Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  “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.”

  “Go on,” I said, trying to recall if the autopsy report mentioned anything about skin cells under Bobette’s nails or any possible DNA evidence that would corroborate Norman’s statement.

  “Just for you,” he repeated. “You’re my lawyer. Anything I say to you is confidential.” He wiped the tears away, this time with his hands. “Anyhow, I got back and went into the house.”

  “You had a key?”

  “No. I’d pushed the little gizmo on the side of the door so it wouldn’t lock. The door was open. I went in. I remember, I was calling out, ‘Bunny’—that was my nickname for her. ‘Bunny, if you have two glasses, I have a bottle of champagne.’ Except I never finished the sentence.” He rubbed his chin. I could hear the rough scratch of his beard.

  “She was dead?”

  “Yes. I knew right away.”

  “And Mary?”

  “Standing there. Hysterical. Trying to talk.”

  “What was she trying to say?”

  “‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’”

  “To Bobette?”

  “No, to me. I started saying, ‘Why? Why?’ But then I realized I had to get her out of there. I didn’t know if she’d fought with Bobette and if there had been a ruckus someone could have heard. Even just her hysterics. She was getting louder and louder: If someone was passing by the house, or if for some reason the tenant came home … I had to move, so I grabbed her and pulled her out of the house.”

  “You didn’t touch anything?”

  He closed his eyes as if viewing the scene. “I bent over to see if there was a chance Bobette was still alive. Objectively, I knew she was dead. But I thought, well, maybe if the breathing was suppressed or something, I could call 911 and get out of there before they came. I may … I think I may have held her face in my hands.” He shuddered. “Already, it was colder than a face should be. You know?”

  “You didn’t touch her neck?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then what?”

  “I took Mary by the arm and I pulled her toward the door.”

  “The front door?”

  “Initially. But then—I couldn’t believe this. She sticks her hand in her pocketbook, one of those shoulder bags, and takes out a tissue and starts wiping the doorknob and the thing where you turn on the lights.”

  “The switch plate?”

  “Right. I knew the more we did, the longer we stayed there, the more chance there’d be for leaving some trace. So I grabbed the tissue. I was going to use it to open the door, but then I realized it would be stupid for us to be seen walking out the front together. Mary’s—you know—noticeable. I was already thinking I didn’t want anyone to think in terms of the, uh, crime committed by a man with a woman. I wanted Mary completely out of the picture. So I led her out the back door. I used the tissue to open and close it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I went toward the front. I took a quick look around. No one was there. So I got her into my car and we drove home.”

  I waited. What was I expecting to hear? We lived happily ever after? Norman did look better for having opened up, that much I noticed. The
crying had stopped, and some color had returned to his face. Still, he seemed feeble, as if trying to get back his strength after a terrible illness.

  “When did you talk to Mary?”

  “When we got home. She was too hysterical in the car.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That Bobette had come down and surprised her. Started shouting at her: ‘Get out!’ That’s the one thing that sets Mary off. Shouting.”

  “It makes her violent?”

  “No. Not with me, anyway. We’ve had a couple of fights, and I’ve raised my voice, and all that happens is she”—he swallowed hard at some sad memory—“falls apart. But I think if someone else is yelling … I mean, that incident in Maryland.”

  “That incident where she beat up Carolyn Knowles,” I elaborated. “Brain concussion, a couple of cracked ribs, facial contusions.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Mary and Bobette argue? Did Bobette know her connection with you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. All Mary told me was about the yelling, that all of a sudden she was on a different planet or something. She didn’t know what she was doing until …” His hand drifted up and softly touched his Adam’s apple. “Until she looked down and saw the thing she was holding between her hands and shaking was Bobette’s neck. I probably walked in a few minutes later.”

  “How long were you away when you went to get the champagne?” I asked.

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “You drove away. Mary probably went in right after you left. She surprised Bobette. Right? Strangled her. Bobette’s strong, but so is Mary—taller, in much better shape. Did she have any bruises, by the way?”

  “Bobette? I didn’t notice any.”

  “No, Mary. Any signs of a struggle, of Bobette fighting back? Black-and-blue marks—”

  “On her wrists,” Norman admitted sorrowfully.

  “So what happened next? You’re back home. Is Mary still hysterical?”

  “Close. I calmed her down a little. I kept saying: ‘I know it’s not your fault.’” I thought—as I often do when listening to accounts of my clients’ lives—how pleasant it must be to receive such easy absolution. “Finally, she stopped crying,” Norman continued. “I put her to bed, tried to give her a sleeping pill—”

  “You have trouble sleeping? Or does she?”

  Norman shook his head. “Neither of us. It’s just sometimes … Sometimes I slip a pill—a capsule I open up—into whatever the lady I’m working on is drinking. I mean, if she’s staying up late and being boring and I want to get home. I always carry a couple in my wallet. Anyway, Mary is very antidrug and said no. So I sat with her until she dozed off.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then … nothing.”

  “You stayed home? Watched TV?”

  “No. I went out and drove around. Tried to think.”

  “How long were you gone?”

  “I don’t know. Hours. It was pretty early—around six-thirty, seven, at night—when I found Mary at Bobette’s. But by the time I got back home it was already getting light.”

  “Where did you drive?”

  “I don’t remember. I know I wound up on the New York Thruway. Finally, I got so exhausted, I pulled off into one of those service areas, where the Dunkin Donuts and Burger Kings are all in one building, and had some coffee. Then I turned around and came home.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing. I told her we had to get out of town. Not that they could trace me, but why hang around Long Island longer than necessary. I wanted to leave then, but Mary was so shaken—she kept falling apart, crying hysterically. Then she got a bad period. So I made the mistake of letting her rest. We were going to leave first thing Tuesday morning, like at five-thirty, and go somewhere warm. San Diego, I was thinking. Once we got out of New York, we’d ditch the car I was driving and buy a new one.”

  “You had the cash Bobette drew out of the bank?”

  “Yes.”

  “You opened the envelopes the cash was in?” He nodded. I was relieved to see he wasn’t lying; his fingerprints had been on the tape that had sealed the bank envelopes. “Where did you open them?”

  “At Bobette’s.”

  “How come?”

  “Just to make sure she gave me what she said she would. I always do that. Hold up the envelope and make some little joke about can’t wait to see the money that’s going to change my life. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the lady will say: ‘Open it.’ Sometimes they’re nervous about me. They go to the bank but only take out part of what they promised. But I always check. If I catch them, believe me, they’re always ready to run back and get the rest.”

  I was feeling uneasy. Tales of masochistic women always make me uneasy, and unease makes me think of food. I had a little bag with a yogurt and a plastic spoon in my attaché case. Vanilla. I kept wishing I could open it up and gobble it down. “So, Norman,” I said, trying very hard to forget the yogurt, “unless I can get you an acquittal or keep hanging juries until Holly Nuñez gets worn out, you’re going to go to jail for a crime you didn’t commit.”

  “Yes.” His spine seemed to crumple, but he did not cry again.

  I sat quietly for a minute and looked down at my hands, trying to assimilate everything Norman had told me and trying to forget I wanted to eat. My latest diet book said hunger pangs last only ten to twelve minutes. Think of something else: I noticed that I had chipped the nail on my right index finger, that I had what appeared to be a smudge of breakfast cottage cheese on my watchband, and that even under the harsh prison lights, I still did not have any brown age spots. By the time I looked back at him, I knew: “You’re not telling me the whole story, Norman.”

  He didn’t pretend to be stunned, and he didn’t act as though I’d hurt him to the quick. “What do you think I didn’t tell you?”

  “Look, you and I seem to be playing poker now. So I’m not going to show you my hand. You tell me what you left out.” It would be nice to say I knew precisely what he was holding back, but I didn’t. I just had a strong sense that Bobette didn’t simply surprise Mary, yell at her to get out, and then get strangled. It was too pointless. Yes, I know homicide often is pointless, to say nothing of stupid, but this story didn’t quite add up to the usual senselessness.

  “I think they must have had words.”

  “About what? You?” Norman nodded yes. “Somehow, Bobette found out that this intruder was connected to you?” When he didn’t respond, I asked: “What were the words they had about?”

  “Getting married,” he muttered.

  And then I was sure I knew. “You were going to marry Bobette, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “We got the license that day, before we went to the bank.”

  “If you were marrying her, why did you want the cash?”

  “I just wanted it, free and clear. For all I knew, she could turn out to be a cheapskate. I mean, she kept saying she wanted me to take over everything for her so she could be—you know—a housewife. I’d oversee the bars, collect the rents and manage the properties. But I couldn’t be sure. I figured if it turned out she wouldn’t let me take over, I’d know in a couple of weeks. That way, I wouldn’t have to hang around waiting for crumbs. I could leave and still have close to fifty thou.”

  “What were you planning on doing with Mary?”

  “Nothing. I mean, we’d keep on like always. I’d be out all day, tell Bobette I was seeing to business. But I’d spend the whole day with Mary—and whatever nights I could. It wouldn’t be ideal but …” He wrapped his arms around himself. “I needed to rest for a year or two. To put my life on hold. I love Mary with all my heart, but I couldn’t keep running around the country doing what I was doing, like I was still a kid. Being World’s Greatest Lover to a bunch of ladies who … forgive me, but who I didn’t give a shit about. Setting up the Love Nest over and over in every damn new town. Wading through the responses to my personals ads. I h
ad been doing it so long. There was no fun left. Maybe because I really was in love. That’s the kicker, isn’t it? I’m in love with Mary, in love for the first time in my life. So what do I do? Get ready to marry someone else.”

  “Did Mary know?”

  “I told her the night before.” He looked away and mumbled to the floor: “I guess that was a mistake.”

  “I guess so.”

  “But listen, I swore to her nothing would change. All it would mean was that for a while she’d have to spend the nights without me. But in terms of real time, I’d be with her more than ever before. And then, in a year or two, I’d start making it so tough on Bobette that she’d pay me big bucks just to get out. Then Mary and I could go someplace, and I’d never have to work the ladies again.” His eyes grew filmy. “We could have had a beautiful life.”

  “Except Mary didn’t see it that way.”

  “No. She didn’t believe me when I told her I would always be true to her.” Norman looked me right in the eye. “But I will be.”

  “You could’ve knocked me over with a feather!” Terry Salazar said the next morning. Terry’s life is a series of brief but passionate romances with clichés; he meets a new one, hangs around awhile, then moves on to the next. He’d been getting knocked over by feathers for the past couple of months, and it was starting to irritate me. “There I was, in the county clerk’s office, looking at this piece of paper that actually says that Bobette Frisch and Denton Wylie are okay to get married in New York State, and I’m thinking: Holy shit! Haul out the smelling salts! The guy told the truth for once in his life.”

  “All right,” I said, swiveling back and forth in my desk chair. It’s the sort of motion you see in the movies, big tycoons twirling from side to side, a phone in one hand, a cigar in the other. But it soothes me and helps me think when I’m feeling pressured. “This makes me so nervous. I hate it when I think a client is innocent. I mean, not guilty is different; that I can deal with. I like knowing someone has a real defense for the crime he’s accused of, that I don’t have to get overly creative. But actually innocent?” I shuddered. It was only part pretense.