Lily White (41 page)

But her work was such a contrast to his. Unlike some of her male colleagues, Lee did not want a bubbly spouse to jolly her out of the black moods brought on by the horrors of the crimes she prosecuted. Rather than talk things out, and thus relive what she wanted to forget, she preferred to suffer in silence. There were nights, however, when she tiptoed out of bed, went into the bathroom, closed the door, and sobbed at the viciousness of what she had seen: tortured corpses, some of them women her age; photographs of children brutalized by the very people who were supposed to love them. Sometimes, though, she forced herself to remember. She would take a crime scene photo home with her to look at it last thing every night and first thing every morning while she was on trial—to remind her what she was fighting for. This isn’t necessary, Jazz told her. It is, she said sadly. It is.

For the first half of 1976, his first six months with Le Fourreur,
Jazz seemed content to live as they always had, albeit with better seats at sporting events. But by June, it was clear to Lee he wanted some changes made. Already drifting away from their classmates, he laid down the law on the matter of the Fourth of July: He absolutely did not want to go to a big, noisy keg party in someone’s tiny apartment overlooking the Hudson River and watch fireworks. And he definitely did not want to trek to a mildewy house out in the Hamptons someone was renting for the month, to sleep in sleeping bags and get bagged on crappy Chablis. Okay, he was just twenty-six and maybe he was sounding like an old geezer but he was the president of a multimillion-dollar company. Not his, and—he was the first to admit it—he could never have done it on his own, and he didn’t deserve it, but there it was. The fact: He was different from their old friends at law school and really didn’t have that much in common with them anymore. At least, not enough to spend the Fourth of July of a lifetime with, the celebration he and Lee and the rest of America would always remember. Unless she really and truly
wanted
to go, and then of course he would, for her.

Lee did truly want to be with her law school pals, or with a group of assistant D.A.’s and cops who were planning a bash on Liberty Island, in the shadow of the Statue. But she knew Jazz now felt uncomfortable among lawyers. He saw himself through their eyes as a loser, a guy who couldn’t cut it. Conspicuous by his comparative wealth. Made a target of gossip among their old classmates by his move out of the world of men and into the world of women—a move made more humiliating by his wife’s success among the toughest of the tough guys.

They spent the Fourth with Leonard, Sylvia, Robin, the fur buyer from Lord & Taylor and a fashion writer from the
New York Times
and her whining husband and two sniveling children. Leonard hired a forty-foot sailboat and crew for the day at a stunning price, and they cruised along, watching the flotilla of
tall ships and getting drunk on fresh salt air. That night, Greta made an all-American barbecue based on Sylvia’s instructions for red and white food served on blue dishes. Lee did not have one moment of fun.

The following morning, Jazz drove her to the station for her train back into the city. She had a trial coming up, witnesses to prepare. Over and over she apologized for having to leave him, after she’d promised to take a few days off, stay out in Shore-haven, and play tennis at his folks’ house.

“Don’t apologize,” Jazz told her as he pulled Leonard’s Mercedes convertible into the parking lot. Even Lee thought he was being too tolerant. She had been the one who had made the big speech about having some balance in life, vowing she would take more time off. No more working on weekends, she had pledged. And if I don’t get it done by eight or eight-thirty at night, it’s not worth doing. Here she was, however, the only lawyer in America not on vacation, going back to Manhattan to interview a pickpocket, a chicken-hearted, mean-spirited liar who was her one eyewitness in what was going to be a miserable case to try.

“I can’t
not
apologize,” she said. “I feel terrible. But if I can’t get this guy to tell a straight story, then there’s no point bringing this to trial. So I’m sorry. And you’re being absolutely wonderful about it.”

“Thanks,” Jazz said, a little absently.

“What’s the matter?”

He glanced at his watch. “Your train is in two minutes. Better get going.”

“Jazz …”

“We’ll talk tonight. I’ll come back in around seven or eight. Maybe you can break away, and we can go out for dinner.”

“Fine,” Lee said. The door handle was in her grasp, but she let it go. “What’s up?”

“Your train—”

“Forget it. I’ll get the next one.” Naturally, her stomach responded to her easygoing offer by immediately going into a spasm. The cop, the witness, everybody waiting for her, looking at their watches. “What’s bothering you, Jazz?”

“I love it out here.”

“I know.” She smiled, indulgently. “Especially in the summer. But you love the city, too. Eight million stories, eight million movies, the theater, the Knicks—”

“Please, Lee.” He took her hand between his and held it tight. “I want to
live
here.”

“What?”

“I’ve made the best of the city, but I’m not a city guy.”

“But, Jazz, I can’t. Not now. I can’t live here and be an A.D.A. in Manhattan. I have to reside in the jurisdiction. You know—”

But he wasn’t listening. Or perhaps he knew so well what her objections would be that he didn’t have to hear them. “I’m so miserable in New York. I want to be able to come home at night and breathe air that doesn’t stink and see trees that aren’t stunted. I need a break from the workaday grind. I know you think I’ve got it easy compared to you—”

“No, not at all.”

“—but believe me, I feel I have to prove my worth every single day. And I’m good, really good. But it takes a toll. Why can’t we come out here—”

“Don’t you think commuting would take a toll?”

“Millions of people do it every day. You get to read the paper, do some work; it goes by like that.” He snapped his fingers. It made a loud sound and she sat up straighter. “Your dad and I even talked a little about getting a driver, take the pressure off. So we wouldn’t have to cope with sitting behind the wheel in traffic, and wouldn’t have to be dependent on the Long Island Rail Road’s whims. It would be the best thing in the world for me. And also, it would mean we could be near our families. I
know, I know how much of your folks you can tolerate. The same with me and mine. But at least you’d be near Robin, now that she’s a human being. And Kent. I know you worry about him a lot, and it kills me too, the way my parents ignore him. We could be there for him.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I know it would mean a sacrifice to you. Your job. But you know you can’t do the work you’re doing and have a family. Isn’t that something you want?”

“But we’re only twenty-six!”

“So?”

“Do we have to do this now?”

“When, then?” He let go of her hand. His voice took on a harsh, aggrieved edge she had never heard before. “Next year? Next decade? When will you have time for me?” She touched him on the shoulder, but he jerked away. “I’ve tried to support you in every way I can. But I need to know there’s some mutuality at work, that I’m not the only one who gives and gives and gives.”

“You think I’m crazy,” Lee said to Melanie Tucker.

“Not at all,” Melanie replied, rearranging her handkerchief in her cuff. “I think you’re a fool.”

“Oh,” was all Lee could think to say.

They had deliberately chosen a deserted spot for dinner, a trendy place in TriBeCa where the chairs were made of rubber tubing. It was too expensive for cops and prosecutors. And at seven in the evening, it was far too early for the chic set who came for twenty-dollar variations on the sun-dried tomato.

“I don’t see you rising to your own defense,” Melanie observed.

“I’m too used to being the prosecutor. I’m cross-examining myself: How could you leave the best job in the world to be a furrier’s wife on Long Island?”

“And your answer?”

“I have none.” Lee moved an oily vegetable—on the menu it was called Sliced Sauteed Summer Squash in the Umbrian Manner—around her plate with a fork that resembled a hoe. “Well, maybe I’ll find something in one of the law firms out there.”

“That might be challenging,” Melanie said in the upbeat manner of women who were girls in the fifties—with a rising lilt in a dead voice. A second later, she recovered; all she had learned since 1959 prevailed. “Personally, I don’t think defending companies who corporately defecate in Long Island Sound will challenge you. But that isn’t why I called you a fool.”

Lee’s fork pierced the squash. “All right? Why?”

“Because you are giving up everything you fought for and care about for a man.”

“For a
marriage.
”

“For a man who is eaten up by jealousy and for a marriage that—I’ll understand if you never talk to me again—a marriage that will come to no good. Why move? You’ll only want to come back. But then it will be too late.”

I
had watched Norman Torkelson go from being the Cary Grant of the Nassau County Correctional Center to being just another dirty-nailed, unshaven con. Now he was at the third step: exactly where anyone in his right mind would be in similar circumstances: depressed. Not suburban depressed, with the standard loss of appetite or sleep troubles, the sort of malaise a little Prozac, a little therapy, or a new girlfriend can cure. No, this was the big-time despondency of a guy who was going to spend the next couple of decades in hell and emerge, somewhere around age fifty-five, an old man.

“Norman,” I said, “we’ve got a trial date set.”

“Okay.” Just a wisp of the word came out; the rest lay heavy inside him. Sitting across the Formica barrier from me, slumped, round-shouldered, his head hanging down, you couldn’t tell what a big man he was. Norman was fading, as prisoners do, out of the land of the living. No matter how long I practiced, I
couldn’t get used to seeing this kind of suffering. I guess it was the absolute loneliness of it that got to me. Sure, I knew many of my clients had inflicted much worse pain than this on their victims. Norman himself, even if he hadn’t killed Bobette, had destroyed enough women’s lives to deserve eternity in the worst jail there was. Nevertheless, part of me wished I could reach through the opening in the barrier and pat his cheek—just to let him feel human warmth.

But what I said was: “I think we should talk about whether or not you’re going to take the stand.” I waited for him to nod or give some indication he was hearing me. He just sat there, sagging, lifeless, as if he were the homicide victim. So I went on. “The reasons for you not to testify are obvious. You have a long record. And the sort of crimes you’ve been accused and convicted of aren’t particularly sympathetic.” That was putting it mildly. The twelve jurors would probably be shouting “Whoopee!” and giving each other high fives two minutes into deliberation—after their unanimous guilty vote. “Other than Mary—who I don’t think would do well under cross-examination—is there anyone who could serve as a character witness for you?”

“No,” he breathed. I waited for him to add something about moving too often to form close relationships, but he didn’t seem to care anymore. He was beyond making excuses.

“I’ve been debating with myself whether we should risk trying to use your record to our advantage. I’d put you on the stand, have you admit to everything, tell them everything bad you’ve ever done. All to make one point: You never laid a hand on anybody. Of course,” I added, thinking out loud, “what Holly Nuñez is going to say is that there’s a first time for everything, that something went wrong with Bobette—”

“I didn’t kill her,” Norman said softly. Then he lifted his head and said it again. Tears were flooding down his face.

“I understand,” I said, wishing he would wipe them away, or at least sniffle. “You’ve maintained your innocence all along. But if you didn’t kill her, who did? Every time I bring up Mary’s name you get furious. So I’ve stopped bringing it up. I’ll do my best for you, but I can’t hold out too much hope. I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re doing all that can be done, given these circumstances.” He lifted a shoulder and used it to dry one of his cheeks, then did the same with the other side.

“I appreciate your confidence.”

“I want to tell you what really happened.”

I realized Norman was prepared to tell me something big, something new. I got that strange, anticipatory feeling I experience at moments of great drama. My senses grew sharper: I could eavesdrop on every lawyer-client conversation, all the guards’ gossip, in the visitors room and not miss a word; read the entire “Visitors May Not Touch Inmates” sign, even the fine print; I could smell the menthol cough drop the lawyer three seats down was sucking. “I’m listening,” I said.

“I know who killed Bobette,” he said. I waited. I couldn’t breathe. Then he whispered, “Mary,” and began to cry again.

“Were you there when it happened?” I finally said. He shook his head slowly. Come on! I wanted to yell at him. Get a grip!
Talk
for God’s sake! “No rush, Norman. Whenever you’re ready.”

“It was like I told you,” he said at last. “I went out to buy the champagne. I told you that, didn’t I? Like I always do. I leave and then come back. That calms their worst fear, that I am who I really am, that I’ll take their money and leave town. So I went out, bought the champagne—”

“Do you remember where you bought it?”

“What? No, not the name of the store. But it was in a little shopping center about a mile away.”

“You could tell me how to get there?” He nodded. “Do you think anyone there might remember you?”

“Maybe. Because of my height. And when I bought the champagne, it was expensive and the guy said something like ‘This must be an important celebration.’” Norman started to cry again. No sobs this time, just a quiet dribble of tears. “I’m just telling you this because I … Who the hell knows? I can’t stand having it inside me. But understand: you can’t do anything about this. Even if you wanted to, what could be done? Even if I wanted to betray Mary—and I’m telling you, I don’t—no one would believe me. Sure, her prints are there, but so are mine. And the marks on her neck. Even if I swore ‘She did it,’ they’d think I was full of it because of what I am.” He swallowed. “I’m a con man. A professional liar. So what I’m saying is just for you.”