Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (26 page)

“Yeah.” Mr. Monti nodded his sleek head. “I see what you mean.”

I should note that the way I was dressed was meant to serve as a crucial part of my disguise. For what I was also banking on was that Mr. Monti’s eyes would be studying not my features but my breasts, whose bared rosy mounds had been pressed (by a shrewdly engineered bra called Lover Cups) above and beyond the neckline of my dress, and whose truly spectacular cleavage (also courtesy of Lover Cups) housed, in its perfumed depths, a simple gold cross.

My alibi for the dress, a slinky, satiny, silvery number, was that I was going from there to another engagement—“a dinner being given by Secretary and Mrs.—whoops!” I interrupted myself. “Sorry, we never mention the names of our clients. Suffice it to say he’s
a man upon whose shoulders might rest the survival of the world.”

Mr. Monti, pleased to be numbered among my exalted clients, and even more pleased, with my unbusinesslike garb, fixed his liquid gaze on my cleavage and huskily observed, ‘That’s a beautiful cross.”.

I thanked him and said, “I’ve already ordered us something special to drink. It’s an old and famous Fisher-Todd tradition. And while it’s being prepared, perhaps you could say some more about what you have in mind.”

Joseph Monti’s eyes swept the room, where the Young and Ambitious were gathered, speaking—as they sipped Chardonnay—with die borrowed importance of their congressional bosses. “We’ve got the votes.” “We told HHS.” “We met with the Speaker this morning.” Clearly these kids believed they were running the world. It struck me, as I watched them playing mine-is-bigger-than-yours, that this was a perfect place to poison a person.

“What I have in mind—” Joseph Monti swallowed hard as I leaned forward, the better to hear him, breasts rising to the occasion magnificently, “what I have in mind is that you skip that dinner party and let me take you to eat at the Lion d’Or.”

“Would that I could,” I sighed. “Would that I could. These Washington do’s, with the great and near-great, are really such a bore. I mean, yet another evening with Bobby Dole and Nino—pardon me, Justice—Scalia is not at all my idea of a high old time.”

“Then why not—” Mr. Monti persisted.

“One night soon,” I promised. “But business first, Mr. Monti, and pleasure later. So would you please
answer me this: If you were a tree—think carefully now—which tree would you be?”

Mr. Monti’s eyes drifted up from my cleavage to my face. Uh-oh, he was studying me. His forehead was furrowed He cocked his head and knitted his brows and examined me some more. My bared rosy chest grew damp with perspiration.

Mr. Monti kept staring at me. And then—at last—be spoke. “They’re wrong,” he said. “You’re really not a Liz Taylor.”

“I’m not?” I asked him, anxiety slipping some northern sharpness into my southern-fried drawl.

“It’s somebody else you remind me of,” Mr. Monti replied. He continued to study my face. “Someone I know.”

I sat there reviewing my backup plan, which on second thought seemed unbelievably lame. I mean, what if—after I tell him my story—he gets really mad and telephones the police and has me arrested for impersonating a real estate agent, and then the police take me down to the station and then they frisk me and find the poison pills, and then—I flashed on Susan Hayward, locked behind prison bars in
I Want to Live!,
and perishing, though innocent, in the gas chamber. Large drops of sweat were dripping down my cleavage.

“I’ve got it!” Mr. Monti snapped his fingers—one, two, three. “You know who you are? You’re a brunette Goldie Hawn.” He paused. “Well, maybe Goldie Hawn’s first cousin.”

I almost choked with relief but I somehow managed to get a grip on myself and my drawl. “Actually,” I replied, “I’ve heard that before. Now tell me—this may sound silly to you, but it helps us compose a
psychoreal estate profile—tell me what kind of tree you think you’d be?”

Mr. Monti leaned back in his chair and sighed impatiently. “I don’t do trees.”

Across the lively room I could see our waiter slowly making his way to our table, two foamy pink drinks aglow upon his tray. “Then let’s look over my listings,” I said, adding hastily, “and would you be a lamb and kindly go and fetch my briefcase from the checkroom?”

Mr. Monti left. The drinks—two oversized strawberry Daiquiris—arrived. The waiter left. I whipped out the poison pills. Which, of course, I had already mashed and which, when stirred, dissolved most gratifyingly into the contents of Mr. Monti’s glass.

Did my fingers tremble as I poisoned my former lover’s drink? I’ll try to answer the question honestly. I’d already resolved my ambivalence and made peace with homicide. I was now, as Nietzsche once put it, “beyond good and evil.” I was also, as Yeats had wisely advised, looking “on the motive, not the deed,” while keeping in mind noble Seneca’s instructive observation that a “successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.” Furthermore, I was guided by—But enough with the citations. You ask, did my fingers tremble? The answer is no.

Mr. Monti gave me my briefcase and settled back into his seat. I removed the listings I’d typed up for the occasion. Pushing his drink a bit closer to him, I adjusted my cleavage and asked, “How central is a fireplace to your happiness?”

“My happiness?” Mr. Monti laughed softly, bitterly. “I have no happiness.”

“Oh,” I said in a most tactful tone, “Is that, perhaps why you’re moving? Domestic problems?”

“Not domestic. Foreign.” Mr. Monti’s eyes were burning. “An outsider attacking the sanctity of my home.” His eyes were searing mine. “Destroying my family. Turning my wife arid children against me. But he is going to pay. They, all will pay.”

I knew who “they” were but I had to ask, “Pay what?”

“Their blood, their sweat, their tears, their grief,” Mr. Monti’s voice ran up the scale. “Their misery, torment, agony, and anguish. That’s what they owe me. And that’s what they will pay.”

When he finished his loathsome litany, he clenched one fist and bit into his knuckles, which definitely underscored his point. And though I had felt no further need to justify this . . . this assassination, his words and gesture hardened my heart even harder.

“I do,” I said, dredging up a smile, “I do admire a man of strong opinions.”

“And I,” said Mr. Monti, his rage retreating, his eyes returning to my cleavage, “do admire your cross.”

I’ll nail you to it, I said to myself. Aloud, I kept smiling and said, “If I might change the subject, it’s time for a toast.”

I raised my glass and gestured to Joseph Monti to do the same. He picked up his drink, examined it, put it back down. “What”—his caressing voice had acquired an unexpected edge—“is this you’re giving me?”

For one wild moment I thought about leaping out of my chair and trying to make a getaway. Surely the jig was up. Surely he knew. I fought back my panic and told myself that he couldn’t possibly know, that I had to
stay cool, that I had to see this through. Clearing my throat, I replied to his what-is-this question with a reassuring chirp. “Why, it’s the Fisher-Todd drink, the traditional drink we always offer our new clients. A strawberry Daiquiri.”

“Sorry. No. I can’t drink this.” Mr. Monti shoved it away as if it were . . . poison.

“Of course you can,” I insisted, anxiety once again playing havoc with my drawl. “All of our clients drink it. Even Justice Souter drank it. You’ve got to! You must!”

“I’ll have something else.” Mr. Monti summoned our waiter back to the table. “I’d like a—”

“No!” I interrupted. “Listen, okay, I’ll grant that it’s sweet and I know that a lot of men aren’t crazy for sweet. But please, just this once, drink it down. It’s really important to drink it down. It’s . . . a tradition.”

I knew I was pushing too hard. I knew I risked rousing his suspicions. But I couldn’t—so very close to my goal—bear to fail. I took his drink in my hand, reached out, and pressed it to his lips. “You can’t”—I batted my lashes—“you can’t refuse me.”

“I’d like a scotch and soda,” Mr. Monti told the waiter, moving my hand away and ignoring my lashes. Then, with a sort of sheepish smile, he explained, “I have the greatest respect for tradition. But the reason I can’t drink your drink”—he did a sue-me-sue-me-shoot-bullets-through-me shrug—“is because I’ve got this bad allergy to strawberries.”

•  •  •

During the forty, minutes, required to extricate myself from this fiasco, one cruel word kept tormenting my brain: Banana! Banana, banana, banana! Banana,
banana, banana!, if only, I thought, as I fought back tears of regret, if only I bad ordered
banana
Daiquiris.

•  •  •

It took me eleven days to regain my shattered equilibrium after, my failure to poison Mr. Monti. It took me until Saturday, October 24, to once again be able to say “Can do,” Where were my organizational skills, where was my resilience, I had to wonder. For it took me until Halloween was one short week away to turn my thoughts to another murder plan.

It had been, to be fair, a stressful eleven days. While struggling to regain my equilibrium (and while, of course, writing my column three times a week), I had, in addition, been fighting with Jake, desperately seeking Hubert, enduring attacks with sharp instruments,’ lecturing in Berkeley and Indianapolis, trying my damnedest not to throttle Rosalie, and assisting shell-shocked Jeff to move back home.

I’ll address these matters in chronological order.

On Wednesday, despite daily flossing and my submission, four times a year, to the preventive periodontia of Sherman Schwartz, I nonetheless had surgery—part one of a two-part series—on my gums. (Why me? Why me? I wanted to know, but according to Dr. Schwartz, in matters of the mouth there is no justice.) I spent the rest of the day adrift on a sea of self-pity and painkilling medication, in no condition to concentrate on murder.

On Thursday night and on Friday night I lectured. I flew to San Francisco Thursday morning and talked about growth to Berkeley students, that night, urging them to set aside some time in their lives to do community service. (This could, I said, be simple volunteer work. It’s
fine, I said, to be Indians, not chiefs, “Native Americans, please,” one of the students, another Adrienne, had corrected me, Where will this end?)

On Friday I spent all day attempting to get to my next lecture, in Indianapolis. (Or should I be saying Native Americanapolis?) The trip to and from Indiana was not a good time. Engine trouble, fog, high winds, and many screaming babies diverted me, during my travels, from plotting a murder.

Late on Saturday afternoon Jeff, having no place to live, returned to the room in which he had spent his childhood. It seems that Mr. Monti, in lieu of buying himself a condo in the District, had decided to take over Jeff’s plush Watergate pad (which, as you recall, Jeff had to forfeit). The only good news was that Jeff, by vacating Watergate immediately, had received an extension on the rest of his loan, with munificent Mr. Monti postponing the due date—what a prince!—till December 1.

Preoccupied with assuaging Jeff’s depression, I didn’t have a moment to think about murder.

On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday Jake and I had nonstop fights, both in person and by telephone. Far Jeff’s glum move back home had forced me to notify my husband not only about Jeff’s real estate problems but also about my efforts to resolve them. I had hoped to tell Jake the minimum, but under his stringent questioning (which came close to violating my human rights), I confessed about Vivian Feuerbach (“Billy? Elton Jr? You’ve got to be kidding!”) and Edmund Standish Voight (“And Sunny joined you for dessert? Uh, what did she say?”). I didn’t say what Sunny had said until the third day of our fighting, until Jake’s
righteous scoldings had gone, too far, until he had moved from “Incattigible!” “Reprehensible!” and (he learned this from me) “Narcissistic!” to “Liar” and “Sneak.” After which I coldly observed, “Speaking of liar and sneak . . .” (significant pause), and then proceeded to tell him every word that Sunny had said to me at the Jockey Club.

My ensuing recriminations, extensive and colorful, left me no energy for murder plots.

On Wednesday I returned for part two of my gum surgery.

On Thursday, while I was occupied with signing a FedEx receipt, Hubert streaked out the front door and disappeared. I called his name, searched the neighborhood—both on foot and by car, rang doorbells, searched some more, shrieked, whistled, implored, impelled by the vision of Rosalie’s face if I had (God forbid!) to inform her that Hubert was lost. Two hours after my search began, I dragged myself over to Carolyn’s, hoping for some tea and sympathy. And there in the back was Rosalie, with Hubert at her side, supervising the digging of Carolyn’s lily pond.

“You let my dog ran away,” said Rose accusingly, her muddy hands planted on her blue-jeaned hips. “He could have been hit by a car. He could have been taken to the pound and put to sleep. He could even—a gorgeous creature like this—have been kidnapped.”

Hubert woofed a reproach and went bounding blissfully through the crunchy autumn leaves, returning to Rosalie’s side and woofing once more. “I just want to ask you this,” I said to my sister, blowing my bangs out of my eyes. “Did you hear me before—like an hour ago, and also an hour and a half ago—did you hear me
out there screaming my heart out for Hubert?” Oblivious to the red-and-gold glories of Keats’s “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (the poem is “To Autumn”), I awaited my sister Rosalie’s reply.

“If you’d found Hubert right away,” Rose actually had the chutzpah to say, “you wouldn’t have appreciated how terrible it was to have let him escape. So you’d let it happen again, and then the next time he’d be hit by a car or kidnapped.”

“You’re telling me you heard me calling earlier,” I said, my voice robotic. “You heard me calling but you didn’t answer.”

Rosalie, shameless, admitted that this was true. “It’s one of the things people do—I read this in some book translated from the German—to get kids to be responsible for their animals.”

She paused to give the lily-pond diggers instructions and Hubert a scratch behind his ear. “And Brenda, you’ll have to agree,” she said, “that spending all morning looking for a dog will make a person think twice before that person lets that dog run away again.”