Investigation

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  But Sam would be just about twenty-four hours too late. Had he been twenty-four hours earlier with the information, as a good spy is supposed to be, Jerry wouldn’t have handed out four commissionerships to Ken Sweeney’s people. Signing those letters put Kelleher irrefutably in Sweeney’s hands for the next four years.

  By being late with this information, Sam Catalano would lose the backing of his only supporter, the D.A. And, best of all, Sam would never know why. Which goes to prove, if you’re going to be a spy, you damned well better be a good one.

  As a suicide, George Keeler was not entitled to be buried in hallowed ground alongside his two young sons. As a World War II vet, he was entitled to be buried in Pinelawn Cemetery out on Long Island. There weren’t many people present; just family and friends. The sensation seekers were left behind at the funeral home; not many of them could be bothered to take the long car trip for another glimpse of Kitty, in black. They would have to be satisfied with the TV news shots and stills in the newspaper. Kitty’s oldest brother stood alongside her, not touching, just within reach. Her mother stood far off, with Kitty’s three other brothers and her sisters-in-law between them. Every person there seemed oddly alone, isolated, solitary.

  Nothing of Kitty showed; she was just an anonymous black-clad figure, behind dark veils and glasses. Not one trace of her was revealed; she stood motionless during the final, abrupt prayer, and when it was over she turned quickly and, followed by her brother, headed for the limousine. Jay T. Williams and his assistant, Jeff Weinstein, had been standing off to one side; they followed her, and Jaytee leaned forward for a few minutes, speaking to her, as she sat on the back seat of the long black car. He ducked inside the car, apparently to give her a short hug or a word of comfort. Her brother started to enter the car, but Kitty stopped him. After a few seconds of conversation, he backed off and slammed the limo door; and as though that was the signal the driver had been waiting for, the car pulled off down the cemetery lane and headed for the Long Island Expressway.

  I went back to the office to write up the required brief description of George Keeler’s funeral. Tim had gone for the day; Sam was gone. The tiny shred of white thread I had placed strategically on my “confidential” file folder was gone; whatever was going to happen to Sam Catalano was in the works. I collected my folder, exchanged wisecracks with a couple of squad men, then went home.

  I sat with a cup of coffee and George’s confession, but the memory of Kitty Keeler at the cemetery began to bother me. Or at least to distract me. She had seemed so isolated, disconnected, solitary, remote even from the Kitty I had seen before. I wondered what the heavy black veil and glasses and clothing were hiding; or were they hiding anything at all?

  Even as I began to read George’s tightly controlled, specific document, Kitty intruded. I thought about her annoyance with George that first morning when Sam and I responded to George’s call; in retrospect, it seemed like the kind of annoyance a girl like Kitty would feel toward a man like George for pulling the same trick twice: c’mon, George, bring the kids home! But George, on the same morning, right from the start, had evidenced a kind of anguish; a dread.

  When I first questioned her that morning, she transferred her annoyance and anger from George to me; but those were the only emotions she had displayed. Certainly not panic or dread. And when the bodies had been found, Kitty’s concern, her hard sudden tenderness and protection of George, were at odds with all the things we were supposed to believe about Kitty.

  During later interrogation, by which time the names of her lovers had been sensationalized, along with glamour pictures of Kitty, and when her public image had been publicly accepted, Kitty had steeled herself behind a wall of anger. But I had penetrated it, fleetingly, a few times: at the morgue, her eyes had blazed out a kind of agony which Geraldi thought was callousness; at her apartment, when she selected the clothing for her dead sons, there was a terrible raw pain revealed before she pulled the tough skin of anger around herself; at the funeral for the boys, she had remained rigidly calm and controlled until the moment she stared from one dead face to the other, then had tried to alter reality by saying they were not her sons.

  Geraldi and the others, including the news-media people and the crazy sensation seekers who dogged her wherever she went, claimed she had never shed one tear for her sons and would not grieve for her husband. But they were wrong. For whatever it was worth, for whatever reasons, Kitty Keeler was grieving deeply: a locked-in, private kind of grief which she had been able to control by tensely drawing strength and determination from the constant crowd around her who were waiting, watching, hoping to see her finally break down. They interpreted everything she did, every word she uttered, every outfit she appeared in, as evidence not only of her heartlessness but of her guilt. When she wore pink to her sons’ funeral, voices had called out “Whore”; when she wore black to her husband’s funeral, they called out “Hypocrite.”

  It’s funny how your initial approach to a person can determine your feelings toward them, no matter what facts develop later on. Vito Geraldi hated Kitty Keeler. That had been his job, right from the very beginning. No matter what might turn up, if somehow it was proven that Kitty was an innocent martyr suffering for all our sins, to Vito she would always be a murderer, a bitch, a whore.

  My assignment had been to offer her a shoulder to lean on, a sympathetic ear to confide in, a sort of refuge from the anger of all the others around her.

  There was no way I could concentrate on George’s confession. Because of Kitty. And the way my mind kept drifting toward her and the way she looked this morning out at Pinelawn Cemetery. She had seemed to be enclosed inside a vacuum, unable to touch or be touched. What I wanted to do then, what I wanted to do now, was break through the wall of that vacuum and reach out to Kitty and hold her against me. Just hold her and feel her come alive. Because, emotionally, Kitty Keeler was in the process of dying. And it seemed to me there was no one close enough to her to notice what was happening. Or, if someone did notice, no one cared.

  I don’t know why I cared; not exactly. Maybe because I had done what Tim Neary assigned me to do. I played good guy to Vito’s bad guy, so I saw Kitty differently from all the others. She let me see her, in a few exhausted, unguarded moments. Now I was paying a price for having encouraged her confidence in me, for letting her turn to me: help me, Joe; get me out of here, Joe.

  I felt a responsibility to her. I had to either help her carry her pain or help her get rid of it.

  And, of course, it went deeper than that. There was more to it than that. There was Kitty herself, with her physical beauty, her special electric strength and energy; her tough challenging pose that didn’t really hide her vulnerability but somehow enhanced it.

  I wanted to protect her from the kind of mindless hostility thrown at her by street crazies; from the cold emotionless damage of the indictments against her; from the hopeless finality of death that seemed to be overcoming her, little by little. She needed me. There was something of value I could offer her at a desperately barren time in her life. And in my own.

  About three weeks before his suicide, George and Kitty had moved to a smaller, more private apartment in a luxury high-rise not far from my own place near the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. It was a fully furnished sublet in a building that had a large number of short-term tenants: airline personnel, Japanese businessmen, U.N. attachés, high-priced call girls. I drove over to her building, pulled into the underground garage, showed the attendant my shield. He told me her apartment number and, as I instructed, did not announce me.

  Without asking who was there or checking the peephole, Kitty opened the door about two seconds after I rang the bell. When she saw it was me, she turned and walked into the kitchen, where she was boiling water for instant coffee.

  “You should be more careful, Kitty. Might have been anyone at the door: thief, rapist, reporter.”

  “Or cop,” she said flatly. She was still wearing the black funeral dress. T
here was an odd, vacant expression, emphasized by dark circles beneath her eyes.

  “Do I have to go with you, Joe? Did you come for—me?” She said it with a tired resignation; she was too exhausted to fight anymore.

  I turned the flame off under the glass pot of boiling water, fixed two cups of instant coffee. “I’ll tell you what, Kitty. You go inside and change your clothes. You look like hell in black. Put on something blue, that’s more your color. And take your hair down.” She had it twisted in a tight intricate bun at the nape of her neck.

  She shrugged without asking any questions at all; took her cup of black coffee with her. When she came back from her bedroom, she looked like a college girl: she wore a blue-and-white checked blouse, with a matching kerchief on her head, her pale hair flowing down her back; a blue denim skirt; blue crepe-soled shoes; a large, soft leather shoulder bag slung on her arm.

  When we exited the elevator at the garage level, the parking attendant gaped at Kitty as though she was an ax murderess on the prowl. She never even noticed him.

  “I thought you might like to get out of Queen County for a little while, Kitty. Shall we head upstate for some fresh air?”

  She shrugged and whispered, “Wherever. Wherever. I don’t care.”

  I glanced at her from time to time, but neither of us spoke for well over an hour. It was getting dark, and when the radio music ended for a station break and the news I reached across her and jabbed at a button for an all-music station. She never batted an eye.

  Finally I said, “I know a nice place for dinner. You interested?”

  “Dinner? I don’t know. Where are we?” She sounded as if she couldn’t care less.

  “About a mile from a nice place for dinner.”

  We were seated at a table toward the rear of the rustic, candle-flickering roadhouse; it was a soft, easygoing, low-pressure kind of place where everyone minded their own business and enjoyed their own quiet conversation. Kitty stared blankly at the menu, couldn’t seem to make a decision. Nodded for me to make the decision for her.

  “I’m not hungry anyway,” she said.

  But she began to nibble absently on a piece of bread, then she picked at the salad. Her appetite grew as she ate; she began to gulp wine between bites of food.

  “Hey, that’s good wine. Treat it with respect; it deserves to be savored.”

  She jerked her head up, her eyes shot reflections from the orange candle flame. She had a look of stunned surprise, like someone waking from a dream, but not sure of reality.

  “It’s okay, Kitty. It’s okay.”

  When the dinner came, she stared at it, then up at me again, then she began to eat, steadily, quickly, one hand reaching for hunks of crusty bread, the other guiding her fork; she stuffed bread in her mouth, then snatched up the knife and began gouging out chunks of roast beef. It was as though she had an overwhelming hunger: an inexplicable need to stuff food, any food, inside her mouth, to force it down her throat with huge swallows of wine. She had a need to fill up a vast and awesome emptiness that was at the center of herself. She watched hungrily, greedily, as I transferred portions from my plate to hers; tapped at her glass with a fork for more wine; choked; swallowed; ate and ate, until finally the food was gone, the bread plate clean.

  She sat as still as a statue, staring at her plate, then her hand went up to her mouth and she looked up at me in amazement and confusion. “How could I have done that? How could I have eaten all that food? My God, and I’m still hungry. Joe, I’m still hungry.” She reached for my hand, squeezed it with a desperate pressure. “Joe, after all that’s happened, I’m still hungry. I feel as though I’m starving! What’s the matter with me? How can I think of food?”

  She waved her hand and knocked over the nearly empty wine-glass, watched in fascinated horror as the stain spread into an inch-wide line along the white starchy tablecloth. She stood up abruptly, whirled around, collided with a waiter, who nearly lost his trayful of food, then she ran a zigzag course, knocking into tables and against people seated at their dinner and out the door to the parking lot.

  I apologized to the waiter, handed him enough for our bill and a good tip, explained the lady wasn’t feeling well. I picked up her shoulder bag, which she had left swinging from her chair, and found her outside, her arms wrapped across her body in the cold night air. I put my jacket around her, my arm around her to lead her to my car. As my hand came to rest on her shoulder, Kitty stopped, turned toward me, her face puzzled and frightened and desperate.

  “Oh God, Joe. I’m hungry, hungry, hungry.” She raised her arms, her hands on my shoulders, climbing toward my neck. My jacket slid to the ground as she reached upward and I leaned forward to meet her urgent hunger.

  “Kiss me, kiss me, Joe, oh God, oh God.”

  The intensity of her mouth on mine surprised me just a little: it was a continuation of her need to devour and consume. Her fingers were kneading and searching along my neck, sliding to my face, touching and tracing where our lips combined. Carefully, gently and firmly, I caught her hands and pulled back.

  “It’s all right, Kitty, it’s going to be all right. Kitty, shall we go somewhere? Shall we spend the night together?”

  She nodded dumbly, then walked away from me and sat quietly in the car while I picked up my jacket. I drove twenty miles farther upstate, then turned off onto a one-mile dirt road which led to the small four-room log-type cabin, set on three acres of wooded land and fronting on a nearly stagnant lake. My father had built the cabin before I was born; it belonged jointly to me, my older brother and my younger sister. When our children had been younger, we used to take three-week vacations, one group of us leaving as the other group arrived. None of us had made much use of the cabin for the last five or six years; all of our kids had grown up and away from this kind of roughing it. Occasionally my brother and I had come up for a fall weekend in hunting season: the funny thing was, neither of us had any desire to shoot at animals. It had taken a couple of trophyless weekends for us to admit it to each other.

  The cabin had been empty and unused for quite a while; it had that kind of dank feel of abandonment, which was slightly dispelled by the fire I managed to rake up, starting with a handful or two of dried twigs. It took nearly twenty minutes, but finally the two small logs caught; the third one, huge and substantial would catch and last through the night. All the time I worked, crouched down to the fire, Kitty lay on her side on the daybed, her face warm and orange, her eyes shining with glints of the flame. She seemed to have quieted down again; to retreat into that dazed unfeeling trance. I went around the cabin, turning on the water and the water heater, setting out instant coffee, which was about all that was in the food cabinet. I had given Kitty a few blankets, had wrapped them around her because she was shaking so badly, but she was still now, pensive, unmoving. I kicked off my shoes and pulled a chair closer to the fire, but before I could settle down, to wait her out, to let her make her own decisions, Kitty called to me.

  She sat up, fighting the blankets from her as though they bound her. “Joe, help me.” She pulled at her blouse, the buttons seemed to impede her; she couldn’t manage, her fingers were trembling and shaking. I helped her; tried to calm her, but there was something so desperate about her, urgent and aggressive and insistent. Her mouth clung to mine, then moved hungrily along my face; then her tongue pushed against my teeth, then her mouth seemed to be drawing my life into herself. She whispered and sobbed and gasped over and over again, “Oh God. Oh, my God, my God.”

  What happened between us was something far deeper and more vital and fundamental than just a sexual act. It was assaultive and abrasive and self-seeking on Kitty’s part. She had a desperate urgent strength which sought to satisfy that same ravenous, terrified empty hunger that food and wine had not satisfied. Finally she lay back, her head flung to one side, her hand, palm up, over her eyes. She breathed in deep hard gasps, and rivulets of sweat ran down her face and neck. I leaned over her and carefully blotted her face with th
e edge of the top sheet. She began to move her head from side to side, slowly at first, then faster and more wildly.

  “No,” she whispered, “oh no, no, no, no, no, no!”

  I caught her face between my two hands, held it still. “It’s all right Kitty. Don’t you know that it’s all right?”

  Her voice was eerie: a harsh whisper in the flickering light which shadowed her face and seemed to widen her eyes. “How could I be here with you like this? How could I be with anyone at all? George is alone, in that box. The boys, Georgie and Terry, they’re all alone, everyone is alone. And I’m alone!”

  The last words were a cry of terror and she pulled free of my hands and began to toss her head from side to side, as though her body was pinned by a tremendous weight and only her head was free to struggle. I stroked her face, rhythmically, began chanting to her softly, “You’re with me, Kitty; you’re not alone; you’re with me, Kitty,” and my lips on hers slowed the frantic twisting and turning and struggling, and when she lay still and wide-eyed, watchful and waiting, my mouth moved over her, my hands moved over her, tasting and kneading and arousing and whispering a sense of life back into her. She came alive again, less desperately, less urgently, and this time it was a mutual passion, this time I could join with her in a kind of lovemaking. A kind of affirmation and assurance that she was still a part of life and living and feeling.

  She slept for brief periods, sliding away into an intense quietness and motionlessness. Then she would begin to move, as though drawing back from a dream. Her hands wandered restlessly to her face, her neck, then her head started to move, from side to side, negatively. Then, a soft moaning, the beginning of a cry; then she would sit up abruptly, starkly awake and confused, her eyes darting with suspicion about the room, toward the low burning warming fire, then finally at me. I held her, eased her back down onto the pillow, my fingers tracing her dark brows, her fine fragile jawline, her slightly parted orange-flame-colored full lips, the edges of her pale hair against her forehead. I studied her in repose. Her face, relaxed and unguarded, seemed so young and vulnerable and unmarked. Her coloring in the pale-orange shadow was delicate and exquisite, unreal. Then a frown would pull her dark eyebrows toward each other; her mouth would tighten, lips pull back revealing clenched teeth. And it would start again; and I would soothe and comfort her again.