by Susan Isaacs
“Let me see,” Joel Winters said. “I’ve got an opening, a couple of openings actually, early next week.”
“Sorry, I’ve got a deadline. I’d really like to be able to quote you, but it’s got to be tomorrow or nothing.”
“Okay, tomorrow. What time’s good for you?”
Just as I hung up, my grandmother stepped into the room. “‘Dialing for Death’? That is the worst name for an article I’ve ever heard.”
“Were you eavesdropping?”
“Were you lying through your teeth and using my name?”
“Yes.”
“There you go. Let me tell you something here and now. I don’t have many scruples. Three, maybe four, but not when it comes to eavesdropping. Anyway, what does this Joel Winters sound like?”
“Not quite the scum of the earth.”
“But close?” Grandma Ethel asked.
“Close as they come.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
When the phone rang a little after eleven that night, I tried to sleep through it. Having been married to a plastic surgeon, I’d learned to ignore late-night calls because 99 percent of them were from the answering service about ooze or a patient panicking that once the swelling went down, she would still resemble a duck-billed platypus. But my brain must have been wider awake than I was. It understood No surgeon in bedroom anymore. My eyes opened. I glanced toward the caller ID readout, half thinking it must be Sparky calling my grandmother, but it was glowing so brightly I couldn’t read it. After a throat-clearing so my “hello” wouldn’t sound like a death rattle, I picked up the phone.
“Hey, Susie,” I heard. “I know it’s late, but we need to talk.”
Jonah! I thought.
Of course I knew it couldn’t be him. But still, that voice! With a giant bam! my heart seemed to explode. Tiny pieces of heart shrapnel shot through my body and, for an instant, filled me with joy. Nevertheless, even while overwhelmed with that euphoria, I was clear enough to ask, “Who is this, please?” Even though Jonah had been murdered, autopsied, and buried, I half expected to hear him answer, “‘Who is this?’ Susan B Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten, give me a fucking break!”
“It’s Theo.” I had been sleeping so deeply that I’d missed the big difference between his voice and Jonah’s. Theo’s perpetual peevishness always emerged within two or three words. Now I heard that touch of whine in his drawn-out “Theee-ooo.” In all the years, I had never answered the phone and mistaken one brother for the other. Theo forever sounded like he’d just been given the smaller scoop of ice cream. “Are you okay to talk?” he asked.
“Yes. Sure.”
“There’s something . . . there’s something I want to get some clarity on.” Theo sounded agitated, but that was hardly a first. I braced the phone between my ear and shoulder and rubbed my eyes hard to get my depleted tear ducts functioning again. I guessed his issue was a major-major (as opposed to just a big) fight with my in-laws. Or, in descending order, career worries, money problems, women problems, drugs. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he said brightly, so I knew another sentence was about to emerge to let me know me he wasn’t fine. “I’ve got to tell you. I’m seriously concerned about my mother—her going off the deep end in the DA’s office.”
I gripped the phone and leaned back on the pillow. “Theo, I don’t think you have to worry. Okay, she went off the deep end, but she came back. She offered me a really lovely apology.”
“Good. I’m glad about that.”
“So am I. I mean, all of us, our nerve endings are so frayed, so it’s understandable. But all of us need each other’s support to get through this hell.”
“You know you always have had my support.” It was true that he’d always been decent, never treated me as if any moment I might forget how to handle a knife and fork properly—the way Babs and Clive did—and muddy the name Gersten forever. “I’m on your side. That’s part of what I want to talk to you about.”
Beyond the built-in touch of petulance in my brother-in-law’s voice, I thought I heard something else: strain, maybe anger. This wasn’t head-on-pillow talk, so I sat up yoga-style, in a half-lotus position, and elongated my spine. I needed to be ready for whatever was coming, not tensed up.
“My mother’s shit-fit outside that Huber woman’s office . . .” Theo began. He seemed to be waiting for me to jump in with some comment.
“That’s over.”
“Look, the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you, but I think there’s a certain need for a reality check when it comes to your behavior.” I didn’t keep quiet out of any strategy but because I was so taken aback I couldn’t think of anything to say. “I hate to say it, Susie, but my mother’s mad scene—okay, it was over the top. But it was an appropriate reaction.”
It was after eleven o’clock, for God’s sake. Did I really have to stay on the phone with him while he worked up his monologue: “A Mother Driven Insane by Grief”? “Theo, you and I have always had a good relationship. We can survive a few bumps, so just tell me straight out what’s on your mind.”
A reluctant sigh. Theo had had enough acting lessons that it didn’t sound theatrical, though I could sense it was a prelude to a rehearsed speech full of naked honesty. Or maybe tough love. I didn’t give a damn as long as it was short. I could say “I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate the profundity of your mother’s anguish” and be asleep by eleven-thirty.
“I’ve held this in much too long. How could you possibly have expected my mother to maintain any semblance of self-control when faced with what you hit her with in Eddie Huber’s office? Not just that you’d never given any of us a clue that you had these . . . these beliefs, but the utter irrationality of them. I don’t know how to express how worried I am about you and your . . . let me just come out and say it: your delusions. You’re seriously considering that the disgusting, cheap whore Jonah went to might not have done it?”
My mouth was open, but I wasn’t talking. It was jaw-dropping, not only what he was saying but the harshness. It wasn’t just his view of me that was getting me so upset but that he could be so blatantly harsh. I’d always thought of us as allies, the two members of the family his parents didn’t approve of.
“Okay, fine,” he went on, “maybe my mother shouldn’t have been screaming in the halls of justice, or whatever they call that revolting place, but can’t you begin to see the double horror of it for her? A murdered son. And then a daughter-in-law—the sole person in custody of her three grandchildren—who’s desperately clinging to, quite frankly, an insane theory.”
“How about ‘a theory my parents and I strongly disagree with’?” I snapped. “And talk about insane: You should keep in mind, Theo, that I wasn’t the one who completely lost control in public.”
“Listen to me, Susie,” he yelped. I may have heard a growl, too, because what popped into my mind as he spoke was our neighborhood psycho-dog, an Airedale that would strain on his leash, bare his teeth, and bark, unable to stop even as his choke collar began to strangle him.
“Calm down,” I told him. “Just tell me what the problem is without using the word ‘insane.’”
“The problem, Mrs. Gersten, is that with your barrage of questions and your pathological inability to accept the conclusions of more than competent professionals in the DA’s office after a thorough investigation—”
“I have doubts about its thoroughness.”
“You’re jeopardizing the case against Dorinda Dillon!” he barked. “If it weren’t for that, trust me, I wouldn’t have brought this up. But the cops, the prosecutors, are acutely sensitive to public opinion. To them, you, with your endless questioning of their evidence and competence . . .” He was now so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “You are just a time bomb they’re terrified is going to blow up in their faces. And Jonah’s killer could go free because of your craziness! You’d better get a grip, Susie. You better get a goddamn grip!” The line went dead
as Theo apparently slammed down the phone.
I got so little sleep the rest of the night that the next morning I didn’t even consider driving into the city. Though I probably could have found my way to Canal Street in Chinatown, the area of downtown Manhattan around the courthouses was a mystery to me. So I took the Long Island Rail Road and prayed that the subway directions to Joel Winters’s office, which I’d gotten from the Internet, were right.
I was a total basket case. First of all, I was carrying my grandmother’s old ID card from WPLG in Miami. Aside from the face on the card being decades older and ninety-five shades blonder, there was a resemblance, though not enough to convince any person with half a mind and/or the gift of sight. As the train sped and slowed through Queens and crept into the tunnel into Manhattan, I was dreading Joel Winters would not only ask for identification but actually look at it. Unfortunately, Grandma Ethel had not been very helpful, since her suggestion had been that I become a blonde. She seemed to believe that her picture on her ID and I were practically identical twins, so with me in light hair and bright red lipstick, we could pass for each other.
Right before I left, I’d remembered the Clarins tanning gel I’d bought the summer before and forgotten to use. I slimed it all over myself to get that I use sunscreen, but hey, I live in Miami color, but the directions said it took two hours to work. I prayed by the time I got to Joel Winters’s office, I’d look like one of those hot bronze goddess statues everyone shleps back from India, not like a walking tangerine. Also, I’d pulled my hair into a ponytail, twisted it, and pinned it up; since all the photos of me in the news were with hair down, shoulder-length, maybe the change would help silence any she-looks-familiar bell.
Riding downtown on the subway, looking at faces, I remembered Jonah had talked about a rare kind of woman, one who was satisfied with how she looked. A plastic surgeon might think she could use several nips and a lot of tucks. That type of woman, though, would have been shocked to hear such a thing. It wasn’t that she wanted to age naturally, without intervention. What he was talking about were the confident ones: pretty, plain, or even homely women who thought they were lovely the way they were. My grandma Ethel was one of them. She was truly pretty, but no one would call her dewy. Still, she was one of those who looked in the mirror and, at almost eighty, saw an ageless combination of Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, and Anne Hathaway.
When I got to Joel Winters’s office, I was surprised to find it had a working elevator and granite floors. My image had been so strong, and so Humphrey Bogart detective movie, that I’d been sure I would walk through a door with JOEL WINTERS, ATTY. AT LAW painted on its frosted glass pane: seedy, without the advantage of Humphrey in the role of Joel. Naturally, it wasn’t at all like my other picture of a lawyer’s office, which was the midtown firm where Jonah and I had made our wills after the triplets came: a forest of lacquered wood, legal pads, ballpoint pens, and mineral water, soda, and bottles of green tea on a credenza beside a stainless-steel bucket overflowing with ice. This place was a disappointment, probably not only to me but to its occupant. The small outer office did have a desk, chair, phone, and cup with a couple of pencils and a ruler, but there was no computer and no secretary.
The inner door opened and Joel Winters said, “Come in, Miss New York Observer. You’re gonna have to forgive me, but I forgot your name.”
“Ethel O’Shea.” Here it was, the point he could ask “Can I see some ID?”
“Come in, come in. Sorry, my secretary’s out on maternity leave.” His office was about the size of the bedroom in our first Manhattan apartment. But that was where the resemblance stopped. With its dark beige carpet, light beige walls, and a medium brown desk, it managed to be unpleasant despite its aggressive neutrality. There were a couple of framed documents with foil seals, but they were hung so high it was hard to see whether they were diplomas or prizes in a pie-eating contest.
Not that he was fat. Winters was skinny—an old-fashioned word, but “thin” gives the picture of someone fit, or at least a person who knows about diet. From his rounded shoulders to his shuffle, Winters gave no impression of having any muscle tone. His walk was old-guy, but my guess was he was, tops, forty.
He gestured to a seat that looked like it had come from some dead relative’s dining room set, then he went behind his desk. I pulled out a pen and a spiral notebook I’d bought in Penn Station and said, “Let me get a few particulars about you first.”
“You’re not taping this?” he asked.
“Oh no.” I hadn’t even thought to go tape-recorder shopping in Penn Station. “Even the newer ones are unreliable. Sometimes you get back to your desk and you listen and nothing . . . The new new thing is that most of the journalism schools have gone anti-
digital and are requiring shorthand. Much more accurate.” I’d made that up, and it couldn’t be true, but Joel Winters was nodding, not only believing me but planning on using it as cocktail-party conversation if he ever got invited to a cocktail party. “I need a little bit of personal background on you,” I said. “Age, what law school, how you chose your specialty—that sort of thing.”
Obviously, my definition of “a little bit” and his were different. He passed the next five minutes talking about himself without, even for a single second, managing to be interesting. He would have kept going with great “Joel in Court” tales of brilliance and high hilarity, but I cut him off. “How is Dorinda Dillon doing?” I asked.
“You know. Holding her own. Hopes she’ll be vindicated at her trial.”
“Has there been any talk about a plea deal?” I asked, grateful that the thousand hours I’d spent watching Law & Order and Son of Law & Order had not gone to waste.
“No.” He looked like he was about to add something else, but all he did was scratch behind his ear. It almost seemed like he had an on-off switch.
“What’s your defense going to be?”
He gave one of those knowing laughs that sound like “huh.” I thought it was supposed to mean That’s easy, and we’re going to cream them, but it just made him sound nervous. Finally, he said, “We’re going with the truth.”
“Which is?”
“Which is, Ethel O’Shea—great old Irish name, not that you’re at all old, so please don’t take that the wrong way—that she went to get the doctor’s coat and there was somebody in the closet. He picked up the electric broom that was in there—”
“Did Dorinda see who it was? That it was a man?”
“No, actually. What do the politicians say? ‘I misspoke.’ She opened the closet door, I think got a look at the electric broom, though I’m gonna double-check on that. Then whomp! She got hit over the head so hard it knocked her senseless.”
“And then?”
“When she came to, she saw the doctor on the floor. Dead. Naturally, she was shocked.”
“How come she didn’t call 911?”
“Look, Ethel . . . Is it okay if I call you Ethel?”
“Of course. Go right ahead,” I said, though not too warmly. Maybe he was a sweetheart, but he had the look of a serious creep, and I didn’t want to make him feel too comfortable with me.
“Dorinda may be a really nice girl, woman, but she’s a woman who’s a hooker and has—I’m not telling you anything here that isn’t on the public record—arrests and a conviction on minor drug charges. Cocaine. It’s not heroin or anything. Somebody like that isn’t so quick to dial 911 about a corpse on her carpet.”
I wrote a version of what he was saying in the spiral notebook, to appear reporter-like. When I glanced up, the overhead office light was shining on his hair, which was light brown coated with so much product that it looked like a piece of tinted, molded Plexiglas. “So the defense is that someone knocked her out and then killed the doctor?”
“Not just any doctor. A Park Avenue plastic surgeon.” He shook his head sadly, as if this were an added burden he should be charging extra for.
“Does she have any theories who this killer
could be?”
“No. None.”
“Was there anyone else who had the key to her apartment?”
“The super has keys to everyone’s place down in the basement but”—he smiled: humor on its way—“the keys are kept under lock and key.”
“No one else has one? What about the person who lived in the apartment before she did?”
“Oh no, definitely not. When you’re a hooker, you’re into privacy big-time. She told me straight out that the first thing she did when she moved in was get a new lock, the really expensive kind. The keys got made on a special machine and had a number. If you wanted to get another one, you had to have the number. So this is not a case of keys floating around.”
“It’s strange, then, that she has no idea who it could have been.”
“What did they used to say? ‘Strange but true.’”
“Do you think that will go over with a jury?”
“It’ll have to, Ethel. It’s true, number one. And number two, off the record . . .” I put down the pen. “We’re stuck with it. She talked. Not a lot but enough. In Las Vegas, after her arrest, and they videotaped it: her saying she got knocked out and woke up and there he was, dead.”
“Off the record,” I said, “if you weren’t stuck with that, what would your defense be?”
“She doesn’t pay me enough to come up with an alternate defense.” Joel Winters had a good laugh about that one, and I joined in with a chuckle to prevent him from having a total ego meltdown. “We could go with the doctor being a real sicko. Self-defense.”
I felt my now familiar shock reaction, a wave of nausea. Acid burned my throat, and I hoped I could heave and get it over with. “In what way was he a sicko?” I managed to ask.
“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” he said. “But if I was going for an alternate defense, I’d spend time with her, probing, maybe finding something we could work with.” I nodded. While I now was merely queasy, it was too much to experience that rise of sickness and plunge of spirit, then snap out of it. I couldn’t talk. I was desperate to catch my breath—except I was already breathing. “But that’s neither here nor there,” he went on. “We’re stuck with what we have. The truth of the matter is, Dorinda did have a bump on her head when she was arrested. I just have to be convincing enough to the jury that she got it the night he was murdered, that she didn’t take a hammer and go bonk! to back up her story, which is what the prosecutor is going to argue.”