Investigation (40 page)

She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, then held her head up, chin out. “I wasn’t going to tell you that, Joe. I wasn’t going to say that to you. You know why? Because I was afraid of what you’d think. That you’d think the same thing that good-old Jaytee Williams thinks. That I just have to ... snap my fingers or something and I make people die. You know what he said to me when George ... when George killed himself? He said, ‘Why, Miz Kitty, what the hell did you say to that pore dumb son-of-a-bitch to make him think he’d be helping you by blowing his brains out?’ And, Joe, I never ... George did what he did ... I never wanted anything like that.”

Kitty reached for my drink, took a deep swallow, then sat down on the couch, her feet under her, her arms seeming to hold her body together inside the deep-salmon-colored jersey robe. She took a deep breath, then said, “Just let me talk, Joe, all right? I feel so ... so filled with the need to talk.”

“Go ahead, Kitty. You talk.”

“Look, I want you to know something. I want you to know how I feel about something. About Vincent’s death. You people are as responsible as anyone else. All of you. You all set him up, and Vincent couldn’t see any way out, so he went before the grand jury and he told the story you all told him to tell, because he didn’t have a choice. Vincent was a dead man from the minute you found out he was bisexual and ...”

That was funny. It was actually pretty stupid. From the minute that Vito Geraldi had announced to us that Vincent Martucci was searching for boys, we had all thought of him as a homosexual. The implications of his being bisexual just hadn’t occurred to me.

Kitty had stopped speaking; she watched me intently. “What’s the matter, Joe? There’s a funny look on your face. What are you thinking?”

“It’s just that I hadn’t thought of Vincent’s death in just that way. Our ... responsibility.” Which of course wasn’t really true; I had thought of it; I just didn’t give much of a damn, one way or the other.

“Well, it’s true. Everyone knew that Vince was on borrowed time. And I’m not going to lie and say I’m sorry it was
before
the trial instead of
after.
And you know what, Joe? There isn’t even going to
be
a trial. Williams said that Vincent was the District Attorney’s whole case. That there never was one single solitary shred of real evidence against me. There was just
me. The fact of me.
And what Williams calls my
‘life style.’
And the way I shoved it to them. Williams says that no one is going to make any kind of further effort in the case. Something to do with politics, Joe. I don’t understand any of that and I couldn’t care less, but I do care about one thing.”

“What’s that, Kitty? What do you care about?”

“That we can’t force them to have a trial; that I’m not going to have a chance to be tried and
acquitted.
I want that creep Quibro to bring his ‘case’ to a jury. He never had a case against me. He never really had to prove I was
guilty,
as long as he had Vincent. I was the one who had to prove I was
innocent.
Now it’s the other way around; the way it’s supposed to be. And he can’t prove I’m guilty. So he’ll get one adjournment after another, until after the election, Jaytee said. And then the D.A. will just quietly drop the indictment.”

Her long hair surrounded her face, which was shiny and moist and very beautiful, her skin picking up a peach-colored glow from her robe. Very softly, she asked, “Joe, can you understand? Can you understand that I
want
to go on trial? I want to get it all out in the open and be acquitted.”

“Yes, I can understand that, Kitty.”

She dropped her chin for a moment; the long light hair covered her face completely, then she parted it with her hands, like parting curtains, and held her face up toward the light, toward me.

“Joe. I don’t feel exactly the way I said. About Vincent. About Vincent’s death. We ... I knew Vincent for a long time, Joe. He was a friend. He was good to me. We trusted each other. I never judged him in any way. It was none of my business how Vincent lived. I wish ... he wasn’t dead. I’m sorry he’s dead. But, at the same time, for my own sake, I’m glad, and that makes me feel awful. Like I must be an awful person ...”

I knew that was the right time for me to sit beside her, to hold her against me. She seemed depleted; the energy had gone out of her, leaving her emptied and light and fragile and totally exhausted.

I held Kitty’s hand in mine, examined the nails: bitten and ripped down to the quick, slashes of bloody ragged wounds. I put her sore fingertips against my lips.

“Joe, I don’t care what a bastard like Jaytee Williams thinks. I don’t care what they print about me in the newspapers. I really don’t But ... it matters to me what
you
think, Joe. It matters to me very much that you believe I had nothing to do with Vincent’s death.”

“I believe you, Kitty. I believe you.”

“Joe, put me to bed. I am so tired.”

She seemed nearly asleep. I settled her on the bed, but when I started to leave she reached out for me.

“Stay with me, Joe. Can you stay with me? Just lie here, next to me. God, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

I cradled Kitty against my body as she slept, her face turned toward the night light she wanted left on. I could see the stages of her sleep reflected on her face: the relaxation of tension as her lips parted and a kind of serenity washed over her. She had the smooth, untouched look of an expensive porcelain doll, almost too perfect to be real. As her breathing went deeper and slower, as she dropped deeper into sleep, her hands clenched into fists, her lips began to move, her dark brows pulled into a frown. I could see the movement of her eyes beneath the delicate beige lids, the flutter of those strange whitish lashes, as she went fully into her dream. Her body tensed and she began to whisper and to shake her head against whatever she was seeing. I stroked the long tendrils of hair from her damp face, and in her sleep Kitty reached and took my hand in both of hers and held on to it as she drifted closer to the edges of consciousness.

In the early morning, the room visible in that peculiar light of predawn, we turned toward each other as though each of us was inside the same dream, and in a slow, almost organic connection we made love slowly, languidly, almost totally devoid of tension, as though our movements against each other were part of a perfect ritual of easy mutual satisfaction.

“Joe,” Kitty said, her fingers tracing my lips, outlining my features, “could we be together this weekend? Could we go somewhere?”

“Where would you like to go?”

She shook her head. “No.
You
pick a place.” She insisted that the choice be mine, as though this was very important to her.

“How about Montauk? It’s about a two-, two-and-a-half-hour drive. Do you like the beach? Look, I’ll take a run over to my place, get a change of clothes and be back for you in about an hour. It’s six now; be ready to leave by seven, okay?”

“Okay. Joe. Just one thing. For this weekend. Let’s let it just be you and me. No ... newspapers or television. Nothing but music on the radio. Let’s not talk about ...”

I leaned over and kissed her. “Where’d you get the idea we were going to have time to talk?”

The two days we spent in Montauk were like a period of suspended time, unconnected in any way to any other time or place. Kitty was radiant, beautiful; there was a lightness about her, a kind of total freedom as she waded up to her knees in the freezing ocean, challenging me to catch her, to run with her, to slide down the dunes with her, to make love to her out in the open on a desolate, cold stretch of sunny beach.

What surprised me was my ability to keep up with Kitty. I seemed to draw energy from her, to reach her level of vitality. I felt ageless; evenly matched; exhilarated by the intensity of everything we did.

We ate seafood in a good, uncrowded restaurant, then returned to our motel room, both of us exhausted by the fresh air, too much food, too much wine; both of us feeling stuporous, both of us somehow, mysteriously, coming alive again at precisely the same moment. She filled me so completely with herself that I began to believe her when she whispered to me, “There is just
now,
Joe. Just here and now. Just us. Just you and me. No yesterday, no tomorrow. Only now. Just now.”

Which is what, I suppose, is meant by the “now generation”: no promises, no commitments, no questions, no past and no future. Just now. Which might, or might not, be a good way to live.

We drove back to the city Sunday night in the kind of comfortable silence that can say more than hours of conversation. As I pulled up to the front of Kitty’s building, she said, “Joe, would you come upstairs with me? Just for one drink.” She slid her hand along my arm. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

From the time she said that until the time she poured some Scotch in a glass, there was a growing tension coming from Kitty. I felt it as she stood next to me in the elevator, as we walked down the corridor to her apartment, as she handed me my drink and tipped her glass against mine.

I felt a reluctant wariness. For two days, I had suspended reality. For two days, she had been the most perfect woman I had ever known, and I would have liked to kiss her good night and leave without either of us speaking another word.

“Why don’t you just put the drink down and say what it is you have to say?”

The line along her jaw tightened; there was nothing comfortable or easy between us now. Just an expectant silence as she seemed to prepare herself to say something to me. I didn’t make it any easier; she was spoiling something I didn’t want touched.

“All right, Joe. I want to ask you to do something. For me. Joe ... since we talked about ... since we talked up in your cabin in the country and I told you about ... what happened that night, and we went over George’s confession and all, I haven’t asked you anything at all. About what you were ... doing. About what you were finding out.”

“Yeah, and?”

Finally she looked directly at me. “Joe, I want you to just drop it, now. I don’t want to know anything at all about what you’ve found out. There’s no point to it now. There isn’t going to be a trial. I don’t have to prove anything. About ... George. About myself.”

“Don’t you want to know for sure that it was George?”

She shook her head. “There’s no point to it. If my life depended on it, that’s different. But this way, Joe, this way, I don’t have to be sure. I don’t want to have to think about George ... hurting the boys; actually doing it. I just don’t want to know for sure.”

I put my drink down. “You just want me to drop my investigation? Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Look up at me, Kitty.” Her head jerked up, her face confronted me, surprised, alarmed. “Is that what this has all been about? Is that what this weekend has been about? Damn it, don’t you turn away from me now. Answer me.”

Her chin came up, eyes narrowed and hardened: she was Kitty Keeler, shoving it to the whole goddamn world. “Sure. Absolutely. That’s it, Joe. You got it. That’s what this whole weekend has been about. Right.”

I don’t know if it hit her the same way it hit me: this was exactly the reverse of the situation between us last week up at the cabin. She had accused me of having used her emotionally; now I was accusing her. And her reaction was exactly what mine had been: anger.

I softened. “All right, Kitty, relax, let’s both just relax.”

“Do you really believe that, Joe? That that’s what this whole weekend has been leading up to?”

“I don’t know, Kitty. I don’t know what to believe. But you tell me. Why has it been so hard for you to ask me to drop my investigation? Why the hell did you get so tense about it?”

“Because I knew what your reaction would be. Because you don’t trust me any more than ...”

“Any more than
you
trust
me?”

“Joe, I am really tired. Look, you do whatever the hell you want to do. I don’t care if you spend the rest of your life investigating me, investigating George. Go ahead. Do whatever the hell you want to do.”

I drove back to my apartment, checked the mailbox, then sat for a long time while the weekend replayed itself: focused and refocused on certain specific moments, certain expressions, gestures, sensations, connections and touches which had all formed between us something far deeper than I was willing to admit.

Age caught up with me, my bones ached; my head ached; my ulcer burned; and Kitty Keeler was as much a puzzle to me as she had ever been.

M
ONDAY MORNING WAS THE
start of a perfect June day. It was also the day of Vincent Martucci’s funeral. He was attended by well-dressed, well-behaved men and women and neat quiet children who all maintained a sad but restrained grief throughout the funeral mass celebrated on Vincent’s behalf.

There were at least ten other law-enforcement men assigned to the funeral besides me. Some of them were discreetly snapping pictures; some of them were busy copying down the license numbers of private cars. Eight limousines and a long line of expensive cars accompanied Vincent to a parklike cemetery in upper Westchester County. Everything was in good taste. There were none of the excesses of the early-day gangster funerals: no huge good-luck horseshoe of flowers, no likeness of the deceased formed by hundreds of different kinds of flowers and preceding him to the grave. Nothing “Chicago” or “prohibition” about Vincent Martucci’s funeral. There was a minimum of flowers; a minimum of ceremony; a minimum of tears. Everything was low-key, doubtlessly arranged and directed and closely supervised by the queenlike widow whose eyes checked everything and everyone.

A large company then followed Mrs. Martucci and her two young daughters back to their home in Forest Hills Gardens, where a light luncheon had been prepared for relatives and friends.

Mrs. Martucci sent word, via a maid, that the police officers outside her home would be welcome to partake of some refreshments that had been especially set up for us in the kitchen. Most of us declined politely.