As Husbands Go (34 page)

Both gave me their version of thank-yous being unnecessary. Layne said a partnership like theirs was another form of family, and members of a family did for one another. Gilbert John quoted a poem, “‘No man is an island . . .’” I’d heard it before and, frankly, didn’t want to listen to it again. Then he came down to earth a little and said from the first time he’d met Jonah, when Jonah was a resident, he’d known he was superior: not just as a surgeon but as a man. He was gratified that they’d been able to form a special bond. In grievous circumstances like these, he would always hope to be able to reach out and offer help, but the boys and I were a very special case because we were part of what was Jonah.

Just when you thought Gilbert John couldn’t go on and on because he’d used up all the words in the entire universe, he’d stop, giving you hope that there was an invisible
THE END
sign. As usual, I fell for it, taking a deep breath in preparation for sighing in relief, but then the monologue continued, about Jonah’s balance and how he’d fitted the various pieces of his life into a beautiful mosaic.

I tried to tune him out while I had a triangle of turkey and avocado and a bite of a grilled vegetables with hummus wrap that tasted like something you regret buying at an airport. Finally, I set it down, wiped my fingers, and said, “I’ve spoken with the chief of Homi
cide at the DA’s office a couple of times.” The two of them nodded politely. “Mostly, it was because I had some questions.”

“About what?” Layne asked. She leaned forward, listening so intently that you’d think she was wishing she could grow another pair of ears to better hear what you were about to say.

“About their case against Dorinda Dillon.” I glanced around. Someone, probably Mandy, had forgotten to put out water and soda, and I was thirsty. But I didn’t want to ask for anything, because then they’d be upset that she wasn’t doing her job. “I have some questions about the investigation, and also about how fast they focused on her being the one who killed Jonah.”

They stared at me like I was a foreign movie and the English subtitles had disappeared. I didn’t go into a lot of detail. I did mention Dorinda’s lack of any history of violence and also the bump on her head that she’d claimed the real murderer had inflicted on her, though I left out the electric broom, as it needed too much explaining.

Without looking at each other, both of them reacted in pretty much the same way: tilting their head to the side and drawing their brows together in an
I don’t get it
expression. Gilbert John straightened his head first and said, “I understand your being concerned that the authorities should do a thorough job.”

“I feel uncomfortable coming here like this. It’s not like me to go on about stuff like justice and ethics, but there are some details of the case that don’t seem right.”

Layne propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on top of her entwined fingers. “This must make it even more painful for you,” she said compassionately. “Of course you care about justice. You’re a good person. That’s one of the reasons Jonah loved you so much.” She kept going in her lullaby of a voice. I started getting the feeling that Layne was intent on making me feel good because she knew about lots of other call girls in Jonah’s life, to say nothing of seventy-five affairs with non-professionals.

When she finally finished, Gilbert John was pulling some excess roast beef from between two triangles of bread. He looked as though
he wanted to pop it into his mouth, but he put it on the side of his octagonal plate. “It’s impossible not to be touched by your concern, Susie. It does you great credit,” he said.

“It was their total focus on Dorinda Dillon,” I continued, feeling they needed more of an explanation. “If all they could think about was her, they weren’t looking to see if anyone else was involved.”

“I see,” Layne said softly. “I understand where you’re coming from.”

“As do I,” Gilbert John said. “You should never hold back on questioning authority. However . . .” He hesitated, probably because he was afraid of me reacting with this huge, hysterical fit. But he obviously decided to risk it. “In my opinion, only one person killed your husband. Dorinda Dillon. I’m sorry, Susie.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “I wish I were.”

After I left the building, I called Grandma Ethel. She told me I should eat grilled vegetables only in four-star restaurants because lesser places served leftovers soaked in olive oil to revive them. Then she said it sounded like I needed company and to pick her up in front of the Regency in fifteen minutes. When I did, a bellman was beside her with a huge, impressively aged Vuitton suitcase. “Don’t worry,” she said to me as the bellman, still thanking her for his tip, closed the car door. “I’ll only stay a couple of days. Sparky has meetings in Atlanta, and anyway, you need me. If I get on your nerves, just sic the little tykes on me. Oh, excuse me, before you correct me: my great-grandsons.”

While Grandma Ethel unpacked in the guest room, which was as far from the boys’ rooms as it could be and still be part of the house, I went into my home office, a room the size of an inadequate walk-in closet, and turned on my computer. There was nothing in my e-mail that made me want to double-click, but I did notice the cursor seemed to be pointing out an emptiness in the Google box. It really was one of those “before I knew it” moments when, the second before, I was wondering if I could still order pizza for dinner, as I’d been planning. Suddenly, there I was, typing
Joel Winters
into the search box.

“Winters,” he said. It wasn’t necessarily worrisome that a criminal lawyer answered his own phone on the first ring—unless you were a client. The thought went through my mind that his secretary could be out to lunch, though four in the afternoon was a little late for that. Still, I considered she might have gone to the ladies’ room and he, busy poring over law books where he would find an old precedent that would save a client from a lifetime behind bars, had been jarred by the phone and grabbed it. But there was something in his “Winters” that sounded both desperate and aggressive.

I hadn’t expected him to get on the phone immediately, so my plan for what I was going to say wasn’t fully formed. That was like saying a two-week-old embryo wasn’t fully formed.

“Joel Winters?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re Dorinda Dillon’s attorney?”

“Who’s this?” I didn’t see him showing up on my mother-in-law’s guest list, even if she had an opening at the table for someone a little rough around the edges.

“Mr. Winters, my name is . . .” I swallowed, not buying time but because I knew I’d be lying. “Ethel O’Shea. I’m working on an article for
The
New York Observer,
and I was wondering—”

“I read it all the time.” Compared to his initial “Winters,” this response sounded like someone had turned on an eighteen-light Murano chandelier inside him.

“Good, glad to hear it.” I said it without too much enthusiasm, since that didn’t seem to be a quality a journalist would have or want. “The piece is called ‘Dialing for Death.’ It’s about call girls charged with serious crime.”

“You want to ask me about Dorinda?”

I sensed a few of the lights in his chandelier had gone out, so I said, “This is my hook: It’s the easy way out for the cops and the prosecutors to target a prostitute for murder. It doesn’t require a lot of convincing.”

“You know the guy was found in her apartment,” he said. I couldn’t see a best-selling biography entitled
Joel Winters for the Defense
appearing anytime soon. “But you’re right. It doesn’t take a lot of convincing. Just say ‘The ho did it’ and be done with it. Wipe their hands of it. Move on to the next case.”

“I’d like to come in and talk to you,” I said. “Get a sense of you and your work.”

“I’m in the process of moving. My office is a mess.”

“I’m not interested in how your office looks. I’m interested in what you have to say about your client.”

“Let me see,” Joel Winters said. “I’ve got an opening, a couple of openings actually, early next week.”

“Sorry, I’ve got a deadline. I’d really like to be able to quote you, but it’s got to be tomorrow or nothing.”

“Okay, tomorrow. What time’s good for you?”

Just as I hung up, my grandmother stepped into the room. “‘Dialing for Death’? That is
the
worst name for an article I’ve ever heard.”

“Were you eavesdropping?”

“Were you lying through your teeth and using my name?”

“Yes.”

“There you go. Let me tell you something here and now. I don’t have many scruples. Three, maybe four, but not when it comes to eavesdropping. Anyway, what does this Joel Winters sound like?”

“Not quite the scum of the earth.”

“But close?” Grandma Ethel asked.

“Close as they come.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

When the phone rang a little after eleven that night, I tried to sleep through it. Having been married to a plastic surgeon, I’d learned to ignore late-night calls because 99 percent of them were from the answering service about ooze or a patient panicking that once the swelling went down, she would still resemble a duck-billed platypus. But my brain must have been wider awake than I was. It understood
No surgeon in bedroom anymore
. My eyes opened. I glanced toward the caller ID readout, half thinking it must be Sparky calling my grandmother, but it was glowing so brightly I couldn’t read it. After a throat-clearing so my “hello” wouldn’t sound like a death rattle, I picked up the phone.

“Hey, Susie,” I heard. “I know it’s late, but we need to talk.”

Jonah!
I thought.

Of course I knew it couldn’t be him. But still, that voice! With a giant
bam!
my heart seemed to explode. Tiny pieces of heart shrapnel shot through my body and, for an instant, filled me with joy. Nevertheless, even while overwhelmed with that euphoria, I was clear enough to ask, “Who is this, please?” Even though Jonah had been murdered, autopsied, and buried, I half expected to hear him answer, “‘Who is this?’ Susan B Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten, give me a fucking break!”

“It’s Theo.” I had been sleeping so deeply that I’d missed the big difference between his voice and Jonah’s. Theo’s perpetual peevishness always emerged within two or three words. Now I heard that touch of whine in his drawn-out “Theee-ooo.” In all the years, I had never answered the phone and mistaken one brother for the other.
Theo forever sounded like he’d just been given the smaller scoop of ice cream. “Are you okay to talk?” he asked.

“Yes. Sure.”

“There’s something . . . there’s something I want to get some clarity on.” Theo sounded agitated, but that was hardly a first. I braced the phone between my ear and shoulder and rubbed my eyes hard to get my depleted tear ducts functioning again. I guessed his issue was a major-major (as opposed to just a big) fight with my in-laws. Or, in descending order, career worries, money problems, women problems, drugs. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said brightly, so I knew another sentence was about to emerge to let me know me he wasn’t fine. “I’ve got to tell you. I’m seriously concerned about my mother—her going off the deep end in the DA’s office.”

I gripped the phone and leaned back on the pillow. “Theo, I don’t think you have to worry. Okay, she went off the deep end, but she came back. She offered me a really lovely apology.”

“Good. I’m glad about that.”

“So am I. I mean, all of us, our nerve endings are so frayed, so it’s understandable. But all of us need each other’s support to get through this hell.”

“You know you always have had my support.” It was true that he’d always been decent, never treated me as if any moment I might forget how to handle a knife and fork properly—the way Babs and Clive did—and muddy the name Gersten forever. “I’m on your side. That’s part of what I want to talk to you about.”

Beyond the built-in touch of petulance in my brother-in-law’s voice, I thought I heard something else: strain, maybe anger. This wasn’t head-on-pillow talk, so I sat up yoga-style, in a half-lotus position, and elongated my spine. I needed to be ready for whatever was coming, not tensed up.

“My mother’s shit-fit outside that Huber woman’s office . . .” Theo began. He seemed to be waiting for me to jump in with some comment.

“That’s over.”

“Look, the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you, but I think there’s a certain need for a reality check when it comes to your behavior.” I didn’t keep quiet out of any strategy but because I was so taken aback I couldn’t think of anything to say. “I hate to say it, Susie, but my mother’s mad scene—okay, it was over the top. But it was an appropriate reaction.”

It was after eleven o’clock, for God’s sake. Did I really have to stay on the phone with him while he worked up his monologue: “A Mother Driven Insane by Grief”? “Theo, you and I have always had a good relationship. We can survive a few bumps, so just tell me straight out what’s on your mind.”

A reluctant sigh. Theo had had enough acting lessons that it didn’t sound theatrical, though I could sense it was a prelude to a rehearsed speech full of naked honesty. Or maybe tough love. I didn’t give a damn as long as it was short. I could say “I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate the profundity of your mother’s anguish” and be asleep by eleven-thirty.