by Todd Cohen
“One million dollars bail?” shouted the prosecutor with a raspy voice. “Dr. Dawson is a cold-blooded murderer, and a big-league art thief!”
The judge hit the gavel. “Silence. I am feeling kind today. Please release Dr. Dawson on one million dollars bail.”
“Where the hell am I going to come up with one million dollars? And how the hell am I going to get out of this mess?” As Oliver Hardy put it: “well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!” Laurel and Hardy humor did not help. Not this time. I squared my slumped shoulders and tried to show some dignity as I was paraded out like the prisoner I was.
The bailiff unlocked my cuffs. But Westhampton Beach’s Police Department had all my stuff. My iPhone, my clothes, and the bracelet, all contained within an envelope marked as my possessions. But I had to retrieve them just to get my life back.
Amy walked with me out of the courthouse.
“One million dollars bail?” I was still in shock over the amount.
“You are lucky they didn’t make it three million. With your house as collateral, the million will not be a problem.” I looked at her and then she looked at me. Our eyes met again. And then she realized.
“I’ve met you before,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied. “A long time ago.”
“It was in seventh grade. Wasn’t it?” she questioned.
“Marty Scheinberg’s Bar Mitzvah,” I said. Leonard’s, the dance floor, you and me? It was my first slow dance. Do you remember?”
“‘Alone again (naturally),” she said.
“You remember,” I said.
“How could I forget?” she replied. “It was my first kiss.”
“Mine too.”
At that moment I saw a twinkle in her eyes. It was as if time had stood still. She had remembered almost all the details, even the song. But still she did not know how I’d obsessed over “Once in Love with Amy” at that time, it almost drove me crazy. It was amazing that we both had never forgotten each other’s names, together with the impact of what happened back in 1972. I could have seen almost anybody else from that year, and I would have never recognized a single one of them on the street. But who could forget their first love? Maybe if they were inevitably scorned, they would move on and forget. But a first dance, a first kiss, a first love, and then a presto change-o disappearing act? Those kinds of memories stick forever. And my Mom singing that stupid song embedded Amy in my brain forever.
“Oh my God, my car isn’t here? I just remembered it’s at the Westhampton Police Department.”
“Can I offer you a lift?” she said to me.
“Sure,” I replied.
We hopped in her red Miata sports car. Amy was kind enough to drive me back to the Westhampton Beach Police Department, where I signed for my personal items. I was happy to get my clothes back, especially my Barenaked Ladies concert T, and even happier to give up the WBPD jail attire. The manila envelope was untouched. I opened it up and found that my iPhone was nearly dead, and fortunately no one suspected the rest of my things were “evidence.” It was all there—the bracelet, my cash, the folded piece of newspaper, even the sticker. Whew, I thought.
“I’d like to take you out to lunch, but I really need a shower. I don’t live far from here. Do you mind, following me to my place, so I can freshen up, and then we’ll go?”
“Okay,” she said.
We then headed back to my place. I opened my side door and we entered. Still no power! I went out back and restarted the generator. I opened a bottle of the Bedell Cellars 2007 Musee with a daguerreotype label created by Chuck Close. This red wine blend was possibly the greatest Long Island wine byproduct, and Chuck Close was probably Long Island’s greatest living contemporary artist, and, coincidentally, the guy who made the label.
“A toast,” I said. “To old friends.”
“Old friends? I’ve known you for forty years,” she replied.
“Not really,” I responded. “I lost track of you after seventh grade. What happened?”
“I moved,” she responded. “Parents bought a place in Kings Point. I wound up graduating from Great Neck North. Sorry.”
“Life goes on and then you die.” I laughed.
“How about you? Did you stay in Sea Cliff?” she asked.
“Yes, all the way! I graduated North Hills High and eventually went to Baltimore, San Francisco, and then back east. What about you?”
“I stayed in Manhattan, Columbia all the way. ‘Go, Lions!’ Then went into practice at a small boutique firm, Eagleton and Siegel, Attorneys at Law. Eventually, I got the opportunity to run their Long Island branch. I’ve been out in Hampton Bays ever since. Inherited my parents’ vacation home, just south of the highway.”
“Did you ever get married?” I asked.
“No, my practice has always gotten in the way. I was engaged once back in 1985, but I chickened out on the way to the altar. My fiancé was a little too needy. My practice has always taken a front-row seat to my life, but I am getting older, and my biological clock is ticking. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.” She just smiled and chuckled.
“Biological clock? Maybe we should go to work?” I joked. Amy was my age. But she did not look a day older than thirty-five. She was extremely fit, and I could barely see any wrinkles at all on her gorgeous face. I couldn’t understand it. If I were meeting her for the first time, I would have thought we were from a different generation. I am most definitely a product of the 1970s and 1980s, at least insofar as my maturing years, and Amy would appear to be a product of the 1990s and 2000s. At least that was what I would have thought. My hair was greying. Amy’s was as blonde as blonde could be.
I turned on Thelonius Monk and we each downed our Musee. I started to feel a little buzzed and very horny, but I knew I had to take a shower. I had not showered since that first night of cleanup at the Weisbergs’. The first time I saw the Pollock. And that included the day I discovered the Pollock missing and one dead Angela Weisberg—my stint at the Westhampton Beach Police Department—and my trek and adventure to and from the Riverhead Courthouse. “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” I left the room to freshen up. I was disgusting. I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower faucet, and turned up the water temperature. I took off my clothes and waited for the water temperature to get nice and hot and then hopped in the shower. The hot water felt so good, no great, as did the heavy water pressure. After about five minutes of just soaking under the hot water my muscles started to relax and melt. As I went to grab the shampoo, I thought I heard the door creak. I stopped for a second and tried to listen through the sound of the pouring water. Then the shower curtain opened.
Chapter 42
It was Amy, with the most amazing body I had ever seen. There was no way she was my age. Did she work out incessantly? I said to myself. Was this the same Amy that was with me in my seventh-grade class? She went to grab for the bar of soap, and I went to grab her. I placed my hands around her waist, and she put her arms around my shoulders and we kissed. This one was different than forty years ago, but it still made me quiver. The combination of hot water and soap, together with her voluptuous body, reminded me of The Kiss by Brancusi. No, that was wrong, way wrong. That sculpture was too modern, sterile. No, it reminded me of The Kiss by Rodin. More sensual and romantic!
Speaking of kiss, we began with our lips gently touching, and her tongue lightly sliding inside my mouth. Within sixty seconds, our tongues were deep inside each other’s mouth, our bodies firmly pressed against one another. Then she started to slide the Irish Spring around my body and down between my legs. Then she took her long, red nail-polished fingers and grabbed me below with her left hand while she moved the bar of soap up and down my hard “obelisk” to the same beat as Monk’s jazz, syncopating distantly in the other room. I wanted to cum, but I held back. I grabbed the bar of soap and began to stroke her down between her legs and saw her neck crank back. She gave a deep moan. As I went back and forth, I felt her harden and her moan turned
into a much louder groan. She was groaning, louder and louder. At that particular moment I pushed her up against the tiled wall and went inside. Her body up against the tiled wall, and mine firmly pressed against hers. The warm water poured over my shoulders. As I pushed up and down, she started to groan louder and louder. I too began to scream as she dug her nails into my butt. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she yelled as she started to harden with one of her legs tightly wrapped around mine.
The warm steam, together with my aroused autonomic nervous system, created a tingling aura and threw me into a dizzy spell. We held each other tight, soaped each other off, and then dried one another. Then we both collapsed on my bed.
I heard the song one more time, but this one was in my head, and it was not the music of Thelonious Monk!
Chapter 43
The next morning, I awoke at sunrise. I rolled over but Amy was not there. I went out to the living room and smelled something coming from the kitchen. It was pancakes and fresh coffee. The stovetop oven ran on a small tank of propane that worked only that one appliance, something I had forgotten with all the confusion during the storm. Amy found some matches in the utensil drawer and had started the stove, which provided an easy source to cook the pancakes even with a power outage. She had freshly brewed the coffee, using my French press. It was my favorite aromatic morning smell of Peet’s coffee, which always reminded me of their café on Chestnut Street in San Francisco. My favorite of all was Major Dickason’s Blend—Deep Roast, a rich dark java brew. Loved it even black. The table was set out in the sunroom, which faced out to the wetlands that backed up on to Quantuck Bay. Amy was sitting there, wearing a bathrobe that she found in my wife’s closet. All she was wearing was the robe and a pair of black pumps. The latter must have been for the effect.
We both ate a stack of Jacks with fresh maple syrup that we found in the garage. I downed my Peet’s. Delicious! “Now for the desert,” said Amy. She pulled off her robe, with nothing underneath. Just her plump breasts, each the size of a ripe Florida grapefruit, with nipples that were stiff and firm. I touched them gently with my hands and began licking the tip of her nipples. Then she proceeded to pull down my boxers and began to go down on me. We moved quickly over to the couch in the living room and she began licking me up and down while I did the same to her. My tongue went deeper into her as she swallowed me up and down. She was on top and I was on the bottom. “Position 69, my favorite,” she said as she dug her spiked heel into me. We were moving in unison, each of our mouths and tongues tasting each other’s juices.
“Eureka,” she screamed as we groaned together and shared the culmination. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has ever felt this good.
Chapter 44
How good was Amy? As a lover, there was no one who could hold a candle to her. But as an attorney? The best, at least, that’s what I was told. Thank God, because my dear friend and fellow scientist, Alexiev was suggesting an insanity plea. I needed good legal representation. And I was lucky to have Amy. She got the Montauk Murderer off and was successful in other newsworthy cases. She represented a very famous East Hampton celebrity against her cheating Wall Street husband. Amy stuck it to that Wall Street scum! But was I confused? I’d done nothing wrong.
“Only a victim of circumstance,” I said convincingly to myself. And my brilliant friend wanted to use the insanity plea to get me off? I was as sane as the day is long! Just a bit of misfortune. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kind of like Sandy! You know, three events coming together: one, a full moon giving rise to a high tide; two, a Nor’easter from the west; and three, a hurricane heading in from the East. All three at the same time and place. And my predicament was not unlike that of superstorm Sandy. I too had three inopportune events: one, losing my job; two, catching my wife having an affair; and three, being at the scene of a high-profile murder and one of the world’s greatest art heists of all time. All this I incredulously but silently recounted.
And, by chance, things have turned from bad to worse. That is, of course, not counting my newfound lust and love!
“Bang, bang, bang,” came a noise from the front door.
It was Alex. Here “for Shaw,” I joked in my head. He had stayed overnight locally, doing his own homework. “Nice of you to visit,” I said. I escorted Alex inside and instinctively poured him a cup of the Peet’s. It was no longer piping hot, but still warm and drinkable. And under the circumstance, warm black coffee would have to do, even for Alex.
“Alex, my only chance is to find the killer, and if we find the killer, I am certain we’ll have our art thief!”’
“MD, are you Mentally Disturbed?” Alex always used to joke that that’s what my initials meant. The confluence of circumstances points directly to you! Think about it—your job, your wife, the hurricane, and now THIS! Your fingerprints are all over the Weisbergs’ place. Temporary insanity is your only way out: severe mental distress led to a mental breakdown! Yes, “Mentally Disturbed.”
“Your friend, Matt, might be a heck of a scientist, but he makes a terrible attorney,” Amy chuckled. “An insanity plea would be my last resort in your case. My strategy is simple. Our good doctor is an outstanding citizen and the truth will set him free. We will examine all the evidence as well as the timeline and put them all under a microscope. Any evidence, including DNA evidence, I assure you is only circumstantial. But because of the high-profile nature of this case, I will be bringing in a secret weapon.
“We have to catch the thief!” I proclaimed. Perhaps I watched too many Perry Mason reruns when I was growing up. Perry Mason was an LA criminal defense attorney, played by Raymond Burr. Perry Mason, according to IMDb specialized in “defending seemingly indefensible cases.” He would gather the evidence and put it together like pieces to a puzzle. And in the end, Mason would always solve the puzzle. Speaking of puzzle pieces, I pulled out the MedicAlert bracelet from the manila envelope I’d been able to conceal from the police and showed it to both Alex and Amy.
“MDT Protecta and Cypher.” He read it out loud, and then said, “What the hell does that mean?”
“It is a clue,” I said. “I found it at the scene, and it does not belong to either of the Weisbergs. It is a piece of medical evidence that only a cardiologist would understand. And there’s this. I pulled out a piece of folded-up New York Times newspaper that I had in my back pocket; it contained the Price on Request sticker from the painting and had an imprint of a shoe on the back. Unfolding the paper, I revealed the print. No, it did not show Bruno Magli shoes like in the OJ case, but it did say, “Cole Haan.” There was a Cole Haan store at the Tanger Outlet in Riverhead, and we could see if we could identify the type of shoe and its size. The unfolded paper released the sticker, which I showed to my team.
“Sotheby’s?” questioned Amy.
“Yes. This is a sticker from the painting I found at the scene, which proves some of the history, or shall I say more specifically the provenance, of the stolen artwork. It is a critical piece of evidence! I can’t believe that they missed this one. Just got lucky, I guess.”
“Did you give any of this evidence to the Westhampton police?” Alex asked.
“I gave it all to the police department when I was strip-searched, but they must have missed it. Quite an oversight. Right? It was in my envelope marked personal possessions that they returned to me after I was released by the bailiff. If they don’t want to play ball with me, I don’t want to play ball with them. Besides, they weren’t going to help me find the thief and murderer! And finding the thief and murderer should definitely exonerate me!”
Chapter 45
Wrongfully accused—now I am witnessing it firsthand. I had been following a New York City attorney by the name of Gale Schwartz, who grabbed national attention by taking on pro bono cases with his charity called the Exoneration Project, or EP. Every couple of months, Mr. Schwartz would appear on the front page of the New York Times, with a wrongfully accused pathetic soul typically trapped in jail for anywhere between five and
twenty-five years and accused of some ridiculous crime. The sorry fact is that even when he found the real perpetrator, it still took him years to get his client out. I felt sorry for his clients, and every couple of months I’d send the EP a check for two hundred and fifty bucks.
Imagine my surprise when Mr. Schwartz arrived at my place shortly after Alex. Mr. Schwartz was of short stature and moderate build. Balding on top but a true tiger in the courtroom. He would perform nothing less than magic to get his criminally accused clients off. But how did Mr. Schwartz wind up at the vacation home of the former Director of Mount Sinai’s Cath Lab? Ridiculous, I thought.
“Mr. Schwartz, you can’t be here for me? I don’t fit the profile of any of your cases?” He told me about the time he got his client off after being accused of an icepick murder based on forensic evidence and expert testimony provided to him by a cardiologist. And that cardiologist was ME! What I didn’t know is that Mr. Schwartz had a thriving criminal-defense private practice separate from EP, and he knew exactly how to skin a cat.
“Perhaps I can repay the favor,” he said. “You helped me out of a tight bind! And now you need all the help you can get.”
“This was the secret weapon I was referring to!” Amy smiled.