The Rothman Scandal (54 page)

“Stop!” she cried. “What are you doing? You're making a terrible mistake! His name's not Johnson!”

“You hear me?” the second officer said, ignoring her and waving his revolver at Skipper. “I said get your shoes and shirt on, Johnson. Fast!”

“Stop!” she cried again. “He hasn't done anything!” And she watched as he meekly put on and buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his trousers, then sat on the corner of the bed and pulled on his cowboy boots. He stood up, and the first officer seized his arms and quickly snapped handcuffs on his wrists from behind.

“But what's he
done?
” Alex sobbed.

“The charge is murder two,” the first officer said.

Alex leaned forward across the bed, the bedsheet pulled around her. “But his name isn't Johnson!” she wept. “His name is Skipper Purdy!”

“Is that the name he's using now? Sorry, little lady.”

“But he's my husband! I'm his wife! This is my husband, Skipper Purdy!”

The second officer threw a sideways glance at Skipper. “
Another
one?” he said. “Listen, little lady, this guy's got almost as many wives as he's got aliases. He's got wives from here to Pueblo, Colorado. Come on, Johnson, let's go.”

“Wait … wait …!” she sobbed.

Standing tall and straight, and with as much dignity as possible, Skipper said, “Officer, may I please say goodbye to my wife?”

The two troopers exchanged questioning looks, and then briefly nodded.

Skipper stepped toward her, and kissed her awkwardly on the lips, not easy to do with his wrists manacled behind him. “It's all a mistake,” he said in a low voice. “I'll explain it all later. You go home to your folks now. I'll be in touch with you there. I love you.” Then, bending close to her ear, he whispered, “Under the mattress!”

“Oh, Skipper … Skipper …”

But then he was gone, marched out of their motel room between the two troopers, one at each elbow, and it was all over before she even knew what had happened.

She jumped out of bed and threw on her clothes, still weeping with fear and anger. Then she remembered:
Under the mattress
. She lifted one mattress, then the other. Under the second lay his money belt. She lifted it, and it was surprisingly heavy. She unzipped it, and emptied its contents on the bed. There were a great many tightly folded bills, most of them hundreds. She sat on the bed and began counting the money, soon realizing that it would be easiest to stack the bills in piles of a thousand dollars each. When she finally finished, she had counted a total of $34,974. This was even more than he had told her he had. She would need the money, of course, to use for his defense. Meanwhile, the motel bill had to be paid.

Outside, in the parking lot, the yellow Corvette was still parked, and the keys, she knew, were hidden under the floor mat. She found them there. In the glove compartment, she found the car's registration. It was registered in the name of William J. Cassidy, 314 Elm Street, Lafayette, Indiana. But the car, she noticed for the first time, bore Wisconsin license plates. None of it made any sense.
I will hear from him soon
, she thought.
He will write or call me soon
.

All sorts of guilty thoughts raced through her brain: Why hadn't I at least asked where they were taking him? Why didn't I find out under what name they were holding him? At the same time, even if I knew where he was, and were able to find him, would the fact that I'm a minor cause him even more trouble? In the end, there seemed to be nothing to do but what he had told her to do: Go home. And wait for some sort of word from him.

Alex knew how to drive a car, more or less. She had practiced driving her mother's car up and down the driveway at home, though the Corvette's stick shift would take some getting used to. But she had never driven on an open road, and she had no driver's license.

She drove home to Paradise that day very slowly and carefully. It was nearly dark when she reached the house with the ruined zoysia lawn, and, all the way, she had been thinking,
I will hear from him soon
.

Her father's car was in the driveway.

“Where the hell have you been?” he wanted to know. “Do you realize I've had the police in three states looking for you?”

So that may have been how the police located Skipper at the motel—looking for her. “I was spending a few days with a friend,” she said.

“Whose car is that out front?”

“My friend's. He asked me to keep it for him for a while.”

“You were off with some
man?
”

She nodded.

She heard him mutter, “Like mother, like daughter.” Then he disappeared into the kitchen.

I will hear from him soon
.

Her mother returned from the clinic in Topeka, and now there was no more talk of playwriting. Her mother had been placed on medication, and these pills were called “mood elevators.” But they did not seem to elevate her mother's mood, exactly. Instead, they seemed to make her drowsy and forgetful, though she would occasionally burst into loud laughter, even when no one had said or done anything particularly funny. Her mother and father hardly spoke to one another.

I will hear from him today
, she began assuring herself as each new day dawned.
Today I will hear from him. There will be a letter or a telephone call. Today
.

The days went by.

“How long is your friend's car going to be parked in our driveway, anyway?”

“He had to go out of town. He asked if he could park it there till he gets back.”

“Where has he gone—to the moon?”

It began to seem that way.

“I tried to start it this morning. The battery's dead.”

I will hear from him today
. She told herself that on the day that the letter she had written to William J. Cassidy, 314 Elm Street, Lafayette, Indiana, was returned to her with a livid purple stamp in the shape of an accusatory, finger-pointing hand on the face of the envelope, and the message: “Addressee unknown. Return to sender.”

“
I must hear something from him soon!
” she began telling herself aloud in the darkness of her bedroom.

But the days continued to go by. She went back to school, and she heard nothing.

At Clay County Regional High, a tall, thin woman named Lucille Withers, who ran the Lucille Withers Modeling Agency in Kansas City, came to talk to the girls about careers in modeling. After her lecture, Miss Withers stepped over to Alex. “I noticed you in the audience,” she said. “I might be able to do something for you. You have a certain look.”

“I've always thought my chin was too small.”

“Mm—maybe. But a good model needs a good flaw. And I like the way you dress. That's a very smart-looking two-piece—clever, mixing checks and stripes. You have a sense of style. Here's my card. Look me up the next time you're in the city.” And she handed Alex her business card.

“Any messages for me, Mother?”

“No, dear.”

“No letter for me today?”

“No, dear.”

I will never hear from him again, she decided. And, gradually, she felt that blindingly bright crimson light that had been beamed into her life that summer, and the great billow of hot wind that had seemed to fill her with its force and to give her head the airy lightness of an untethered balloon, beginning to fade. And in its place began to grow that thin, hard, cold and bitter sliver of ice in her heart.

To hell with him
, she thought.

But it wasn't that easy. It was one thing to say to hell with him, but quite another to forget him. Does one ever really forget that first, great agonizing love? By October, she had the battery of the yellow Corvette recharged, and had begun practicing her driving seriously, spending an hour or so each day driving up and down country roads. By the end of the month, she decided she was ready to apply for her learner's permit. This allowed her to drive during daylight hours. She had driven to Kansas City and placed Skipper's money in a savings account where, she reasoned, it would at least earn interest. But, because he had promised her she could have one, she withheld enough money to buy herself a portable sewing machine, and she returned to designing and making her own clothes.

She drove to Topeka, the Kansas state capital, and found the state police headquarters. But no one there had any record of an arrest, the previous August, of anyone named James R. Purdy, or William J. Cassidy, or anyone named Johnson. The state police suggested that it might have been a matter involving the Wichita City Police Department. She drove to Wichita, where it was suggested that pertinent records might be found in Topeka; a sympathetic desk sergeant offered her two tickets to the Wichita Police Department's Annual Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner for the Poor. The rodeo had long since left the Wichita Fairgrounds, and she telephoned Omaha, their next stop. But the rodeo had left Omaha as well, and no one had any idea where it might have been headed after that.

At the beginning of Christmas vacation, she drove to Kansas City again, and presented herself at the offices of the Lucille Withers Modeling Agency, and was pleased to find that Miss Withers remembered her.

“Stand up,” said Miss Withers, who wore a pince-nez on a long silk cord and placed this instrument across the bridge of her thin, hawklike nose. “Now walk around, walk back and forth—that's right. Now turn. Try turning your toes outward just a little when you walk. Yes, like that, not too much.” Lucille Withers was making notes on a long yellow pad as she talked. “Now turn again. Shoulders back a little. Chin up. That's it. Swing your hair—that's it. Try swinging your shoulders a little as you walk. Now take smaller steps. Turn on your heel. Let me see your hands. Good. Now put your hands in the pockets of your skirt. Try jutting out your hips a bit as you walk—tuck the fanny in. That's it. That's a pretty girl. Sexy Lexy.”

No one had ever called her Lexy before, and she rather liked it.

“We're going to be partners, and we're going to be pals,” Miss Withers said. “You're to call me Lulu. Only certain very special pals get to call me that. Now let me see you sit. Sit down
slowly
. Cross your legs. Age?… Weight?… Dress size?… Height?… Waist?… Bust?… Hips?… Shoe size?… Glove size?” Lulu Withers wrote all these numbers down. “Yes,” she said at last, surveying Alex again from head to toe through the pince-nez. “You do have a certain style. And, as I said before, I like the way you dress. That skirt-and-sweater outfit—mixing plum with orange. Very
smart
, very snappy. Where do you buy your clothes, anyway? Certainly not in that hellhole called Paradise.”

“Actually, I made the skirt myself.”

“
Really?
Where do you get the patterns?”

“From my own designs.”

“Really?” she said again, looking impressed. “That means you not only have a sense of
style
, you have a sense of
fashion
. And that's rather rare, you know. Most of my girls don't have that, I'm sorry to say. It's rare to find a fashion model with a real sense of fashion. Most girls are simply thinking in terms of what their precious bodies are doing for the clothes they're wearing. They think from the inside out. They don't think of what the clothes they're wearing are doing for them, from the outside in. Fashion is cosmetics in cloth. Your feeling for clothes can help your modeling career, and I'm pretty sure I can use you. There's a catalogue job coming up at Stix's, and I'm going to push Lexy Baby for the teen pages. But first I'm going to send you around to a photographer pal of mine”—she jotted a name and address on a slip of paper—“and have him do some shots of you. Then we'll make up a composite for you, and take it from there.”

“How much do models make?” Alex asked.

“In this town, twenty-five an hour max for photography. For runway work, less. We're not New York or L.A. or even Chicago, I'm sorry to say. I might be able to start you off for fifteen or twenty an hour. We'll see. But tell me something, Sexy Lexy. What do you really want to be?”

“Be?”

“Uh-huh. Say, ten years from now. What do you want to be?”

Alex looked at her new friend steadily. “I just want to be the most famous, most successful woman in the world,” she said. “That's all.”

Lucille Withers clapped her hands. “Good!” she said. “Yes, Lexy honey, I really like your style.”

Yes, to hell with him, she told herself again. May he roast on a spit in hell, the way his preacher father said he would. And at that exact moment she made a second solemn promise to herself. Dear God, she told herself—dear God, if there is a God, I swear to You, dear God, that from this moment onward, and for the rest of my life, the only person I will ever trust to take care of me is
me
.

She was remembering that vow now as she stepped out into the evening sunlight of Fifth Avenue. She had decided to walk the few blocks to the Lombardy for her meeting with Rodney McCulloch and his wife. Had she been so intent, over the years, on taking care of herself that she had neglected to care for others who had been entrusted to her care? Steven, for instance? Would he have done what he had done if she had been able to show him that she cared about him? Years ago, she had gone to see a famous Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Richard—pronounced
Reekard
—Lenhardt, to try to find out what was troubling her marriage to Steven. “Why do you want so much control?” he had asked her. “You want to control your magazine. You also seem to want to control your husband. You even want to control the way he feels about you.”

A couple of years ago,
Time
magazine published a profile of Alexandra Rothman under the headline “Fashion's High Priestess” in which the writer described her as an “icy-cool Olympian beauty.” Olympian. Control. The Ice Goddess. She had not particularly cared for that description of herself, though the article was accurate enough: