Compromising Positions (18 page)

“Well, the homicide people had given them copies of the pictures they found in Brucie’s drawer. They figured someone in the precinct might recognize one of the ladies, since we’re all one big, happy community. So after about forty-eight hours of salivating over the photographs, a sergeant, in a rare moment of lucidity, decided to have a look at the faces and recognized her—the Dog Shit Lady.”

“Did they interview her?” I asked. Nancy had left a small piece of halvah on the table. I ate it. It was delicious.

“Sure. It turns out the pictures were taken in her kitchen. The minute the homicide cop saw the clock over her stove, he realized it was the same one as in the pictures. It seems that she and Brucie were into produce.”

“Produce?” I echoed. “What do you mean, ‘produce’?”

“Produce. Fruits and vegetables. Maybe under all that silicone beats the heart of Mother Earth. There were some great shots of her with carrots and bananas dangling out of her assorted orifices.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You know, whips are understandable. Leather, chains, all that stuff. But I can’t comprehend bananas. Anyhow, what did she say?”

“She denied the whole thing, even knowing Bruce. Naturally. Then they offered to show her the pictures, but she refused to look. But after a minute or two, she broke down and ’fessed up. She said she hadn’t seen Brucie in six months. She showed up one day at the motel—probably with a suitcase full of kumquats—and he wasn’t there. Then she called his office and he wouldn’t come to the phone. She called the next day, and his nurse told her he had a very busy schedule and he’d call her in a week or two. He never did.”

“Nice guy.”

“The greatest. Anyhow, that was it for Miss Fruit of the Month. The third one was someone named Ginger Wick. Now, come on, don’t ask me how I can remember her name. Did you ever hear of her?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. It seems she owns the lab where Brucie sent all his work. And her husband is some sort of hotshot specialist who only does very esoteric types of dental surgery. Anyway, the cops got her name from some dentist who saw them carrying on in a hotel in Las Vegas. It turns out that she and Brucie had done business over the phone for a couple of years, and one night they met at a convention in Las Vegas. It was love at first sight, according to her, and they broke up about a year ago.”

“How long had they been carrying on?”

“A few months. Brucie finally ended it by telling her that he couldn’t handle the guilt. But he continued to use her lab.”

“Any pictures?”

“She says no.”

“What does Cupcake think?”

“He doesn’t.”

“What about the fourth? You’re obviously saving the best for last.”

“Meg Brill.” A grin spread over Nancy’s face. Her green eyes sparkled.

“Oh, no!” Meg Brill was the class mother of Kate’s first grade. She was short, pudgy woman with fat red cheeks and curly mouse-brown hair, which she wore pulled back into a pony tail—tied with a large colored ribbon to match her outfit. Sweet and friendly, like an energetic beagle puppy, she talked ceaselessly and was always aflutter organizing PTA bake sales and car-wash days. “She’s so sexless,” I exclaimed, and then added, “but that’s not fair.”

“Christ, would you stop being so guilt-ridden, Judith. She
is
sexless. By normal standards, anyway. And she’s a royal pain. Lord, she’s always calling me, asking me if I can make southern fried chicken for some damned bazaar.”

“How did the police find out about her?”

“She volunteered the information.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. The cops came calling because she was in his file. A patient. Anyhow, they asked her if she knew anything about Brucie, and she began weeping copiously. Well, they calmed her down, and she told them she had had an affair with him about two years ago. According to her, it was your average, run-of-the-mill adulterous liaison. No chains. No clever little torture devices. No pictures.”

“Did the police believe her?”

“Sure. Why not? According to this old detective on the homicide squad who’s taken a fatherly interest in Little Cupcake, they were embarrassed by the whole thing and wished she hadn’t decided that confession was good for the soul. Anyhow, that’s it, at least in terms of what the cops already know. But there are still a few beauties in the pictures that they haven’t identified.” Nancy explained that the police had not yet discovered the identities of either three or four of Fleckstein’s subjects. The reason they were unsure about the precise number was that two of them had their faces covered: one by a mask and another by her hands, placed peek-a-boo style over her eyes. Although Miss Peek-a-boo’s body was startlingly similar to one of the unmasked lovelies, the police maintained a reasonable doubt as to whether the two were indeed one.

“So what have they done?” I asked Nancy. “It seems that all they’ve accomplished is to widen the scope of the investigation. They keep on discovering more and more suspects. Any one of them could have slipped it to Fleckstein. They all had a motive, God knows.”

“I know. But look at it this way. All your information is coming from Little Cupcake.” She stressed the “your,” disassociating herself from the investigation, stressing her role as a conduit.

“You don’t think he’s reliable?”

Nancy put her feet down and shifted back in her chair so she was sitting upright, her posture elegant, regal. “Shit, I don’t doubt that he’s reliable. He’s just limited. Seriously, besides his intelligence, or lack thereof, he’s just another cop. All he’s getting is the station house gossip and a few tidbits from this homicide fellow who’s become his big-ass buddy. And the only reason he’s keeping his ears open is that he thinks I find it amusing, and he does want to keep me amused. Now, if you’re serious, the guy who’s heading the investigation is the one to talk to. For all we know, he might have the case practically wrapped up.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “And what difference would it make if I did?”

“None, I suppose,” I answered thoughtfully, “although I think it was in one of the newspaper accounts.” I picked up the halvah wrapper and began to shred it into an ashtray. “So, in other words, everyone is still a suspect.”

“Yes. I did ask him if anyone had an airtight alibi.”

“So? What did he say?”

“Well, he said that no one could prove that they were in one place with a flock of reliable witnesses between five and seven that evening. See, that’s the problem. Brucie’s office is no more than five or ten minutes from most of the suspects’ houses. An irate husband could tell his wife he’s going up to the can and sneak out and commit murder and then tippy-toe back and flush the toilet. Nobody would ever know.”

“Right. And if some woman’s children are sitting around and watching television, they’d swear she was home, while actually she could have slipped out without anyone knowing. God, I could take on ten men on the kitchen floor while Kate is watching
The Flintstones
.”

“Why don’t you?”

“That’s when I give Joey his bath.”

“I see. Well, at least you’re growing up. It’s better than your old tune about adultery being ethically repugnant.”

It was getting late, nearly time to meet Joey’s school bus. I resented the intrusion of obligations on my relationships; I wanted to live in a purer world. One of the reasons I adored Bette Davis movies was that she had time, time for Celeste Holm or Miriam Hopkins. I would watch her, cigarette smoking, those glorious protruding eyes focusing on her companion. She would sit back in a restaurant or put her feet up in the living room, and she and her friends could indulge in hours of conversation, uninterrupted by strangers telephoning to inquire if she would collect for the Heart Fund, or by children demanding to be fed or bathed or soothed or tucked in. She could enfold herself in the luxury of friendship undiffused by pediatricians’ appointments, uncomplicated by trips to the dry cleaners and Sunday school car pools.

“Speak to you soon,” I said.

Ultimately, I was responsible, I thought, as I backed my car out of her driveway. The pebbles made brisk crunching noises under the tires. I had chosen to have children—whom I truly loved—and had agreed to the migration from Manhattan to Long Island. But, in fairness to myself, no one had ever made the connection for me. No one had ever even hinted that if one has children, one has almost no time to pursue adult relationships. True, I had heard that motherhood is demanding, that one must spend nights in a rocking chair with one’s breast in an infant’s eager mouth. And I had heard that one must give up a tennis game to cuddle a sick child and be willing to confront diarrhea and neighborhood bullies. But no one had ever said explicitly that children would impinge on every aspect of one’s life. And no one had said that the need for real grown-up talk would lock one further into marriage; the only time for long, wide-ranging, probing conversations was late at night, with one’s husband, who would tell you again and again and again how, despite all his hopes, all his planning, he had somehow allowed the presidency of his college fraternity to slip through his hands.

I pulled my car into the garage with a quarter hour to spare until Joey’s bus was due. I could do a crossword puzzle, put on a facial mask to tighten my pores. Or, to honor the memory of M. Bruce Fleckstein, sit down with a yard of dental floss and make the spaces between my teeth the cleanest in town. Ruminating on my options, I opened the door which led from the garage to a small alcove beyond the kitchen. Something was very wrong.

Interestingly, before my intellect made the connection that something was amiss, my body sensed danger and reacted. It felt the cold air as I put one of my feet into the kitchen, it tensed all the muscles within its jurisdiction and ordered a general alert of the blood vessels in preparation for fight or flight. My body knew, independent of my mind, that when it walked into a warm kitchen from the icy outdoors that it should feel good. It didn’t because—and here my intellect reestablished its primacy—the kitchen was as bitterly cold as the unheated garage.

The freezing air came as a persistent, cold blast, which meant that the forty-year-old oil burner hadn’t simply given up the ghost. Indeed, as I took three tentative steps forward, I knew the cold rush of air must be coming from an open door or window. But when I had left for Nancy’s, all doors and windows had been locked.

I stood absolutely still, forcing myself to breathe through my nose so that if there was an intruder, he wouldn’t hear me panting with panic and have time to take out his switchblade. There was silence. No chirping birds, no heavy-breathing rapist. No sounds of scurrying footsteps upstairs as burglars ran from room to room searching for negotiable securities. I climbed out of my shoes and took another silent, stockinged step into the kitchen.

Whoever it was had gone. The kitchen door that led to the back yard was flung open, its handle, either unscrewed or knocked out, lying on the floor right by the stove. I glared at it, annoyed, as if it were part of a very expensive toy one of the children had wrecked after five minutes of use. Then the fear returned, and then anger. Some miserable, rotten, slimy bastard had broken into my house, defiled my property. As I spun around to head for the phone, I saw it. The message. In red spray paint on my refrigerator door, four foot-high letters: M.Y.O.B. The period after the “Y” was larger than the others, and the paint had trickled down the door and dripped on the floor, like drops of blood.

I grabbed the telephone decisively and then held it, debating, should I call 911, the police emergency number? Well, someone had broken into my house. But it wasn’t an emergency, was it? My life wasn’t in imminent peril. Maybe I should call the local precinct. But they wouldn’t think it was an emergency and the desk sergeant would put me on hold and the intruder would return. I had all the makings of a Talmudic scholar, I thought, as I dialed 911.

“Police emergency.”

“Someone broke into my house.”

“Your address, please.”

“They’ve gone.”

“Lady, just give me your address.”

I decided 911 was not interested in a dialogue, so I gave the man the address, slipped back into my shoes, and trotted outside to wait for Joey. His school bus came just as I walked out the door, and I grabbed his hand. “Mrs. Tuccio asked you to come for lunch.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Come on, Joey.”

“I hate her peanut butter. It’s the smooth kind.”

I banged on Marilyn’s door and she opened it. “Parlez-vous français?” I asked her rapidly.

“Un peu.”

“II ya un criminal qui broke into chez moi. Compris?”

“Oui. Is there anything...?”

“Les gendarmes sont coming,” I continued. “Gee, Marilyn, Joey’s so glad you asked him for lunch.”

“I love having Joey for lunch. And Tommy is so excited that you’re coming, Joey.” Tommy was her youngest, a three-year-old mechanical genius who had once fixed my toaster. Marilyn took Joey’s hand, pulled him gently inside and said, “See you later.”

I tore across the street and paced my lawn, from the now-barren tulip bed to the white birch tree and back again. Within a minute, two police cars screeched up. Four men leapt out of the cars.

“You the lady who called about a break-in?” asked a heavy, gray-haired cop with three chins.

“Yes. This way.”

I took them in the front door, through the hall past the living room and dining room and into the kitchen.

“Geez,” said the gray-haired cop to a tall, good-looking blond one. “He took the fucking handle off the goddamn door. Hardly ever see that. They usually just kick the whole door in.”

I waited for him to turn to me and say, “Pardon my language.” Instead, he demanded in a harsh voice: “Did you touch anything?”

I was about to say no, that I had been very careful, but at that moment he and the three others noticed my refrigerator. Then they glanced at each other. One of them, a short pale man with gold-rimmed glasses, sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He looked like an accountant whose books wouldn’t balance.

“Lady, was this here before?” asked the gray-haired one, pointing to the scarlet M.Y.O.B.