“Possible? Sure. Likely? From everything I’ve learned about the guy, I don’t see it.”
“You saw Mrs. Galdino testify this morning. She thinks her husband killed her sister.”
“Yeah, it was pretty painful.” He draws a zigzag line down the frost on his mug. “When I started this case, I spent a month in New Jersey investigating Galdino, trying to figure out what he did with the cash. One thing I did learn -- from everything he did, from everyone I talked to who had anything to do with him -- the guy’s a world class scuzz. During that month I’d see his wife now and again. She’d pretty much go to church and back. It looked like -- like she was drying up.”
“Was Caprice at home?”
“Naw. She’d started a new job in Manhattan. She wanted to come home, to be with her mom but her mother wouldn’t let her. They had some pretty heated arguments about it.”
“And you know this how?”
“It’s what I do.”
Salads and pizza arrive at Bitsy’s table and the four of them divvy the loot. An empty bottle of wine is replaced with another. Our waiter comes to clear our plates. Parker waves him off. “Still workin’ on the fries,” he says.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“The money’s still missing. That month I spent in New Jersey digging around Galdino’s life, he didn’t change his lifestyle, didn’t pay off his gambling debts, didn’t buy a Lamborghini, didn’t go to Vegas or Atlantic City. Nothing changed from the time they found Brandy’s body to the time they arrested Galdino for her murder. I’ve been around bad guys most of my life and the ones like Galdino, the compulsive gamblers, don’t sit on that kind of money without laying off a hefty bet on a horse or a football game or the odds the sun will rise in the east the next day.”
“So,” I say, “just to play devil’s advocate, maybe he doesn’t have the money. Maybe he never took it. Maybe it’s exactly like the Defense attorney said. Brandy gave Galdino her jewelry to take to the Jeweler. Maybe you need to rethink Mel as the killer.”
Parker gives me the exact look Bitsy gives me when I theorize about cooking. The look says ‘This is not your arena. Cheez Whiz on Saltines does not a canapé make. Leave the hard stuff to the professionals.’ “I think he stashed it,” says Parker. “Now I just need to figure out where.”
The waiter swings by and this time we give up our plates. “So,” I say, still the slightest bit bitchy about his invading my boat privacy, “are you done following me?”
“Look, I understand you’re pissed. But I’m not going to apologize for doing my job. And, remember, I didn’t have to tell you any of this. I could have just faded away.”
“And you didn’t do that because…?”
“Somewhere in all this, I began finding excuses to see you, to spend time with you.” He’s looking at me straight on. I have nowhere to hide. “I’d like to keep seeing you.”
My heart ratchets up a tick or two. “You can’t broadside me like this,” I say.
“This can’t be a surprise. You must have given it some thought, all that time we spent on your boat.”
“Thought about it and let it go,” I say.
“Is this about me or your husband?”
“I’m not done mourning.”
“I’m a patient man.”
The waiter returns and begins writing our check. “I’ll take theirs too,” says Parker, not turning, pointing over his shoulder at Bitsy’s table.
“You knew they were there?”
“It’s what I do,” he says, smiling, paying both our tabs. “I figure I owe you and your sister dinner.”
“You could have taken us to the Delano.”
He bends down, kissing my cheek with soft lips. “Take care, Laura.” Then he walks off toward the paddleball courts, keeping time to the band’s Texas two-stepping music.
I pull up a chair between Bitsy and May who are dying to know what happened. “I’m fine,” I say, “I’ll tell you later,” helping them kill the second bottle, getting to know Anatoly and Ivan, a pair of twenty-three year old Russian imports with enough life force and sexual energy to power the Eastern seaboard. It turns out they have a passion for standup comedy.
“We are goink to Branson,” says one, “to see Yakov. You know heem? Yakov Smirnoff? Very, very funny guy. We, too, are from Odessa. We, too, make the jokes. Yakov vill show us how to do thees.”
And in this magic moment we laugh and drink and stroll barefoot to the ocean, three wanton wenches wading into water warm as pishach while two wildly rambunctious Russians strip to their skivvies and plunge in. A while later, the five of us walk to the Bandshell, joining the line dancers until the band closes shop.
“Dasvidaniya,” we say, cheek-kissing our cheeky Russians who, drip-dried and in need of vodka, set off to befriend more Americans.
The three of us walking back to the car are not the same three women who rolled out of bed this morning. We’ve experienced heart-wrenching betrayals, unexpected revelations and emotions laid raw, and we’ve emerged reenergized, renewed and reborn. I feel in me the faintest beginning twinges of a convert, the primal tug of the ocean loosening my Midwestern roots. I inhale the salty sea air, feel it caress my skin, soothe my spirit. Perhaps I will stay in Florida a while. Give it a chance. Embrace the restorative power of negative ions.
24
Last night before bed, I laid out today’s outfit, set my purse, keys and a warm sweater on the dining room table and preset the coffee maker to begin brewing at seven. This morning, Bitsy, who normally wakes at sunrise to organize the cosmos, shows no signs of stirring. Evidently last night’s trifecta of sea air, cheap wine and a couple of frenetic Russians took its toll.
By eight I’m outside my apartment waiting for the elevator. Even if this morning’s rush hour is filled with I-95 twits a tweeting, I’ll make it to court in plenty of time to garner a primo seat. My cell phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Ethan?”
“I hope it’s not too early to call,” says my son.
“No, Sweetie, I’m--” It’s only seven in Chicago. Dread hits like a truck. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Jeez, I didn’t mean to scare you. This is a good call. I saw a special airfare online this morning, Ft. Lauderdale to Chicago for a hundred dollars. I want to book you a flight next month.”
The elevator doors open on people dressed for work. There’s no phone reception in the elevator. I step back, let the doors slide closed, press my son’s voice to my ear.
“Next month?”
“Stacey’s big as a house. Her legs are so swollen she’s lost her ankles.”
“She never said anything.”
“Yeah, well, she’d never bother you but I’m telling you she could use her mother right now. Besides, it’s the holidays.” Already? “Come home. Stay a week. Stay two. Stay a month. Everyone misses you.”
“Look, I’m just on my way out. Can we talk about this later?”
“The seats will be gone by then, if they’re not already.”
“I don’t know, Ethan. I…I can’t think just now.”
“Okay. I’m booking you a flight. If I have to eat the ticket, I will.”
“Might not be bad with a little horse radish.”
He laughs. “You made a funny.” Yes I had. “It’s been a while.” Yes, it has. “I’ll e-mail as soon as I have the details. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I’m not the only one checking out the ceiling as I enter the new courtroom. It looks safe enough, no water stains, no black mold, empty squares where the fallen tiles used to be. Farley and Lucille have saved a space in the back row. “Broward should make the courthouse a hard hat area,” says Farley, as I settle in, “until it stops raining tiles.”
I don’t see Parker in court this morning. No doubt he’s out hunting down his client’s inheritance. Speak of the devils, the Lucas children slouch in their usual seat behind Caprice
. Nikki has returned from wherever it is Nikki goes, once again defying the sub-zero courtroom in a summer gauze dress. Today she’s sitting next to Caprice. From the back row, I watch Nikki mimicking Caprice, picking up every nuance -- the slightest shifts in Caprice’s posture, head tilt, shoulders as Caprice’s mother is once again called to testify.
Maria Galdino takes the stand. “That woman is shrinking right up in front of us,” whispers Lucille. It’s true. Maria Galdino seems smaller than she did yesterday, adrift in her clothes, her shoulders hunched as if compressed by the weight of the proceedings. What had Parker said? During the month he staked out Galdino’s New Jersey home, it looked as if Mrs. Galdino was drying up. I know how that goes. Grief sucks the juice out of you, leaves you as empty and brittle as a cicada shell. Oddly, seeing the ravages of her depression makes me certain I’ve already hit bottom and that I’m in the process of crawling out. This poor woman is still free-falling into the abyss.
Today, the Defense is into damage control, revisiting much of Mrs. Galdino’s previous testimony:
--“My husband left on a fishing trip.”
--“I could not reach my sister on the phone the morning after my husband left.”
--“My husband returned from his fishing trip a few days later.”
That is all she knows.
Ever so gently, so as not to appear to be bullying her, the Defense presses for exact dates, casts doubt on her perception of the passage of time. Mrs. Galdino twists her handkerchief, seems flustered she can’t remember whether something happened on a Monday or Wednesday or the exact times of her husband’s coming and going.
The attorney turns apologetic. “I know,” says Miss Southern Syrup, “I do that all the time. Can’t remember what I had for breakfast.” As if someone her size ate breakfast. But her questioning set up the possibility Joseph Galdino was actually home when Brandy Lucas went missing. That Maria Galdino’s testimony displays the sorts of difficulties and inconsistencies of memory distraught women are known to suffer.
I resent the hell out of this tack. Middle-aged women belong to the last group it is still permissible to make fun of in our culture. From idiotic mothers-in-law on TV shows to corporate shrews in films to dismissive real-life salespeople behind store counters, women over forty are either the object of ridicule, pity or are totally invisible. Nice choices.
The attorney works her magic, confusing Mrs. Galdino about exactly when such and so happened. It’s painful to watch her, jaws clenched, frustrated by not having all the right answers. Would I remember the date my husband went off for his yearly Minnesota fly-fishing trip with the Witlin brothers? Could I tell, months later, the exact date I last talked to my sister? Not without a calendar in front of me. The jury must know this, must see what the attorney is up to.
I am ravenous by the time our group gets to Lulu’s. Today, the Professor has come in from the park and commandeered a roundtable for six, tilting the chairs to save them for us. He waves us to the table with an oddly regal gesture, the King summoning his court.
“We were worried about you yesterday,” Lucille says to me, “leaving all of a sudden like that.”
“Sorry.”
“Thought you had the runs,” says Farley, “the way you lit out.”
“I’m okay. I thought I saw someone I knew.” Yeah, Parker.
“I passed your information on,” he says, “about the propeller missing from the Lucas boat. My friend’s a retired homicide detective, says he’ll check on it.”
The waitress swings by carrying silver pots of caf and de-caf, refilling the Professor’s mug, pouring Farley half from each. “Heard you had some excitement yesterday,” she says, grabbing a bunch of Saltine packets from her pocket and setting them in front of Nikki. “Ceiling falling, building flooding. Couldn’t pay me enough to work in that place. Sharing?” This last to Lucille and me.
“Fine with me,” I say.
“Yes, thank you,” says Lucille.
The Professor leans forward, elbows on the table, yellow-nailed fingers tented. “So,” he says, in his beautiful voice, “how goes the frozen body trial?”
“The defendant’s wife is on the stand,” says Lucille. “She said her husband was away fishing when her sister was murdered.”
“Said he was fishing, like she might have seen it. Or said he told her he was fishing?”
“Told her.”
“Galdino doesn’t strike me as the fishing type,” says Farley, stirring packets of sugar substitutes into his coffee.
“Does she love him?” asks the Professor.
Our table goes quiet. Nikki uses her teeth to tear open a packet of crackers. “Can’t read her,” says Nikki. “She’s like a total zombie. Like, you know, the doctors have her on some heavy-duty tranquilizers.”
“I don’t know about her husband,” I say, “but I’m positive she loved her sister. I feel that.”
“That,” says the Professor, “is because you love your sister.” I never told him that. “You feel the truth of that woman’s love. If my sister cooked like yours, I’d love her, too.” He laughs a rich rolling laugh. “Now,” he leans toward me, “the question is, do you love your husband?”
“He’s…he’s gone,” I say.
“Then, did you love your husband?”
“I did, yes. Very much.”
“Do you see that in Mrs. Galdino? Does she look at her husband as she testifies? If so, what is the nature of the look? Is it love? Is it fear? Is it hate?”
“She almost never looks at him,” says Nikki. “And she never looks at the jury. Mostly she stares down at her hands. Like this.” Nikki picks up a napkin and holds it in her lap, pulling at it, folding it, smoothing it, an exact imitation of Maria Galdino worrying her handkerchief.
“That might mean she loves him,” says the Professor, “that it’s too painful to look at him sitting there accused of murdering her sister.”
“It might also mean she hates him,” says Farley. “That she can’t stand the sight of him, wants to string him up by his thumbs and leave him twisting in the wind.”
Our orders arrive, the waitress setting a couple of empty plates in the middle of the table. Lucille and Farley each take one, adding some of their food, passing the plates on, everyone tithing a portion. No one says a word, no one calls attention. One of the plates, filled with fruit cups and vegetable garnishes, settles in front of Nikki. The Professor winds up with coleslaw and half of Farley’s towering corned beef on rye.
“So, everything presented by the prosecution is circumstantial?” asks the Professor.
“Not the jewelry,” says Lucille. “Brandy’s jewelry is very real. Galdino fenced it.”
“Theft is not murder,” says the Professor, splitting his half-sandwich into two open-faced.
“There were airline flights,” I say, “Newark to Palm Beach at the right times for Galdino to have flown in, killed Brandy, then flown home.”
“There would be records,” says the Professor.
“They’re saying he used an alias,” says Farley.
“Airport security cameras,” counters the Professor spreading Dijon over the corned beef like icing over cake.
Farley shakes his head. “Wouldn’t take much to alter his looks to match a phony ID.”
The Professor considers. “All still circumstantial,” he says.
Lucille turns to me. “Tell them about the propeller.” So I explain about the Dandy Brandy’s missing spare propeller.
“Weight like that could pull a body straight down,” says Farley.
“’Could’ isn’t ‘is’,” says the Professor. “You’d need to find it. And it’s a mighty big ocean to try to find one body attached to one propeller.”
“Or what’s left of one body,” says Nikki.
“Most likely.”
Lucille nudges me, tilts her head towards the door. Caprice leads her ghost of a mother into the restaurant. “Two for lunch?” calls our waitress. Caprice nods. “Hang on a sec.” She
aims for a back booth where an older man with a welded comb-over and ill-fitting pin-stripe suit lingers over coffee. He’s casting a smarmy smile at his companion, a cute twenty-something, size two, double-D cup.
The waitress straightens their condiments, wipes around their cups, clears their water glasses. Time’s up. The guy doesn’t catch the hint. He reminds me of Bitsy’s divorce attorney, a toad who charged six-hundred an hour while offering his bespoke suit’s shoulder to help my sister get through her oh-so-messy divorce. “Call me anytime,” he’d said, as friendly as you please. When she took him up on it, he added a two hour charge on the next bill. You’d think the daughter of a judge would recognize the stench of an attorney churning a case. But the divorce put Bitsy off her game, and I was too busy being dead in Florida to notice what was happening. Water under the bridge. Let it go.
Caprice and her mother wait patiently. The waitress stands over the table, hands on hips. The man looks unhappy to be rushed. The size two seems indifferent. The waitress doesn’t care. As they get up, it is the girl who reaches for the briefcase, stuffing in a manila brief and yellow legal pad. She’s the attorney. He’s her client. Lately, I seem to be sizing up people bass-ackwards.
We sit in silence as Caprice leads her mother to the table. I feel the dynamics of our group shift. Even though the women aren’t within listening range, the Buffs seem uncomfortable talking about the case with them here. As we eat, conversation shifts to some of the other trials going on in other courtrooms. Suddenly, there’s a commotion in back.
“Call 911,” yells Caprice.
Mrs. Galdino is stretched out on the seat of the booth, her skinny legs hanging limp over the side. Lulu’s fills with the beeps of dialed phones. Caprice shoves aside the table, begins pumping her mother’s chest. “911!” she yells again.
“They’re on the way,” says a man. “They’re over at the courthouse.”
I watch paralyzed, hurtled back to that moment at sea, Michael working over his charts, suddenly pitching forward, sliding onto the floor. I needed to give him CPR but I also needed to radio for help, frantically running back and forth, radio, CPR, radio. It took forever for help to come. Not that it mattered. He died that first instant. I want to comfort Caprice but I can’t move. I can’t. Other people crowd in to help.
MIAMI ICED Page 15