Lily White (44 page)

I knew I had to get her through, to the end. “She offered you money,” I said, as though this was a terrible affront.

“I said, ‘I don’t want your fucky money, you fat old bitch.’ Then she started acting real scared. And like, instead of that awful, scary voice, she sounded so pathetic. ‘Please don’t hurt me! Please!’ I swear, I wasn’t going to hurt her. But she kept begging me
and begging me, and finally I just wanted to shut her up. So I grabbed her.”

“Her neck?”

“And the next thing I knew, her tongue was out, and then I put her down on the floor ’cause she was so heavy and she was …”

“Say it, Mary.”

“Dead.”

H
ow
nice
,” said the real estate agent as he drove Lee and Jazz around the Estates section of Shorehaven. “That is what I call a
love
story.” Mr. Chadman, for that was his name, then sang a few bars of “The Boy Next Door.” He liked to think of himself as a late-twentieth-century incarnation of a Victorian eccentric, whimsical yet lovable.

When they passed the modern stone and glass house that Sylvia, Leonard and Robin White lived in, he nodded in its direction and decreed: “An important house.” Its importance had to do not with the family that lived inside or the house’s architectural distinction but with the fact that in that year, 1976, it would have brought at least half a million dollars had it been put up for sale.

“Important,” of course, was too small a word for Hart’s Hill. Mr. Chadman stopped his car in front of the driveway, gazed greedily through the trees that obscured the house, and remarked:
“What
can
one say?” He twisted around to pay homage to Jazz, who was sitting in the back seat.

“One can say we’re looking in the wrong neighborhood,” Lee remarked. All right: Her temper was a little short. But there she was, stuck in the passenger seat beside the agent—a place she did not want to be. To be honest, Shorehaven was a place she did not want to be. But Jazz, of all people, had pronounced Connecticut too Wasp and Westchester too pretend-Wasp. New Jersey, he declared, was overrun with unassimilated members of obscure ethnic groups—none of whom could be trusted behind the wheel of a car. As for Long Island, all the towns other than Shorehaven were either glitzy or overly quaint or run-down. In the end, Lee had let him have his way. She knew she had lost the Battle of Manhattan and, as prisoner of war, her fate was in the hands of her captor. Nevertheless, she realized he was a captor who was generous in victory. Whatever you want, he kept telling her. Colonial. Tudor. Ranch. What she didn’t want was a house within shouting distance of his and her parents—not that she could picture any of them shouting. “We really can’t afford—” she tried to explain to Mr. Chadman, trying for honeyed tones to soothe whatever raw spot her last outburst had left.

“Trust me, my dear, if I may say ‘my dear’ without sounding like one of those male chauvinist pigs. ‘Afford’ is not the issue here.” Lee and Jazz each suppressed a smile and took comfort in knowing that the other was doing likewise. “I have your dream house. Just on the market. Part of the old Howell estate. Finally subdivided now that old Mr. Howell passed on, may his soul find eternal rest. It was his estate manager’s cottage.” He made a quick right after Hart’s Hill, then another, and bounced up a badly rutted road. “On the high end of your budget, maybe a tad over. But one must pay for charm.”

“I don’t think—”Jazz began as they drove under a canopy of elms.

“We don’t want to live quite so close to where we grew up,” Lee explained diplomatically as they passed a flame euonymus, so brilliant that its redness made her turn away. “We were thinking that some other area of Shorehaven—”

But they fell into silence as the car pulled up before their dream house. “Hey,” Jazz said softly. “I never knew this existed.”

“This place, it’s …” Lee was going to say “perfect,” but Mr. Chadman sat beside her, his chin raised in smug triumph, and she could not bear to give him the satisfaction. She turned back to the house. Not very big, built entirely of large, irregularly shaped stones held in place by gold-colored mortar. Nestled in a grassy glen, circled by ancient oaks and sycamores, it looked like an illustration for a fairy tale—a cheery, revisionist, non-Grimm tale, to be sure—with its quirky tilted chimney, windows like shining eyes, and a wide, welcoming red wood door. Rambling ruby roses climbed up the right side of the house. Nice, she decided to say to Mr. Chadman. No: Charming. Or maybe give the pompous ass Sweet. But before she could stop it, “Beautiful!” fell out of her mouth. Three months later, after the painters and floor sanders left and the carpenter screwed the final knob onto the last kitchen cabinet, they moved into the most wonderful house in the world.

Right before they moved, Lee made it clear to Jazz that she would not give up the law. Furthermore, she was not interested in some tame suburban lady-lawyer position—assisting a matrimonial specialist or pushing papers across a table at real-estate closings. No, she wanted to be in court. As a prosecutor. However, the district attorney of Nassau County was a Republican. So without even consulting Jazz, Lee went directly to her father-in-law and asked him to use his influence in securing her an appointment as token Democrat.

Fos told Ginger he was at least grateful someone connected with the Taylors was an attorney. What Jazz had done rankled him. He had not expected much from his daughters, and he had not gotten it: One did little but play tennis and golf and, at thirty-two, had skin like that on her brown alligator pumps. The other was becoming a hunchback, picking cucumbers on a commune. Kent was useless. But his Jasper! Fos was not merely anguished but infuriated by his son’s new life: Leaving Wall Street! To take up with garment center types. He could not for the life of him understand it.

While ten generations of Long Island inbreeding may have diminished the once soaring Taylor IQ, Fos was no dummy. He was smart enough to realize that his favor-seeking daughter-in-law was not a party to Jazz’s idiot decision. Further, Fos sensed that Lee might be an ally. Woo Jazz back to where he belonged. It would be such a relief, when the fellows on the Committee or at Rolling Hills inquired, How’s that fine son of yours coming along?, not to have to go mumble mumble … fur coats … mumble, feeling he would die of humiliation. Accordingly, he was not only vaguely fond of Lee but also not unwilling to help her. In addition, while not a bighearted man, Fos was worldly enough to know that there are certain requests that cannot be denied. Since he could not dream of telling the future mother of his grandchildren to go stuff it, he picked up the phone and spent half a morning being jovial to a few of his fellow Republicans who, only recently, had been badgering him for myriad courtesies at the games in Montreal—and who owed him. He hated to waste his IOUs on a cause not his own, but that could not be helped. And so, two days later, Lee was face-to-face with the district attorney of Nassau County, Woodleigh Huber, in his office.

And what an office! Oak-paneled, with a desk so monumental it seemed that nothing less than a manned rocket to Mars or the D-day invasion should be launched from it. Behind it, three
eight-foot flags, representing the county, the State of New York, and the United States of America, stood proudly against a blue-draped wall.

“Homicide?”
Huber inquired.

“Homicide,” Lee affirmed. That was what she wanted. And she had done her homework: The Nassau District Attorney’s Office was considered middling to good—except for its Homicide unit. That was reported to be first-rate.

“Homicide,” Huber sighed. If he was not incredulous, he was at least dismayed. “It isn’t that I don’t think you’re up to it. I hear nothing but good things about you: smart, straightforward, no fancy footwork, but delivers the goods. What you’ve got to understand, though, is that this is not New York City.” He nodded his agreement with himself, and his shock of white hair flapped in approval. Huber was a handsome fellow, high-colored and square-jawed. He looked like an actor hired to play the President of the United States for a television movie of the week. Seated as he was between his grand old flags and his important desk, his every action seemed calculated for a photo op. But if his moves appeared false and contrived that was not the entire Woodleigh Huber story. He did care that the District Attorney’s Office was perceived as a fine one and, in fact, worked hard, if not entirely successfully, to achieve that goal. “Our jurors aren’t so—shall we say—sophisticated as the ones you’re used to.”

Lee smiled. “I guess you haven’t seen a Manhattan petit jury recently.”

“I think what the Boss is getting at,” Jerry McCloskey interpreted, “is that it might be too
upsetting
to a suburban-type jury to have a woman representing the People in a homicide trial.” He was a squat pale mushroom of a man, who appeared to be the quintessential political gofer, existing solely to say or do anything his patron found unpleasant. “I don’t have to tell you homicides can get pretty gory.”

“So can rape. I hear you have a woman in your Sex Crimes unit.”

“We do indeed!” Woodleigh Huber said, in the powerful voice he dreamed would be heard on a segment of
60 Minutes.
“Portrait of a Crime Fighter” he imagined it would be called. “Bonnie Brinkerhoff. Soft as a marshmallow outside but when she walks into that courtroom … hard as nails. A hell of a lawyer. I mean that.” Lee nodded. She had heard Brinkerhoff was, on her occasional good days, mediocre and had inherited the job when the man who had previously held it was run over by his lawn mower. “Believe me, we welcome you women. We think you’re a tremendous addition to the team. Tremendous.”

“Except this is the thing,” McCloskey explained. He smelled a little stale, as if he or his suit was overdue for a cleaning. “We’re full up in our Homicide unit right now.” Like Lee, McCloskey sat in a straight-backed chair before Huber’s desk. Unlike Lee, McCloskey was perched on the edge of the hard seat, as if not high enough in rank to have the right to rest his entire backside. “Full up to the gills.” Huber nodded.

Lee thought fast. If they were full up in Homicide, that meant they were going to put her someplace else, some less plummy unit. But she was in, it seemed. Hired! A prosecutor again! Foster Taylor had come through for her! He’d had the clout. And if he had the clout to get her—a Democrat, a woman—the job, he must have been owed some big favors. So big, she suddenly realized, that the job had probably been hers before she set foot in the office. Before she could get cold feet, Lee turned from McCloskey to his master and blurted: “Give me a month’s trial in Homicide.”

“As Jerry mentioned—”

She cut him off. “I know how competitive it is, getting a spot in the unit.” Huber’s mouth compressed in annoyance until his near-lipless mouth was merely the width of a paper cut. “And
because Homicide is so good, so public, that’s all the more reason to give me a shot. If I can’t cut it, I’ll be glad to try cases elsewhere. But if I’m as capable as your background check suggests I am, then I can make the unit’s statistics look even better.”

“Well …” Huber mused.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lee saw McCloskey inch even closer to the edge of the seat. Had she gone too far? Had he gotten some signal and was he getting ready to show her the door? McCloskey didn’t like her, she could tell. Why should he? She did not belong in his scheme of things, in which deserving people got what they deserved—and Woodleigh Huber received chits from them for future favors. True, Huber must have owed Foster Taylor or a Foster Taylor friend something major and had to pay up. But Lee understood that a two-bit pol like McCloskey would know in his bones that no further benefit would accrue from putting her in Homicide: Lee White would feel she owed the District Attorney her best efforts, nothing more.
Ipso facto,
a stinko deal. “Listen, Boss,” McCloskey began.

But the Boss had already filled his lungs to declaim, and McCloskey lost his chance. “You’ve got one month, Lee,” Huber said resonantly, imagining introducing her to Ed Bradley or Mike Wallace. A younger member of our Homicide unit. Non-partisan. As you can see for yourself, it doesn’t matter here if you’re male or female, black or white or green. What matters is what you
do.
And this girl’s won major cases. Toughies. He could hear Lee saying, I may be a Democrat, Ed, but this man is beyond politics. “Jer,” Huber commanded, “bring her downstairs.”

“Downstairs, Boss?” McCloskey asked, but without much hope.

“To Homicide. To Will Stewart.”

William Hibbets Stewart was definitely not handsome, even though everyone would give you an argument that he was. He
had a round face that lacked even a single arresting angle; small, undistinguished eyes; and a too awesome nose, big and down curving, a signal that one of his African ancestors had gotten quite friendly with an individual of Arab descent. But as she stood where she and McCloskey had run into him, right outside his office, Lee judged he was well over six feet tall. Imposingly built too, with shoulders so broad they were parallel to the floor. His skin was richly dark, somewhere between ebony and mahogany. His body, the ideal male V, was slim and muscular, and his carriage was so regal that even one of his most culturally illiterate colleagues had been heard to say: Will’s like one of those, uh, African statues or somethin’.

What made Will Stewart a standout, however, was his elegance. It was the real thing. He was beautifully dressed, in a gray suit, white shirt, and burgundy tie, all so simple and yet somehow she knew: the best there was. Yet his bearing had nothing to do with money. Leonard’s Savile Row suits and hand-stitched shoes made her father look like nothing more than a rich businessman. Even Jazz’s new wardrobe showed him to be a good-looking guy with nice taste and a Hong Kong tailor. Will’s elegance came from within.

“Hi,” he said. “Good to meet you.” He had a thrilling basso that could have been singing “Il lacerato spirito” at the Met, or moving huge congregations to leap into the aisles and shout “Praise the Lord!” To Lee, it was a huge, nineteenth-century orator’s voice—a courtroom voice. “Good to meet you.”