It’s just old.”
“I’m old. This stinks. But I’ll lower my voice.” She did to the point that I could barely hear her. “I’m only here to make you happy,” she said.
Of course, the danger of taking Grandma Ethel was that I couldn’t predict how she’d behave; I didn’t really know her. Having been the professional charmer hosting Talk of Miami meant she could be both smooth and savvy, but saying “stinks like an unwashed twat” in front of fifteen or twenty people, including the cop at the security desk, was neither. Still, part of her job had been knowing a little about almost everything; in a potentially hostile environment like the Homicide chief’s office, having someone truly savvy and totally on my side was a plus.
Eddie Huber’s jaw went momentarily slack at the sight of the “elderly grandmother” in bubblegum-pink Chanel, still a hottie at seventy-nine. Fortunately, she had no cause for complaint about Grandma Ethel’s behavior. Neither did I, but it was only a couple of minutes into the meeting.
“I guess this must be a tough part of your job,” I told the prosecutor. “Dealing with the families of homicide victims who need a lot of dealing with, when you have so many cases, so much legal work to do.” I was trying to be ingratiating.
“This is as much a part of the job as going to court, and just as important to all of us,” she said.
I tried to believe her. “Well, I’m very grateful, because I can see how I might be a pain in the neck.” Using “ass” wouldn’t have felt right. I glanced at Grandma Ethel nervously, grateful for her silence; her legs were crossed, and she was swinging the top one like a metronome, so at least she was occupied.
Eddie Huber was wearing the same bland green sweater she’d wor
n the time before. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or admire her. If someone like me had a second appointment to see me in my office, I would be constitutionally incapable of wearing the same thing. Maybe she genuinely didn’t remember what she’d worn, or possibly, she didn’t care. Or it could be Eddie Huber’s way of sneering at me and my navy Prada pantsuit, which I didn’t have on at this second meeting—it was now a white silk shirt and olive gabardine pants, since I’d realized the Manhattan DA’s office was a dress-down kind of place.
I noticed I was twirling my wedding ring nervously, so I clasped my hands. “It might help me if I could find out more precisely what happened to Jonah once he got to Dorinda Dillon’s.” Eddie Huber’s eyes moved to Grandma Ethel. “It’s fine to speak freely in front of my grandmother,” I assured her, just as Grandma Ethel offered her an encouraging smile.
“Can you give me an example of what you’d like to know?” Eddie asked.
“Do you have any idea how long he was there?”
“Difficult to say. When Dorinda was interviewed in Las Vegas, she was asked, and I believe her words were ‘I don’t know. Not that long.’ Beyond that, without witnesses, there isn’t enough evidence to make that determination.”
“So it’s not clear whether ‘not that long’ is two minutes or, whatever, a half hour or more?”
“We don’t know. The natural assumption is that since Dorinda was going to the closet near the front door to get his coat for him, he was leaving after whatever business between them had transpired. What that was and how long it took, we simply don’t know. Her interview with our detective and the representatives of the Las Vegas police was cut off after her lawyer arrived.”