I shuddered silently. And I kept painting.
• • •
Two hours later Joseph Monti was still at the kitchen table, complaining about his life and cursing his enemies. I had finished painting two kitchen walls. I’d also tried to leave several times—“You’re sick. I come back later. I come back tomorrow”—but Mr. Monti insisted that I remain. He insisted that I remain and keep on painting while he kept muttering things like “She threw me out of the house.” And “How could this happen to me?” And, most unnervingly, “I’ll tear out his liver.”
Not if I can stop you, I thought. But first I needed a hammer and nails and some masking tape. Without them, I couldn’t do him in that day. Besides, with my muscles aching—throbbing and burning and twitching and aching—from my unexpected workout with the walls, I didn’t have the strength to commit a murder.
“No more paint!” I finally—thank God!—had an exit line that Mr. Monti would buy. “I go get more and come, back early tomorrow.”
“Be here before I leave for work,” Mr. Monti told me. “I’ll show you these other places I want you to patch.”
“Absolutamente,” I said. “I be here before you leave. Absoluta- and positivamente.”
• • •
During the afternoon I went to the store and purchased another can of white semigloss, though I had no intention of doing any more painting. I did, however, expect to make full fatal use of my other purchases: the roll of tape, the hammer, and the nails. But my plan to return in the early A.M. and do to Mr. Monti what Jeanne Moreau had done to victim three was thwarted—temporarily—by circumstances beyond even my control.
• • •
Groans awoke me at five that morning, terrible kicked-in-the-stomach gasping groans, oh-god-oh-help-me groans that came from the room above my head—from Wally’s room. (Needless to say, Jake snored at my side, undisturbed.) I flew up the stairs, convinced that Joseph Monti had somehow gotten to my boy, though the green letters on the panel of our security system still read “all secure.” When I reached the third floor I found no suggestion that anyone had breached our electronic fortress, (I didn’t even find Jeff, who was out for the night with, I figured, another unsuitable babe.) Wally was up there alone. He was writhing and thrashing on his bed. His face was soaked with sweat and contorted with pain.
“Mom,” he moaned, “I’m hurting so bad. You’ve got to do something, Mom. You’ve got to do something.”
I put my hand on his forehead. It was on fire.
“Jake,” I roared in a voice that I had cultivated for major domestic emergencies, a voice that could waken the dead—and sleeping mates. Faster than the speed of light, my husband the doctor arrived at Wally’s bedside.
One phone call and two minutes later, the three of us—Jake and Wally and I—were on our way in Jake’s Volvo to Sibley Hospital. And at 9 A.M., after whispering, “I guess maybe Jo should know about this,” Wally had an emergency appendectomy.
• • •
While Wally was having surgery and Jake rushed off to Children’s to perform some urgent surgery of his own, I went to a phone booth and made a number of calls. To Josephine, as Wally had requested. To Jeff, except he had not, as yet, returned home. To Dwayne’s mother, who, upon hearing that Wally wouldn’t be seeing his clients for a while, took full responsibility for his appendix. And to Mr. Monti’s office, where I explained to his secretary that though Mr. Fuentes had not showed up today, he would be at the condo early on Friday morning. Indeed, though I was aware that it might be hard to get away, I had to be at the condo on Friday morning. Halloween, after all, was Saturday.
Jo arrived at Sibley while Wally was still in the O.R. Birdie, looking ten years younger, was with her. “Family should stick together,” she said, explaining her presence in the visitors’ lounge. “Your boy is a lovely boy, and I’ll count him as family until Jo returns his ring.”
Josephine bit her lip and wandered off to stare out a window. Birdie joined me on the tan vinyl bench. “I guess with how mean my husband’s been about the kids’ engagement, you wouldn’t mind so much if she broke it off.”
Mean? I said to myself. She’s calling him “mean”? How about “vicious,” “evil,” “homicidal”? Aloud I murmured mildly, “We all love Josephine. But I guess right now she’s deep into self-discovery.”
Birdie Monti laughed. “Self-discovery, yes! I left Joseph over Josephine’s self-discovery.”
Even though Birdie Monti was about to become a widow, I felt strangely compelled to set the record straight “I honestly think,” I said, “that your husband never did anything sexually inappropriate. I mean”—I hastened to add—“as far as Jo or your other daughters are concerned.”
Birdie nodded. “We know that now. At first we were kind of confused. Until the doctor explained to Jo, and Jo explained to me, that the problem”—Birdie paused, then dived in—“was not her father’s unconscious incestuous yearnings, which, Dr. X says, even nice people have. She said that the problem was his larger pathology.”
My jaw dropped as Birdie swam briskly through these dark psychological waters. I cleared my throat and inquired, “Larger pathology?”
“That’s right,” said Birdie calmly. “His narcissistic need for control and domination.”
I couldn’t, I thought, have put it better myself.
Wally’s green-suited surgeon came out to the lounge to tell us that everything had gone well and that Wally was now being monitored in the recovery room. “Strong lad. No complications. He can go home on Saturday morning. And with this laser surgery, he’ll be back in business within a week to ten days.”
Birdie hugged me hard. “Oh, Brenda,” she said, “I’m so happy that Wally’s okay. Thank God.”
Hugging her in return, I prayed to To Whom It May Concern that this lovely lady would also be okay.
For despite (or because of) the fact that I was her husband’s former lover and future murderess, I was feeling responsible for Birdie. And despite her stellar performance that September night at AFGO, I still worried about how well she would do on her own. But as we. Continued talking together that morning at Sibley Hospital, I realized that my concerns were quite misplaced. Her contentment, her composure, and her quiet self-possession made Gloria Steinem look like a co-dependent.
“So,” I said to her, deeply relieved that I wouldn’t have her unhappiness on my conscience, “I guess you’re not planning to get back together again.”
“Planning to get back together again? Oh, I can live without him. I can live without him very well.” She smiled somewhat abashedly. “Except—and you know, they never talked about this at AFGO—I sometimes worry that Joseph can’t live without me.”
Birdie stood up to leave, patting her thick dark hair into place with one well-jeweled hand. She walked to the window and said goodbye to Jo. Then, bending to peck my cheek, she whispered, “I want to tell you something before I go. I don’t think it’s right that Joseph took Jeff’s condominium.”
“It may not be right, but it’s legal,” I said. “A contract is a contract. And Jeff signed over his life to Monti Enterprises.”
Birdie tucked her cream silk blouse into her slim boot-length skirt. When had she attained that firm, flat stomach? “Yes,” she said, “a contract is a contract. But what is Monti Enterprises? That’s what the lawyers are trying to figure out.”
Soon after Birdie left, Jo and I were told that Wally was out of the recovery room. We fluttered around his bed solicitously. I did not in the slightest resent it that when Wally fully focused on our presence he was far more thrilled to see Josephine than to see me.
While Wally and Jo held hands, I tactfully gazed out the wall-wide window at the autumn-burnished trees in their final glory. While tactfully gazing, I tactfully eavesdropped, too, but—mindful of my presence—the troubled lovers exchanged the most irritating inanities.
“I know that it means a lot to him that you’re here,” I said to Jo, when weary Wally wafted off
to sleep.
“I’m glad to be here,” she said, “but I wouldn’t want him to misunderstand. I think we really need this trial separation.”
I assured Jo that my son wouldn’t use his operation to make undue demands upon her. I, however, wished to make one small request. Could she please come to the hospital and keep him company tomorrow morning? I had some pressing business—some extremely pressing business—to attend to.
• • •
What kind of person asks the daughter of someone-she plans to murder to give her a hand so she will be free to murder him? I answer, without apology, “A mother person.” Indeed, I’d like to quote a letter I got a few years ago, signed, “Memphis Mom”:
DEAR BRENDA:
Some four-year-old creep has been mocking my little William, who is a stutterer. I told this creep he better cut it out. When he wouldn’t cut it out, I twisted his arm behind his back and told him next time he mocked William, I’d break the arm. I also tracked down the car that had deliberately cut me off though the driver could plainly see that William was with me. I tracked down that car and threw a rock at the windshield and what I’ve been wondering is, if a mother doesn’t protect her child, who will?
“Memphis Mom” had inspired me to write a whole column on mother love, which I called (all exceptions granted) the most primitive, unconditional love in the world. Forget about Heathcliff and Cathy. Forget about Romeo and Juliet, I wrote. If you’re looking for love that a person will sacrifice everything for, lie for, steal for, cheat for, die for, kill for, look no further than your average mother.
I noted in my column—and decided that it would be best to end it right there—that, fortunately for all of us, most mothers aren’t called on to kill for their children.
I didn’t say what we ought to do if we are.
But as “Memphis Mom” so eloquently put it, if a mother doesn’t protect her child, who will?
• • •
On Friday morning, I drove through drizzle and fog to Rock Creek Park and, in a deserted picnic area, again turned into Mr. Garcia Fuentes. I looked like Charlie Chaplin and spoke like an Italo-West Indian Desi Arnaz, but as I entered the Watergate condominium, I was strictly Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.
Mr. Monti stood at the door. I looked at his shabby shoes instead of his face. I didn’t want to see a human being. I only wanted to do what I’d come to do without further ado. I wanted to be a lean mean killing machine.
Okay, I commanded myself. Okay, let’s do it.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted when Mr. Monti began to talk. “There’s something I got to show you in the kitchen.” I gestured for him to follow me into the room. “The other day, before I leave, I was looking inside”—I pointed to it—“that broom closet. I find something strange in the back, behind the broom. Something vary strange, and maybe important.”
I opened the door of the closet, crouched down, and peered into the back. I shook my head with convincing perplexity. “Please,” I told Mr. Monti when I was standing up again. “I don’t think I should touch it. You go see.” And when he knelt down in the back of the closet to see what I’d said I’d seen, I slammed the closet door and quickly wedged a kitchen chair under the door handle.
(If you remember The Bride Wore Black, you’ll know that I added my own special variations to the suffocate him-in-the-closet plan. Nevertheless, Jeanne Moreau deserves full credit for the fundamental concept.)
“What the hell’s going on!” Mr. Monti shouted.
I decided not to answer. I turned on the faucets and dishwasher instead, hoping the running water would mute the loud and extremely reproachful things he said as—just in case, the chair didn’t hold—I methodically nailed the door shut with my hammer.
Mr. Monti banged on the door and screamed more unpleasant things. I didn’t wish to hear what he had to say. I turned on the exhaust fan. I turned on—top volume—the little TV on the counter. I turned on the water faucets the rest of the way. I hardened my heart against him, and kept hammering.
Mr. Monti was pleading now. “You’ve got to let me out. There’s hardly any air. It’s hard to breathe.”
And it will be getting harder, I thought, as I reached in my pocket and whipped out my roll of masking tape.
Mr. Monti was bargaining now. “You want money? I’ll give you money. Tell me how much you want and I’ll get it for. you.”
I re-hardened my heart against him, as I was fiercely determined to do, and started to tape up the cracks where the air came through, between the closet door and the door frame.
Mr. Monti was weeping now. “This just doesn’t make any sense. This just doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said. “I fly down here to visit my little brother. And bing, bang, boom, the next thing I know, I’m dead.”
Visit his little brother? I put down the masking tape.
After which I turned off the faucets, the dishwasher, and the exhaust fan. After which I turned off the little TV. “Who,” I asked, remembering that I should speak not like me but like Mr. Garcia Fuentes. “Who, por favor, is your little brother?”
“Joseph,” whispered the voice inside the closet. “We’re twins but he was born eight minutes later.”
“So you are—?” I asked, but of course I knew the answer.
“Vincent Theodore Monti,” he said, “but please call me Teddy.”
• • •
Do I need to tell you that this was very very—I mean, extremely—upsetting news?
Do I need to tell you how badly this sort of thing can shake one’s confidence in oneself?
Do I need to tell you again that, as Rosalie mentioned last year at lunch, I happen to be a really resourceful person?
Before I got resourceful, however, I first got one of my dizzy spells. The kitchen twirled like a merry-go-round run amok. I slid down onto the floor, bent my head, and listened to Teddy Monti as I waited for-the return of my equilibrium.
Teddy explained, through the door, that he had flown down the previous evening to visit “Joey,” who was having “some family problems” and feeling “depressed.” Joey had left for a business meeting in the early A.M. and had asked him to show me where to patch up the paint. “He mentioned that you were ah excellent painter. However,” Teddy said gloomily, “he forgot to mention that you were also a killer.”
“A killer?” I laughed most merrily, my dizzy spell done, my resources fully mobilized. “A killer? What kind of gringo talk is that? You got some kind of problem here?” I sounded slightly hurt. “You can’t take a joke?”
I then told Teddy that where I came from—I didn’t mention where—it was considered hysterically funny to shove a person into a closet and nail it shut. If you wanted to go for the big guffaws, I said, you added the masking tape, but that was optional.
“This is a really sick—’ Teddy started expressing his heartfelt feelings, but apparently realized that wasn’t the shrewdest move.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s a famous custom,” I told him, adding, with a menacing hint of annoyance, “You never heard of it?”.
Picking up on my cue, Teddy murmured that now that I’d jogged his memory, he was starting to recall that he had indeed heard of it. He furthermore agreed that it was—ha, ha, hee, hee, hee—hysterically funny. “So when,” he casually asked me, in between chuckles, “do you jokers let your victims out of the closet?”
I explained that I was about to remove the masking tape from the cracks and pull out all the nails with the claw of my hammer. “But when I remove the chair,” I said, “you must stay in the closet until you count up to three thousand, or else I have to shove you back in again.”
Teddy swore on all he held dear that he’d stay in the closet until he reached three thousand.
I was out the condo door by the count of three.
• • •
The near-murder of the wrong Monti gave me much food for thought, but not immediately. Immediately, I had to go relieve Jo at Wally’s bedside and also come up with
another murder plan fast. I felt frenzied. I felt frantic. Halloween was on its way. I now had less than a day to save my son. And having seen Godfather one, I knew that killers could get to their victims even in hospitals. I also knew that when Teddy told his brother about what Garcia Fuentes had done, it wouldn’t be easy to, say, return to the condo and push Joseph Monti off his terrace. (Which was, at the moment, my only backup plan.)
Before I went to the hospital, I stopped off at the house. I wanted to bring some soup to Wally for lunch. I also wanted to check the mail, our answering machine, and our new fax.
There was nothing of interest in the mail. Nothing on our answering machine. Our fax had nothing whatsoever, too. But just as I started to leave, I heard that special little ring that announces that a fax is coming through.
I walked back to die machine. I waited, filled with a feeling of dread. But when the message arrived, there was good news and bad news:
FORGET HALLOWEEN. NO TRICK AND NO TREAT. THANKSGIVING THE TURKEY TURNS INTO DEAD MEAT.
The way I figured, this message contained not only a threat but a stay of execution.
• • •
Early on Halloween morning, thrilled that I didn’t have to kill anybody that day, I quietly removed my A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE T-shirt/nightshirt and put on a long string of pearls and one blue lace garter. I then awakened Jake to introduce him to my G-spot and other adulterously acquired lore.
“This doesn’t mean,” I said later, as we lay in a sweatily satisfied embrace, “that I forgive you.”
“Nor does it mean,” Jake replied, as he gently stroked the side, of my face, “that I can be happy living with a control freak.”
“A charming phrase!”
“An even more charming character trait!”
“Not nearly as charming as screwing Sunny Voight!”
“So what are we doing?” Jake sighed. “Are we going to go a few more rounds on this? Let me know so I can put on my gloves.”
I started to lob one back. (Yes, I am aware that I’m mixing metaphors.) I shut my mouth and searched my heart instead, where feelings of the fiercest love, and also the fiercest hate, mingled ambivalently.
Murdering Mr. Monti Page 24