Compromising Positions (24 page)

“Oh, Nancy,” she mimicked. “My God, you sound positively pubescent. Do you dream about walking hand in hand with him through a field of clover?”

“No. I dream of finding some nice, seedy motel room and screwing until we both expire from exhaustion.”

“Oh, boy,” she said. “Can you handle that, Judith?”

“I doubt it. Anyway, I don’t know if he’s interested.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he is. But it’s just a feeling. I mean, I have nothing concrete...”

“Eat your dinner,” she ordered.

I did, along with a glass of resiny red wine. And then another. Oddly, I didn’t feel at all tipsy, just extremely alert. Nancy sat back in her chair, half her steak left over, while I again went over all the details of the case, all the reactions of the people I had spoken with: Fay, Mary Alice, Scotty Hughes, the Duncks, Marilyn.

“Do you have any plans to speak with his nurse, Lorna Lewis?” she inquired.

“Yes. She’s next on my list, after Norma.”

“Do you think it could have been her?”

“Nancy. Come on.”

“I just asked. Don’t get so touchy.”

“Look, all I’ll say is that the police believe she left Fleckstein’s office first, before he finished up with Marilyn Tuccio.”

“And did she? Or do you think she came back later?”

I filled my mouth with air and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know anything for sure.”

“Boy,” Nancy commented, “you want to keep everything to yourself. What do you want to do, wrap it all up in a neat little package and present it to your cop as a token of your love?”

“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully.

“All right, I won’t push you. Now, what about the Duncks?”

“Well, I told you everything I know about them. He belongs to your club, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. And everyone agrees that the admissions committee made a truly tragic error. I mean, Lord, he is so adolescent. Now let me get something straight. I was right, he did have a fight with Bruce over money?”

“Yes. But according to Brenda, they had kissed and made up. Apparently, Fleckstein even steered some business his way.”

“I see. And what about Mary Alice?”

“Well, she had a motive. And so did all the women he photographed.”

“Was he actually involved in blackmail?”

“I don’t have any more information on that than I had the day we spoke to Mary Alice. Of course, he did have the pictures, so the threat was implicit. And he seemed to have a knack for selecting women with successful husbands, women who could pay.”

“You see,” said Nancy, “that’s why I pick nice, sweet young guys who have no imagination beyond their own cocks. They like me, I like them, we have a good time, and that’s all. Lord, these convoluted relationships. I don’t understand them at all.”

“Well, these women needed something. Don’t you?”

“Yes. I need lots of good, straight sex.”

“Don’t you need love? Attention?”

“Judith, they’re not exactly ignoring me. And I get love from Larry. Attention too. Sometimes he’s painfully boring and he has the soul of a Calvinist, but he really loves me. And I love him.”

“I know you do. But why do you need other men too?”

“Because they give me things that Larry can’t.” I peered at her curiously. “Passion. Spontaneity. Novelty. And excitement.”

“Can’t you get that from Larry?”

“Can you get that from Bob?”

“That’s unfair.”

“No, it isn’t.”

We sat for a while, silent, and then I switched the subject to her article on the fleeing suburbanite. It was going well, she said, and would probably be finished in another two weeks. The waiter came with the check. Nancy picked it up, saying it was her treat.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Why not?” she responded.

She drove me home, and as I reached for the door to get out, she took my hand and squeezed it. “You’ll be okay,” she said.

I strode into the house, somewhat belligerently, propelled by the wine, but Bob hadn’t come home yet. I paid Mrs. Foster, marched upstairs and, swaying a little, undressed and got into bed. Bob’s gold tie was still lying limp on his pillow. Within five minutes I was asleep.

He came home that night, I knew, because his side of the bed had been slept in. But by the time I awoke, at seven, he was gone—and so was his tie. I found it a moment later, in the bathroom waste basket, curled up beside a foil packet of Alka-Seltzer and a wad of crumpled tissues. He’s been drinking to forget me, I thought. But he’s such a lousy drinker; his stomach gets upset after a half of a martini. And the tissues. He’s been crying. Or he used them to wipe some whore’s lipstick off his mouth and God knows where else. I picked them up and examined them: normal, used, mucousy tissues. I threw them back with disgust.

With a loud sigh, I showered and dressed, then went downstairs to make breakfast for the children. Feeling heavy with guilt, I called a mother of one of Joey’s friends and arranged to have the bus leave him at her house after nursery school. That way, I could stay as long as I had to with Norma Fleckstein, without worrying that my son was standing before a locked, empty house, bleating with fear and hunger.

At nine-fifty, I checked Fleckstein’s address in the telephone book. At nine fifty-five, I got in the car and drove there. And at ten on the dot, Norma Fleckstein answered the door in a coral cashmere sweater set with matching slacks, a black mourner’s ribbon pinned over her left breast like fourth prize in some terribly depressing contest.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” she answered. “Easy, Prince,” she commanded, as a mammoth German shepherd pushed its way past her and growled at me. “He’s really very gentle,” she explained, as the dog stuck his snout between my legs. “Stop that, Prince. Bad dog. Bad dog.” Prince took a long sniff and, clearly uninterested in what I had to offer, turned and skulked away into the house. “Come in,” Norma said.

I did, but gingerly. I love dogs in general, but German shepherds make me extremely nervous. Somehow, I feel they’re still in cahoots with the Nazis, and at a command from some place deep in the bowels of Argentina or the Schwarzwald, they’ll leap up and devour every Jew within a ten-mile radius.

She led me into her living room which was surprisingly pleasant: grass green carpet, green and white upholstered couch and chairs, and light sleek white wood furniture. The room was like a garden, with plants all about, hanging from the ceiling, growing up walls, covering tables, giving off the moist, earthy smell of spring.

“A lovely room,” I said, smiling. She didn’t acknowledge my compliment, so I launched into my spiel about doctoral dissertations, and abusive press, the rights of the individual, and the agony of unwanted notoriety. Norma nodded several times, not so much committing herself to my thesis as indicating that she understood what I was saying. She lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and asked in a hushed, flat voice: “What do you want from me?”

“Well, before I ask for your personal reactions, I’d like to know what happened when the articles first appeared. Did anyone call you to give you moral support? Any friends react adversely?”

“Would you like a cigarette?” she asked, offering me a Parliament, as neat with its recessed filter as she was.

“No. No thank you.”

She clutched the cigarettes and a gold lighter in her left hand. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”

“I was asking about how your friends reacted.”

“Well, several friends called. Some came over.”

“What did they say? Were they shocked? Did they dismiss it? Did they make any comments about the press?” The last question, I knew, was completely asinine, but I wanted to seem full of my topic.

“I told them it was all a bunch of lies and they believed me. What did Bruce need to do anything like that for? He made a very nice living in his practice, and he made some very fine investments. We didn’t need any more than we had.” She talked without inflection or passion, as though she had carefully memorized a speech in a language she didn’t understand.

“Well,” I asked, “who do you think was responsible for his legal problems and all this negative publicity?”

“Someone was out to get him. To destroy him.” This, too, was said in a dead voice.

“Who?” I asked, displaying as little curiosity as I could.

“I don’t know. I’d rather not say.”

“Someone close?”

“Please,” she began, stabbing out her cigarette in a large white ceramic ashtray and reaching into the pack for another.

“Your brother?”

Her finger had just flicked the lighter. She let it burn, leaving her cigarette unlit. “How did you hear that?”

“Frankly,” I said, “I knew that your husband and Dicky were on the outs over your father’s will. Is that right?”

She lit her cigarette and flicked the lighter shut. “Yes, but it’s not like it sounds. My father had given Dicky a lot of money when he was alive. Dicky was always starting some new business and then failing, and my father must have poured in over fifty thousand dollars before he died. He had a massive coronary. So he left his estate to me because Dicky had already gotten his share.”

“And you mean Dicky still wanted more?”

“Yes,” she answered, leaning forward slightly. “Dicky said that he was a businessman and the oldest and I was already provided for because I had made a good marriage.”

“And your husband,” I commented, casting my eyes down in a ritual gesture of sadness, “your husband felt that you were entitled to your share?”

“That’s right. I mean, I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it, but Bruce said it was a matter of principle.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

“But how did you know about Dicky?”

“Oh. That. Well, in researching this chapter of my dissertation, I heard that there was some tension between you and the Duncks.” She sat stiffly, waiting for me to elaborate. I did. “But then I heard that your husband had sent some business his way.” I didn’t mention that I heard it slip from Brenda Dunck. “Then all of a sudden, your husband is under investigation. So, I thought to myself, who might have something against him? Who might still be holding a grudge, especially if the business didn’t pan out? Your brother, right?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “But the terrible thing is that Bruce didn’t know anything about pornography or anything like that. I think he had heard about some people who needed a printer, and just to be decent, he told them about Dicky. The next thing, he’s involved in this awful investigation. He got a subpoena.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They came here looking for things.”

“Who came?”

“I don’t know. Police. They were wearing regular clothes. They had a search warrant and they came late one morning.”

“What did you do?”

“I called Bruce, but he was out, so I left a message with his service to hurry home.”

“His nurse wasn’t in?”

“No. They generally take the same lunch hour. Anyway, these men, there must have been three or four of them, were all over the house. Do you know what they found?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Of course. Was that the first you knew about your husband being investigated?”

“Yes. Bruce told me that he hadn’t wanted to upset me. But he said everything would be all right, not to worry. He had a lawyer.”

“And was everything all right?” She hung her head. “I’m sorry. I meant, was the investigation pursued?”

“Well, nothing else happened until after Bruce was, was killed. Then all those news stories were printed.”

“And then what happened?”

“Nothing. Some reporters called, but I just hung up on them.”

“And what about these so-called Mafia connections?”

“That’s ridiculous. Bruce was a professional man, a well-known periodontist. He had even been called in to consult on one of the Kennedys’ in-law’s gum problems.”

“Oh,” I said, and nodded respectfully. “One more thing. How did your husband know that it was Dicky who was causing all the trouble? I admit it’s a natural guess, because that’s what I came up with, but did he know it for certain?”

Norma ran her hand over her neat, short, frosted hair. She wore earrings of coral surrounded by a small semicircle of diamonds; they looked real. “He told me that the day he went down to court to talk to the Grand Jury, he ran into this man he hardly knew, the man he sent to Dicky just to be nice and throw a little business his way. I mean, Dicky needs all the money he can get. My sister-in-law should have married a rich man. She buys antiques.”

“Oh,” I commented. “And about the man your husband met when he went to the Grand Jury?”

“Well, this man told him that he had heard from someone he knew who worked with the government investigators that Dicky had been the one.”

“Did your husband ever confront Dicky?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He said that he was sure Dicky would come to his senses and realize how important family loyalties were. And he didn’t want to be mean because Dicky was my brother and he didn’t want to hurt me.”

“Did you and he discuss the case often?”

“No. Bruce said he wanted his home to be a haven in the storm.”

“You were very close?” She didn’t answer. “Were you close?” I asked again, more softly this time.

“Yes,” she responded, her eyes filling with tears.

“I’m really sorry. This must be so painful for you. The horror of your loss, then the newspaper articles, and then this thing with your brother.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “And I’m not angry at Dicky. I know him too well. He’s always been kind of weak, childish.” She glanced at me. “Do you have any more questions?”

For another ten minutes, I asked her about her reaction to the newspaper coverage. She was, understandably, outraged. Her children had been protected, she said, but she lived in fear that one of their schoolmates would taunt them about Fleckstein’s legal troubles.

I stood to leave. I had been there less than a half hour. “I want to thank you,” I said.

“That’s all right,” she responded. As she rose, her slacks fell perfectly into place. “I hope I helped you.”

“You did.” As we walked to the door, Prince, who must have been roused by our footsteps, came barreling in.