Compromising Positions (3 page)

“Marilyn,” I said, seeing her sitting at the end of her long refectory table, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the police came over and started asking me questions, and I didn’t want you to think...”

“Judith, this is unbelievable. A police detective was here last night asking me questions for over two hours.”

“Unbelievable,” I concurred. Her small, pointed chin jutted out angrily. “Ridiculous.”

“I told him I was busy going through my voter registration lists, but he just kept asking the same questions over and over.”

I liked that. Marilyn was a politician after all, probably letting the detective know she was a committeewoman, well-connected in this congenitally Republican county.

“What did he ask you?”

“The usual,” she replied. Twenty years from
Dragnet
to
Kojak
and we’re all experts. “Whether Dr. Fleckstein seemed upset about anything. Did he get any phone calls. What time Lorna Lewis, you know, his nurse, left. Did he seem in a hurry to get me out of the office. Did I see anybody hanging around. Things like that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“You take your coffee with a Sweet ’n Low and a little milk?”

“Yes. Thanks. Were you able to tell the police anything?”

“Well, you have to understand that I was absolutely numb from the Novocaine and that nearly the whole time I had that gas thing on and was floating over the clouds somewhere. I wonder if that’s what marijuana is like.”

“Were there any phone calls or anything?” I sipped my coffee. Excellent. Marilyn had ground her own beans.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“And what about people? Any other patients waiting?”

“No. In fact, I felt a little uncomfortable being alone in the office with him after his nurse left.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And that’s why when I opened the door to leave, I was glad to see a couple of people in the hall.”

“Who?” I demanded.

“I forget. Some doctor, I think, in a white coat, and maybe one or two others.” She ran her hand over her red hair, as if making sure she looked presentable enough for those strangers.

“Did he seem different to you in any way?”

“No. Well, Judith, you know what a complete lecher he is.”

“Was. I’d heard.”

“Well, he started flirting when I came in, just like always.”

“Like how?” Men like Fleckstein, who wear gold chains around their necks and have manicures, tend to ignore me. I seem to attract hypercerebral types, chubby astrophysicists in wire-rimmed glasses who tell me I have a first-rate mind while they stare at my breasts.

“Oh, the usual come-on. That there was only one way for me to prove that I’m a natural redhead. And didn’t I know that dentists were better than doctors?” Marilyn’s husband, Mike, was a pediatric surgeon.

“What did you say?” Things like that never happened to me. Once, an advertising copywriter whom I’d met at a dinner party took me aside and said: “If you ever get into the city, give me a buzz. We’ll have lunch.”

“What did you say?” I repeated.

“Nothing. I just laughed, although I told Lorna, his nurse, her daughter was in Kevin’s class, that her boss had himself one heck of a reputation and that someday he was going to get himself in big trouble.”

I stared at her. “When did you say that?”

“Yesterday. She came to tell him she was leaving, and he stepped out for a minute, so we chatted a bit.”

“Terrific, Marilyn.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Lorna probably told the police that you said her boss was going to get himself into big trouble.”

“That’s absolutely idiotic.”

“Of course, it’s idiotic. But, look, Marilyn, you know the police. And that Lorna looked like she had a stick up her ass; she was probably whooping it up with him between patients. Those super-neat, prissy types are kind of sneaky. I mean, they look like they don’t even have vaginas and then all of a sudden you hear they...”

“I don’t know,” she interrupted. “Maybe.” It occurred to me at that moment that Marilyn, when she wasn’t baking bread or drafting nominating petitions, taught confraternity class; I had been more forthright with her than I usually was.

“Sorry about my choice of words,” I said.

“That’s okay.” She stood and walked to the refrigerator and extracted a large plastic bag of green baking apples. “I’m making apple crisp,” she explained. “What do you think I should do?”

“I assume you’re not asking me for a recipe.”

“No,” she responded softly.

“Well, it can’t hurt to talk to a lawyer.”

“If they were crazy enough to consider me a suspect, wouldn’t they tell me to get a lawyer?”

“I don’t know. That’s why you need one.” I paused and watched her take a paring knife and peel the apple. The skin came off in one long, thin strip. I leaned on the table and told her about Ramirez, that all he seemed interested in was the time she returned home.

“This is Lorna Lewis’s second marriage,” said Marilyn. She wanted to change the subject.

“I didn’t know that. I only saw her briefly, when I had some work done in his office.”

“She and her first husband had three children, and then one day, out of the clear blue sky, she told him to pack up and move out. She didn’t feel fulfilled.” Marilyn said “fulfilled” with great contempt. Despite her wide circle of friends, her sophistication, and the legions of divorced women scurrying about Shorehaven, she was still appalled at the breakup of any marriage. She was, above all, a devout Catholic. “Then she married George Lewis, but I gather she doesn’t find him fulfilling either.”

“Do you think Lorna was having an adulterous affair with Dr. Fleckstein?” I asked, adjusting my diction to suit my audience.

“Yes.” She was already on her fourth apple.

“What makes you think so?”

“Because I saw them.”

“Saw them?”

She laughed. “Not doing it, Judith. But a few months ago I was pulling into that Chinese restaurant, the one that’s right next door to the Tudor Rose Motor Inn. I was meeting my sister-in-law Cathy for lunch. Well, who should I see sitting in a car in front of the motel but Lorna Lewis. And not ten seconds later, guess who saunters back to the car? Dr. Fleckstein!”

“What did you do?”

“Pretended I didn’t see.”

“Did they see you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Marilyn, did you tell this to the police?”

“No. I don’t like to spread rumors.”

She was upset. She left her apples, walked to a cabinet and took out a bag of sugar to transfer into a cannister. Then she sat next to me, peering into my cup to see if I needed more coffee. I didn’t, so she stood and paced about the huge room, walking aimlessly from microwave oven to stove to refrigerator to freezer. It was disturbing. Marilyn rarely wasted a moment. If she’s having coffee with you, she’s stitching up a hem between sips, or snapping off the ends of green beans, or making little red checks on voter registration lists. But now she was perturbed. If someone had forced me to choose, I would have said she was only mildly concerned over the police involvement; what really bothered her was that she was being dragged into a matter that was potentially so sordid. But Marilyn was a private person, and I couldn’t be sure. I simply guessed that whatever portion of her enormous energy was sexual, it was expended behind closed doors of her bedroom with her husband, in complete conformity with Church doctrine. To her, the proscription against adultery was just one of ten commandments to be obeyed, unquestioningly. She would no more flit around with a Bruce Fleckstein than kill or take the Lord’s name in vain or covet her neighbor’s ass.

But she was uncomfortable, anxious even, so I guided the conversation onto safer ground, Nassau County politics. Finally, I gave her my let-me-know-if-I-can-do-anything speech and left to meet Joey, due home from nursery school, at his bus stop on the corner.

He ran to me, heels kicking out at awkward angles to his body; at four, he still retained a trace of the toddler’s stance, stomach preceding the rest of the body, which gave his movements a touchingly clumsy appearance.

“A man got deaded with a knife in his head.” His light brown eyebrows were drawn together, his small, round face full of concern.

“That’s terrible. Where did you hear that?” I held his hand as we walked to the house.

“I want peanut butter and grape jelly cut in triangles.”

“Where did you hear about the man who was killed?”

“Can I have peanut butter and...?”

“Sure. Who told you...?”

“I forget.”

We sat over lunch at the kitchen table, Joey studying me and the peanut butter sandwich with equal intensity. Can all the kryptonite in the world kill Superman? How many infinities do I love him? When am I going to die? If you smash an ant with your shoe, will it go to heaven? Joey, under a patina of cuteness and whimsy, has a core of profound seriousness. He posed question after question, all with the hope of getting a commitment that I would not die—at least not until he was old enough to be an astronaut and a fireman and have monkey bars in his back yard.

“Joey, I won’t die until I’m very, very old, and by that time you’ll be a grown-up.” I was not unaware of airplane crashes and cancer, but I decided to go with the odds; a four-year-old needs security, continuity. Somewhat reassured, he dashed to his room to play records. I sat at the table, pushing bread crumbs into a small mound. The phone, seeming to sense my plight, decided to ring.

“Hello,” I said hopefully.

“Where were you all morning? I kept trying to get you.” It was Bob. Where was I? Having a quickie double-header with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Saul Bellow and completing my dissertation in time to have lunch at Lutece with David Halberstam.

“Over at Marilyn’s.”

“Oh. I asked because you wanted me to talk with Clay Katz.”

“Bob! Tell me.”

“Are you still interested?”

“No. Goodbye.”

“Okay. Don’t be so touchy, Judith. I have a very heavy schedule today and I took time out...”

“What did he say?” I persisted.

“Well, you know that under normal circumstances he wouldn’t say anything at all. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“I know. I know.”

“But a reporter from
Newsday
was up to talk to his partner, the other criminal lawyer, and this guy gave Clay the story; it’s going to be in the paper tomorrow.”

“What?”
Newsday
is a Long Island daily, an excellent newspaper, but not above publishing minute details of a really good murder.

“Bruce Fleckstein was in big trouble,” Bob said, pausing for an ominous effect.

“How big?” I demanded, abandoning all pretense of being just casually interested.

“Big. Big. He was called in front of a Grand Jury, and he was almost definitely going to be indicted.”

“What for?”

“Tax evasion.”

“Tax evasion? What kind of dentist gets indicted for tax evasion?”

“A dentist who’s a partner in a porno film distributorship. A dentist doing business with the Mafia and pocketing a pile of cash. That’s what kind of dentist gets indicted.” Bob’s Darrowesque delivery was superb; if he hadn’t insisted on being so soulfully literary at twenty-one, he would have made a fine lawyer.

“I can’t believe it,” I said, although I could. “How did
Newsday
find out about it?”

“Clay thinks someone in the IRS blabbed the whole thing to the reporter. That’s the Internal Revenue Service, Judith.”

“Thank you.” I’d only studied American government for nine years. “Anyhow,” I continued, “how did the authorities find out about Fleckstein being involved in a pornography ring?”

“Clay says that a federal Grand Jury was looking into some mob business, and Fleckstein’s name came up. He thinks that someone involved in the mess was cooperating with the U.S. Attorney’s office and was testifying against Fleckstein.”

“I thought Mafia people don’t talk.”

“They’re not supposed to. Clay says it was probably someone on the periphery, but he really didn’t know the details.”

“How would a suburban dentist get involved with the Mafia?”

“Judith, I really don’t know. I told you everything Clay told me. Why are you so interested in this?”

“I don’t know. It’s exciting, I guess. Having someone you know get murdered without being close enough to see it as a tragedy.”

“But it’s very sordid. I mean, Fleckstein sounds like a really slimy guy.”

“I know. That’s what makes it fun.”

“Judith!”

“Well, it’s a change from
Sesame Street
and chicken pot pies.”

“Is that what we’re having for dinner?” he asked, his voice filled with dread.

“No,” I sighed, “lamb chops.” Stretching the telephone cord, I opened the freezer and took out a package of lamb chops.

“Look, I have to run. I’m having lunch with Charlie Leboyer.” Charles Leboyer, a hockey player of great renown, if one cared about hockey, is a client of Bob’s firm. They see that he endorses the right aftershave lotion. They cover up his violent, sadistic treatment of his girlfriends by planting newspaper articles about his warm family life.

I hung up the phone and concentrated on the Fleckstein case. I really didn’t understand it. The Mafia is simply not one of my areas of expertise. American political history, of course. Some macroeconomics. A little Shakespeare. Bette Davis movies. But the Mafia? A group of tight-lipped men with diamond pinky rings and white-on-white shirts who paid off legions of equally tacky politicians and distributed heroin by remote control.

Something sounded wrong. I called Bob on his private line.

“Me. If Fleckstein was going to be indicted, it means he wasn’t testifying against the Mafia.”

“Judith, I have a lunch date and I have to get to the club for a quick workout first.”

“Come on.”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess you’re right. Let me try to remember what Clay said.” I waited. “From what he said, it sounded like Fleckstein was in pretty thick; he wasn’t talking or anything.”

“So if he wasn’t testifying against the Mafia, why would they kill him?”

“I don’t know. Judith...”

“And they don’t stab people. They’d gun him down. They would have booby-trapped his car. Or cut off his balls and carved a black hand on his chest and left him on his front doorstep.”