Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  “I couldn’t see past the surface. I thought I could. I thought I knew. That’s what gets me. I believed I was different, that I had depth. If I gave my heart to a person, or to a cause, it would be someone or something worth fighting for. And what happened? I was duped.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “So?”

  “So why don’t you go off and shoot yourself because you believed what appeared to be the truth twice in your life? Come on, Lee. What have you ever done that you feel obligated to give yourself such a bad time? Not even Woodleigh Huber, that shitheel, would dare to do to you what you’re doing to yourself.”

  “So I should just forget it?”

  He got up from his rocker and stood right beside me. “No. Not quite yet.”

  My daughter, Valerie, was a marvel to look at: cascades of auburn hair, peachy skin, and huge, intelligent hazel eyes that dominated her face—and any room she happened to be in. At two in the afternoon that Sunday, she happened to be dominating the kitchen and laundry room. She had invited a fellow actor—a tall girl from Chicago, who was trying to look like a born tragedian—to spend the weekend. It appeared that they had taken in laundry from the entire cast and crew of the cable TV movie they had bit parts in. Between wash loads, they watched the entire filmography of Maggie Smith. Val had said: Want to be a patron of the arts? So I’d paid for the video rentals as well as their foray into Ben & Jerry’s—this a half hour after I had watched Val tearing a head of lettuce into tiny pieces, dicing a zucchini and slicing mushrooms and meticulously measuring out a quarter teaspoon of Parmesan cheese, agonizing over its fat content.

  “Where are you going, Ma?” she asked, her spoon poised to dive into the ice cream again.

  “No place special,” I said, hoping she’d say: Hey, you paid for this stuff. Why not join us? Come on, dig in.

  Chicago was working on Chunky Monkey while maintaining a sour expression that should have curdled the cream. Maybe she was involved in her process, as my daughter would say. Probably daydreaming about being Medea killing her children. I liked most of my daughter’s friends, but this dame was a heavy piece of furniture. I wasn’t in the mood for moods.

  Val, I could see, had gone for her usual, a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk. “If you’re going to be passing the video store, we forgot The V.I.P.’s.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m doing. I want to plant some nasturtiums, but if I do go out, I’ll—”

  Val smiled at me, a wide, incredibly friendly smile, so unexpected on a classic pretty face. Part of her charm, I thought for the millionth time. Surprise. That this lovely young woman was still entrancing with fudge chunk on her teeth and a chocolate ice cream coating on her chin—Suddenly I didn’t fall into my usual isn’t-she-a-marvel reverie. Something wasn’t wonderful. Something was wrong. My maternal instincts are pretty good. “Ma, you’re looking at me funny.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Yes you are.” But no, it wasn’t Val.

  It was the chocolate.

  I was rushing around, looking for my car keys. “It was the chocolate,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “What?” She knew my leaving would mean she was going to have to fold her own laundry. She might be an actor, but she was not a lawyer’s daughter for nothing. If she could not win one point, she’d try for another: “Do you want to take us out for sushi when you get back?”

  “Very much. But now … Hate to rush out on you, but …” I was picturing Bobette’s mouth and lips, thick with chocolate from the Snickers bar. “I’ve got to get to the women’s prison in Bedford Hills before visiting hours are over.”

  On the drive up to Bedford Hills, I was thinking that I should have taken Chicago with me, to show her what a really tragic face looked like. Except even before Mary Dean spotted me and broke out into a big smile and a two-handed wave, she looked happy. All right, if not happy, then at least something between untroubled and carefree.

  “Hi!” she enthused. “It was so sweet of you to come and see me. I was talking to one of the girls and saying, ‘It’s gonna be a bummer on visiting day ’cause I’m not from New York and I don’t know anybody so how can anybody come and visit,’ and the next thing, here you are!”

  “You sound pretty cheerful,” I said. “Considering the circumstances.”

  “Yeah, well, what can you do?” The blue uniforms of Nassau County were gone. New York State, for some reason, was pushing a deep green, a more flattering color for Mary because it matched the dark-green glints in her emerald eyes. “You know what? I’m going to finish high school. You can do that here. To tell you the truth, they kind of push you. I mean, you can’t just go to work in the laundry or in the kitchen. No, before they even talk to you about a job, you gotta take all that English and history and—jeez, I hope not math. But that’s New York for you. A very smart state.”

  I could see by the way Mary flashed little smiles at the other inmates, or made ooh-isn’t-he-cute faces at their boyfriends or children, that she was knocking herself out being congenial. She was right to want to build up some credit. Beauty like hers was a liability in the slammer. If someone took a dislike to her and a fight broke out, they would go for her face. Bruise it the first time, disfigure it the second. In fact, her whole ebullient manner—upbeat smile, happy babbling—was a front. I was at least relieved to see the other inmates wave back with a reasonable degree of warmth, noting, I had no doubt, that Mary was obeying the unwritten law: scrupulously avoid eye contact with their men.

  I handed her a bag of grapes I’d brought from home, red, purple, and green. “I wasn’t sure what you needed.”

  “This is so nice,” she said. “All they give you here is oranges. Sometimes bananas for breakfast, but they’re …” She made a fairly hideous guttural sound in the back of her throat.

  “Mushy brown spots?”

  “Brown all over!” Her too cheery behavior was replaced by a sweeter, more genuine manner; she was getting into a real conversation. If I could stay on yucky bananas or a comparative analysis of eye makeup remover pads, we could have a fine visit. “I mean, if you really went like this”—she squinted—“you could find maybe one banana-color little teeny spot in all that brown ook.”

  “Mary.” She saw something serious coming on, and her eyes darted left-right-left: Let me outta here. “I’m going to try and keep this conversation light, okay?” I assured her. “I know you’re worried you’ll start crying, and you probably don’t want the other women to know how emotional it is for you right now.” She nodded. “Okay,” I said, offering her a big, phony grin. “If the discussion gets too rough on you, rub your nose. I’ll go into a long song and dance about my boyfriend or something.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “Who? Oh, my boyfriend?” She nodded. “Yes, pretty cute. And a really nice guy.”

  “Good, ’cause I was worried about you. I mean, your age, no wedding ring. I figured, Uh-oh, something must’ve happened. I remember I said to …” She looked toward the red Exit sign over the door.

  “Now that you mention him, Mary: There were a couple of days between the time Bobette was killed and her body was discovered.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When the police came and arrested …”

  “Go ahead. You can say his name. I don’t care.”

  I smiled. “Thank you. When they arrested Norman, he wasn’t wearing the same clothes as when he killed Bobette. Right?”

  “Uh … No.”

  “It might be helpful if you could remember what he was wearing that Friday, the day he went to the bank, the day Bobette was killed.” Mary screwed up her mouth and drew her lovely arched brows together in deep thought. Or maybe she was practicing looking cerebral for her high school equivalency diploma classes. But nothing was happening behind that beautiful forehead. I was such a New York knee-jerk liberal that I was always thinking: Hmm, this person must have had an emotionally deprived childhood to appear this dull-witted. Or, this person must have
been dropped on her head. Maybe I was right. I certainly never thought: Holy shit, is she dumb! until that moment in Bedford Hills. “Did Norman say anything about ripping anything during the murder? Or about Bobette trying to fight him off, or just moving around and possibly getting something on his clothes?”

  “Chocolate!”

  “Chocolate,” I repeated.

  “On his sleeve. Like right on the top of the cuff. A teeny doodle of chocolate.”

  “From Bobette. From the Snickers bar she was eating.”

  “Right!”

  “Did you notice the spot or did Norman?”

  “Well, I would have, because I always check before I do a laundry or send stuff to the dry cleaner ’cause stains have to be specially treated. I have a Mary Ellen book, and it tells what to do for each one.”

  “But Norman saw it?”

  “Did he ever! I mean, he came home and he was, like, crazy. It was right by the DW. The initials on his cuff. Denton Wylie. Well, I mean, I don’t know whose initials they really were. Norman lifted this expensive suitcase in a little airport, Santa Barbara. He just picked it up and walked out with it. He said the guy was his size—and that didn’t happen every day, a rich guy that tall, ’cause most rich guys are little teeny men with little teeny … Do I have to tell you? You’re a lawyer. What happened was, the rich guy gave it to a skycap and the skycap put it down and when the skycap got busy doing something, Norman picked it up. And there were five shirts with initials and a whole bunch of ties in a leather case with a gold DW. A case just for ties! The shirts were silk, except they were so expensive they looked like cotton. Anyhow, that night, after Bobette. He tore off the shirt. I mean tore. A couple of buttons came off.”

  “And then?”

  “And then? I forget. I guess he must have told me what happened. No, wait, he wanted a drink. Chivas over ice. You don’t say ‘on the rocks.’ It’s not classy. I made it for him, but he went right back to the bottle and poured, like, a cup more. Right up to the top of the glass.”

  “And the shirt?”

  “Oh, he said: ‘Get rid of it.’”

  “Right then?”

  She gave that a minute’s thought. “Later. He drank so much, so fast. I mean, both of us like to have a drink, but you know … Sip. He was the one who taught me about sipping, but he wasn’t sipping. He was glugging it down and telling me what happened.”

  “And he told you to get rid of the shirt?”

  “Yes. He was pretty drunk, but Norman wouldn’t ever get that drunk that he couldn’t think. He said: ‘Get rid of it,’ and then he went to sleep. And when he got up, he said: ‘Did you get rid of it?’”

  “Did you?” I asked.

  “You’re asking too? Jeez! No one gives me credit for anything. I told him: Norman, relax. I told him I walked about half a mile to a used car lot—he knew which one—but naturally it wasn’t open. It was spooky at night, I told him. And I used up a whole book of matches, but I finally burned it and stomped the gray stuff, ashes, into the ground.” I supposed I must have looked as if my life was over, because Mary bent forward to look at me with a mixture of pity and curiosity. “I shouldn’t have burned the shirt?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” The guards were moving around. Inmates were starting to say goodbye to their families. It was easy to tell which were the troublemakers. For them the guards enforced the no-touching rule, but they bent it for the others. Mothers kissed their children, touched the cheeks of their parents. Women patted their hair, or moistened their lips, so their men would have someone pretty to remember after that last look. I stood to go. “Please don’t worry about the shirt,” I told her. “It might have been helpful if it was still around, but probably not. Don’t give it another thought.”

  “Okay,” she said, only too pleased to comply. Then she added: “Because I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t burn it.” I sat back down. “It was silk. White silk. Norman loved those shirts. You give it to the dry cleaner, you know what you get? A spot. They get the chocolate out, but leave a little drippy-looking raindrop thing. And he did say: ‘Don’t even think of giving it to the cleaners. Get rid of it.’ Except I figured, what the hay: With some silk—not all, but some—you wash them on the cold, gentle cycle and then you pull it out. Don’t let it go through the spin, just pull it out wet—”

  “Mary, did you wash it?”

  “I’m trying to think. I remember thinking: If it comes out nice, he won’t know it’s the Bobette shirt because they’re all the same. White silk. But they were so expensive and beautiful and all with DW initials. We could’ve kept using them. There are lots of D names. Dennis and Dwayne and Dick—”

  “Picture what you did with the shirt, Mary. Tell me what you see.”

  She closed her eyes. “I put it in a net bag. Like what you put your panties in. And then …” I waited. “I zipped it. It’s one of the ones with a zipper.”

  “And then?”

  “I put it in the washing machine.”

  I took a deep breath. “Did you turn on the machine? Do you remember taking out the wet silk shirt, letting it drip dry?”

  “No. Oh, I know why. ’Cause Norman was home that whole weekend. Really bad. Drinking. Didn’t want to have any fun. Kept sleeping and drinking and sleeping. So I wasn’t going to do a wash, not with him there. I had to wait.” She sighed. “That’s not good to do with a stain. And now I’m up here for twenty years.”

  “You didn’t wash the shirt once Norman went to jail?”

  “No. Isn’t that weird? Oh, I know why. I did some washes, but I took it out of the machine because, like, why not wait till I had a few more things for a cold water wash? I mean, if it was like her blood or something I would have done it separate. Or maybe I really would’ve burned it. But it was just Snickers.”

  “Where is the shirt?”

  “In the net bag.”

  “And where is the net bag, Mary?”

  “Let’s see. I stuck in some panties and a teddy and … It should be right where I left it.” She closed her eyes and lifted her left arm high, making a patting motion with her hand. “Right up there on that shelf, in the broom closet. Next to the Endust.”

  Next to the Endust! I tried to keep myself calm going home. I didn’t go more than ten miles over the speed limit. Fifteen. When I got to the Throgs Neck Bridge, I called my investigator, Terry Salazar, and told him to meet me at Mary’s apartment. It hadn’t been a full week since she’d been arrested, and I prayed that even if Jerry McCloskey ordered a complete search of the premises, the cops would have overlooked a silk shirt stuffed under panties and a teddy on a shelf in a broom closet. Since Mary had confessed and pleaded guilty, they wouldn’t have had to seize the contents of the apartment. Would they?

  Except I didn’t get a chance to find out, because when I pulled over to the curb, I saw Terry making a thumbs-down sign. “What’s the matter?”

  “Sealed,” he said.

  “Sealed?” I didn’t want to believe him. I got out of the car and ran to the building. Sure enough, the cops had pasted their Sealed by the Order sign onto the door and jamb of the apartment.

  “Want me to break in through one of the windows?” Terry asked.

  “No!” I snapped.

  “You on the rag?”

  “What good will your breaking in do? I’d have gotten the shirt illegally. It’s no use saying Mary authorized me to search the apartment now that it’s sealed. Anyway, knowing Huber, he’d accuse me of faking evidence.”

  “If it has Bobette’s saliva with her DNA—”

  “What if it doesn’t? What if it just has some Snickers juice and that’s it? He’ll say I got a silk shirt—”

  “You’re going off the wall, Lee. Calm down. I’m sure during the whole investigation with Norman they took samples from him. Didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if we find some of his hairs with roots on the shirt, body hair, whatever, that shows i
t’s Norman’s. That you didn’t plant it.” I got back into my car and slammed the door. “Hey, now that you screwed up my Sunday, getting me over here,” Terry said, “why don’t we go for a drink or something?”

  I turned the key in the ignition and left Terry behind. I went home to take Val and Chicago out for sushi. Home to figure out a way to get my hands on the shirt Norman was wearing when he choked Bobette Frisch to death.

  I would have spent the whole night on the phone with Will, but at eleven-thirty, he said he wanted to get a good night’s sleep. “You’re going to ask me: ‘How can you possibly sleep?”’ he said. “So I’ll tell you. I’m tired. But I can also tell you right now you’re not going to change Huber’s mind, because he’s decided that letting Mary go would show that he was conned, ergo a dupe, ergo not fit to hold public office. I’ve crossed him off my to-do list. As far as any other avenues leading to the shirt, the only one I can think of is Holly Nuñez. She did back down at the end, but she was on your side for a while. She went head to head with McCloskey.”

  “She lost.”

  “The point is, at least she had the guts to go stand up to that pathetic piece of white trash.”

  “Should I call her?”

  “I think you should do nothing. Let me be your lawyer on this.”

  “You want a retainer?”

  “No. I want a good night’s sleep so my head can be clear. Is it a deal?”

  “Deal,” I acknowledged, and hung up the phone for the night.

  De Ruyter, Lefkowitz and Stewart looked as if it had been designed by Thomas Jefferson on a bad day. It was a two-story red-brick building trimmed with white wood, with a Greek portico in front. It even had a Monticello-style Roman dome. But contrary to the usual Georgian symmetry, the building’s right side had been overextended to accommodate the three senior partners’ sudden, irresistible whim—after half the structure had been erected—to each have a private bathroom with a shower. The whim became a request, then a demand. The architect, a macho type with a chest-length beard and work boots, wept. The contractor all but swooned from joy at the cost overruns. What it came to was this: De Ruyter, Lefkowitz and Stewart, although not ugly, always looked unbalanced, as if it were about to slide down the hillock on which it stood.