As Husbands Go

by Susan Isaacs

  “My lawyer will let you know, Mr. Ruhlmann. Thank you for calling.” Phoebe Kingsley? I thought. I pursed my lips, furrowed my brow, and waited for the name to ring a bell. It didn’t.

  Grandma Ethel and Sparky passed on pizza and went out to an Indian restaurant. After I put the boys to sleep, I roamed around the house and wound up in each of their rooms, gazing at them. That peaceful euphoria mothers are encouraged to feel each time they look at their children came to me once in a blue moon, almost always when they were asleep and incapable of shrieking, hurling their Spider-Man accessories, or crayoning a mural on a silk-covered wall.

  I walked down the second-floor hallway into my office and Googled Phoebe. There was much to Google. Somehow I’d missed her in those party pictures that appear in the Times and all those Town & Country–type magazines. Maybe it was because she always showed up in group pictures, never by herself. Billy Kingsley was rich enough to have his wife noticed, but apparently, he didn’t care enough to bankroll what it took to be so exquisitely dressed and so philanthropic that reporters and photographers cannot resist coming to your fifty-two-million-dollar home in Southampton to cover your party for the Friends of the South Fork Water Birds Foundation.

  But I zoomed in on her again and again, and finally, in one photograph that happened to have an incredible number of pixels, I could see her face clearly. No, I had never met her. Phoebe and I ran in different circles. She was, as Andrea would have said, a type, or at least doing her damnedest to become one. Her hair was coiffed in one of those neo-helmet-head styles socially ambitious women were wearing again, maybe hoping people would take them for the reincarnation of Brooke Astor. She was slim, pretty enough. From the little I could see in the photographs, she wore elegant, safe couture clothes well, and she smiled with every tooth she owned.

  What really impressed me was her face. Smooth and unlined. Almost perfectly symmetrical. It was what Jonah called the Gilbert John Noakes signature face-lift. I’d learned to spot one years earlier. Flawless yet natural, except for two slight indentations on the temples near the hairline, less obvious than but a little like the forceps marks you see on some newborns. The dents could definitely be seen; Phoebe Kingsley’s helmet hair was full, high, and swept off her face.

  I wanted to get her out of my head, not so much because she was upsetting me, but if I could stop thinking about where she fit into the overall picture, maybe something would come to me. To change my mind’s subject, I got into bed with an envelope of pictures from a vacation we had taken two summers before, in Chatham, Cape Cod. I’d taken photos of Jonah and the boys on the beach, the best photography I’d ever done. The sunlight had been perfect, illuminating the mist in the air so that all of them—alone or in groups of two, three, or four—looked like they were surrounded by an aura. Better than an aura: more like a head-to-toe halo. I kept going through them, about fifteen photographs, again and again. I didn’t cry. Maybe I was melancholy, but I had the feeling you get from looking back on any good time that’s gone with no possibility of a do-over. As I drifted off to sleep, I was thinking I could smell the ocean.

  I woke up sometime during the night. When didn’t I? No dreams startled me awake. No kids were crying. Instead, I recalled an evening Jonah and I had gone out to dinner with Layne and her husband, Mike Robinson, an OB/GYN. Jonah made it a rule never to gossip about one partner when we went out with another. That night, though, Gilbert John was mentioned. Jonah and Layne were deep in conversation about some fat-lasering procedure that Gilbert John had observed and deeply disapproved of. Mike murmured something to me about how he’d hate to have Gilbert John disapprove of anything he did. I’d laughed, partly because it felt like such an illicit conversation for the two spouses to be having about Gilbert John Noakes. I told Mike I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t intimidated by Gilbert John. He said Layne once had told him that early in her career, when she was assisting Gilbert John during surgery, he’d given her a dirty look for something minor she’d done wrong. Mike said he’d laughed when she described those disapproving eyes glaring over the surgical mask, but Layne was never able to. She’d told him it was like having all the presidents on Mount Rushmore angrily staring down at her.

  Mike had been on something of a roll, and he wasn’t at all a drinker, so it wasn’t alcohol talking. I figured this was a conversation Jonah would rather I not have, so I tried making it a foursome again. But he and Layne were still going on about lasering in the kind of surgeons’ shoptalk that gets pretty revolting. Mike hadn’t moved on from our conversation, though he’d transitioned to Layne being upset about Gilbert John’s lifestyle.

  Gilbert John wasn’t bringing in anywhere near as much business as he had been. We all knew that, right? Right. So why should Layne and Jonah get stuck subsidizing his house on the ocean in East Hampton and his ski lodge in Steamboat Springs when he was putting less time into the practice and doing more traveling and pro bono work? I kept quiet about Gilbert John’s new Bentley convertible, an Azure, which was so big it could almost qualify as a yacht.

  Mike was telling me he approved of doctors giving back. He himself was in a program where he was assigned high-risk obstetrics patients who had no insurance and no money. Mike thought Gilbert John’s enormous number of good works was a great thing for a plastic surgeon to do toward the end of his career. Layne and Jonah each had their own pro bono causes. But Gilbert John’s pro bono time was way out of proportion.

  The memory of that dinner with Layne and Mike was still with me the next morning. I was doing busywork, cleaning out the freezer, getting rid of pesto marked Aug 07 and containers of ancient cookies, when Grandma Ethel and Sparky came downstairs. Sparky asked me if it would be okay if she stayed another day or two.

  “You have to ask permission to stay on?” my grandmother demanded. “I’m family, so you’re family.”

  “Grandma Ethel,” I said, “if you’d given me one nanosecond more, I could have been the one to tell Sparky that.”

  “You’d better work on your reflexes. Speaking of which, I heard the phone last night, but you must have grabbed it right away. Any news from the Rialto?”

  “It was your boyfriend,” I said. “Martin Ruhlmann.”

  “Eth,” Sparky said, “if you want him, I won’t stand in your way.”

  As they took breakfast, I filled them in on Phoebe Kingsley. Then I segued into my waking in the middle of the night, thinking about that dinner with Layne and Mike. I couldn’t understand what about the conversation had been so significant that it suddenly came back, considering I’d forgotten it not long after it had occurred. Naturally, I’d mentioned it to Jonah, but he’d come to Gilbert John’s defense; it was Gilbert John, after all, who had brought him and Layne into one of the city’s most prestigious practices and therefore was entitled to earn a little more than his fair share of the proceeds.

  “Maybe it’s the connection,” my grandmother said. “You know what I mean?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “The connection,” she said again, more impatiently, like I was deliberately trying to outdo the dumbest kid in the class.

  “I give up,” I said. “What connection are you talking about?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking. The connection between Layne and her husband with that Phoebe Kingsley.” She reached over to Sparky’s plate and helped herself to half her bagel. “You hear from Ruhlmann about Phoebe, then a few hours later, you’re remembering that dinner. We’ll need to work on why you’re tying the two together.”

  Before I could work on it, the publicity-hungry Joel Winters called my cell. “Dorinda got the client who referred your husband through College Girl Companions,” he said. “I gave them a call, but they don’t talk to anybody. ‘Our business is based on trust.’ Can you believe that? Like there’s a lawyer-client, priest-penitent, and madam-of-a-whorehouse-john privilege.” Joel Winters seemed not just annoyed but upset at not being able to get me the information I’d asked for. I sensed he was worrying
that his fifteen minutes of fame would be canceled.

  “Who’s in charge at College Girl?” I asked.

  “Her name is Cleo. Maybe Clea. She’s one cold fish. Ice water in her veins. The last thing she wants to do is talk to a reporter, so save yourself some time.”

  “All right, Mr. Winters, how about this? Let me have your e-mail address. I’m going to send you a photo of someone. I need you to take it to Rikers—”

  “Listen, Ethel—”

  “This will be a great story. I guarantee it. And it could make you . . . I don’t think I have to draw you a picture. You’d be the guy who did what everybody else said couldn’t be done—you saved Dorinda Dillon. Okay? Please ask Dorinda if she ever saw the man in this photo. One more thing: I need you to do it fast.”

  I had to get my grandmother away from Sparky for a few minutes to tell her what I wanted to do next. Sparky was the kind of lawyer who would tell both of us, “Forget it. You absolutely cannot do this.” “Grandma Ethel,” I said, “I have some lower-heeled Manolo slides that are too narrow for me. Want to look?” She did, of course, and Sparky didn’t. When we got upstairs, Grandma Ethel seemed extremely aggravated by my shoe ruse because she’d already entered the Manolos into her “Assets” column. “Please, I needed to get you away from Sparky, because she does the ethics thing twenty-four/seven. Listen, stick with me now. Be with me. I’ll give you any pair of shoes in my closet. Two pair.”

  “Do you think you have to pay me to be with you?” my grandmother asked.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Good. A couple of years ago, when we came up to New York and had dinner with you and Jonah, you were wearing a pair of Manolos. Remember? I admired them, and you said you’d gotten them at an outlet. Sling-back, white and taupe stripe, two- or three-inch tapered wood heel. If I didn’t have ethics, those are the ones I’d take.”

  I called back Martin Ruhlmann to get Phoebe Kingsley’s number. On my cell, which had caller ID blocked, I reached her in one ring. I held the phone slightly away from my ear so Grandma Ethel could hear.

  “My name is Marianne,” I said. “I’m the bookkeeper at Manhattan Aesthetics.” I heard a big-time tremble in my voice, but my grandmother gave me a smile of approval. “We’re having issues about your check to Dr. Noakes.” I spotted the striped slingbacks on a high shelf and reached for them. I got only one; the other flew off the shelf, beaned my head, though not too hard, then fell to the floor.

  “I sent another check to his home address,” Phoebe said, sounding irritated.

  “Made out to him personally?” I picked up the shoe and handed the pair to my grandmother.

  “Yes,” Phoebe said. It came out as pissy hiss. “He was supposed to tear up the other one personally and mail it back to me.” She took a deep breath. “Can I ask you something, Miss Bookkeeper? How many goddamn face-lifts am I supposed to pay for? I only had one.” Phoebe Kingsley didn’t sound low-class, but her voice had a raspy hardness, like a diamond nail file. “I can’t have my checks floating around where some clerical type could deposit two of them. Listen, I asked for it back. Christ on a crutch! Two times! Do we understand each other?”

  “Not completely,” I told her. “I’d like to know—”

  “That’s it,” she said. “I am not discussing this anymore!” She slammed down the phone.

  I put down my cell and motioned to Grandma Ethel to keep silent because I sensed she was ready to make a noble speech renouncing the slingbacks. I closed my eyes for a moment and chewed on my knuckles. “Okay, let me try this out on you,” I said. “It seems to me Phoebe Kingsley’s check was for Gilbert John. There was no mistake. When Jonah found it, or maybe it was brought to his attention by one of his staff—I don’t know—Gilbert John obviously couldn’t admit what it was and cash it. So he called Phoebe Kingsley and told her there was a problem with that check and she’d have to write another one.”

  “He told her he’d send back the one made out to him torn into pieces,” Grandma Ethel said. She was cradling the shoes in her arms the way someone else would soothe a baby. “But he couldn’t because Jonah was probably holding on to it. So, like I used to say on Talk of Miami, ‘I need to think.’” She smiled into a nonexistent TV camera. “Give me one hundred and twenty seconds, and I’ll be back with an answer for you.” She walked over to the bergère chair in the bedroom, put the shoes on the floor, then sat, and in under five seconds said, “Okay, tell me if you agree. Phoebe sent Noakes—what the hell kind of stupid name is Noakes?—another check. But she didn’t get the torn-up check back. On the other hand, it never got cashed, did it? My guess is she probably forgot about it until just now, when you called. That’s what happens when you’re in the middle of a divorce. It takes all your energy. I was so grateful when Sidney dropped dead—I couldn’t just leave him like I’d left Lenny the Loser, because he was a popular guy and I didn’t want to alienate half of Miami. I love Miami. Anyway, if you ask me, and even if you don’t, you can safely bet that Phoebe’s GP Fund was money she’d socked away for incidentals, like a new face. And probably, when she got closer to going back on the husband market, lipo and new tits.” She tried on the slingbacks. They fit.

  We went downstairs to tell Sparky that Gilbert John Noakes’s pro bono work most likely wasn’t so pro bono. If Phoebe Kingsley was any indication, his on-the-sly surgeries were what was causing the inventory shrinkage that had so upset Jonah. We were careful not to let Sparky know how I’d gotten the information.

  “The check to Noakes from Phoebe Kingsley’s fund shows Gilbert John taking money under the table,” Sparky said. “My guess is he’s doing side deals with some old patients, friends he trusts, along with their friends. He gets the check made out to him and pockets it. He puts in for the anesthesia and surgical supplies as part of his pro bono work.” I must have looked pathetically hopeful because Sparky said, “Susie, if this were reported and substantiated, it probably would be a good case for prosecuting him on tax evasion. But I’m sorry to tell you, this does not prove Gilbert John Noakes committed murder.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Maybe she’ll offer you a job,” Andrea said brightly.

  “Maybe I’ll take it.” Not so bright.

  We’d gone to a luncheon at a private club in Manhattan for a client’s fiftieth birthday. Now Andrea was dropping me at a brownstone on West Fiftieth: not one of those pretty places with geraniums in window boxes. Crummy, in fact. College Girl Companions was upstairs. A nail salon a few steps down looked like a place to go if you were interested in taking home a toenail fungus.

  The building was not a place that had seen better days ever, though it might have watched its final tolerable ones fly out a dirty window in 1908. Now it was just another sad subdivided space badly in need of a sandblasting it was unlikely to get. This wasn’t a block for gentrification. On one side was a locksmith. On the other was an Italian restaurant; its canopy was torn, and the ripped piece flapped crazily in the wind.

  College Girl probably needed a midtown address to reassure tourists, but I couldn’t imagine many people set foot on the premises. Why would a client want to go to a place like that, much less be seen there? And despite the “College Girl,” I couldn’t picture a bunch of academic whizzes like Dorinda Dillon sitting around a lounge and reading Paradise Lost.

  “I’ll find a place to park and wait,” Andrea said.

  “Don’t bother. I don’t know how long this will take, and you’ll wind up getting stuck in rush-hour traffic. I’ll grab a cab and get home by train.” Our ride into the city, and then being at the same table at the luncheon, had been enough of Andrea for me for one day.

  “You are not going home on the train during rush hour.” Andrea wrinkled her nose like I’d suggested taking a bath in a vat of pig shit.

  “It’s okay,” I murmured, opening the door of her latest car, a Jaguar convertible.

  “It’s not okay. I’m going to stay here. You’re going to a whorehouse.”


  “I’m going to the offices of an escort service. What do you think, it’s like a dorm and they have cubicles with beds up there? Go on. Go home.”

  “Susie.”

  “Andrea.” I got out of the car. So did she. “Hey, you’re double-parked,” I said. “You’re holding up traffic.”

  “I want you to keep your phone on. I’m going to call you in fifteen minutes. If you don’t answer, I’m coming in with the police.”

  “What police? You’ll go running to the corner screaming for a cop? You know what will happen? You’ll get a ticket for double parking. I’ll be fine. And please don’t go calling me, because my phone may not work in there, or if I’m talking to someone and getting information, I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  She put her hands on her hips. She’d looked so cool at the luncheon—killer stilettos, a Carolina Herrera dress and coat in gray—but having a snit beside her convertible on this seedy street, she looked bizarre, a deranged rich lady from another neighborhood who’d taken a wrong turn. “Hear me!” she said. “I do not want you to do this.”

  “Andrea—”

  “What? You don’t give a rat’s ass what I want? Too bad. You can’t go.”

  “Let me explain one last time. I’m trying to get some information so I can have something to push the cops and the DA to reopen the case. The only way I can think of—”

  “Forget that I’m your business partner and have a strong financial interest in keeping you alive,” she said.

  “You can stay here and block traffic if you want.” I turned to go upstairs. “I can’t worry about you now.”

  “I don’t want you risking your life!” The idea of me risking my life by going to an office was so over-the-top that I wound up smacking myself in the forehead, that I can’t believe it gesture lusty ethnics do in old movies. But Andrea wouldn’t let up. “Susie. You have three children. What if something happens to you? Who are you going to leave them with? Theo, that ridiculous, selfish Munchkin bastard? And if I’m calling someone selfish, you can just imagine!” I really couldn’t. “Listen to me, Susie.”