Blind Faith

by Joe McGinniss

  “I’ve been speaking with Gene,” he began, “…Gene thinks you should hear…it may sound worse than it is…” His voice was so low that Sal had trouble hearing. “…been having an affair, a torrid affair…Felice…year and a half…” Now he raised his voice and looked his two friends straight in the eye.

  “I love her,” he said. “As difficult as this is to say, I’d fallen out of love with Maria. I’d had every intention of confronting her, telling her that Felice and I had rented a little bungalow in Manahawkin, that we were going to be moving in together.”

  Then he began to talk about the fact that he’d been having “severe” financial problems. He did not go into any detail about how they had arisen, other than to complain that Maria had spent money recklessly, nor did he mention anything about insurance. He did, however, admit that he’d signed Maria’s name on the $100,000 loan application.

  As he’d spoken of Felice, Rob had sounded defiant and proud. But Sal noticed that now, as he talked about money, and not having enough, he sounded for the first time as if he were confessing to something shameful. Given the value system that held sway in Toms River, this wasn’t surprising.

  When he finished, Rob sat back, awaiting some response. Sal and Jack looked at each other, but neither spoke. Jack was a handsome man in his late fifties, with distinguished gray hair. He was polite, reserved, almost courtly in manner. Sal, who was still in his thirties and who lifted weights every morning at a health club, was almost entirely bald. Thus, when he became angry, which he did with some regularity, being emotional, expressive, opinionated and fiercely loyal, not only his face but most of his scalp quickly reddened. It reddened now.

  “Well, say something,” Rob said. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re a fucking hypocrite,” Sal said.

  When Sal and Paula had moved down from North Jersey three years before, Rob and Maria had been among the first to befriend them. Later, Sal had learned that the Marshalls made it a practice to “tutor” a younger couple socially, to be the benefactors who would enable the new arrivals to win acceptance at the country club and in the civic organizations that dominated Toms River social life—groups such as Rotary and the Businessman’s Association and the Twigs, the women’s volunteer group (but very much by invitation only and the invitations were seldom mailed to addresses beyond Brookside) that sponsored fundraising events for the local hospital.

  The Coccaros, like the Perillis and the Mitchells and a number of others before them, had been lavished with attention from Rob and Maria. Usually, what happened was that the younger couple came to find Rob overbearing, arrogant, egocentric, slightly crude, and concerned (even more than the rest of the town) with status symbols and appearances. Then the friendship would fade, as the younger couple made its own way. But that had not yet happened with Sal and Paula. The four of them were frequent companions at the club and in Atlantic City, as well as regular visitors in each other’s homes.

  Sal and Paula, in fact, had been to the Marshalls’ for dinner only ten days before the murder and they’d all dined and gambled at Harrah’s Marina together three days later. A few points from the dinner conversation stood out in Sal’s mind. He remembered a long talk about cremation, during which Rob had said several times that he and Maria had decided that they wanted to be cremated after death, though in her case Maria’s strict Catholic parents would not approve. Rob had also discussed with Sal how much insurance he carried on Paula. He’d said that as a selling point he always kept at least a million dollars’ worth on Maria.

  But the discussion that had dominated most of the conversation in the Marshall home had concerned Rob’s practice of taking every Friday off from work and devoting the time to his family. It was the least a man could do, Rob said, to repay his wife for all that she did for him. Since he’d begun to do it, the enduring love that he and Maria shared had blossomed again into romance. Rob went on and on about it—how he carefully budgeted his time to be sure that he had accomplished his week’s work by Thursday night, how it would be the greatest thing in the world for Paula, how Sal could do it without strain if he would only impose the same sort of self-discipline as Rob, and that how not doing it was really just an act of selfishness.

  Rob’s unctuous, self-congratulatory and patronizing tone had irked Sal at the time, but now, having just learned of Rob’s affair and his plans to divorce Maria, the memory of it infuriated him.

  “I think you’re a fucking hypocrite,” he repeated. “And I resent having been preached to to follow your example.”

  Rob didn’t respond. He turned to Jack Rogers and said, “Jack, you understand. You know what it’s like to fall out of love.” This was a reference, apparently, to the fact that once, many years earlier, Jack had been divorced.

  Jack just shook his head and looked back at Sal.

  “You have to understand,” Rob said to both of them. “I love Felice. With her, I’ve found the true meaning of happiness. Of joy. Of ecstasy. Feelings I had never even dreamed of. Physically—the sexual part—it’s so far beyond anything that Maria could even comprehend. But the relationship is much more than that. It’s not just our bodies. We’re soul mates.”

  He stared across the table as if he’d just completed a sales presentation. His next move might be to hand pens to Sal and Jack and point to where they should sign.

  Had he done so, Sal, at least, might have broken the pen in two. He could not believe what he’d just heard. An affair—it was bad enough that Rob was confessing to an affair within two days of the murder of Maria—but an affair with Felice! That was the news that Sal could not absorb.

  Even in the few years he’d lived in the town, Sal had heard more stories about Felice than about all other women (or men, for that matter) in Toms River combined.

  He knew she’d moved down from North Jersey in the late 1950s, just about at the start of her high school years. Her father, Fred Frankel, had opened a car dealership on Locust Street, long before it grew into Route 37. The way Sal had heard it, the town had not known what to make of her then, and despite the passage of twenty-five years, Toms River still hadn’t figured her out.

  Was she threatening, or merely amusing? Scandalous, or merely entertaining? Was she serious or was her whole life a put-on, designed to poke fun at a town that took itself very seriously? About one point there was no debate: life without her would have been more comfortable for a lot of people, but duller for nearly all.

  Felice did things that other women in Toms River only talked about (and there were quite a few who wouldn’t even talk—they just fantasized). Whatever was new, whatever was “in,” whatever bordered on being outrageous, Felice would try it. The list ranged from roller-skating to Club Med vacations to Transcendental Meditation, although Sal knew that the whispered rumors extended well beyond that. A regular Madame Bovary of the Pine Barrens was what she seemed to be, and in Toms River that was no compliment.

  But it was not so much her actions, Sal knew, that bothered the other women of Toms River (except when she flirted with their husbands), it was her attitude. How she thought she was better than anyone else. How she thought she was too good for the town. If she didn’t like it, they asked—if it was too tame for her—why didn’t she just go elsewhere, to New York, or Los Angeles, or even Bergen County, leaving the rest of them in peace?

  The same people who asked the question had the answer. Felice stayed because she needed to be the center of attention, and in any town a little bigger or a little more sophisticated than Toms River, she might just get lost in the crowd.

  Her most garish display, in Sal’s view, had been her fortieth birthday party the previous fall, which had already achieved legendary status as the most notorious public event in the history of Toms River society. It had been billed as a surprise, but most who attended (and Sal was not among them—his information, like most information in Toms River, was secondhand) were convinced Felice not only had known about it in advance but had helped to plan it. Th
ere were just too many details that involved Felice’s distinctive touch.

  The invitations had been accompanied by cards that said, “Frisky Felice Turns 40!” The party was held at a beachfront disco that most of the country club crowd stayed away from. A billboard outside had proclaimed: LORDY, LORDY, FELICE IS 40!

  As Sal had heard the story, the first thing that happened was that somebody dressed up like a policeman had come to Felice’s house saying he had a warrant for her arrest. He led her outside, where two men dressed in leather jumpsuits and carrying whips “abducted” her. They put a blindfold on her and led her to a Rolls-Royce. When they got to the disco they placed her on a litter, which was decorated with red and black and silver balloons. (Those were the colors she favored in clothing and jewelry.) Amid cheering and shouting and the blare of loud music they paraded her around the room. Then the blindfold was removed and Felice, for the first time, saw the guests. And that, Sal imagined, was quite a sight.

  All the women were dressed like Felice in red and silver and black. Some wore black wigs and fake silver necklaces made up of paper clips, and purple exercise suits (another of Felice’s favorite outfits). It was a whole chorus line of fake Felices. They called themselves the “Felicettes.” They wore name tags that said, “Hi. My name is Felice.” Even the waitresses were dressed like Felice. And all female party guests received a party favor of Frosty Red nail polish wrapped in red and black, with a note saying, “A touch of Felice.”

  In addition to the male strippers, the party featured makeup artists who painted the faces, and in some cases bodies, of the guests, and then added sparkles and feathers for decoration. There was also a professional videotape crew to record the whole thing.

  The party made the society page of the Asbury Park Press, which delighted those in attendance, especially those whose names were mentioned, though most feigned embarrassment. The names included Rob and Maria Marshall. Rob had gone bare-chested under his tuxedo in recognition of the festive nature of the occasion, but Maria (somewhat churlishly, many thought) had refused to dress as a Felicette.

  The thought of the whole thing made Sal sick. He stood up. His face had colored like an autumn leaf. “I’ve heard enough,” he said. “Less than forty-eight hours ago, the woman you’ve been married to for twenty years was murdered. The loveliest woman in all of Toms River. Murdered! Nobody has a fucking clue yet about who did it or why. And you sit here—”

  “Robbery,” Rob said.

  “What?”

  “Robbery. The motive was definitely robbery. They must have followed us up from the casino.”

  “Rob. Stop talking and listen for just a minute. Right now, I don’t give a fuck what the motive was. And I don’t even give a fuck yet who did it. Don’t worry. I will. That’ll come. But right now I am grieving, I’m filled with sorrow. The few hours I haven’t been here since I heard about it, I’ve been down the street crying in my pillow.

  “You know why? Because I loved Maria. So did Paula. And so did Jack and Barbara. And so did the Pecks, and the other Pecks, and the Critellis, and the Kenyons, and the Mitchells, and the Perillis and about five hundred other people in this town. Maria was a very special person. She made you feel good about yourself. She made you feel like how happy you were was the most important thing in her life. And you know what? She wasn’t faking. She didn’t bullshit. It was real. She was real. And now she’s gone, and all of us are the poorer for it, and her three sons are basket cases.

  “You’ve seen them out there. Walking around hugging anything that moves. They’ll be outside hugging the fucking trees in a minute. And you know why? Because their whole universe has been destroyed. And you call us in here to talk. Do we hear one word about those boys and how we can help them survive this? No. Not one fucking word about the boys. Do we hear one word about Maria? Yes. We hear you’ve ‘fallen out of love’ with her.

  “Well, tough shit. What you did is, you got hot pants for Felice. Big deal. Probably every guy in the country club has had hot pants for Felice. But you, Rob Marshall, the biggest fucking showoff in the county, what do you do? You toss over twenty years of marriage. Jesus Christ! What are those boys going to think now? First, their mother gets murdered, and then they hear—and I presume you’re going to tell them before they read it in the Observer or the Press—that you were about to leave her anyway. To run off with Felice. Felice!”

  “I love her, Sal.”

  “Knock it off. Just stop with that love shit. I know what you loved about her. So does Jack. So would anybody who’s reached the age of puberty. And I’ll tell you this—it ain’t her fucking intellect. But I don’t want to talk about Felice. David is a friend of mine, too, and I don’t talk about friends’ wives behind their backs.”

  “But you don’t understand. The depth—”

  “Don’t start with that depth shit either. The only thing deep about banging Felice is how deep your pockets had better be to buy her all that silver jewelry and the Day-Glo jumpsuits and the Club Med vacations. I mean it, Rob. I’m your friend and I’m here to help you, but I don’t want to hear another fucking word about Felice.”

  Rob was nodding and pursing his lips. “All right, Sal,” he said. “All right. I only wanted you to know the facts. And I wanted you to hear them from me. But I won’t push it. There’s just one more thing.”

  Sal sat down again, the color receding slowly from his face. “What’s that?” he said.

  “You do remember—in case you start hearing anything about insurance—that I told you, at least ten days ago, that I carried a lot of insurance on Maria. It was no secret. You remember I told you it was a selling tool. I just want to be sure, Sal. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Rob. I do.” Then Sal stood and walked to the door and left the room. Jack Rogers followed, leaving Rob alone at his desk.

  When he told the boys, a few hours later, there were no harsh words or recriminations, only tears. He said, “I have to be honest with you. There is somebody else in my life. I’m sure you have no idea who it could be.”

  “Mrs. Rosenberg,” Roby said. Rob’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the edge of his desk.

  “You knew?” he said. But Roby had not known, he’d only guessed. He could never figure out why he had been so quick to guess Felice, but oldest sons sometimes have extremely sensitive antennae.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rob continued, after getting assurances that Roby had never been told anything specific by either Maria or her private investigator. “But there’s nothing I can do about it now. If only I had it to do over again it never would have happened.”

  But then, in almost the same breath, he added, “Felice and I are so good together. You should just see us together. And you will. I know she’ll never replace Mom, but she can be your friend, and she wants to be. She’ll be spending a lot of time here now and you’ll all get to know her very well.”

  “Hey, Dad?” Roby said.

  “Yes?”

  “The minute she walks in the door, I’m walking out.”

  “Me, too,” said Chris. John just cried.

  “Don’t worry, boys, nobody’s going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. Felice is a very sensitive and caring person. We both know it’s going to take time. But I must tell you, she’s the most important person in the world to me, now that your mother is gone, and I need her for my happiness. I hope you can all understand that and I hope you’ll support me in this.”

  The three boys were staring at the floor, arms folded, all crying now.

  “Will you? Will you promise me you’ll try to understand? I’m devastated, boys. The loss of your mother is a terrible blow. Felice’s love and your understanding are all that I’ll have to get me through this. Will you promise me I can count on you?”

  Neither Roby nor Chris could quite believe it. But in the past day and a half they’d lost their capacity for disbelief. Things just happened. Unreal things. But nothing mattered. They’d already lost everything
and knew they’d never have anything again. All they could do was cry and hug each other. And Roby could hug Susan Salzman and Chris could hug Jennifer. John just kept trying to hug his father.

  Because nothing mattered, the boys would say anything; words had lost all meaning and importance.

  “Sure, Dad,” Roby said. “Whatever makes you happy’s fine with us.”

  Chris just nodded and sobbed.

  John looked at Roby and then he nodded, too, mumbling something that no one could hear.

  Rob grinned. Then he got up and came around the desk and hugged each of them firmly. “I knew I could count on you. You’re fine young men. I’m very proud of you all.”

  Don’t say it, Dad, don’t say it, Chris thought. But he did. He said, “And your mother would be proud of you, too.”

  He kept talking for another ten minutes, but none of them heard much that he said. There was some mention of financial difficulties, some talk about insurance, and something that seemed quite peculiar (except to Chris, who had never shaken loose from his feeling).

  Rob said, “The worst thing is, some people may think I was involved. The police might even suspect me. But if you ever hear anything like that, don’t worry about it. That’s very common where the wife is killed. They always look to the husband first.”

  That night, Chris started remembering things that hadn’t seemed important at the time. Like the night of his senior prom, in May, when he and Roby, who was also attending, were dressed up in their tuxedos and their father, after taking the usual pictures, walked over to them and murmured that he wanted them to stop by the Rosenbergs’ on their way, so Mrs. Rosenberg could see how nice they looked.

  This had struck the two of them as odd at the time, especially when they rang the Rosenbergs’ bell and Felice came to the door all sweaty and still in a purple jogging suit and they saw her husband in the background, just out of the shower, with a towel wrapped around his waist. It was obvious they had not been expected. It was equally obvious that Felice was not impressed.