by Susan Isaacs
I had been to the firm a few times for depositions or meetings, and once as Will’s date, to an impromptu champagne celebration after he’d won a big case for a defense contractor, a guy who had faced thirty years in jail and ten million in fines for selling gyroscopes used in fighter planes to Iraq. “Oh,” said the receptionist when she saw me, glancing at the brass carriage clock on her desk. It wasn’t even ten in the morning. Her “Oh” came out as “Ew,” because she barely separated her lips when she spoke, De Ruyter, Lefkowitz and Stewart was such a tony firm. “Ms. White. Do you have a meeting today, or are you …?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Stewart.”
“Ew.” I’m sure she was dying to know why, because she hesitated, as if expecting me to confide something fascinating about my relationship with Will. When I didn’t, she punched a few numbers and murmured my name to his secretary in a refined but disappointed tone.
Instead of the secretary, Will came striding out. “Hi,” he said, and led me to his office.
“You don’t seem surprised that I dropped in on you.”
“What surprises me is that you were able to hold off until ten o’clock.”
Instead of sitting behind his desk, he took a seat on his couch and patted the cushion next to his. It was a very plain couch. His whole office was plain. Beautiful, simple, and austere, the sort of working space God would have. Will had perfect taste.
“Do you have any thoughts?” I asked. “Or thought? For what I’m paying you, I can’t ask for too much.”
“I got off the phone with Holly Nuñez about fifteen minutes ago.”
“You spoke to her? About the Torkelson case? Do you know her? Have you ever met her?”
“Yes, yes, no, no. But she knew who I was.” There was no false modesty and no genuine modesty in Will’s remark: a simple statement of fact. “We spoke for nearly an hour.”
“And?”
“And we’re meeting for lunch today. At a little place near my house, where we won’t be seen.”
“What is this? A new chapter in your life?”
“I’m giving Holly Nuñez the chance to be a champion of justice and a defender of democracy.”
“Are you nuts? She has acrylic nails and she wimped out to Jerry McCloskey.”
“Lee, what do you say to your clients when they start to second-guess you?”
“Something like ‘You hired me because you trust my judgment and know that all my years of experience count for something. You have to be willing to let me be the lawyer.’”
“Okay. You hired me because you trust my judgment and know that all my years of experience count for something. You have to be willing to let me be the lawyer.”
I said: “So what time will you be back from lunch?”
Will did not seem surprised to find me waiting in his reception area when he strolled into his office a little before three. “What did you have?” I demanded. “A five-course meal?” He ushered me into his office. The receptionist looked so crazed with curiosity I thought she was going to leap over her desk, grab us, beg us: What is going on here? Which is what I wanted to know. The second he closed his office door, I said: “Everything. The tone of your voice when you said hello. Was her handshake warm or not so warm? From the first minute she walked into—”
“As we speak, she is taking Sam Franklin over to Mary’s apartment. They’re going to break the seal, look for the shirt, and if they find it, bring it to the lab. They should have preliminary findings by Wednesday or Thursday.”
I sat there flummoxed. For the life of me, I could not imagine how he had done it. “How did you convince her? What issue did you raise that would make her take such a huge risk? She’s going to lose her job!”
Will said: “She won’t be needing it. She’s going to run for district attorney on the Democratic ticket.”
I clapped my hands to my face. I must have looked like some Disney version of amazement. “What?”
“I pointed out that she knew what you had asked for was fair and just. Mary Dean did not kill Bobette Frisch. There is no reason for her to be paying for the crime. I also pointed out to Holly that all that was stopping her from following her instincts—her fine, commendable instincts—was Woodleigh Huber and his flunky, White Trash.”
“And the only way to stop him is for Holly to run against him?” Will knocked me out; I couldn’t believe the audacity of what he was doing.
“Right.”
“But she’s a Republican.”
“That can easily be remedied. Huber runs every four years with no real challenge because everyone’s convinced he’s a shoo-in. Big voice, no controversy, all that white hair. Well, Holly wants to see to it that there is controversy. Mary Dean: She was the victim of one man, Norman. And now the victim of a second man.”
“Huber?”
“Yes. He’s pulling off Justice’s blindfold and spitting in her eye.”
“My God!” I said. “You gave Holly that line and she’s going to use it.”
“She probably will.”
“I could use a hit of Chuckie’s oxygen now. This whole thing … It leaves me breathless.”
“It should leave Huber breathless. Holly wants to make the point that he’s so stuck on image—on the old politics—that he can’t admit he was conned. He’s willing to let someone serve a fifteen-to-twenty sentence just to save his political ass. She knows he’s going to fire her the minute he finds out that she authorized lifting the seal on the apartment. She wants to be fired.”
“And the Democrats will want her?”
“Lee,” Will said patiently.
“They’ll be thrilled,” I acknowledged.
“Exactly. And they’ll be ecstatic when they find out I’m breaking with my party to fund-raise for her. I’m going to get her big bucks. She’s going to give that slick piece of work a run for his money—and then some.” He took my hand in his. “I’m doing this because I think Woodleigh Huber is profoundly fourth rate, and anyone below second rate is dangerous when he has prosecutorial powers. I’m doing it for Mary Dean, because I’m a sucker for the grand gesture. To sacrifice yourself in the name of love! At the very least, she deserves to get her life back. I’m doing it for myself too, because I have achieved everything I ever dreamed of achieving—and to tell you the truth, it’s a little boring. I need a cheap thrill. Well, this campaign won’t come that cheap. That’s okay. But mainly, Lee, you know why I’m doing this.”
“For me.”
“Yes. For you.”
It took quite a bit longer than Thursday, but the lab confirmed that the chocolate on Norman’s cuff was like that of chocolate from a Snickers candy bar. Further, the saliva found on that same spot matched the DNA of Bobette Frances Frisch, deceased. Additionally, an almost microscopic smear of blood along the rim of the collar of the white silk shirt, consistent with a shaving nick beneath the jaw, matched the blood specimen taken from Inmate 1025567–95, Norman Torkelson.
I was planning on going to Holly Nuñez’s press conference, but I had a sentencing. My client had been caught by the state police after his truck hydroplaned off the Long Island Expressway during a downpour and hit an embankment, causing many of the crates that contained the six-hundred-forty ducks he had stolen from a farm on the North Fork to break apart and set off a cataclysm of bloody feathers on the median, as well as drumsticks beating on the windshields of passing Range Rovers. It was his third duck-rustling offense. The assistant D.A., a new kid who had clearly read his animal rights literature, was annoyingly graphic on the subject of my client’s genocidal proclivities when it came to poultry, and the judge refused to hear my argument for a suspended sentence with community service.
It wasn’t until I got back and turned on the TV in Chuckie’s office for the five o’clock news that I was able to see Holly announce her candidacy for district attorney of Nassau County. She had a new hairstyle, straight-cut with bangs, something between Cleopatra and Betty Boop—though instead of vampish, it made her look pu
re, a Madonna in a Puerto Rican church. She was wearing a navy suit and a crisp white blouse, so she appeared sufficiently lawyerly for the job. Whether she’d been coached to be low key or it was a natural television genius, I don’t know, but instead of perky—her prosecutorial correlative of an Entertainment Tonight cohost—she merely looked bright and energetic. I kept waiting for the cameras to turn to her supporters so I could get a glimpse of Will, but the cameras liked her too much.
Naturally, I didn’t get to hear everything she said, just a sound bite or two on the various local newscasts. She spoke about the Bobette Frisch case and how Bobette was the victim of one man, Norman Torkelson, but how Mary Dean, the woman serving time for the murder, was the victim of two men: Norman—and Woodleigh Huber.
“It’s easy to look tough,” she told the cameras. Holly seemed so much the genuine article they all but nodded back. “We need someone who has the guts and the integrity to be tough, and that means standing up for justice no matter what the political cost.” Her dark-brown eyes moved from lens to lens, giving each station its share. “It’s wrong to run a D.A.’s Office by taking polls and holding press conferences and wearing hair spray. Nassau County deserves better than pretty-boy politics. That’s why I’m running against Woodleigh Huber.”
Will came for dinner and stayed for the ten o’clock news, and then the eleven. By that time, a couple of reporters had caught up with Woodleigh Huber as he was coming out of the Nassau County chapter of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League’s annual black-tie fund-raiser, where he had no doubt been giving his usual Jews Are Good speech. He was looking spiffy, a blue silk handkerchief in his tuxedo pocket, his hair looking as if Michelangelo had carved it out of Carrara marble. “I have no comment at this present time,” he commented. “All I can say is that Holly Nuñez”—he paused for effect—“was fired from the District Attorney’s Office for cause.” Not a particularly effective statement, or a terrible one. Or at least not until the same idea popped into every late-night news producer’s head: a close shot of Huber’s face, his luxuriant white hair frozen in the brilliant TV lights, followed by a clip of Holly declaring: “It’s wrong to run a D.A.’s office by taking polls and holding press conferences and wearing hair spray.”
I looked over at Will, sitting in a Papa Bear chair, his feet up on an ottoman. He was actually smiling. “She’s better than I thought she’d be.”
“Does she have a chance?” I asked.
“In this county, against one of the most proven Republican vote-getters? A guy with Conservative, Liberal, and Right-to-Life endorsements?” He thought for a moment. “When the press conference was over this afternoon, I told Holly how good she was. Know what she did? Took her hand and mussed up her hair a little. She said: ‘No hair spray. In case any of the reporters asked.’ Interesting: I was the one who suggested she run. But when I did, it didn’t come as any surprise to her. None of that ‘Who, me, run?’ stuff. She said great, she’d use the Mary Dean business—woman-as-victim and all that—but she wanted to nail Huber on what she called the Politics of Fatigue: how he plays to the cameras but doesn’t have the energy or the imagination to get to the root of crime.”
“What does ‘get to the root of crime’ mean?” I asked.
“Damned if I know. She’s big on the word ‘proactive.’ I told her to find a synonym. What was amazing is that she had the entire campaign against Huber already mapped out in her mind. True, she’d probably been thinking of a Republican primary challenge, not bolting and running as a Democrat. But I was just a catalyst, a guy who could raise money so she could do it four years earlier than she’d originally planned.”
“If she wins, will she be any better than Huber?”
“Let’s put it this way. She’s smart. Smart enough. And she’s a woman and a Hispanic, and she’s enormously ambitious. Based on that alone, she’s got to be at least two or three times as good as Huber.”
“And now she’s a Democrat, so she won’t trample on people’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.”
Will moved his feet from the ottoman to the floor. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a political imbecile?” He stood and put on his jacket. “In my life, I’ve never heard such idiot stereotyping as comes out of your mouth every single election campaign.”
“Fine,” I said. “Be the Clarence Thomas of Long Island. That’s your business. Just wait till your party pals learn you’re supporting a Democrat.”
“Please. They already know.”
“So how many times this summer do you think you’re going to be playing golf at their lily-white country clubs, big boy?”
“With any luck? Not a single goddamn one.” He patted the top of my head. “Lily White,” he said, and he went home.
Some men get away with murder. But some of their victims can come back to life. Not Bobette Frisch, of course. Mary Dean was a different story.
The day after Holly Nuñez’s news conference, Woodleigh Huber held one of his own. He said he would not deign to address his opponent’s hair spray remarks, except to say categorically that he did not use hair spray. That day he was telling the truth, but he made the mistake of speaking from the courthouse steps. Somber, pin-striped, every inch Mr. District Attorney. A breeze toyed with his hair, first lifting it up so it appeared electrified, then tossing it to the left, so it looked like the hair of a mad genius. Huber patted it back down once, then again. In the end, the only information most people watching him on television registered from his appearance was that the district attorney of the County of Nassau was horribly upset about his hair.
This is what he said that did not register: He welcomed the opportunity to debate the issues with Ms. Nuñez. He was proud of his record, darn proud, and was not afraid to run on it. And contrary to his opponent’s blatantly false and spurious assertions, he was not keeping an innocent woman in prison because he was ashamed to admit he’d been conned. “The buck stops here,” Huber announced. “I don’t just take credit for all the successes of this office. I am willing to take full responsibility for my misjudgments. Now, there haven’t been many, but in this case, like every single lawyer and public official involved, I believed Mary Dean’s confession. However, subsequent information proved to me that she had been used by Norman Torkelson, a notorious con artist. The moment I heard the truth, I knew she had to be released. However, unlike my opponent, I do not shoot from the hip. I do not speak rashly or act rashly. There is a procedure to follow in these cases, and I had to follow it. I am sworn to uphold the law. I have devoted my life to upholding the law. And now that the procedure has been followed”—he patted down his hair and broke out his 60 Minutes voice—“I am ordering Mary Dean to be released forthwith!”
I picked Mary up at Bedford Hills the next morning and drove her back to her apartment on Long Island. “Jeez,” she said, opening the car window and letting the wind stream into her face. “A couple of weeks cooped up, you forget air. It feels so good.”
When we turned off the Sprain Brook Parkway to the Bronx River, I asked: “Do you have any plans?”
“Like, for lunch?”
“I really meant plans for your life.” The subject seemed to be of no particular interest to her, so I added: “But I was hoping you’d let me buy you lunch.”
“You mean, you would buy?”
“Yes.”
“I should be taking you out for a champagne dinner, getting me out of there. I swear to God, I thought I’d be stuck there till I was, you know, forty or something.” Her eyes closed, and she turned her face to catch the sun.
When we got back, she told me she couldn’t go to a restaurant looking the way she did. With her skin clean of the mask of makeup she usually wore and her hair deflated, she looked far more beautiful than anyone else on Long Island. But I understood her need to re-create the Mary she wanted to be, so I agreed to give her an hour before picking her up.
“We’ll just have fun,” I promised her. “No serious discussions about your future. No p
ressure.”
“If I don’t feel like going for my high school diploma, I don’t have to?”
“Of course not. I told you: We’ll just be two ladies out for a nice lunch.”
I didn’t mention that I had a few plans in place for her if she was interested. Beauty school, waitressing. I couldn’t help find her a job in a bar, because the state liquor authority would run her prints and find out about her record. As far as that went, I had already spoken to a lawyer I’d once dealt with in Baltimore who had recommended someone in Annapolis; he was going to look into getting the assault and fugitive charges against her reduced. I’d spoken to a pal in the probation department who knew a social worker in Queens who had a grant to work with prostitutes, offering them alternatives to the life; I’d set that in motion too.
I was interested in Mary’s past and her future. Ladies who lunch open up to each other. What had her family been like? What had turned her into a hooker? And was there any way to change her path so she wouldn’t about-face and go right back to it?
And all right, I was not without hope that somewhere in an hour and a half of her ditsy chatter I’d find a glimmer, a hint that she herself hadn’t picked up on, of where Norman Torkelson might have gone.
“What should I wear?” she asked as I pulled up to the apartment building. She took in my gray linen suit, then looked into my eyes with something that might have been pity. “I don’t have anything like that.”
“Anything other than shorts or jeans,” I told her. “It doesn’t matter. You always look wonderful.”
“Thanks,” she said, pleased by the compliment but not thrilled: It had not come from a man. The second she climbed out of the car, she was rubbing a lock of hair between her fingers, checking what conditioning it would need. “Oh, and thanks a million for getting me out.” She laughed. “I wish I could pay you a million.”
