Playing Dead

by R. G. Belsky

  That was the key. Moderation. Just like everything else in life. It was simple.

  Or so I told myself anyway.

  But that was all bullshit too.

  I knew the truth. The truth was that I was like some alcoholic who convinces himself that it’s okay for him to drink socially. He’ll do it too. For a while. Maybe a few days, a few weeks, a few months—even years. But then one night he’ll just keep drinking. He’ll fall off the wagon big time—and then he’ll be right back where he started again. A hopeless drunk. Well, that was like me with gambling. Either I gambled or I didn’t gamble. There was no middle ground. My gambling was a sickness, and I had to beat it. If I didn’t, then it would destroy me.

  The first time I ever gambled was with my father. When I was eleven, he took me to a race track—where I bet a dollar on each of the nine races. I won them all. My father won too, which made him very happy. That made me happy too because I knew he didn’t have a very happy life. All in all, it was just a great day. I felt as if I had found a home.

  By the time I was a teenager, I was using the money from my paper route and allowance to bet on pro football and basketball with a bookmaker who lived in a very bad neighborhood. I had to pedal my bike over there to pay off my losses and collect my winnings. Every time I did, I was convinced someone was going to mug me for my money. They never did, but one day someone stole my bicycle from where it was parked. I had to walk five miles to get home.

  In college, I would cut classes and hitchhike to Atlantic City for the weekend. I had spent weeks perfecting a system to win at blackjack when I was supposed to be studying. I tried out the system in small increments at first, winning between fifty and a hundred dollars each time. By Friday night, I was up ten thousand dollars. Sometime during the early morning hours of Saturday, I lost almost everything I had won. On Saturday afternoon, I was flat broke. I called my parents and asked them for money to take a bus home. They wired it to me, and I gambled that away too. Then I tried my college roommate. After that, an ex-girlfriend. I bet everything they sent me and kept losing. Eventually, I ran out of people to call. On my way back, a man who picked me up hitchhiking tried to touch my leg and I fled his car at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. I had to wait an hour and a half before I could find another ride. It was a cold night in February, and at some point it began to snow. I got back to my college on early Monday morning, where everyone was mad at me because I owed them money. I still believed in my blackjack system though. I knew if I tried it just one more time, I’d be a winner.

  I never minded the losing. The winning more than made up for it.

  And for a lot of years I managed to keep my head above water.

  Toward the end—after Susan and Joey died and I plunged even deeper into gambling to try to forget about my pain—the stakes got higher and higher.

  My sports betting by then basically consisted of desperate longshots. Four-team parleys that I’d play for thousands of dollars in the hopes of getting one big score. My average bet on a four-team parley was two thousand dollars. If all four teams covered their respective spreads, I’d walk away with $22,000. It happened a few times. But not enough.

  At the race track, my wager of choice was a forty-dollar exacta bet. That meant I put forty dollars down on each of the six combinations that three horses can do if they’re bet to finish first or second. If I hit one of these, I was set for the day. But on a bad day, I’d be out at least a thousand dollars. A bad week meant I was five thousand in the hole.

  Looking back on it all now, the thing I remember the most is that first day at the track with my father and the simple joy I felt when our horses won.

  We are all our parents’ children. What they do while we’re growing up—whether it’s intentional or not—sometimes stays with us through our entire lives. My father liked to gamble. Not the way I did, just in a small, very controlled way. He played the lottery, he went to the track once in a while, he enjoyed a neighborhood poker game with friends. For him it was an escape.

  My parents’ marriage wasn’t a very happy one. I never knew exactly why. I do know my father felt cheated by life. He never got to do the things he wanted to do. He was a very intelligent man, but his family never had enough money to send him to college. So he joined the army instead. When he came out, he wanted to go to school on the GI bill and become an electrical engineer. But then he got my mother pregnant with me, so he had to get married and find a job instead. That was what you did when you got somebody pregnant in those days. I don’t think the two of them ever really got along. My mother was a good person, but she was very high-strung and demanding. Eventually she just wore my father out. The biggest fights they had were about his job. He worked as an inspector at a factory that made automobile parts. He was bored by the work, and still dreamed of someday becoming an electrical engineer. Early on when I was growing up—I guess I was maybe eight or nine—he got accepted into an engineering program at the University of Washington in Seattle that would allow him to go to school at night and have an apprentice engineering job during the day. He told my mother he wanted to move there. He said it was what he’d wanted to do all his life. I’d never seen my father so excited and hopeful and optimistic.

  She refused.

  After that, I think he just gave up. Years later, after he’d suffered his first heart attack, I went to see him in the hospital. I had just started working at the Banner and I was full of excitement about my job and the newspaper business and New York City. He smiled as I sat there next to his bed, letting it all spill out of me. He seemed very pleased.

  “Whatever you do, Joe,” he said to me in a weak, raspy voice, grasping my hand in his, “make sure you enjoy life. Have fun. Have some excitement. Enjoy the ride. I never did. But it’s not too late for you.”

  My father’s gone. My mother’s dead too.

  But I still think about them a lot.

  Maybe that’s why it’s so important to me that my life is filled with passion and excitement. Because their lives never were. So far, I’ve found that kind of passion and excitement in three things—newspapers, my marriage to Susan, and gambling. When things were going good in my newspaper career and when I was head over heels in love with Susan, I never got too out of control in my gambling. I didn’t need it as much. But once those things were gone, I plunged deeper and deeper into gambling until it nearly destroyed me.

  Of course, that was a long time ago. Things were different now. I had Carolyn—she was a great woman. I had a great job at the public relations agency. I had a great life. So what was my problem anyway? Why was I thinking about gambling? And Susan? And those things my father had said to me from his hospital bed before he died?

  Well, the truth is I was still looking for excitement.

  And I hadn’t found any in a long time.

  Until the Great Pretenders.

  So here I was now, standing in an Off-Track Betting parlor, ready to put down money on a horse race.

  I put my money back in my pocket, turned around, and walked out the door.

  Okay.

  That was easy.

  I was able to handle that crisis just fine. I knew why too. I had a job to do.

  I was going to prove that Lisa Montero was innocent. Then I was going to catch the last of the Great Pretenders. That was my passion right now. As long as I had that, I’d stay away from Off-Track Betting parlors. And the even worse temptations that were out there. I didn’t need anything else until this story was over.

  I just wasn’t sure what was going to happen after that.

  Chapter 34

  Lisa called me at my hotel on the night before she was supposed to appear in court for her hearing.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” I told her.

  “Can you come over and see me?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, I’m feeling very alone.”

  I remembered what Rollins had said about me getting too clo
se to this case. Ackerman too. Even Andy Kramer seemed worried about my relationship with Lisa.

  “I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea,” I said.

  “Please.”

  “Don’t you have anybody else you can call?”

  “I want you!”

  Lisa was wearing a red silk blouse and a pair of tight jeans when I got to her apartment. Her long black hair was piled up on top of her head. She looked terrific. She poured me a drink, then got one for herself and sat down on the couch next to me. She seemed very upset. Close to tears.

  “I’m sorry I had to make you come over here and babysit me like this tonight,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I guess everything just caught up with me all at once. I’m . . . I’m worried.”

  “You have nothing to be afraid of,” I told her soothingly. “You’re innocent.”

  She looked over at me and smiled gratefully.

  “Well, at least I’ve managed to convince one person of that.”

  “You’ll convince a jury too.”

  “I don’t know . . .” She began to cry. “I don’t know anything anymore. . . .”

  I moved closer to her and put my arm around her. I could smell her perfume. I could feel the warmth of her body. It took all my willpower not to take this gorgeous woman in my arms and kiss her right there. It would have been so easy.

  “It’s going to be fine, Lisa,” I said. “You’ll see. Everything will work out okay.”

  She leaned closer to me now and buried her face in the front of my shirt.

  “I’m really not a bad person,” she sniffled.

  “You’re a terrific person.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest.”

  She looked up at me and our eyes met. I was only inches away from her lips now.

  In all the time I’d been with Carolyn, I really tried hard to love her.

  I knew she was good for me.

  By the time I met Carolyn, I was about as close to rock bottom as a person can get. I’d lost a half dozen jobs, I was in gambling debts up to my ears, and I hadn’t had a real relationship with a woman since Susan died. I was out of control. I was a mess. And, most of all, I was scared. Scared about what was going to happen next. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Carolyn saved me.

  That day I met her in the coffee shop in Harrisburg changed everything. I was all the way back now. I had a job. I had a relationship. I had a life. Carolyn was responsible for all of it. I could never have done it without her.

  And so—even though I kept having the flickers of secret doubt, these feelings that something was missing—I said yes to everything she wanted.

  The move to Princeton.

  Working for her father’s public relations company.

  The wedding plans.

  I tried.

  I really tried.

  But, you see, that was the thing that was different about Lisa. I didn’t have to try at all. I knew from the first minute I talked to her that she was the right one. That had only happened to me once before. With Susan.

  Holding Lisa in my arms now, I tried to rationalize as best I could what I was about to do. It wouldn’t be fair to Carolyn to marry her if I didn’t really love her. We’d be living a lie. Sooner or later, she’d find out the truth—and then it would be even worse. I couldn’t do that to a fine person like Carolyn. This was really the best thing for her.

  Of course, that was all an excuse. It wasn’t Carolyn that I was thinking about. It was Lisa.

  I knew what I was going to do.

  I had no choice.

  I was all out of willpower.

  I leaned down and kissed her.

  Lisa seemed surprised. She hesitated for just a second. Then she kissed me back. Cautiously. Tentatively. Like a swimmer trying out the water for the first time.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this, should we?” she said.

  I answered by kissing her for a second time.

  She seemed flustered.

  “Are you going to do that again?” she asked.

  I nodded. Our lips were together now as we talked.

  “Is that all right with you?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh . . .”

  We were locked in an embrace now. This was the real thing. All of her hesitation was gone.

  I maneuvered myself down onto the couch on top of her. I kissed her gently at first, then more and more passionately. My hands stroked her hair and began to explore her body. She dug her nails into my back and began to moan softly.

  “Do you want to go into the bedroom?” she asked.

  Later that night, we sat up in her bed into the early morning hours—eating takeout sandwiches we’d ordered from a deli downstairs and telling each other about our lives in that excited, nonstop way two people do when they’ve just made love for the first time.

  “Well, at least you haven’t lost your appetite,” I said.

  “Sex always makes me really hungry.”

  She took a big bite out of her sandwich. A huge gob of mayonnaise squirted out and onto her cheek. She wiped some of it away, but there was still some left.

  I leaned over and kissed her there softly until it was gone.

  “We’ll have a big victory party when you’re acquitted,” I whispered into her ear.

  She smiled and hugged me tightly.

  “No more secrets, okay?” she said.

  “You’re keeping secrets from me?” I asked.

  “No. You are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me what happened to you at the Banner,” she said. “Why did you get fired?”

  I sighed. I knew I was going to have to talk about this with her sooner or later. Now was as good a time as any.

  “Did you ever hear of a man named Walter Billings?” I asked her.

  “Should I?”

  “He was a councilman back then. A big Bible-quoting, family values kind of guy. A real crusader. Well, he organized a crackdown against prostitutes. Put a lot of them in jail.”

  She nodded.

  “Anyway, I got this tip that he was seeing a call girl himself. I staked him out—and sure enough, I caught him going into this hotel with a blonde. I told my editor I needed more time to check it out. But the editor went with it anyway. It was a mistake.”

  “She wasn’t a call girl?”

  “No. She turned out to be some Bible student Billings was trying to recruit for his campaign. The paper had to run a big correction, and Billings threatened a lawsuit. But then he committed suicide. No one ever found out why.”

  “Maybe he really did have something to hide,” Lisa suggested.

  “Yeah, I’ve always wondered about that myself.”

  “What happened to the editor who made you run the story?” Lisa asked.

  “He got promoted. He claimed I’d told him I checked the story out—and that it was fine. Everyone believed it. Everyone that mattered anyway. Hell, I think even he believes it now.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Jack Rollins. He’s the executive editor at the Banner.”

  Lisa was snuggled up close to me in bed. Her head was lying on my chest. We’d just made love again.

  “Were you ever married?” she asked.

  “A long time ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “She died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged.

  “Sometimes you remind me of her,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “You just do.”

  “Did you love her very much?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” she smiled.

  I thought about my marriage to Susan. But I was remembering another part of it this time. Lots of times our memories play tricks on us. We talk about all the good times, and forget about the bad. Sure, there were good times with Susan. But there were plenty of bad times too.

  The arguments. The crying. The endless
complaints that I was never around.

  It was all coming back to me now.

  The whole thing became a vicious cycle for us. We fought about me not being home enough to spend time with her and Joey. And the more we fought, the less I wanted to be there. I began looking for the passion in my life in other places.

  By the end, I was hardly ever there for her. I’d work long hours at the Banner, hang out at bars all night, and spend whatever time I had left over gambling somewhere. I still loved Susan. I always loved Susan. But I thought I could have it all. All the passion and thrills I craved out of life, then her waiting for me at home whenever I was ready. Looking back on it now, I guess I was a disaster waiting to happen.

  And when the disaster did strike—and I lost my job—I blamed everyone else. The Banner. The editors there. Other reporters who I thought didn’t stick up for me. Everyone but myself.

  I still think I got a raw deal back then on the Walter Billings story.

  But maybe I was at fault too. Maybe my judgement was skewered. I didn’t have much of a grip on my personal life, and maybe I let things slip a bit in my professional one too. Maybe this one was someone else’s fault. But maybe I would have screwed up the next time. I was pushing the envelope too much. Living too close to the edge. The odds were bound to catch up with me, sooner or later. They always do. At the gambling table and in life.

  But I’ll tell you a secret.

  Something I never admitted to anyone. Not to Carolyn. Not to any of the shrinks I saw after Susan and Joey died. Not even to myself, for a long time anyway. But here it is. Despite everything that happened in my life back then—all the disasters, all the problems, all the turmoil—there is one kernel of truth that I have come to realize.

  I miss it.

  I miss the excitement.

  “What’s going to happen to me tomorrow?” Lisa asked, looking up at me in bed with an anxious expression.

  “It’s called a pretrial hearing,” I said. “The prosecution will present the reasons why they believe you should be charged with murder. Your lawyer will move for a dismissal, claiming there’s not enough evidence. The whole thing will only take a few days. Then a judge will make the decision.”