Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir

by Gary Taylor

I shook my head, chuckled, and turned back to some notes on my desk. Catherine had insisted again that I meet her for lunch at Charlie's that day. She had said she wanted to introduce me to someone important. So, I was reviewing a mental tally of the items revealed so far on her secret agenda of reasons for maintaining an interest in me. Besides our physical attraction to each other, I believed she had revealed several ulterior motives. She considered me a buffer that might protect her from overly aggressive investigators in the Tedesco murder. She had told me she felt safer on the arm of a reporter who would expose the police and Special Crimes if they took liberties on the case.

  Catherine also had said she intended to appeal the verdict on Tedesco's estate and needed to develop a respectable relationship with me so I could testify on her behalf if she won a new trial. I just grunted when she said that, considering it pretty farfetched to believe she'd get a new trial and maybe even sillier to think I'd present as "respectable" after cross-examination from Tedesco's lawyers in front of a jury. But I realized her hopes for a retrial could moderate her behavior. If she thought she needed me as a positive witness, she would work harder to behave.

  Then, there also had been her discussion of a need to separate the professional and physical sides of her life. I had concluded Catherine viewed me as a prime candidate for domestic slavery. Would she call me her bitch? Trying to see myself from her point of view, I realized I did have the look of a desperate creature begging for rescue from the two-hundred-dollar car and the luggage by Kroger. I knew she saw me as a puppy she could easily control and manipulate, after some short period of breaking. But none of this bothered me. I considered myself unbreakable. And, I thought I might enjoy playing the role of a kept man for a while. I also rather relished my new image around the courthouse as the latest foil for our most notorious femme fatale. I had prosecutors warning me off the scent, and the whole scene had provided sanctuary from gossip about Cindy's soap opera. Catherine amused me with her constant parade of schemes and Machiavellian maneuvers. In my mind, our relationship had become much like a game of chess. I hoped to lull her into a state of overconfidence by accepting her portrayal of me as a chump. And, I firmly believed her mercenary nature would force her to drop me anyway, as soon as a more lucrative target entered her life.

  "You need to think seriously today about the things I am going to ask you to do," she said firmly as soon as I joined her at a table in Charlie's. Bringing me to a place that required jackets for lunch was this city's version of taking a mutt to a dog show. I had a tie, but it was loosened at the collar. My khaki trousers and frayed herringbone jacket contrasted sharply with the three-piece suits scattered about the darkened dining room. A waiter in white stood nearby just itching to scrape cracker crumbs from the tablecloth, should any fall from my mouth.

  "You have some genuine opportunities, thanks to me," she began. "Our future depends on it."

  Not that again, I thought, taking a sip of ice tea. I grinned and told her, "Our future is now." But I don't think she understood my double entendre.

  "That's right," she said. "Our future is now, and we need to get going. I want you to help us make a lot of money."

  "How does that happen?"

  "You need to use your influence with the felony judges at the courthouse to appoint me to defense assignments for indigents. I've done that for misdemeanors, but I have to start getting felony assignments—the big cases. I want to defend on a murder case."

  "I can't do that, Catherine."

  "You can. You go to every court, every day. They all want publicity. They all want you to help them. Nothing is free. I could have a $250 assignment every day just pleading somebody out on lower charges. You'd get your share. How about 10 percent? There might be larger cases with more money involved. You'd get 10 percent of anything you bring me."

  "I can't do that, Catherine."

  She applied the Medusa stare. Then she placed her face in her hands, and I thought she was going to cry.

  "I can't take money on something like that, Catherine," I said, as she peeked over her fingertips. "But I'll tell you what I will do. I will take you to Judge Route's courtroom and introduce you to his court coordinator, Edd Blackwood. He has an open door policy on appointments. You see him, tell him your background, and he'll find something for you. If that works out, he'll give you something else. I saw him one time take business cards from about a dozen lawyers, shuffle them up, and then deal out representation to a whole room full of defendants."

  She started laughing and said, "You would do that for me? And, if that works out there, you'll help in some other courts?"

  "But I can't take any money from you. It would be a conflict in my journalistic ethics," I said, then quietly questioned that comment as I considered the hypocrisy of preparing to eat a $150 lunch on her tab. I didn't elaborate for her, but I would have no problem introducing her to Edd, who had become a good friend during our time together at the courthouse. He was a law school dropout who had joined the sheriff's department and then moved on to court administration. Later on, in the 1980s, he would become a successful Houston bail bondsman. In 1979, however, he was always asking me to find new lawyers to audition for court appointments because his judge, Thomas Routt, liked to spread the appointments around. Other courts would be more difficult because most judges preferred to work exclusively with their own cadre of lawyers.

  Just then her "important" guest arrived and sat down at our table. He was a former prosecutor named James who required no introduction. I had known him from the courthouse but hadn't seen him in months, since he had left the district attorney's office and started his own private practice. We made small talk for a bit, finished our meal, and then Catherine came to the point.

  "James is here because I want him to take your case."

  "My case?" I asked while James continued to sip coffee. "What case do I have?"

  "Your divorce case. You have to take charge of that thing now before you lose out."

  "I have a lawyer."

  She waved her hand around as if scolding me and said, "No, you can't have one lawyer for both of you. Too much is at stake."

  Then she looked at James, who offered his first observation: "You have a very valuable house, Gary. You have some mitigating factors in your favor for protecting that investment."

  Flabbergasted and growing angry, I looked him square in the eye and said, "What the fuck do you know about my house or my mitigating factors?"

  "I've been in your house," he said. "We went through it with the Realtor just to see what you have. Catherine asked me to assist."

  Then she added her advice: "Don't ignore the adultery. I think you could get those kids if you do this right. Let James help you."

  I pushed my chair back from the table, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and started shaking my head.

  "Let me get this straight," I said. "You two toured my house with the Realtor. Then you discussed my mitigating factors. And now you think I'm going to fire my lawyer and hire you to handle the divorce?"

  They just stared at me. I paused a few seconds and stood up to leave.

  "I'm finished here," I said. "Thanks for the lunch."

  Before I could leave, James bolted from his chair and said, "No, no, I'll go. I have to be in court anyway. You two should talk about this."

  As he walked away, I sat back down and stared at her.

  "You crossed the line here," I said. "Even if I wanted to fire my attorney, there's no way in hell I'd ever hire that slug."

  "You know what," she began. "I don't need your bullshit. You humiliated me in front of someone I need to impress. I was trying to help you, and you just don't see what a big problem you're making for yourself."

  "You don't need my bullshit? I don't need this bullshit. Why don't you find a new boyfriend who'll take it?"

  Our relationship should have ended right there. But it didn't. The waiter refilled our coffees, and we sat in silence for a few minutes staring at our cups. I didn't leave, and she ju
st sat planning her next move. Finally, she said quietly, "I just wanted to help you because you have been so good for me."

  "Thank you. But I really would appreciate it if you will stay out of my divorce. It's my business. If I fuck it up, that will be my cross to bear. I'm sorry if I got too rough with James but he just caught me by surprise. I felt violated, like a burglary victim, to hear about that slug crawling around my house behind my back trying to figure out if I would be worth his time."

  "All right," she said, giving me an encore of her humility performance from that night at the beach after ripping my tenant apart. "I'll try to keep my mouth shut. But you know, I can't stand to see anyone taking advantage of you, and I think that is happening now. You're just a nice guy who needs someone to stand up for you."

  As we finished the meal and prepared to leave I realized I had a couple more items to add to her secret agenda. And these appeared more threatening than the rest. She wanted me to help her generate income through my job at the courthouse. And, she obviously had decided I might be worth more than she initially had thought.

  Finally, I was starting to get nervous. I realized Catherine was moving to take control of my life.

  THIRTY-ONE

  November 1979

  Although I moved into Jim Strong's house on November 1, paying him a hundred dollars monthly for a bedroom with a closet, I continued to spend most of my time with Catherine at Mike's place in far west Houston. And, in the weeks before Thanksgiving we spent a lot of time with Strong as well. I recall that period now as similar to the lull later in my life before Hurricane Alicia in 1983: Peaceful, but punctuated here and there by a few ominous clouds.

  One Saturday the three of us drove to Galveston to walk around the older sections of the historic city rather than visit the beach. We had a charming lunch and shopped at the huge Army-Navy surplus store in Galveston's Strand district. Strong had fun teasing Catherine about her reputation, offering to purchase old World War I gas masks and showing her a box of grenades.

  "Use these on your next job," he said. "There will be no witnesses."

  She took it all in stride, enjoying the attention from her colorful aura. On the way out of town we noticed a sign for a fortune teller in the window of an old house and stopped to have our palms read. I've never been a believer in the occult. But that experience proved downright spooky. The Gypsy woman read Strong's palm and jabbered about his need to fulfill his potential. After searching Catherine's palm, however, the laughter died as the old woman refused to share anything about it and insisted on refunding the two dollars that Strong had given her. Then, when the woman felt my hand, she looked into my eyes and refused again. I demanded a reading.

  "You are in very great danger," the old woman said.

  Strong repeatedly has sworn over the years that he did not set that up or pay the woman extra for her dramatic presentation. Catherine laughed it off, speculating that the old woman probably played that game routinely as a way to generate repeat customers and had just picked us at random for her pitch.

  On another Saturday night, Catherine complained about an infected mosquito bite on her ass, claiming I was to blame. She said the bite had occurred while servicing my lust during our tryst on the beach and later got infected. She insisted I take her to an emergency room and pay any expenses above what her State Bar of Texas medical plan would cover.

  "You got what you wanted, and now I'm the one who has to suffer," she muttered.

  We walked into the emergency room at Houston's Memorial Southwest Hospital to compete with the usual Saturday night crowd of blood and gore waiting for service. Unmoved, Catherine strolled forcefully to the nurse's station with her complaint of a bug bite on her ass and demanded immediate help.

  "Listen," she lectured the nurse. "I am a lawyer. Do you understand what that means? My time is too valuable for this. I bill at the rate of two hundred dollars per hour. I have clients who depend on me right now. I don't have time for this. I have to be available if something happens. So get me a doctor right away."

  The nurse yawned in the middle of Catherine's tirade, then shoved a clipboard in her direction and told her to fill out the form and take a seat. Catherine repeated her demand a few minutes later while returning the form, but the nurse just pointed back to the chair. During the next three hours Catherine pitched her case repeatedly to the same nurse who continued to yawn and point her back at the chair. Catherine watched in horror as the nurse ushered patients with broken limbs and bloody faces into the rooms ahead of her bug bite on the ass. Each time she demanded her turn and each time the nurse pointed at the chair. I had a hard time holding my laughter.

  Finally, her turn arrived. She insisted I accompany her into the curtained examination cubicle, telling the doctor, "I insist on a witness." Then she pulled a pen and a notebook from her purse and asked for his name.

  "We'll need this information in case there has to be a malpractice suit," she said. I started laughing but he was not amused. He grunted when she added, "I am a lawyer, and I know what happens in these hospitals."

  Then he prescribed an antibiotic and sent us on our way.

  Just as she'd promised, Catherine refrained from debating my divorce case or making comments about my marriage. We grew better acquainted and went to old movies like Casablanca and Red Dust. W saw some fresh releases, too. Catherine embraced a line from the police murder drama The Onion Field, chuckling as one of the characters chided another who had expressed a conscience about his actions: "Guilty is just something you say in the courtroom when your luck runs out."

  Whenever we encountered some old pal of hers while crawling the bars, she'd introduce me and then demand I repeat what I had said to Chuck when he warned me about her. That, too, became one of her favorite lines.

  We spent a lot of time together alone at Mike's house while he was out making arrangements for his wedding. She took pride in her cooking skills, preparing a variety of dishes from Greek salads to shrimp scampi or something as simple as hamburgers. She told me about her affair with the cop named Joseph and how sexually charged it had been to watch him unbuckle his Sam Browne gunbelt, then hang it over the bedpost before climbing beneath the covers with her. Of course, she kept a .32-revolver on the table beside her bed and said she had a .22 stashed somewhere, a memento from her father.

  "I need to be prepared," she warned. "You never know when the 'Tedescos' are going to kick down the door here and come for me."

  Tedesco remained a common theme in her conversations. No day passed without a mention of his name or the names of other lovers from her past who had suffered their own particular punishments for alleged transgressions against her. I felt like a confidante to someone truly living on the edge. She ridiculed that court bailiff who had testified against her in the estate trial and boasted about destroying his marriage.

  "That's how low I had sunk, to have sex with a slob like that," she said. "And then, he wouldn't even pay for my abortion. All I needed was two hundred dollars, and it was his bill to pay. Nothing is free. But he didn't pay and look what happened. He's out on the street, his family is gone, and he has nothing. Even at that, if I saw him and his kids in the desert begging for water and I had a little in my canteen, you know what I would do? I would pour it into the sand in front of his face and watch them all die of thirst."

  She asked one time to watch me masturbate and I obliged. She said she'd never seen that before.

  "You should have asked me years ago," I said. "Thanks to you, I now only have to beat off twice a week."

  She adopted that line as well and started sharing it with other friends any time we met some.

  "Gary says he only has to jack off twice a week now that he's met me," she would say with a girlish giggle. Then she would order: "Tell them how you handled Chuck."

  I kept my word on the defense appointment opportunity and asked Edd Blackwood to check her out. I figured he would toss her a burglary plea, but then he shocked me by assigning her to defend a murder
case against an Hispanic gang leader named Blackie that would probably go all the way to jury trial.

  "Hey," I asked him, "you didn't do that for me did you? That sounds like a complicated case."