The Man Who Loved Women to Death

by David Handler

  5. the answer man goes uptown

  New York City, December 12

  Friend E—The Christmas shoppers are out in full force. You’ve got to see it to believe it. The pushing and shoving. The honking and cursing. The flat-out craziness. And for what, to buy a bunch of stupid shit nobody needs and won’t use? One good look at Christmas in New York, E, and I’ve got this to say—the wrong people in this world got all of the money.

  And you would not believe the women. Especially if you move on up Madison Avenue into the 60s and 70s, where the Park Avenue rich bitches shop, all of them so slim and sophisticated, noses stuck up in the air, shoulders thrown back, hips swinging. It’s hard to believe, looking at them, that they are just as miserable as all the rest. Maybe even more so. Because, damn, they got what every woman wants—great looks, great bod, some rich guy who’s fool enough to give her every cent he’s got. They got it all, right? Only, it ain’t working, E. I can see it in their eyes. I can see how lonely they are. How starved. How desperate for someone to come along and save them from their pointless lives.

  And that someone is me. They don’t know it. But I do.

  I was on Madison in the low 60s when I saw her coming out of this Italian shoe store, looking tall and lean. Looking like she was going somewhere that mattered. She had on a camel coat, black leggings and a pair of moccasins. I had to use my imagination a little this time, E, because she wasn’t doing the makeup thing and her frizzy black hair was tied back and she had on these big, ugly horn-rimmed glasses. But there could be no doubt about it—this was a major honey. My major honey.

  I followed her down Madison. A big black limo followed her, too. She stopped to throw a couple of shopping bags in back and say something to the driver. When she got to 57th Street she hung a left and went into the Ghurka leather store. I didn’t much like the feel of it. Too small. I waited outside. She wasn’t in there for long, and she came out empty-handed. Headed over to Fifth, where the cabs jammed the intersection, riding their horns, and the people were shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk and some guy was roasting chestnuts and another guy was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army and another guy was selling flowers. I bought a bunch from him, cost me five bucks. I thought maybe she was going into Tiffany’s but she crossed over to the other side of Fifth and went in Bergdorf Goodman. A prime-time ladies’ clothing store, nothing but the fancy designer stuff, floor after floor of it. Standing just inside the front door was this little sugar-lipped Chinese honey offering free perfume samples to the folks. What a little cutie. Making, what, six dollars an hour to come all the way here from Queens during Christmas season to spray that bad-smelling shit on people? Little honey would be better off dead.

  Another time, Friend E. Not today. I already had business today.

  I followed my own honey up the escalator to the second floor. I didn’t exactly blend in there, as you can well imagine, but the flowers helped me out some. I just looked like one of those messengers you see around town, making another delivery, trying to keep it together.

  She ended up in this shop with stuff by one of those Italian designers that got only one name. She was checking out a navy blue suit. There were a few other women beaming on stuff. One clerk. But nobody was standing too close to her.

  Until I was.

  I said That’s a crime against nature, you know. She looked me up and down, cold as cold gets, and said What is? I said Pulling your hair back that way. It’s much too beautiful. Well thanks, she said, trying to act like she wasn’t interested. But she was. She was a woman like all of the rest, E. Desperate to be saved. I said These flowers are for you. She said As if, I couldn’t take them. I said Yes you could. She took them. Sure she did. I asked her what her name was. She said it was Cassandra. I said Wait, don’t I know you? Because she did look familiar, like maybe I saw her once in a movie. She said Well, I am on television sometimes. I said That can’t be it. I don’t own a television. She said Geez, how do you stay in touch with what’s happening? I said From life. She said Get outta here, that’s a totally nothing magazine now, Jurassic fucking Park. I said Not the magazine, life itself. Then I launched into this whole bullshit argument about how too many people experience life secondhand from their lounge chairs instead of getting out there and talking to the people. I made it all up on the spot, but she was real intrigued. Hooked, you might even say.

  I’m telling you, it’s a gift I have, Friend E. I am blessed.

  She was staring at me now. Had these weird eyes, like great big saucers of cream. She said Y’know, I’d swear you look familiar, too. Where do I know you from? I said You don’t, but I hear that a lot. She said Listen, let’s go someplace. I said Where to? She said My place. I wanna hear some more about your ideas on television and society—ties in with a story I’m doing. I said You’re a writer? No way, so am I. And she said Get outta here, that’s so cool. And out the door we went.

  Me thinking this one’s going to be like a hot knife going through butter.

  That limo of hers was waiting out front for her. Right away she started to get in. Right away I said No way. Didn’t want any driver remembering me, E. She said C’mon, what’s your problem, cookie? I said Nothing, I just don’t believe in limos. She said What, you wanna take a cab? And I said No, the subway. And she said What are you, weird? And I said Hey, maybe some other time. And she said Yeah, yeah, shewa. We’ll take the subway.

  We took the N train down to 14th Street, her acting real tense and paranoid the whole way, like she thought somebody was going to mug her. My guess was she hadn’t been down below with the people in ten years. One old lady sitting across from us seemed to recognize her. But she didn’t say nothing. Nobody did.

  Cassandra lived alone on West Tenth Street. Owned the whole damned building. Not what I’d do with my money but, hey, it’s a free country. Or so I’ve been told. There were a million pictures of her with famous people plastered all over the walls. Man, this honey knew everybody. Didn’t matter one bit, though. She was still praying for me to come along. She needed me, E. Maybe even more than the others did. Because this one, this Cassandra, she had the looks, the money, the career … And yet she was alone and miserable and she knew it. I sure knew it. The pain in her eyes was enough to make me cry. But I would make that pain go away now. I would make it go away forever. I was here for her. I had the power.

  I AM the power.

  She offered me a drink. I said No, thanks. She told me to sit down. Then she went upstairs and came down with a tape recorder. Put it on the coffee table, turned it on and said So tell me what you’re not telling me. Suddenly acting tough. And I said Huh? And she said You followed me all the way to Bergdorf’s from Madison. You picked me up for a reason. You got something you wanna dish, go ahead and dish. You want it off the record we’ll make it off the record. My word is gold. I didn’t get to where I am by boning my sources. Go on, dish me, do me, c’mon.

  Friend E, I just sat there staring at her like a fool. Because she was like this whole different person. Nasty and hard in that New York kind of way. Finally, I said You’ve got me all wrong, baby. I just want to get to know you. She said You’re wasting my time with this bullshit. You want to talk about Him and we both know it. So let’s talk about Him. And I said Talk about who? And she said The answer man, who else?

  Whoa, trip on this a second, will you, E? She KNEW who I was. She’d HEARD of me. But she didn’t know she was sitting there TALKING to me!

  Damn, talk about a player being a step slow going to the hoop.

  She eased off a little now. Tried the gentle approach, which went something like this … Cassandra: Is he a friend of yours? Is that what it is? Me: Yes, that’s what it is. He’s a friend. A real close friend. Cassandra: He’s really something, isn’t he? Me: That he is. I have a huge amount of respect for him. Cassandra: Gawd, so do I. Wanna tell me his name, cookie? Me: Actually, I can do better than that.

  What I did, E, is I got up and sat down right next to her on the sofa and said
You have to turn off the tape first. And she said Why? And I said Because that’s the way it has to be. Just turn it off. Turn it off and I’ll tell you the answer man’s name. She said Promise? I said Promise. So she reached over and turned it off.

  And that’s when I gave her the special something I’d brought for her. The gift that would take her out of that lonely misery of hers. I had it tight around her throat before she could even react. She let go much easier than the others did, which surprised me. Her being so tough and all. I think I must have crushed her windpipe, because she made this gagging noise and right away pitched over onto the floor, her eyes rolling back in her head. Twitched once and was still. I put my brand on her, grabbed that tape recorder and got out of there, my deed done.

  It was a good deed, too. A happy deed. I had a real spring in my step all the way home. I felt fulfilled. I felt useful. That’s one of the nicest things about my work, E. That feeling of being able to give something back to the community. It does almost as much for me as it does for them, you know. It’s especially nice to find out that others have heard about my work and are responding to it in a positive way. My hope, just between us boys, is that I can inspire people to join me. Just trip on this a minute, E. Think about what a world it would be if each one of us performed a small, random act of kindness every day. That’s not so much to ask of people. A few minutes. That’s all it takes—a few minutes. But what a difference you can make. Think about what a difference I’ve made in this big, cold, heartless city in just a few short days. Think about what a world it could be if we ALL gave something back. Think about that.

  Damn, I’m starting to carry on. I just feel so good I may have to go out and party. I miss you, man. See if you can slip out the back way. We’ll make us a weekend of it. I know I can get you laid. No problem meeting beautiful honeys in this town. There are more than you can shake your big ugly stick at.

  Your pal, T

  p.s. Money helps. Bring some, the more the better

  Fourteen

  THE NEWS WAS WALL-to-wall answer man for some time after that. The no-brain supermodels and no-game slam dunkers and no-nothing politicians could pretty much forget about getting any ink or airtime. People wanted to know about the answer man, period. They wanted to know about his unmasking as Tuttle Cash, the former Heisman trophy winner and Rhodes scholar and close personal friend of Stewart Hoag, that dashing onetime It Boy of contemporary American literature. They wanted to know about Tuttle’s incredible gridiron feats. About his long and painful fall. About his dramatic suicide on the field where he had known his greatest triumphs. They wanted to know it all. Every detail. There was, believe it or not, a high road here. Sports Illustrated put its best people to work on an insightful cover story that took over most of that week’s issue. ESPN threw together an instant one-hour special, From Heisman to Madman. Pretty thorough work, actually, considering that they didn’t have Tuttle as a source. Or me.

  Of course, this being America in the nineties, there was a broad, four-lane low road, too. No speed limit here. The tabloids dug up a seemingly endless bevy of women who’d once had violent, kinky sex with Tuttle—going all the way back to the ex-wife of his geometry teacher at Choate. Not surprisingly, the hottest figure to emerge from obscurity was Luz Santana, exotic dancer, who got six figures from one of the TV shows to tell all and another six figures from Playboy to bare all. Luz also got her own worldwide web site and a recurring role on Baywatch. I don’t know if she and her new boyfriend ever got hitched. We lost touch somehow, Luz and I.

  Naturally, the whole Tansy thing came out again—in painstaking, ugly detail. Not that Tansy would go anywhere near it. She wasn’t talking, no matter how much money they offered her. Me, I didn’t stop to think for a moment how much I could get for that awful photo album. It didn’t occur to me. Not once.

  Cassandra Dee, the answer man’s fifth victim, went from rising TV tabloid glam princess to media martyr overnight. Her emotional on-air plea—“Call me, fax me, E-mail me, I’m yours”—became one of those phrases that catch on. Everyone in the one-name sphere started saying it. Newt. Deion. Batman. Whitney Houston even put it to music—if you call what she does music. I call it breathing. In death, Cassandra got her second People cover and a degree of respectability that had eluded her in life. There was even talk of setting up a scholarship fund in her name at the staid Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, which would have made her shriek with laughter. I can practically hear her now.

  Inspector Dante Feldman started shopping a proposal for his story, The Hunt for the answer man, around town almost immediately. Those publishers who lost out on the big book ended up bidding on his, and one of them overpaid dearly for it. The big book, of course, was my book. Or I guess I should say our book—for it was to be a collaboration of sorts. Part of it would be the five chapters that Tuttle had sent me, including his cover letters. Part of it would be my account of my life and times with him, an intimate biography climaxing with my blow-by-blow reenactment of those harrowing last days. My involvement with the police. My friendship with Cassandra. What it was like discovering her body. What it was like discovering his body.

  Damn, there were a lot of bodies.

  Three publishers stayed in on the final bidding. And in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes, the answer man was worth more than Colin Powell. Of course, there were some legal hurdles to jump. Technically, those five chapters weren’t mine to sell. They belonged to Tuttle’s estate—his mother in Pennsylvania, where his body was being sent for burial. And then there was the Son of Sam law, which says that no one who has been found guilty of a crime may be allowed to profit from that crime. This one was a bit thornier, since Tuttle had never actually been convicted or even so much as charged with any of the killings. One publisher’s lawyer was even floating the theory that the Son of Sam law didn’t apply here. Not that any publisher would care to test this particular theory out by getting sued by the victims’ families. Me neither. I hate going to court. I never know what to wear, and no one ever smiles. Still, these hurdles could be and would be cleared, given enough lawyers and money. And there was no shortage of either of those. There would be a book. A major movie, too. I could even write the screenplay if I chose to. The money was huge. All of it was huge.

  The trouble was, I wasn’t sure if I wanted any of it. I was deeply torn. Part of me wanted to get Tuttle’s sorry life story down on paper myself, and get it right. Part of me wanted to turn my back on the whole goddamned thing. Because I didn’t want to live with it any longer. And because, to be honest, I still hadn’t figured out what it all meant. What the so-called moral of this twisted and violent story was. Or if there even was a moral.

  So I let the faxes from my agent pile up on my dresser. Didn’t respond to them. Just brooded, which happens to be one of the things I’m best at.

  “Maybe I should bail out, Merilee,” I said as I lolled in the tub with my martini, Lulu sprawled mournfully on the tile floor next to me. She still had not gotten over Cassandra’s death. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t even touch Pam’s kippers and eggs, which for Lulu is akin to the Reverend Al Sharpton walking away from a live microphone. “Maybe I should just forget it.”

  “Maybe you should at that, darling.”

  She was in the bedroom, dressing for dinner. A rare evening off—her director was in the hospital passing a kidney stone, news of which had prompted her to remark, “There is a God.” Opening night of Wait Until Dark had been pushed back a week.

  “Then again,” I said, “maybe I won’t be able to forget it. If only I hadn’t waited. If only I’d turned him in right away. Cassandra would still be alive. He’d still be alive.…”

  “I want you to stop that this instant, mister,” Merilee commanded me, padding into the bathroom in her stockings and white silk camisole. She was searching for her hairbrush. She was always searching for her hairbrush. “You cannot blame yourself for what Tuttle Cash did.”

  “Easier said than done, Merilee.
I was involved. I was his accomplice. He made me into his accomplice.”

  She stood there in the doorway studying me, her golden hair a mass of tangles. “Hate him for it, darling?”

  “I don’t love him for it, that’s for damned sure. And now he’s bailed out and left me here to live with the consequences of what he did.”

  “Tuttle Cash was not a nice man, darling. You must have figured that out by now.”

  I said nothing, just lay there in the hot water feeling limp.

  She settled on a comb and went to work with it there in the mirror. “If it’s all of that money that’s bothering you …

  “The money’s no problem. I can set up a fund for the families of the victims. No, the money’s the easy part.” I took a sip of my martini. “Possibly it was the roar of the crowd, Merilee.”

  “The roar of the crowd, darling?”

  “Possibly he missed it so much he’d do anything to get it back. Even try to walk on water. Maybe that explains it.” I was silent a moment. “What am I saying? Nothing explains it. Nothing explains why anyone would do anything that sick.”

  Merilee lingered there, watching me in the mirror. “I phoned Tansy this afternoon.”

  “So did I. She wouldn’t take my call.”

  “She took mine.”

  “Really?” I glanced up at her. “How did she sound?”

  “Hollow and empty, poor thing. I invited her to dinner. She said dinner would be very difficult right now. I do wish there was something we could do for her.”

  “I’m afraid she’ll have to do that for herself, Merilee.” I pulled the plug in the tub and climbed out. She handed me a towel. “He wasn’t out of her life. Not really. So there’s a great big empty space there now. It’s up to her to figure out how to fill it. Her and Malachi both.” I was surprised at just how low a profile Malachi had been keeping the past couple of days. He’d shuttered the restaurant, given no interviews. Wouldn’t return my phone calls. I wondered how he was doing.