As Husbands Go (37 page)

The three of us were in the kitchen having decaf espresso when Grandma Ethel pulled into the driveway. Moments later, there were hugs and more air kisses as she came in and they went out. A half hour later, I was alone, taking off my makeup and feeling something needed doing. I just didn’t know what.

The next morning I knew. I called Joel Winters and asked him to put me on Dorinda’s visitors list. “That’s right. O apostrophe capital s-h-e-a.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I couldn’t believe what I was doing. But I’d asked for it, and now it was happening. In preparation for meeting Dorinda Dillon, or at least getting in to see her, I went to the hairdresser and got the Ethel O’Shea makeover. I saw my hair, light brown with gold highlights, go so light some might call it blond, while gold highlights slid along the precious-metals graph closer to platinum. That was Tuesday morning. Though I’d explained to the boys what I would be doing, I was prepared for an afternoon of hysteria when they saw me as someone other than their light-brown-with-gold-highlights mother. Evan and Dash didn’t seem to notice. Mason motioned me to lower my head. I sat on the floor with him. He took a handful of my hair, rubbed it between his fingers, decided it was still hair, and asked for a stick of cheddar cheese.

That night Grandma Ethel asked, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“Listen, I won’t use your ID.”

“How are you going to get in? Spray mace at them and steal their keys? This is jail you’re going to. Use my ID. What do I care about the station anymore? The bastards canceled my show. They should all drop dead.”

Despite her protest, I told her that if anyone caught me using her ID, I’d say I’d stolen it from her wallet. “They’re not going to arrest me or prosecute me,” I said. I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. “I’ve been through too much. The worst they’ll do is be really, really unpleasant.”

“You don’t have to say you stole it. I’m a seventy-nine-year-old
woman with three gorgeous great-grandsons whose father was brutally murdered. Do you think they’re going to arrest me?”

The answer was no, but TV credentials can get you only so far. Other than by committing a crime or being employed by the NYPD or the New York City Department of Correction, it was not easy getting into the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island.

But I’d made two decisions that turned out to be good ones. One was not driving my own car, registered in my name; I took a cab. The second one was leaving my handbag home. I took Grandma Ethel’s ID card in one pocket of my jeans; a smaller spiral notebook I’d taken to Joel Winters’s office in my other pocket; and two hundred dollars in tens and twenties in my jacket. The only jewelry I wore, since I’d read online that visitors had to put all their belongings, down to their earrings, in a bin that went into a locker secured by the police, was a Swatch with a plastic band that I always wore when we went to the beach.

The guards said in less than trusting voices, “You forgot your wallet?”

I told them I’d intentionally left my handbag at my hotel but forgotten to put the wallet in my jacket. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “But what can I tell you? I swear, this is not your usual ‘I forgot my wallet’ story. I came up from Miami to do background for a big piece, except my plane was late. Once I got to the hotel, I was in such a rush I wasn’t thinking.”

They weren’t buying it. I asked to speak to their supervisor. Though she was wearing a uniform, she reminded me of female guards in concentration-camp movies, big and boxy, with weird, watery, bulgy eyes, as if they were staring out from a fish tank. I wasn’t going to win her heart or her mind with a smile. So I didn’t smile. I told my story and said I had to catch the four o’clock plane back to Miami, so there wasn’t time to go to the hotel and return.

Maybe she caught my exhaustion and frustration, maybe she liked the cut of my True Religion jeans, maybe she was a racist and was giving me points for being light-eyed and white. At least she didn’t catch my desperation and near-hysteria. But after a blessedly
fast glance at the ID and a check that Ethel O’Shea was on the visitors list, she finally ordered the guards to pat me down, give me my own special tag, and let me through.

I’d been picturing movie scenes with prisoner and visitor sitting opposite each other, separated by bars, and talking into a phone or a stub of a mike. Or another scene where a guard stands blocking the door, legs apart, arms crossed over chest, face like a particularly stupid bulldog’s, while prisoner and visitor sit on stools or crummy chairs across the bare room from each other.

I got something else entirely. Teleconferencing. I was so unprepared for being stuck in a tiny room in which someone had recently sneaked more than one cigarette that I almost cried to be let out. The guard turned on a TV monitor and said, “They’ll be bringing her into the booth in a minute. Have a seat. If you get any trouble with the audio, bang real hard on the door. This here is soundproof, so even if you yell, I won’t hear you. And bang when you’re done.”

A couple of minutes later, some movement on the screen made me look up. Dorinda Dillon came in, sat, and stared at me. The only thing keeping my heart from rocketing out of my chest was that it didn’t seem to be a stare of recognition. Just a dumb stare. Without makeup, her eyes seemed not only less human but even farther apart than in her pictures. Her hair had been cut short since her arrest and was mostly brown except for the bottom couple of inches. At first it looked like she had a rosy glow, but then I saw her face was chapped. Still, she looked . . . not exactly like a little lost pink lamb, but a lost sheep, one who definitely did not look pretty in pink.

“Hello, Ms. Dillon. My name is Ethel O’Shea. Did your attorney explain why I wanted to see you?” I asked.

“I got a message,” she said. I don’t know what I had expected, but what struck me was that it was such an ordinary voice, not breathy or husky. She just sounded out of town, like an operator at an 800 number.

“Would you like me to explain what my piece is about?” I took out my notebook and pen. She shrugged, so I went into my story about how prosecutors leap to judgment when—I said “someone with your
background”—is involved in a serious crime.

“I am not a call girl,” she said. “They kept calling me a call girl on TV.”

“What do you like to be called?”

“An escort. Right now I don’t look my best, but I’m a real escort.” Except for a whine, her voice had no emotion. “A guy can take me out and be glad to be seen with me on his arm.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” I said.

“Not that I’m arm candy.”

“No, I’m sure you’re more than that.”

She was wearing a short-sleeved blue coverall, not the orange I’d expected, and once she said “arm,” she started rubbing her right arm just above the elbow. “Some bitch pinched me,” she said. “Last week, and it’s still bruised. Look.” She put down her hand and pointed. I thought there might be a black-and-blue mark, but I couldn’t be sure. “It still really, really hurts.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Can you see it?” she asked.

I hoped she was too dense to set a trap for me, but I wasn’t sure. “Yes. Awful,” I told her. She nodded, as in
Awful is right
. “With all this happening, are your friends standing by you?”

“Yeah.”

“Have they been visiting?”

“Not yet.” It seemed clear that she didn’t have friends, but also that she didn’t feel terrible about it. She gave her arm another gentle rub to soothe herself. I thought that somebody who complained so much about a several-day-old pinch was a major kvetch. Considering what prostitutes were supposed to do, she probably could take some kinds of pain. But I couldn’t imagine her hitting herself
hard enough on the head to cause a bump that would last for weeks. “You’d think that shit lawyer Winters would visit, but all I get is messages. He said we’d spend time together when they set a trial date. Like, what the fuck? What am I paying this guy for?”

“Tell me about the bruise on your head. I heard that when they arrested you in Las Vegas, you had a big bump.”

“That’s because I got hit. I got hit when I opened the closet door. Someone was in there, and they got my electric broom. The next thing you know, I was out cold. And when I came to, the guy was dead.”

“Had you ever been with him before?” I asked. My mouth was completely dry. I truly would have given a year’s income for a sip of Diet Coke.

“No. He was new. He was a very big plastic surgeon. I guess you know that.”

“Yes. He told you he was a plastic surgeon?” I couldn’t believe Jonah would give out information about himself like that. He was so discreet about talking about what he did, mostly because people were always asking his opinion on the work they wanted to have done, or whether he thought they needed a certain procedure. He hated being out for an evening and getting cornered by someone displaying arm flab. Also, he said that in most people’s minds, plastic surgeons were fabulously rich, and especially when we were out with the boys, he didn’t like people thinking of him as wealthy. He said it was simple discretion. I’d always thought he was afraid someone would kidnap the triplets. Possibly even demand a triple ransom.

“Maybe he told me. I forget. I don’t think he talked about it, but maybe he said something.”

“Did he pay cash?”

“Yeah. Private clients always pay cash. Up-front. With an escort service, they can charge.”

She looked more annoyed at her situation than fearful or angry or anything else a person in a blue prison outfit might be feeling. “What did he want done?” I asked.

“He was kind of crazy,” Dorinda said. At that moment, I didn’t
dare ask anything. If she had a train of thought, I wanted her to stay on it. So I kept looking at her. Then I made some scribbles on the pad. “He kept saying he heard I was a miracle worker. A miracle worker? What the fuck? So I asked him what kind of miracle he wanted. And he said something about his hand.”

“His hand?” I asked. “What about his hand?”

“I don’t know. So I went over, and he started acting funny. I told him not to be scared, to let me help him.” She caressed the bruise on her arm again. “Then I brought him into the bedroom and said, ‘Why don’t you take off your shirt?’ So he unbuttoned a couple of buttons.”

“And then?”

“He was slow, so I started to help. All of a sudden he got really snotty and shitty and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I thought it was part of his game, so I slipped out of my dress. Then he said, ‘Get me my coat,’ like he was the biggest big shot in the world. And he started buttoning his shirt, so I went out to the hall to get his coat.”

“And?”

“And then nothing. I got hit. When I came to, when I finally stood up, there he was. Dead. With scissors.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

So Jonah hadn’t had sex with Dorinda Dillon. Thank God! The news I’d been hoping for!

Except he was dead.

Every once in a while, like now, waiting in the wholesale flower market later that afternoon while my favorite peony dealer finished haggling with Miss Northern Westchester Floral Design Queen—who was doing everything except carrying a riding crop to show where she was from—I would discover a new way of missing Jonah. This time it was looking at Willie, the exasperated peony guy, sleeves rolled up, punching numbers into his calculator, trying to make the sale and get rid of Miss NWFDQ. It was late for the market, midafternoon, and he’d probably lost most of his patience by nine in the morning.

The hair on his forearms, wet from working with unboxed flowers, looked dark red against his ruddy skin. Seeing it transported me right to our pool. Jonah and I were in the deep end facing each other, our arms crossed and resting on a white float. Just talking. I reached out and smoothed the hair on his arm so it would all go in one direction.

Another punch in the gut. I started crying, not just tears, but with my shoulders going up and down, like I was bouncing. I turned the other way so Willie wouldn’t see. Except I was face-to-face with some Dutch bulb mogul I’d seen at a lot of the New York flower events, a young guy with a face full of brown polka dots that looked like age spots. So I turned back and cried facing Willie’s face and his customer’s horsey ass.