Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (21 page)

Josephine, sounding more like her father than I could have ever imagined, snapped, “Don’t tell me what to tell her. Don’t you dare! And don’t you start putting her down just because she’s got me—” she paused, cleared
her throat, and continued unsteadily, “to ask myself some questions about our relationship.”

A long silence followed her outburst, and then Wally grimly said, “So what are you asking?”

Josephine’s voice dropped so low that I had to—I still don’t think you could technically call this eavesdropping—move from the couch to a nearer-the-window chair. “I’m asking,” she told him nervously, “if our feelings for each other are based on—uh, you know—love or just on need.”

“I need you,” Wally exploded, like I need a hump on my back. You and that family of yours—that’s what I need? There are plenty of nice Jewish girls around who don’t have crazy fathers and fear of botulism. God knows I don’t need you, Jo, but”—Wally’s voice turned sweet as syrup—“honey, I
love
you.”

A rustling on the porch suggested that Wally was conveying his love nonverbally. “Don’t kiss me. It mixes me up,” I heard Josephine groan. “Okay, so you say you don’t need me but maybe you need me to need
you.
And maybe that’s what I’m doing instead of
loving
you.”

Now Jo was crying, and Wally was crying, and I started crying too, for Jake and me as well as for Wally and Jo. I cried for young lovers everywhere and for middle-aged lovers too, for the way we were—and the way we screw it up, for that please-believe-me-I’ll-die-if you-leave-me, that are-you-pretending-it-can’t-be-the ending, that high-as-the-mountain-and-deep-as-the-ocean devotion which ends with our lonely heart calling, in the chill still Of the night, lover come back to me.

“Oh God, oh God, it’s so sad,” I wailed. My body shook with sobs—two-thirds sorrow, one-third
Chardonnay. As tears streamed down my cheeks and my sobbing reached a loud, crescendo, all of a sudden I heard somebody say» “Mom? Is that you?”

I had, in my grieving for love’s labours lost, forgotten that Wally and Josephine were, right there. Now they knew that I was right there too. “It’s me,” I said, thinking fast. “I was taking a nap, and I just woke up from a terrible nightmare. Come on inside and I’ll make us all some coffee.”

I opened the door to let them both in, but Josephine told me No, thanks, explaining that she had studying to do.

Wally grabbed her hand and said, “It’s really important to me for you to come in.”

Josephine slipped her hand away. “It’s really really important,” she said, “for me not to.”

“It actually isn’t that cold tonight,” I said to Wally and Jo, trying for a constructive intervention. “Compromise! Have coffee out here on the porch.”

“Forget it,” said Wally, and stormed into the house.

“Good night, Mrs. Kovner,” said Jo, and walked to her car.

Saturday night, I said to myself, is the loneliest night of the week.

I made myself a lonely cup of coffee.

And since Wally said no—a rather sharp no—when I asked if he wanted to talk, and since Jake was God knows-where with God-knows-whom, I decided the best thing to do was to go to sleep. Tomorrow—when I was thinking more clearly and looking a whole lot better—I’d figure out how to make up with Jake and how (once again!) to murder Mr. Monti.

•  •  •

Sunday started out badly and got worse.

The phone rang at 7
A.M.
with my sister Rosalie saying, “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

There are three answers to this question. The direct approach: “Damn right you did. Who calls at seven
A.M.
?” The smart-ass reproach: “Certainly not. I had to get up to answer the telephone anyway.” The comforting lie: “Oh, no, I’ve been up for hours.”

In the interests of sisterhood, I chose option three.

“So why,” Rose persisted, “are you sounding so groggy?”

“Maybe I’m getting a cold,” I said. “Rose, I’m up.”

“Because if I
did
wake you up, you could tell me. I can deal with that I’d rather have you say it right out than secretly thinking I’m selfish and irresponsible.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” I fibbed. “I’m thinking that if my sister is calling at seven
A.M.,
it must be important.”

“In other words,” Rose said triumphantly, “I did. I did wake you up. And you hate me for it.”.

As I think I’ve already mentioned, ours has never been an easy relationship.

It took about ten minutes to get beyond this opening gambit to the purpose of Rosalie’s early-morning call, which was to let me know that she and Hubert would be coming down on Wednesday. They would need to stay, she reminded me, two or maybe three weeks, till the work on Carolyn’s yard was well under way. “Unless—and you can be honest with me, Brenda—” she tensely said, “you’d rather that Hubert and I went somewhere else.”

“You’re more than welcome,” I assured her.

“Is that ‘you’ as in me or ‘you’ as in Hubert and me?”

“You’re both welcome here,” I said. This was not the truth.

“I know you don’t really like dogs, Bren, but I couldn’t come without Hubert.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“I mean, a Great Dane is a sensitive breed, and Hubert happens to be especially sensitive. And intelligent. And intuitive. And dignified and proud. And deeply devoted.”

“I don’t, know Hubert that well,” I said, trying to stanch the flow, “but I’m looking forward to getting to know him better. And now, if you’ll excuse me”—I employed my old trick for getting off the phone—“my doorbell is ringing.”

“Who would be ringing your bell,” asked Rose, “so early in the morning? Don’t they care about waking people up?”

“Wednesday, Rose,” I said, and hung up the phone.

When I went outside to bring in the Sunday papers, I saw something on the windshield of Wally’s car. Stuck under the wipers, a raggedy note announced in big block letters,
ON HALLOWEEN THE CLOWN TURNS A GHOST.

I had no problem deconstructing this terrifying message. It obviously was naming the date on which Mr. Joseph Monti intended to do in my baby boy.

The sidewalk lurched under my feet. The sky started falling. A full-scale dizzy spell was about to begin. No, I said to myself, I won’t let this happen. I won’t let them hurt him. I won’t be helpless. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t let that bastard win.

The doziness passed.

I reminded myself, as I tore up the note and tossed it into the trash can, that Halloween was more than a month from today. Which meant that Wally was safe for a while, that I didn’t need to feel pressed to swing into action and rescue him right away. There was time, and I had to have time, to prepare another foolproof plan to kill Mr. Monti.

How much time, did I have to win back Jake?

I was brooding over this question during a meager breakfast of coffee and dry toast when I got a telephone call from Vivian Feuerbach.

“I wanted to check on your health, my dear,” she said to me in her Katharine Hepburn voice. “You sounded so dreadful on Friday when you canceled.”

What in God’s name was she talking about? For a moment my mind was blank. And then I remembered. “Oh, right. But I’m fine today.”

And I also wanted to tell you that I’m going out to the shack for a couple of weeks”—this, shack was. her two-hundred-acre estate in Middleburg—“so whatever you wished to see me about will have to wait until I have returned.”

My mind, no longer a blank, flashed,
That’s too late.

I guess I must have moaned, because imperious Vivian quickly, graciously added, “Unless—well, if it’s important, I could make the time to see you this afternoon.”

I told her it was important. I told her I’d get back to her immediately. I called up Louis and asked could he meet us today. “We’ll take her to Anacostia, and then we’ll take her to Harmony House, and then you’ll make your pitch about converting Jeff’s properties into group
homes for the homeless, and then she’ll agree it’s a great idea, and then she’ll agree to buy them, and then Jeff will be all right, and then maybe Jake . . . maybe Jake . . . maybe Jake . . .”

“Brenda! Brenda! Slow down! You need me to meet you and Ms. Feuerbach, I’ll do it.” Louis’s voice was soothing arid concerned. “But—no offense intended—you are
strange,
I mean sincerely strange, today.”

I took a deep breath and told Louis that I was suffering from a case of sensory overload—“I need to unjam a few circuits and I’ll be okay.” I decided I wouldn’t say that I needed this real estate coup not merely to bail out Jeff but to score some urgently needed points with my husband, whom—I also didn’t say—I seemed to have significantly alienated.

“I don’t want your praise or apologies,” I imagined cooing to Jake, when—having been told (dramatically) about Jeff’s ruinous real estate deal and (modestly) about my brilliant solution—he looked at me with new respect in his eyes. “I don’t want your praise or apologies—just your love.”

•  •  •

In the early afternoon Vivian Feuerbach and I—and Jeff, who of course we needed to come with us—were crammed into Louis’s Honda on our not-so-merry way to Anacostia. To one of the meaner sections of Anacostia. To, in fact, one of the meaner streets of one of the meaner sections of Anacostia.

The day was pay but mild, and a silent cluster of teenage boys, in the hanging-out mode, looked us over when we stopped at a light. As I, in turn, looked them over—looked at their unsmiling faces and what-you-doing-here eyes—my hand, without my permission,
reached out to push down the locks and roll up all the windows. Red light, red light, turn green, I nervously said to myself, this chant of impatience dredged from the mists of my childhood. But when the light turned green, our way was blocked by a wiry lad in high hair and a headband, who darted into the street and, rhythmically pecking his head and jabbing out his elbows, started dancing to an improvised rap song.

So they come across the river

From the other side.

Now they got no place to run—uh uh!—

And no place to hide.

Gonna make tomorrow’s headlines—

This is where they died.

Get ’em. Go get ’em. Go get ’em. Go get . . .

When some of High Hair’s pals danced into the street and joined him in the “get ’em, go get ’ems,” Louis backed up, swung around them, and pulled away. None of us expressed any wish to stay for the rest of the boyz-n-the-hood performance. Especially me.

I mean, I was scared. I also was ashamed of being scared. I also was much more scared than I was ashamed. I was scared to be in this blighted place with its overflowing trash cans and dismembered cars, not to mention its alienated inhabitants. Would I be feeling more welcome if I were wearing my sixties
WE SHALL, OVERCOME
T-shirt? I doubted it.

I was looking across a gulf that was missing a bridge, that I wished could be bridged, that required a lot of encouragement to be bridged. Which is why, when we parked in front of a battered, brick building—one of
Jeff’s sorry set of eight—with its door swinging off its hinges and its first-floor, windows methodically smashed in, the sign saying
KOVNER PROPERTIES
—
EFFICIENCIES FOR RENT
displayed a desperate addendum:
WEST MONTH FREE

In’ spite of which, as Jeff had already informed me, the occupancy rate was no more than 30 percent.

I had warned Vivian in advance that I was taking her on “a magical mystery tour” of a part of the city that she had never seen. I also had warned her in advance that I might, for the very first time in our relationship, be asking her to make what I termed “a substantial contribution to a good cause.” (I chose to avoid specifics until later.) I also had warned her in advance to wear her casual clothes, which for Vivian meant low heels with her Chanel. Leaning on Louis’s arm, with Jeff leading the way and me warily covering the rear, Vivian made a regal entrance into the front hall—and bumped into Jeff, who was frozen in his tracks. He was staring—we all were staring—at a man in a Rolex watch and designer running suit, who seemed to be holding a gun to another man’s head.

Forget about “seemed.” This man was positively holding a gun to another man’s head.

“We’re doing some business. Please move on,” said the man who was holding the gun, though he phrased his request in far more colorful terms.

Jeff began backing out. “Yeah, right. We don’t want to interrupt.” Vivian, however, stood her ground. “Are you going to whack him?” she asked “Is this a drug deal that’s gone sour? Or one of your pushers skimming off the top? It’s important to show some muscle, but
everyone knows you can’t collect money from a dead man.”

Billy (the name was embroidered on the pocket of his running suit) tilted his head and squinted, his eyes at Vivian. “You been seeing too many TV shows, Mama.”

“I happen to be of the
reading
generation,” said Vivian proudly, “and quite a connoisseur of detective fiction.”

“Mama, get your ass out of here or you gonna be quite a
corpse
of detective fiction.” Billy was clearly not charmed by Vivian’s style. He was even more annoyed when, moving up close and shaking a finger in his face, she told him, “No one, not even my son, calls me Mama.’ And furthermore I consider threats a repugnant and unacceptable form of discourse.”

While Billy, cursing vividly, was pushing Vivian’s chastising finger away, his erstwhile victim chose to exploit the distraction. Moving with serpentine grace, Elton Jr. (his name was embroidered on his running suit too) swiveled around and wrestled the gun from Billy. After which he grabbed Vivian, held her up in front of him like a shield, and announced, “This is a hostage situation.”

Somebody down the hall, his interest aroused by the commotion, poked out his head, said, “Oh, shit!” and quickly withdrew.

Somebody from the second floor, a baby on her hip, looked down from the top of the stairs, said, “Oh, shit!” and withdrew.

While Jeff (aloud) and I (silently) concurred in this estimate of the situation, Louis asked Elton Jr., “What are your terms?” But Vivian—eyes ablaze and all of her ninety-six pounds aquiver with indignation—said, “No
terms, Louis. Never. I am have been, and will continue to be, opposed to any negotiations with hostage-takers.”