Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  So there I was, fresh from giving their flimsy son the old heave-ho, breaking bread with the Kendalls in their manse on tony Prospect Street.

  Mr. and Mrs. Kendall were at the head of a highway-length dining table toasting the new library wing. Jeff was lolling behind them sipping from a wineglass and sporting a hubris-glazed smile comprised of one part anticipatory sexual satisfaction and two parts alcohol. And though Jeff was the personification of wealth, good looks, and a Mayflower heritage, he had about as much chance of getting me in bed that night as an addict bottomed out on crystal meth.

  Presently Mrs. Kendall was crinkling her eyes at me above a glued-on smile, Mr. Kendall was busy blowing his own horn, and Carlyle’s eyes were boring into mine like a laser beam. Dinner had ended and I reached for a glass of Roederer abandoned on the sideboard. I had limited myself to two drinks and this serving was my stealthy second.

  Jeff ushered me toward the back of the room. “Hey, let’s get out of here and catch some jazz at Chan’s. New quartet this weekend. Carlyle’s not interested in us tonight.”

  “Jeff, a Holton coed is lying on a slab at the morgue and we’re two AAGs. Get real. We are the only ones Carlyle is interested in tonight.”

  “It’s hard to believe you’re a lawyer, sweetheart. You’re so naive. Money, money, money. The bottom line. The period at the end of every sentence. The final frontier. Tonight Carlyle cares only about his new library and the money.”

  “Well, since no one’s donating my rent payments, I’d like to keep my friggin’ job. So get me up close and personal with Carlyle tonight or I’ll cut off your balls in front of your parents.”

  Jeff glanced down at his crotch, then shot me an eerie sidelong glance. He grabbed the champagne flute from my hand and placed it back on the sideboard as he ushered me toward the head of the table. Carlyle moved slightly away from Jeff ’s father to silently announce our arrival.

  Jeff and Carlyle did that pat-on-the-back-handshake thing as Carlyle nodded his head at me. “So nice to see you again, Ms. Melone.”

  My eyes wouldn’t cooperate but I smiled as sweetly as I could. “Dean Carlyle, I hope I didn’t offend you this morning. This is such a horrible tragedy for the Hastings family. I didn’t make it worse for them, did I?”

  Carlyle tilted his head at my subtle about-face.

  “Jeff,” I said, “would you get me a glass of water?”

  “Your champagne is on the buffet.”

  “I’m driving tonight, Jeff. I shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” Jeff rolled his eyes at Carlyle. “I’ll be right back.”

  “The rules have to be followed—at least in public—don’t you agree?” I said to Carlyle.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I mean sometimes rules are meant for other people, but we all have give the appearance of abiding by them or there would be social chaos—anarchy even.” I looked deeply into Carlyle’s eyes. “That’s why I was so harsh with the Hastingses. I couldn’t let it appear that the AG’s office would bend to pressure—even from understandably bereft parents. But my heart goes out to them, so I promise you I will do everything I can to keep this matter private and within discreet bounds.”

  “Even if your boss directs you otherwise?”

  “Vince is a great AG, but sometimes he lacks a certain finesse.”

  “A talent you apparently possess.”

  “Dean, if there is anything I can do to make this horrid situation more palatable for the Hastingses—and Holton—please let me know.” I took a step closer and leaned toward his ear. In a breathy whisper I said, “And you may call me anytime, office or cell. I’m pretty much a free agent there and it won’t be a problem.”

  I slipped a card into his palm with every number on it except my bra size.

  Jeff arrived with my glass of ice water. I ignored him as I backed slowly away from Carlyle.

  Jeff took me by the elbow and led me away. “If Vince saw you sucking up like that, he’d fire you on the spot.”

  “Only if you tell him, Jeff.” I kissed him on the cheek and he responded by grabbing my ass.

  “Make it worth my while,” he said.

  He placed my water on a table in the foyer as he skated me through the kitchen toward the back door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Shouldn’t we say goodnight?”

  “They won’t miss us. They’ve all had too much to drink.” Jeff suddenly detoured down a circuitous brick passageway off the back hall, leaving me at the top of a steep cement stairway.

  “Um, Jeff?” I was peering down into darkness.

  “Come on down!” he hollered from below. An echo cradled his hollow voice. “I’m getting a few bottles for Chan’s. I can’t drink their rotgut wine.”

  “I’m going home.” I took a few steps down. “Jeff?”

  Impressed and awed by the cavernous stone cellar, I willed my eyesight to adjust to the thick darkness while Jeff was apparently making his worldly selection among the blended grape varietals. He had disappeared into a smaller room at the bottom of the stairs appropriately façaded with a stone archway. I wondered whether Jeff and his historically wealthy family stored the same things in their basement as we did in mine: my first bike with training wheels that my father couldn’t bear to part with, a few odd pieces of broken baby furniture that my mother insisted Cassie and I could make use of when we had our own kids, a rusty old water heater . . .

  “Jeff?” I called again, stealing a few more steps into the darkness.

  “Come here, Mari. I want to show you something.”

  “No thanks. I’ve had all the pleasure I can stand for one evening. I’m leaving.”

  “Come on. I just want to show you my old man’s wine collection.”

  “I don’t know a fig about wine, Jeff, so I can’t be impressed.”

  “I have a 1780 bottle of rum from John Brown’s collection. The same shit he traded for slaves.”

  “It sounds stale.”

  “Come on, be a sport. My old man lives and dies by this shit.”

  He locked his fingers around my wrist and pulled me into the musty room. Within seconds his mouth was sucking on my lips like a bottom feeder on the side of an algae-laden fish tank. His hands swept under my shirt and laced up through the band of my bra, and before I could even spit out his slimy saliva, my bra was up around my upper chest and Jeff ’s mouth was busy at my nipple.

  I spit, then pushed him away.

  “What’s the matter, Mari? You don’t like the way I kiss?”

  “Was that a kiss? I thought it was drool while you were feeling me up.”

  He laughed demonically and lunged at me again.

  Since being polite was no longer an option, I drew my knee up and knocked him against a wall of wine. Several bottles clanged in their shelving but despite Jeff ’s overactive sexual thirst not a drop was spilled.

  “You fuckhead,” I said. “They should have traded you to Africa. Mayflower my ass.”

  Jeff straightened his hair. “You have no sense of humor, Marianna.”

  “You, on the other hand, are a real joke.”

  While he was formulating his next sentence, I left the cellar and walked straight out to my car. As I was trying to get the key into the lock, I heard Jeff ’s voice behind me.

  “Were you with your usual entourage from the office?”

  I ignored him and popped the lock open.

  “How long were you there? Did you see it? Hastings’s body smash through the windshield of the car?”

  My hand trembled on the door handle.

  “My buddies and I were at Haven Brothers when we heard the sirens and went outside. You were at the corner backing off into the Pine Street alley. Hastings must have been hit while we were eating wieners all-the-way. Awesome.”

  “Haven Brothers wieners—awesome is right. I’m still trying to uncover their magic sauce recipe,” I said, with as much ennui as I could muster.

  He apparently didn’t appr
eciate my humor. Or the fact that he couldn’t get a rise out of me.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are, Melone? You’re a homegrown little Rhody girl who thinks she made it big by going to some second-rate law school. You’ll never get one up on me.”

  “I think maybe I did. Screwing you that one time was about as close to a mercy fuck as I’ll ever get. And guess what? You flunked the audition.”

  But as I was verbally beating Jeff up, my multitasking brain realized that if it had been light enough downtown for Jeff to recognize me the night Hastings was murdered, the killer may have seen me too. Would the killer be able to identify me when he met me at the arraignment? I could just see it now. The tables turned as the murderer pointed to me from the defendant’s table. “I know her! She saw me that night and never told anyone. Obstruction of justice! Withholding evidence! Arrest that woman!”

  “Why don’t you admit it, Mari? You broke up with me because deep in your heart of hearts you’re gay. You and those other dykey friends of yours. And don’t tell me Shannon’s straight. She fucks anything that moves.”

  “If I’m such a dyke then why are you so pissed that I dumped you? Come to think of it, why’d you ask me out to begin with?”

  “I was fooled by your tits.”

  “Suck on this one,” I said. “If you come near me again I’ll have you arrested for rape.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re all done.”

  “With you, finally, I hope.”

  “With me and a lot more.”

  I climbed into my trusty Jeep and peeled off through the tunnel of Jeff ’s hopefully hollow threats. As soon as I was out of view, I called Shannon.

  “Jeff saw me on Pine Street,” I whispered into my phone. “From outside Haven Brothers.”

  “Christ almighty! He saw Hastings go down too?” she whispered back.

  “No. He was with some of his frat friends when they heard the sirens. When they came out to see what the fracas was about, Jeff recognized me as I was taking off back into the alley.”

  “Put that little shit on the phone. I’ll break his balls and then slit his carotid if he breathes a word of it.”

  “He’s not with me. I’m alone.”

  “Then what the hell are you whispering for?” she roared. “I’ll call Laurie and Beth. Tomorrow morning, eight sharp, the Dial-up for breakfast.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Green Eggs and Spam

  THE DIAL-UP MODEM DINER was a dilapidated coffee shop in another hypogenous alley of downtown Providence. This place catered almost exclusively to regulars. On rare occasions a regular might get an uninoculated friend to tag along if the former offered to pay the medical bills in the likely event of ptomaine poisoning. Otherwise no one still using his birth name would enter alone or willingly. Defense attorneys and judges ate there. Discriminating criminals ate there. Most of the AG prosecutors had informal breakfast meetings there, excepting that handful of Ivy-educated Lord and Lady Fauntleroys who were on a separate career track and would loll into the AG’s office circa nine a.m. after eating breakfast at home with their mothers or cooks.

  More importantly, the Dial-up was one of the few establishments, like the Fez, whose owners feared reprisals from their choleric, oftentimes armed, patrons if they dared enforce the no-smoking ban.

  Shannon and Laurie were sitting alone at a table in the back. Shannon tapped the business end of her unlit Camel against the Formica tabletop. (She had recently weaned herself from the unfiltered model. But bad habits die hard.)

  “What’s this about Little Gidget Kendall? Is he gonna rat us out?” Shannon would never dignify Jeff by using his given first name.

  “He was steaming last night when I rebuffed his latest rape attempt.”

  Shannon called to our waitress. “Hey! Three javas over here—and a pony of Sambuca.”

  I lowered my head. “Jesus Christ, Shannon.”

  Without looking at me, she said, “Okay, what do we do about the Little Prince?”

  The waitress approached with our coffees sans Sambuca. “I’ll bring Beth a bagel,” Laurie said calmly. “Jeff has her locked up in his office, probably taking friggin’ shorthand on his lap!”

  “Apropos of which,” Shannon said, “I’ve got Bethy applying to some local law schools.”

  “ ‘Apropos of which’?” I repeated.

  “What, Melone, I can’t talk fancy like you once in a while?” said Shannon, throwing her Camel to the table and rifling through her pockets for a match.

  Laurie flipped through the menu for effect. “It is too early in the morning for a smoke, Shannon.”

  “I’ve been up since five,” she fired back. “This is lunch for me.” Shannon ran her fingers through her unruly blonde hair and it immediately rebounded, sticking up straighter in the air than ever. “I’m worried about Kendall. I was up all night trying to figure it from every angle. If what we did compromises the case, one way or another we’re going to have to come clean. I have no intention of going to my grave with guilt on my conscience. Maybe we should tell Vince before Kendall does.”

  Laurie looked at me. “ Uh-oh, move over, Mari, now Shannon’s getting morality. She must have gotten a bum mammogram reading.”

  The waitress was back at our table.

  “Two eggs on hash, wheat toast, and a refill.” Shannon held her cup up to the waitress. “And my tits are just fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” the waitress said.

  “Two poached eggs on porcelain,” I ordered.

  “You want those hard, right?” she asked me.

  Shannon answered for me. “We always want them hard.”

  “Shannon’s right, Laur,” I said. “Maybe it is time to tell Vince and let him make the call. Maybe after drilling us and realizing we saw nothing worth reporting, he’ll just let it go.”

  “He won’t,” Laurie said. “If for no other reason than he’ll be worried about his own skin. Because don’t forget, then Jeff will have all of us under his thumb. Vince will never let Jeff have that power over him. Or anyone else for that matter.”

  And what Laurie hadn’t said was that Vince wasn’t a crook at heart. His sensitivity to arrogant people like Carlyle made him morally cognizant of every professional move he made. Privately he used to counsel me that having Italian last names made us vulnerable to the presumption of mob connections. And for precisely that reason, when and if he found out that the girls and I were at the Fez knocking down drinks after hours, we (especially me) were in for some serious repercussions.

  “Oink. Oink,” Laurie suddenly singsonged through gritted teeth.

  Shannon and I twisted round in our seats to see Vince swaggering our way, sporting one of his deliberately disingenuous grins. Come to think of it, I’d never seen a look of unadulterated happiness on Vince’s puss. He was either laughing at someone, or his face was scarred with its permanent scowl.

  “Groan, sigh,” said Shannon. “Not a word to him yet,” she said to Laurie and me.

  Vince was stocky, solid, and physically prepossessing. His big frame and deliberate strides exuded power like a long black limousine idling at a curb. He liked cheap boxed pasta and expensive French wines. He’d been known to covertly decant Chateau Latour into basket-woven Chianti bottles to appear true to his Italian heritage. Vince shopped at Louis Boston, Louie’s in Milan, or off the back of Lou’s truck in Silver Lake. He wore argyle cashmere socks, a gaudy eighteen-karat gold Rolex watch, and practiced every double standard in the book. Vince had many faces, but no one saw the one in his mirror before he went to bed at night.

  And there he was, looming and in our faces. His corpulent belly, vested in a stylish, handmade charcoal gray suit, was pushing so heavily against the table edge that its spindly legs squawked a few inches along the floor.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the female half of the Brady Bunch.”

  Shannon had found a match and was lighting up that Camel with no protest this time from either Laurie or me. Vinc
e, it was clear, had no interest in fencing with Shannon. It was me he’d come to see.

  “So, Meloni, Jeff told me about last night. You and Carlyle cozying up.”

  “Jeff was too busy admiring himself in the mirror to see anything that happened last night. What else did he say?”

  Shannon kicked me under the table while Vince was dragging over a chair that had been minding its business at a table across the aisle. No sooner had he plunged his wrecking ball of a body into the chair than our waitress came by and placed a cup of coffee in front of him. He took a Merit menthol out of a shirt pocket and lit it with Shannon’s matches. His nails were clean and shiny from a new manicure and the stones in his gold cuff links were black onyx as he pointed his finger at me. “You’re high profile with this Holton murder, Meloni. Everything you do now is under a microscope. Don’t screw up on me.”

  Then he suddenly tacked: “They found the Hastings car parked down by the river at Fox Point. Looks like she was cut up in her own car, dumped from it, and he abandoned it there. Cops are going over it now with a fine-tooth comb. Problem is, most of those rich brats are slobs because they had to leave their maids home, so finding anything probative in her car is going to be like finding a toothpick at the Johnston Landfill. I’ll need DNA from every kid on campus to make a match.”

  “Hey,” Laurie said, “what about the blanket? Anything from forensics yet?”

  Vince nodded broadly. “Best news of the day. It was from Holton student health services. But again, it had a couple of thousand hairs on it—all from different sources. I guess they don’t believe in doing laundry over there.” He looked directly at me. “That blanket’s our arrow pointing right to the school.”

  He checked the time on his big shiny watch. “Meloni, wipe all that egg off your face and get back to the office. And no more drinking until this case is over, especially at the seedy joints.”