Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (29 page)

•  •  •

On Sunday I thought about gas—perhaps I could turn on the jets in Mr. Monti’s kitchen and somehow persuade him to stick his head in the oven. Or perhaps I could get him to park in a shut-tight garage with the motor running in his car. On Monday I thought about plastic bags—I might, as he lay sleeping, ever so gently slip one over his face. On Monday I also recognized that—tidy and simple though they well might be—these were not the murder plans of a rational person.

You will note that it the head-in-the-oven plan as well as the plastic-bag-over-the-face plan, I presupposed access to Mr. Monti’s condo. I presupposed access because, when Jeff had handed over the keys, he forgot about mine. And of course I had a key—what Jewish mother would not have a key to her child’s condominium? In case of emergency. In case he’s too sick with the flu to open the door. In case she wants to murder the next tenant.

With no murder plan in sight by the end of a sleepless Monday night, and with time-running out, I made the desperate decision to let myself into the Watergate condo and look around. Somewhere on the premises there must be, had to be, would surely be found, some obvious opportunity for homicide. I was going to find it.

•  •  •

I needed to go unrecognized to the Watergate condominium. Once again I needed a disguise. Who should I be? I asked myself (I must admit I was getting into disguises). And after I had rejected dressing up as a police woman or a nun (though I loved both outfits), I had my answer. Three stops—at a hardware store, a uniform store, a costume shop near Dupont Circle—and I was (not too expensively) equipped. I had just tried everything on in a gas station ladies’ room to check out the effect when a woman walked in, gave a shriek, and fled out the door. My disguise was a triumph!

On Wednesday morning I put in a call to Mr. Monti’s office and established that he was already there and that he was expected to be there all day. I then called the Watergate desk—this time I spoke as Mr. Monti’s private secretary—and explained that Mr. Monti would be
sending someone to work in his apartment. I then drove my car past the Watergate and parked it right next door, in the underground parking of the Kennedy Center. Finally I dialed Mr. Monti’s Watergate telephone number to make absolutely certain that no one was home.

No one was home.

Just a bit before noon a man with a small black Chaplinesque mustache walked over to the Watergate desk. Dressed in heavy work boots, a white peaked cap, and blue-and-white-striped industrial coveralls, he explained in broken English that he was Mr. Garcia Fuentes, here to do a job in apartment 10 C. He carried a bucket of paint, a paintbrush, a ladder. He said Mr. Monti had given him the key.

“We’re expecting you,” said the man at the desk, pointing him—I mean me—to the service elevator.

•  •  •

And here I was, in Mr. Monti’s—previously my poor son Jeff’s—condominium.

And a very nice place it was—two bedrooms, two baths, eat-in kitchen, huge living room, handy dining area, and a wraparound terrace reached through sliding glass doors. Though Mr. Monti’s furniture (which, I presume, he had rented) lacked the high-tech flash of Jeff’s former decor, I observed, as I put down my ladder and other equipment and wandered slowly through the rooms, that he had already settled himself in. Indeed there were paintings hung on his walls and photographs set on his tables, photographs of him and his family. A studio portrait of Birdie. Snapshots of his daughters and his grandchildren. A photo with his parents and his twin brother. A photo of—

O, my God! I gasped, as I suddenly saw, on a shelf
in his bedroom, a picture that made the blood freeze in my veins. Smiling and festively dressed, there we were—Jeff and Wally, Jake and I—in a silver-plate frame, a brutal black X slashed across each of our faces. The photo had been taken on the night of April 4. The night of my birthday party. The night that was the beginning of the end.

•  •  •

Some people like to throw a big blast for the birthdays that mark their decades, but I never wanted a thirtieth or a fortieth. Yet, as you will recall, the year of my forty-sixth was deeply symbolic to me. Without telling Jake exactly why I wished to celebrate this particular birthday, I made it clear that was what I wished to do. Which was how come there were sixty-two guests at our house on Saturday evening, April 4, swearing that I was looking real good for my age.

In my tosh-hugging midnight-blue crepe, in honor of which I had lost five pounds, I had to agree with my guests: I was looking real good.

I also was feeling good, though a little peculiar because beneath my roof that night were all the men with whom I had slept in my lifetime. Jake was there, of course, and so were Wally’s future in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Augustus Monti. Louis had been invited as my colleague at Harmony House and as my pal. And then, at the very last minute, I got a telephone call from Nora telling me that her husband had fallen ill and could she please bring Philip Eastlake.

At one point I watched as all four of my lovers converged upon the Design Cuisine buffet and attacked the sirloin filet and grilled baby vegetables. A question came to mind: Was I a star on a Donahue show called
“My Mom Is a Slut”? or was I Lady Brett in
The Sun Also Rises
? But then I told myself that I was allowed not to answer that question on my birthday.

Our guests took their plates to the tables for eight set up all over the house, filling the rooms with laughter and conversation, I heard Hillary . . . lowered the interest rates . . . CDF . . . CEO . . . NBC . . . great pedicure . . . they still don’t get it . . . the Vineyard. I heard carjacking . . . cut the defense budget . . . Jack Nicholson always plays Jack Nicholson . . . EEOC. Philip, having lobbed a couple of soulful glances at me, was pontificating on the Middle East peace talks, while Marvin was demanding proof from the woman on his right that a sixty-five-dollar silk tie was really superior to the beauty he was wearing—“nine-fifty, two for eighteen bucks.”

Josephine, with the camera that Wally had bought her and taught her to use, was shyly photographing the happy event, posing us four cute Kovners for a couple of family shots before we drifted off to our separate tables. When she held up the camera to shoot, however, her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t, at first, even manage to push down the button. No matter what she does, that girl turns into a nervous wreck, I said to myself impatiently—and unfairly. For later that evening I learned that it wasn’t photography that was making Josephine tremble.

Later, after our guests had finished their meal and crowded together in the dining room to watch me blow out the candles on my cake. Later, after Philip had bent to deposit a birthday kiss upon my cheek, murmuring a throaty “I want you. I need you.” Later, after Louis had whispered, “Best-looking premenopausal woman I
know,” as he wrapped me in a warm but platonic embrace. Later, when people had started to leave, though several still remained, one of whom was Gilda, who happened to be not only our neighbor but our rabbi Emmanuel Silverman’s assistant rabbi.

Wally, Jo, her parents, and I were standing off to one side, sipping coffee and chatting, when Gilda—bright-eyed and bouncy, broad in the beam and beaming broadly—presented herself to Joseph and Birdie Monti.

“I didn’t want to go without meeting Josephine’s mom and dad,” she said, a warm rabbinical hand on Birdie’s arm. “This is not the time and place for a whole big discussion—”

“That’s right. It’s not,” my son interrupted.

“—but I’d just like to reassure you that conversion doesn’t mean you lose your daughter.”

All of us stared at Gilda. “What?” asked Mr. Monti. “What was that you said?”

“That just because your daughter’s converting to Judaism,” said Gilda, “doesn’t mean she’s any less your daughter.”

Our stunned little group collectively gasped. Jo’s cup and saucer dropped from her trembling fingers. Birdie Monti, bending to pick up the pieces, looked up to scan the clouded face of her mate.

“We were going to t-t-tell you all t-t-tonight,” Jo stuttered, utterly undone. “It was Wally’s b-b-b-birthday surprise for his mother.”

“And mighty surprised I am,” I said, with a desperate please-don’t-blame-this-on-me heartfeltedness. “When”—I turned to Jo—“did you decide?”

“Decide? What did she decide?” Mr. Monti
demanded in a voice that silenced all conversation at the party.

“I think the rabbi just told you, sir,” said Wally.

“Let Josephine tell me,” Mr. Monti replied.

Gilda, red in the face and gasping apologies far breaking the news too soon, began to back away from our shell-shocked group. “I guess I first ought to let you all discuss this among yourselves,” she whispered nervously. “But please feel free to call if you have any questions. You know, like about the conversion classes”—Gilda kept backing away—“the Hebrew lessons, Leon Uris, the
mikva
 . . .”

Gilda was out of there.

“Talk!” Mr. Monti bellowed to Jo. He cast a glowering glance around the room, where the guests who remained were maintaining a gape-mouthed silence. “Please,” he said oleaginously, smiling his sharky smile, “don’t let us interrupt your conversations.”

When the room started buzzing again, Joseph Monti turned to Josephine. “Okay,” he said to her, “you decided
what
?”

“To convert”—her voice could barely be heard—“to Judaism.”

“And why? Why are you doing this to me?”

“She isn’t doing it
to
you, sir,” Wally interceded.

Mr. Monti ignored him and imperiously repeated his question to Jo.

Jo, who had just finished chewing off all her fingernails one by one, now directed her small, perfect teeth to her cuticles. “It’s because of what you said about conversion,” she replied in a hoarse whisper.

Her father threw up his hands. “What did I say?”

Josephine opened her mouth to explain. Not a word
emerged. She tried again. No words. Wally came to her rescue.

“You told us,” he said, “that conversion was the kind of accommodation, perhaps even sacrifice, that people in love should be more than willing to make.” He swept his expressive Mel Gibson eyes from Jo to Birdie to me. “That’s what he said.”

“And so beautifully put,” I added in an effort at a constructive intervention.

Mr. Monti ignored me.

“You knew what I meant,” he told Wally and Jo. “You both knew who was supposed to convert to what. I made”—his voice grew louder—“my wishes clear.”

Wally and Jo said nothing. Mr. Monti, his voice still louder, pressed his point. “Did I or didn’t I make my wishes clear?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Jo whispered. “You did. But then we decided—”

Wally and Jo explained that they had decided that if Jo converted to Judaism, and if Wally joined her in her Jewish studies, it would be a truly meaningful experience. Plus good for the marriage, not to mention the soul. Even if it involved, on Josephine’s part, some accommodation, even sacrifice.

Unfortunately, I was forced, though I could hardly bear to do it, to excuse myself and tear myself away. The rest of the guests were leaving and I was obliged to say some very long goodbyes. What was I missing? I wondered. What were they telling one another? Was Mr. Monti adjusting to the news? The occasional phrases that I could hear—like “mocking and disdaining me”—suggested that Mr. Monti wasn’t adjusting.

Indeed, by the time I rejoined the group, the man was
taking exception most unattractively. Throughout the whole diatribe, Birdie Monti stood mute. “I’m sure it’ll all work out,” I warbled, hoping to soothe an acutely strained situation. But everyone’s eyes were on Wally, who (in a sensitive, sweet, not one bit defiant way—that boy was
born
to be a social worker) had embarked upon a response to Mr. Monti.

“You know,” he said, “Rabbi Gilda was wrong. You’re going to lose your daughter.”

“Losing isn’t my thing,” Joseph Monti replied.

“But you aren’t going to lose her because she’s converting,” Wally persisted.

“I’m not losing—period,” he replied.

“You’re going to lose your daughter because she’ll be leaving you,” said Wally. “She’ll be leaving you to cleave to another man.”

“That’s not,” Mr. Monti said, “how it’s done in our family.”

For a couple of endless moments no one spoke.

“Daddy, please,” Jo whispered, breaking the silence.

“Not now, Josephine,” her father replied. “It’s getting late. It’s time for us to go home.”

He turned to Wally and me and, once more mobilizing that sinister sharky smile, placed one arm on my shoulder, the other on Wally’s. “A decision gets made,” he said. “It can get unmade, especially when that decision is making certain people real unhappy.”

“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” Wally replied.

Mr. Monti sighed. “When I’m unhappy,” he said, “everyone’s unhappy.”

He pressed on our shoulders, forcing the three of us into a tight, tense embrace.

“Talk to your son, Mrs. Kovner,” he said to me softly.

“Listen to your mother,” he said to my son.

“And in case you forgot what I mentioned before, I’ll mention it again. Losing”—his dark eyes glistened—“isn’t my thing.”

• 
The Rest of October 28 and On into the Last Day of November

•

“L
osing isn’t my thing.” The warning words rang in my ears as I stood in the condo this late October morning. “Losing isn’t my thing.” The brutally X-ed out photograph of us four Kovners wobbled back and forth in my trembling hand. I set it down and continued methodically casing the condominium, desperate to find a way to murder the man who intended to X out my whole family. The photo, to which I kept coming back for another horrified look, fortified my homicidal resolve.

I was staring at it, transfixed, determined to do this man in-—but how? but how? but how?—when I noticed another photo on that same shelf. This one showed a tuxedoed Joseph and a white-gowned Birdie Monti coming out of church on their wedding day. It also—albeit circuitously—showed me the way to murder Mr. Monti.