by Lev Raphael
“He is a detective,” I said glumly.
Serena waved that off. “He was asking me all sorts of things about Stefan and Perry and you.” She frowned. “Was Perry some kind of government agent? Why all the interest?”
I groaned. “Serena, it’s just the Campus Police, not the CIA.”
“It has to start somewhere.” She peered at me and seemed disappointed. “We’ll talk later,” she said, bustling off—no doubt to spread the word that something exciting was going on.
I didn’t have the heart to follow her and find out what exactly she’d been asked, and more importantly, what she’d told Valley. And I sure wasn’t in any mood to phone Stefan and ask him about Valley’s visit this morning, and if he had been out around the time Perry Cross died. Or was killed.
This was a crisis, a time for us to be together, but I felt coldly distant from Stefan, seeing him as an outsider might. He had been painfully involved with Perry, Perry had left him a lot of money. Two good reasons for murder. I picked up my copy of the campus paper, and there it was on the front page, my nightmare: a very short article saying that “new information” had appeared pertaining to Perry Cross’s death. This was no joke.
I was desperate, so I called Sharon, like I often had in the past when I was in trouble. My favorite picture of her was from Glamour, in which she wore a lilac silk portrait-collared dress that made her look like someone Sargent would have painted: rich, assured, and quite beautiful. Whenever I called her, I thought of that photograph, and it calmed me.
Luckily she was in now and I got right through. “Hi, Nick, need some help with the major exports of Tasmania?”
“Devils,” I said. “Tasmanian Devils. I already knew that.”
She chuckled. Given her position as archivist in Special Collections at Columbia’s library, her ease in six languages, and the fact that she read widely and with voluptuous curiosity, the family seemed to think of her as a hotline. Apparently they asked her anything and everything: about quarks, earth science, genetics—you name it. While I had never called her for help with a crossword puzzle, I knew my mother had.
“Sharon, you know I wouldn’t call about something stupid. I am able to use an encyclopedia.”
“Then what’s up?”
I came right out with it. “I think Stefan may be a murder suspect.”
“You’re serious.”
I almost said, “Dead serious,” but stopped in time.
I filled her in on everything that had happened, and she listened with occasional sympathetic noises, saying “Right” or “Sure” or “I understand.”
It sounded like she was jotting down notes.
“So,” I summed up. “You know Stefan. Do you think he’s capable of murder?”
“He’s a very capable man.”
I laughed despite myself, and realized how badly I needed it.
“Nick, let me ask you a question: Do you think Stefan is capable of murder? That’s the first question.”
“Well, maybe,” I said, sounding defensive.
“Okay, then. If he did murder the guy, then you have to ask yourself if you can live with it. Will it become a habit? And how do you keep this from your parents?”
I knew she was trying to make me laugh, but it wasn’t working. “Sharon, what can I do!”
“You have to find out where Stefan was that morning when you woke up, and just what he was doing. If this Perry actually was murdered, and Stefan doesn’t have a good alibi, then it’s up to you to find out who did it, and why. From what you told me, the police, the Campus Police, would love pinning a gay man’s murder on another gay man.”
“You’re crazy! I’m not a detective, I’m an English professor. What can I do?”
“It’s simple. Do what Hercule Poirot does. Talk to people, get a feel for their psychology.”
“But they won’t tell me the truth!”
“That’s never the point. ‘Speech is the deadliest of revealers’—that’s what Poirot says in, hmmm, Cards on the Table, the one with all the bridge playing. And that creepy victim, Santana, Montana, something like that. Speech,” Sharon repeated, “speech is the deadliest of revealers.”
“Huh?”
Now she sounded a little impatient. “Haven’t you read Agatha Christie?”
“Not really. I’ve seen some of the movies, though. But how’s that going to help me?”
“Honey, make a list of all the possible suspects and talk to them. Somebody’s bound to let something slip.”
“But what if they all did it?” I cried helplessly.
That didn’t throw her. “You mean like in Murder on the Orient Express’? Then I guess you’re outnumbered, so back off.” She added, “And get a very good lawyer.”
She wasn’t joking.
Somehow, I made it through my classes, expecting more bad news, more disruption—but the day continued uneventfully, except for what I was thinking. I kept imagining Stefan’s lies about Perry exposed in court, Stefan in jail, our lives ruined. And mixed in with these catastrophic images was a recurrent horrible doubt: could Stefan have killed Perry? What exactly did that mean? And how could I possibly be wondering such a thing about the man I had lived with for ten years?
Did I really know him, though? Maybe that’s what was possessing me—the realization that when it came to Perry, I had no real idea what Stefan might have felt or done, it was all too mysterious and out of character. Especially since what he’d said about Perry reminded me of friends in college and after who’d gotten involved in doomed, obsessive relationships where they spent as much time on the phone complaining to me as they did with the person they were unhappily in love with. Those phantom relationships struck me as absurdly dramatic, the kind of emotional jump-starting people did when they were afraid they couldn’t feel anything at all. But doubting Stefan, doubting my knowledge of him, was worse for me than if Stefan actually had killed Perry.
When I got home that evening, I felt as exhausted as if I’d been at the gym for hours after a year away: drained, achy, depressed.
Stefan was making dinner and the kitchen smelled great. The dining-room table had been set with Sharon’s china.
I perked up a little. “What’s the menu?” I asked, sinking into a kitchen chair.
Stefan turned from the counter. “Veal scallopine au vermouth, duchesse potatoes, string beans with garlic.”
“And the beverage?”
“A bottle of Haut Brion.”
“ ‘Why such reckless extravagance in one so comparatively young?’ ”
Stefan beamed as he always did when I quoted from The Importance of Being Earnest, his favorite play.
“After this morning, you have to ask?”
I smiled. “Now you sound like me.”
In a Yiddish accent, he said, “Who else should I sound like? You want I should sound like a stranger?”
But I stopped laughing as soon as I started. While he was talking, Stefan had laid the veal out on the counter between two sheets of wax paper and was pounding it lightly with our large meat mallet. As it rose and fell, I imagined him striking Perry down, with real force in that arm. I was shocked at how easy it was to see it.
I closed my eyes and shuddered.
When I opened them, Stefan was staring at me. “Do you want a drink? You look dead.”
I flinched as he came toward me. And when he stopped, I blurted it out: “Valley was there at school. Why didn’t you tell me he came by the house and talked to you this morning?”
Stefan shrugged.
“Valley asked me about the night Perry died, and where you were. He said there was a witness….”
“What kind of witness?”
“That you left the house, you were driving, around that time. Did you?”
Stefan nodded. “Actually,” he said with an odd smile, “I was out earlier than two a.m.”
13
I ASKED STEFAN, “DO I NEED a full stomach to listen to this?” He nodded. “Dinner’s almost read
y. Can you wait? I’m just doing the veal.”
I waited. The veal was soon sauteed in olive oil and Stefan was cooking it with the butter, vermouth, lemon juice, and parsley. He quickly brought the steaming redolent plates out to the dining room, and I followed with the wine and mineral water. It was a good solid meal, like ballast in a storm.
I ate and drank a little feverishly, particularly enjoying the fancy potatoes, while Stefan told me about the night Perry died. “I woke up around midnight. I tried to write a little, but that didn’t work, then I ate some of the leftover cheesecake, but I wasn’t really hungry, so I got dressed and went for a drive.”
“This isn’t Los Angeles, Stefan. This is Michiganapolis. How can you go for a drive around here?”
He bit his lower lip. “Good point. But I did. I ended up cutting through campus on the way home—”
“What time was that?”
He shrugged. “One-thirty?”
This sounded terrible. Driving around by himself, with no sense of the time. Who would believe he wasn’t out pushing Perry off a bridge, or doing whatever had led to Perry’s death?
“I drove by Parker and I saw the lights on in your office, so I stopped and went upstairs.”
“My office lights were on….” I set down my glass very carefully.
He looked right at me. “Perry was there.”
“Redecorating?” I snapped. “Or did he slip you a note when he left after dinner, asking you to meet him there?”
“Oh, Nick.”
Why was it more awful to think of the two of them in my office together than imagining Stefan ending Perry’s life?
“We talked,” Stefan said. “I told him what I told you, that I finally saw he was a phony.”
“You had to go to the office in the middle of the night for that? What about a fax, huh?”
“I told you it was coincidence. It felt good to finish things off.”
“How long were you there?”
“Fifteen minutes? Ten? I’m not sure.”
“Well, what did he say?”
Stefan hesitated. “He wanted to have sex.”
“What! Did he touch you?”
“He tried.” Stefan gave me a weary smile. “It seemed pointless, stupid. I felt sorry for him.”
“How sorry?”
“I said, ‘No, thanks,’ and walked out. He couldn’t believe it.” I downed my wine and poured another glass, pushed my plate away. “Neither will Detective Valley, when you tell him.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“Nick. Listen to me, didn’t you read the paper this morning? And it was on the local news. They’re investigating again, so they must think something’s suspicious. It’s bad enough Perry left me the money. If I tell anybody I saw Perry an hour or two before he was dead, they’ll be sure I did it.”
“But you did see him. It’s the truth.”
Stefan eyed me as if I were a pitifully naive immigrant who’d just been sworn in as an American citizen, declaiming about the unalloyed goodness of my new land.
Then something came to me. “Wait a minute. Was he drunk? Was Perry drunk when you talked to him?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”
“You’ll be a great witness. Why didn’t you tell me about seeing Perry that night?” Before he could answer, I went on. “Let me guess. Same reason you didn’t tell me that you knew Perry, that you helped Perry get the job here. You didn’t want to upset me, right?”
He nodded.
“Stefan, I’m not that fragile, you don’t have to protect me!”
He looked down, obviously ashamed of himself.
And then I said something I knew was dangerous, but I couldn’t help myself. “I can’t believe that after the way your parents and your uncle lied to you about being Jewish, you could lie to me about anything this important.”
Stefan glared at me.
I went on recklessly. “Haven’t you learned anything from all that? That lies come out eventually? You want me to end up hating you like you hate your dad?”
At that moment, if he’d reached across the table to smack the shit out of me, or swept the dishes onto the floor, or crushed his wineglass onto the table, I would not have been surprised.
Stefan did the unexpected. He started to cry, mouth and shoulders trembling, eyes squeezed, without turning his face away or leaning down into his hands. He cried unashamedly, utterly exposed, and there was no barrier whatsoever between us. It was naked, thrilling, weird. I felt awed and transfixed, as if I were watching some natural disaster. There was nothing I could say.
I made Stefan go to bed, and sat there cradling him while he fell asleep. “Say you don’t hate me,” he murmured, just as he drifted off. I was glad he didn’t repeat the request, because I couldn’t have told you what I felt for Stefan right then. I gently slid my arm out from behind his head and eased myself up to tiptoe from the room. He had clearly been drinking before I got home, and would probably sleep through the night, but I didn’t want to risk waking him up. Hell, it wasn’t Stefan I was thinking about as much as myself. I wanted to be alone, I wanted to think.
I stalked through the house once or twice, like a restless dog unable to find a comfortable spot to curl up in. Finally, I settled into the large armchair in my study, put my feet up on the ottoman. I went through my conversation with Sharon that morning, looking for some exit, but everything seemed hopeless. I had seen enough mysteries to know that Stefan was sunk: he had the motive, two motives, the opportunity, and I guess the means. Though that last point wouldn’t matter as much as the other two. I could just see him in court saying he went for a drive, and some lawyer subjecting him to withering questions. A drive at that time of night? And he just happened to end up near the department building? And all he wanted from Perry was to talk? Hadn’t he said enough at dinner?
Hell, if all that came to me so clearly, a lawyer aiming for Stefan’s conviction would do even more damage. And of course the jury would be homophobic, good simple people from Michiganapolis who supported “family values” and were suspicious of the university anyway—even though it was a major source of income in town.
How was it possible to have been so happy here, so happy with each other, growing more and more fond of living in Michigan, and to suddenly find that happiness proven chimerical?
I reached for the phone, dragged it over, and called my cousin Sharon at home.
“What’s wrong, Nick? You sound terrible.”
I explained how Stefan had lied to me, that he had seen Perry not that long before Perry was found dead.
“This is pretty bad,” she said.
I moaned, “Tell me something I don’t know!”
Sharon clucked her tongue, but she wasn’t being noisily sympathetic, it was something she occasionally did when she was thinking and marking time.
“Sweetie,” she said gently. “Are you listening? Nick?”
I muttered something.
“Okay, Nick. This feels crazy to you. The thing to do, then, is to be as systematic as possible. ‘Order and method,’ that’s what Hercule Poirot always says.”
“Sharon, I can’t balance my checkbook—I can’t keep my files alphabetized—I can’t remember where I put the shopping list!”
“But Nick,” she said. “None of that is a matter of life and death, is it?”
That shocked me out of my self-pity.
“You have to make a list of everybody who might have wanted Perry Cross dead or at least out of the way, and then you have to start digging. Find out everything you can, fast, because it doesn’t sound like the police there would be interested in the truth when they have a great suspect like Stefan.”
“I can do that,” I said, sounding less hesitant than I would have imagined, but apparently not convincing enough for Sharon.
“Listen,” she said. “Remember when your adviser at NYU was dying of lung cancer and you were terrified they’d make you work with McCracken, who
hated you, and that you wouldn’t finish the dissertation on time to get the job in Massachusetts, and Stefan would have to move there without you?”
“How could I forget?”
“If you could get through that, you can get through this. I want you to put the list together and call me right back, okay?”
I hung up, grateful, energized, and unexpectedly filled with the wonderful memories of how Sharon had helped me years before, when I felt doomed. With my thesis adviser given just two months to live, despite the chemotherapy, Sharon had sat me down, helped me organize my research, and had nursed along my dissertation, which I wrote in six weeks staying at her lavish apartment on Sutton Place that was like an Art Deco movie set. Whenever I had panicked, and Sharon wasn’t working, she was there with food or entertainment or a neck massage or terrific advice: “Your dissertation doesn’t have to be perfect, sweetie, it just has to be done. It’s just a passport, it’s your ticket out.” When she wasn’t there, she left cheerful, stirring notes and freshly baked muffins and breads.
And so I had finished my dissertation in a blur, Sharon had paid for it to be typed far more quickly than I could have imagined, and I passed my dissertation defense just in time, before my adviser eventually succumbed. A day after the defense, Sharon had Stefan and me over for Dom Perignon and beluga, and Stefan announced, “You’re like a fairy godmother.”
“I’ll be the godmother,” she had drawled. “You be the fairy.” Feeling refreshed by those memories, I pulled out a pad of paper from my desk drawer and started to make notes. As if guided by Sharon, I felt incredibly clear-minded and resolute. I headed one column SUSPECTS and another MOTIVES, and wholeheartedly entered Stefan’s name in the first one. Now was not the time to pretend. I hesitated, then put mine there, too. I didn’t have an alibi either, and it was clear enough that I hated Perry. Money was Stefan’s motive; jealousy was mine.
But who was next? I wrote down Bill Malatesta’s name, then added his wife’s, since what happened to one could happen to the other. Fear and secrecy were their motives.