Compromising Positions (23 page)

“No, of course not,” I responded, feeling horribly guilty for hurting his feelings again. “Well,” I said lamely, “where are you going to go from here?”

“Back to my office.”

“No, I mean in terms of the investigation.”

“Oh, well,” he said carefully, “that depends largely on you.”

“Me?”

“I’m going to ask a favor of you.”

“Look, would you stop patronizing me?”

“What should I do? Lose my temper? Alienate you?” he asked testily. “You’re useful. You know this community. You’re observant.”

“All right. What do you want me to do?”

“Relax,” he said, noticing I was sitting, tense and rigid, at the edge of the couch. “It won’t be too painful. I just want you to look at the photographs. See if you can recognize anybody. Unless you were bullshitting me about not having seen them.”

“I was not bullshitting you. I don’t know. How would I recognize anybody?”

“Why don’t you give it a try?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll bring them over tomorrow. You won’t even have to come down to headquarters.”

“No. I mean, I’m busy tomorrow. There’s no way I could make it,” I said, remembering my date with Norma Fleckstein.

“Okay,” he said, standing up, “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow then. About nine-thirty?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated. What would happen if I saw Mary Alice in one of the pictures? Could I deny flatly that I knew her? Even if I did, Sharpe would be astute enough to realize I was reacting to something, and then there would be no stopping him. He was intelligent and tenacious. He’d keep after me until I told him everything I knew.

“Well, don’t worry about it now,” he said. “See you day after tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“Bye.” He turned and walked briskly out the front door.

At times I am capable of tremendous self-control, so I restrained myself from peeping through the living room curtains to watch Sharpe walk to his car. Instead, I remained on the couch and concentrated on his image, on his yellow turtleneck, how it covered him so neatly; he had no paunch, no limp, flaccid pectoral muscles. He was lean and firm and exquisitely compact. The insides of his thighs would never ripple when he sat, his waist and hips would form one taut, fluid line. Suddenly, with no conscious realization of the leap from lust to guilt, I walked to the telephone and called Bob.

“Hi,” I said to his secretary, Candi, a tall, thin woman about my age who still wore miniskirts and short white boots. “Is he in?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Singer. He’s in conference at the moment. But he told me to tell you if you called that he’ll be working very late tonight. Is there any message?”

Was there any message? But all I said was: “No. No message. Have a nice day.”

I didn’t feel hurt or even angry. Bob was far more resolute than I. When we first began dating, we would have staring contests, gazing unblinkingly into each other’s eyes until one of us laughed or averted our glance; it was always me. But this time I couldn’t win because I wasn’t going to join the game. He could fix his eyes on mine forever, but I would have neither a giggle nor a tearful apology to offer him. Or even a plea to please, Bob, let’s call a halt. You win by default.

The receiver was still in my hand, so I called Mary Alice.

“Let me get it upstairs,” she said, after I had identified myself. She put me on hold, and I waited for two or three minutes until she picked up the phone again. “My sister’s here,” she informed me, which I assumed was an explanation for the delay.

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Actually, Judith, it’s not so nice.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Her husband moved out on her. It’s been an unbelievable shock, as I’m sure you can well imagine.”

“Which sister is this?” I asked reflexively.

“Mary Jeanne.”

“The one from Larchmont?”

“No. That’s Mary Elizabeth. Mary Jeanne lives in Darien. I should say lived. She says a house without a husband is not a home, and she’s bereft, absolutely bereft. Do you know why he left her?”

“No.”

“Because he’s forty-two years old and wants to find himself. Can you imagine that? Forty-two years old, in line for a major vice-presidency at IBM, and he wants to find himself. Never mind about Mary Jeanne. It’s a good thing that all the rest of us married men who work in New York, so at least she had her sisters to rely on. She’s feeling terribly rejected. She was on the phone with her psychiatrist for over a half an hour just to keep from having a complete nervous breakdown, and do you know what he said?”

“Listen, Mary Alice...”

“He said her husband was a cad. A cad. And when a psychiatrist says that...”

“Mary Alice, I have to talk to you about the Fleckstein case.”

“Judith, please. What more can I say? Here I am wrapped up in my sister’s problem. What does she have left to live for? ‘Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.’ Right? How can I concentrate on my own problems right now?”

“The police want me to look at some pictures they found in Fleckstein’s office,” I said.

“Judith, no!” she breathed, her voice suddenly thick and heavy. “You can’t. I told you what I did in private. Like the way you talk to a priest or a doctor. Does our relationship mean nothing to you? Does the confidentiality of all the things I said come down to a big fat zero? Judith, I can’t believe...”

“Mary Alice, shut up.” There was silence. “Now listen to me. Why don’t you call Claymore Katz? If your picture is there, sooner or later someone is going to recognize it. If the cops can’t get anywhere, they’re going to be showing the photographs around to more and more people. Just by the law of averages...”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to get involved in all this.”

“But you are involved,” I said. Again there was silence.

Finally she spoke. “Do what you have to do, Judith.”

“Look, Mary Alice, I’ll tell you what. I’ll look at the pictures, but I’m sure I won’t recognize yours if it’s there.”

“What do you mean? Why won’t you recognize it?”

“I mean, I realize you were talking to me as a conduit to a lawyer and that makes the conversation privileged.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think I’ll recognize your picture if I see it.”

“But what if you do?” Actually, she was even stupider than Nancy or I had surmised.

“I’ll make it a point not to. Do you understand me, Mary Alice?”

“Yes. Now I do. But still...”

“What?” I asked, trying to sound patient.

“How would you like it if I saw pictures of you?”

She was right, of course. If someone had taken a snapshot of me, even lying supine with my own husband blanketing me, missionary style, I would want no one—not even Bob—to see it. “You’re right, Mary Alice.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“And it’s not as if I’m the only one, Judith. Believe me. He told me some of the people he did things with, and you’d be shocked. I mean, I really didn’t do anything so unusual. Not really.”

“Like who?” I asked. “What names did he mention?”

“Lots of people,” she insisted.

Realizing I was back in the game-playing business, I bantered: “Oh, come on. Lots of people? He really mentioned names to you?”

“He most certainly did. Would you believe Ginger Wick?” I could; Nancy had already told me. “Everyone thinks Ginger is such a genius career lady, but Bruce told me about some of the things she liked to do. And let me tell you something, Judith,” she sputtered, the words pouring out too quickly for her to scrutinize their import, “what Ginger Wick liked would make you realize that she isn’t so liberated. And Ms. Gordon-Jaffee.” She spit out the “Ms.” Laura Gordon-Jaffee was a local feminist who had become involved in a national group that raised money to finance litigation in sex discrimination cases. By all reports she was intelligent, effective, and violently energetic. Her name had been mentioned in a magazine article on the new leaders of the liberation movement.

I was stunned. “Laura Gordon-Jaffee? How did someone like that get hooked up with Bruce Fleckstein?”

“What do you mean, ‘someone like that’?”

I had been something less than diplomatic. “I mean, she’s so busy. Traveling around. Making speeches. Organizing.”

“I don’t know. But Bruce told me all about her.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, that for a women’s libber, she sure liked it a lot.”

“Liked what?”

“You know. Sex.”

“Oh.” I felt relieved. If Laura Gordon-Jaffee had been fixated on handcuffs or baby-doll pajamas, I would have hung up the phone, baked a pile of brownies, and waited patiently for my grandchildren to be born. “Did he mention anyone else?”

“No one that I can remember.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes. Those were the only names I recognized.”

I said goodbye, again promising that her face would remain foggy in my memory when I looked at the photos. But I pleaded with her to call a lawyer; if Bruce had told her about his other paramours, maybe he had told them about her. But Mary Alice denied it, assuring me that he had promised to keep their liaison secret.

“Pea brain,” I muttered as I got off the phone. My stomach began making plaintive grumbling noises, so I poured myself a glass of milk. I took two big swallows, when the phone rang. It was Nancy.

“Busy, busy,” she commented. “You were chatting away for quite a while. Someone fascinating? Arthur Schlesinger? The Pope?”

“Even better,” I answered wearily. “Mary Alice.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Nancy, are you free tonight?”

“Free?” she asked blankly.

“Could you have dinner with me? Or is Larry coming home?”

“I’ll tell him to work late,” she said. “Anything wrong?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I just feel like getting out for a while. Let’s go some place really nice. I’ll break out a new pair of pantyhose, okay?”

“Fine. Do you want me to pick you up?”

“Would you? About seven?”

“See you then,” she said. “I’ll make a reservation some place nice. You sound as though you could use it.”

I gulped down the rest of my milk and called Mrs. Foster, who said yes, she’d love to baby-sit for her little lambs. Mrs. Foster calls all the children she sits for her little lambs.

Later, in my bedroom, I opened my closet and reached into the back pocket of an old pair of white jeans that hadn’t fit since Joey was conceived. My worldly goods, I thought, and counted out forty-five dollars. More than enough for dinner and a baby sitter. But not nearly sufficient for even a down payment on a really nasty divorce lawyer.

“A bottle of Chablis,” Nancy informed the waiter. “We’ll order later.” We sat in the back room of Hermann Lomm’s, a local restaurant that had risen to fame on the basis of its magnificent T-bone steaks and crisp, salty German-fried potatoes. I settled back into an uncomfortable large Papa Bear chair upholstered with red vinyl and nail studs. Not the atmosphere for a quiet, cathartic cry with a good friend. This was a tough meat and potatoes place. I leaned over the table and arranged the packets of sugar and artificial sweetener into neat little piles.

“How lovely and precise,” observed Nancy. “Do you think you could stop your housekeeping chores and talk to me?”

“Sure,” I said, giving her a weak smile. “I think my life may be in ruins.” I waited for a quip, but she said nothing. “Bob has withdrawn from me completely. Someone—probably the murderer—broke into my house. And the cop who’s in charge of the investigation keeps threatening to arrest me, and I want to have an affair with him.”

“Judith,” she breathed, “you have been busy.”

“It’s better than cleaning out closets,” I retorted.

“For heaven’s sakes, stop trying to be cool. Tell me what happened.”

For the next half hour, over a bottle of icy wine and a Caesar salad, I recounted everything that had happened; from the moment I walked into my house and saw the M.Y.O.B. on my refrigerator to my planned meeting with Norma Fleckstein to my last glimpse of Sharpe walking out of my living room on his lovely, powerful legs.

“I assume you want my reaction to all this,” Nancy finally said. I nodded. “Well, let’s start with the break-in. It’s fairly clear...” The waiter came and took our order for dinner: steak for two, medium rare, fried potatoes, sautéed onions. “And a carafe of red wine,” she called as he trotted toward the kitchen.

“I don’t think I should have any more to drink,” I said.

“Hush, Judith. Now, as to the break-in. Nice people generally do not force someone’s door in unless they are deeply perturbed about something.” She lifted her long hair from under the collar of her yellow silk shirt and let it fall casually onto her shoulders. Three businessmen at the next table watched her. “Therefore, I think you ought to take the message seriously.”

“I do. It is serious.”

“All right. Now, it’s clear that it’s someone involved in this nasty murder. Most likely it’s not the Mafia. I really can’t imagine some hood pulling up to your house in a shiny blue Cadillac and spray-painting your refrigerator. Right? I mean, they tend to be more forthright in their requests.”

I agreed. “Whoever it is,” I said, “is an amateur. And not terribly subtle, either.”

Nancy looked up. The waiter came and placed a large platter of thickly sliced steak in the middle of the table. We sat silently as he served us.

“All right,” Nancy said after he left, “so we can exclude the pros. Now, of all the people in Shorehaven who might have wanted to see Fleckstein laid out with a lily in his hand, do you have any idea who might be the one?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Well, it’s just a feeling, you know. Nothing based on fact.”

“I see,” she said, spearing a piece of potato with her fork. “And that’s what you told this stud Sharpe and that’s why he threatened to arrest you.”

“Right.”

“Well, if he can’t get it out of you, I certainly can’t.” She stared down at her plate, contemplating her steak. “Since when,” she asked, looking up, “do you go for WASPs? You’ve always seemed to be drawn to those glowering, intense, cerebral Jewish types.”

“Oh, Nancy, I’ve never met anyone like Sharpe. You should see him.”