The Last Good Day

by Peter Blauner

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

  “But isn’t it true that during the time you were involved with the lieutenant, you got to know all the members of his family intimately?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess so?” Florio cast a foxy squint up at the dais, shaking her head in wry disappointment. “Isn’t it true that his mother cooked meals for you and your sister when your own mother couldn’t make it to the kitchen?”

  “Yes, that happened on a few occasions.”

  “And the lieutenant’s father helped your career as a photographer, as well,” said Gwen. “That’s true also, isn’t it?”

  “He helped me get access to things I wanted to take pictures of. Yes, that’s right.”

  The board members began muttering to one another, obviously remembering a few more of the unflattering pictures she’d taken of the town in the seventies. In the back of the courtroom, a familiar old man with a hawkish face and an unevenly mowed gray crew cut leaned forward on his cane.

  “Isn’t it also true that you had a very close relationship with the lieutenant’s older brother, Johnny, who went on to become a police officer in New York City?” Gwen Florio asked.

  Lynn froze for a second and stared down at Mike, not quite willing to believe that things were going to move in this direction. She’d been warned that the normal rules of evidence didn’t apply in this kind of hearing, that the defense lawyer could ask her literally anything. But surely there were some limits. She looked to Jack Davis at the prosecutor’s table, waiting for him to object. But he seemed lost in the fields of thought, reading documents with his legs crossed and his pale shins and old-fashioned black elastic sock garters exposed.

  “I’ve already said they were all very good to me,” she said. “Though I’m not quite sure what that has to do with what we’re talking about today.”

  She saw Barry give a slight encouraging nod, as if to say, You go, girl.

  “I’m coming to that. Shortly.” Gwen Florio smiled, the warning shot as a courtesy call. “Did there come a time when the lieutenant asked you to marry him?”

  Lynn raised her eyes to a water-stained ceiling panel, ignoring the frantic whispering among her reading-group friends in the third row. “We were both about seventeen.”

  “Mrs. Schulman, I’m standing right here, in front of you.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to object.” Jack Davis finally roused himself and got to his feet, pant cuffs dropping over his garters. “What does any of this have to do with the price of beans? I can’t see any relevance.”

  “It’s relevant because it has to do with the credibility of this witness and the particular history she has with my client.”

  Gwen Florio looked back at Mike, who was brooding at his swollen thumb, a blood red tie knotted thickly at his collar. Lynn shuddered a little, thinking about the conversation he must have had with his lawyer to prepare her for this line of questioning.

  “I’m going to allow it,” said Mayor Flynn, with a cursory rap of the gavel. “We’re not in an actual trial here. Ms. Florio has a lot more latitude in what she can ask.”

  Jack Davis gave a small shrug before he sat down, as if to say, So I tried. Lynn girded herself, adjusting her scarf, wishing she’d found the nerve to tell Barry exactly what was coming.

  “Yes, he did ask me to marry him.”

  “And did you consider the possibility?”

  She focused on a burl in the wooden balustrade before her. “Only very briefly.”

  “And can you tell us why you considered the possibility?”

  “I thought I was in love with him.”

  She looked down, the tightrope walker realizing she didn’t have a net. How does she do it, ladies and gentlemen? Why does she do it? What had possessed her to think this would be anything other than the most heinous and humiliating public disaster of her life?

  Of course, it was all her fault. She’d let shame nudge her out onto a high wire one hundred feet above safety. Shame had kept her from telling Barry the whole truth about who she used to be. But shame had kept her from backing out and not testifying today. So now she was stuck between the two points, wobbling and swaying above the gaping crowd.

  “Was there some other urgent reason that made you consider his proposal?” Gwen Florio pressed her.

  “Yes. I was pregnant.”

  The courtroom fell dead quiet. Barry’s drawn face seemed to come rushing up at her from the second row and then quickly recede.

  “And did there come a time when you decided to terminate that pregnancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so you had an abortion.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  She looked over as the court officer, Tony Shlanger, cleared his throat. His ears had turned bright pink, revealing an embryonic-looking network of veins within the thick cartilage.

  “And did you consult Lieutenant Fallon about that decision?”

  “I did.” She was transfixed, watching the color of the court officer’s ears darken as she spoke. “He wanted me to keep it. He thought we could have it and live with his parents. But then I decided it was all a little too much for me.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  Lynn looked forlornly at Barry. She’d tried to tell him, hadn’t she? She’d said, We talked very seriously about having kids. But she couldn’t even justify that excuse to herself for more than a half-second. She was a coward and a prevaricator, and this was precisely the punishment she deserved.

  “I asked my mother for the money,” she said. “And then I went into the city with my friend Sandi to get one at the Eastern Women’s Clinic downtown.”

  Her stomach dropped, and for a split second she was seventeen and back on the subway platform at Times Square with Sandi. The crowd separating them before she saw the doors close and Sandi speeding off on the downtown train without her, fingers pressed against the scratchiettied glass, mouth open in a silent wail.

  Then she was back in the courtroom, being gawked at, the tight-rope walker starting to lose her balance. Jeanine pointing and whispering behind her hands to the other book-club ladies, as if she alone could explain what was happening. Mike’s wife turning beet-red in her dark-green business suit. The mayor waving his hands, trying to get the other board members to stop whispering at him.

  A kind of humidity filled the courtroom. The water stain seemed to spread across the ceiling. And gradually it dawned on Lynn that she’d altered the temperature just by mentioning Sandi’s name, reminding everyone of the case lurking just beneath this one.

  Gwen Florio approached the stand again, holding the legal pad out in front of her as if it were a young swimmer’s Styrofoam kickboard.

  “So you disposed of my client’s child without asking his prior consent?”

  “Last I checked it was my body as well,” said Lynn defiantly.

  “All right, all right.” The mayor gaveled them both into silence, broken blood vessels lighting up like small red wires in his nose. “We’re not going to reopen the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade case here. Ms. Florio, move on please.”

  “Certainly, Your Honor.” She nodded sympathetically at Tony, the court officer, acknowledging his pain, before turning back to Lynn again. “Now, Mrs. Schulman, can you tell us what happened to your relationship with the lieutenant after you had this procedure.”

  “I believe we broke up shortly after that.”

  “Can you tell us why?”

  Lynn rubbed her eyes, seeing Barry turn slate gray, thinking he’d already heard the worst of it. “Michael became very possessive and controlling of me. He started wanting to know where I was all the time. Who I was with. He started following me around, telling me how I should dress, and what I should be taking pictures of …”

  “But isn’t it also true that you’d started seeing somebody else?”

  “Oh my God.” Lynn sank in her chair.

  She felt herself become physically ill. She looked down a
t Michael, as if to say, Is this helping you?

  But he kept his head down, scribbling notes on a Post-it pad that seemed to throb and turn a sickening shade of bright yellow before her eyes.

  “Do I really have to answer this?” Lynn looked up at the mayor.

  “I’m afraid so,” Tom Flynn said. “She can ask anything she likes, within reason.”

  “Mrs. Schulman?” Gwen Florio prompted her.

  Lynn’s chin drooped, and her chest became a groaning concave space bowing back against her spine. “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, there were others.”

  The gorge started to rise in her throat, knowing there was still even more to come.

  “Can you tell us who they were?”

  “Objection.” Jack Davis clambered to his feet. “Have we really degenerated to the point where all we’re doing is retailing lukewarm gossip?”

  “Just a little more leeway, Your Honor.” Florio looked up at the dais, her navy jacket opened enough to reveal the stark womanly drama of her hips.

  “I’ll give you about three more questions to establish some relevance, and then we’re done with this line of questioning,” the mayor rebuked her.

  “Thank you.” She nodded. “Mrs. Schulman? We’re still waiting.”

  Lynn sucked her lips, slightly dazed and dehydrated. “This was all so long ago.”

  She looked over at Barry again, hoping for some sign of understanding, but he was a black hole to her, gathering light in and giving none out.

  “You were seeing other men,” Florio prodded her.

  “I had Michael stalking me.” Lynn tried to sit up and defend herself. “He wouldn’t leave me alone …”

  “Who were these other men?”

  Florio honed in on her, moving close enough so that Lynn could smell her perfume.

  “He was just trying to protect me,” Lynn said. “We didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “Mrs. Schulman.” The lawyer’s lip cocked back. “Isn’t it true that one of those men was my client’s brother, John Fallon?”

  Lynn heard the first sharp intake of breath.

  “It’s not the way you’re making it sound.” The tightrope walker flailing her arms, trying to keep her balance.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, one of them was John Fallon.”

  She was falling now, bracing for impact.

  “What’d she say?” one of the Town Board members asked from the dais, hearing aid squealing with feedback from being turned up too loud.

  People in the gallery began to whisper to one another, their voices light and sulfurous, like a hundred little match heads igniting at the same time.

  “So you slept with my client’s older brother while you were still going out with my client?” Gwen Florio plumped her lips, as if she was impressed with this as a feat of athleticism.

  “I didn’t sleep with him,” Lynn protested weakly, already lying facedown in the sawdust. “We were friends and then …”

  “Isn’t it true that the two brothers physically fought over you?”

  “Johnny was just trying to get Mike to leave me alone …”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Jack Davis threw down a paper clip in disgust. “Are we reliving High School Confidential here? Is this a disciplinary hearing for Lieutenant Fallon or an attempt to pull the witness’s pants down in public? Frankly, I’m embarrassed and I suspect the witness is as well.”

  Lynn tried to offer him a grateful smile, as if he were an anesthesiologist arriving halfway through her open-heart surgery.

  “What I’m trying to establish is that this witness caused the breakup of a previously close-knit family that’s been an important part of this community for generations.” Florio turned to address the board. “She isn’t just this innocent victim being stalked by my client. There was a complicated history here. It’s no surprise that she was tense and ready to misinterpret anything he said when he showed up to investigate Mrs. Lanier’s homicide. She was feeling guilty.”

  Lynn opened her mouth to argue, but Jack Davis cut in.

  “I did not realize that along with being lovely and skillful as an attorney that Ms. Florio was also a talented mind reader,” he said. “Perhaps she could rent a turban and a booth at the upcoming county fair to supplement her practice.”

  “All right, both of you, stop it,” Mayor Flynn spoke up, forced into the role of beleaguered parent. Clearly, this was not what he had in mind during all those years he’d spent trawling through the local Kiwanis clubs and senior centers, looking for votes. “I hate this kind of thing. Mr. Davis, holster that famous wit of yours. Ms. Florio, finish up quickly and please spare us the graphic details.”

  “I appreciate your patience, Your Honor.” Gwen Florio nodded sweetly. “Mrs. Schulman, can you tell us what happened to the relationship between my client and his brother after your little episode involving the two of them?”

  Lynn searched for her voice. “I believe they stopped speaking for some years afterward.”

  “Would it surprise you to know that they never spoke again before John Fallon was killed?”

  “I …”

  This time, the gavel and Jack Davis’s objection arrived simultaneously.

  The mayor told Gwen Florio: “I believe we’ve heard enough about this.”

  But it was too late. Lynn had already been scraped off the ground, broken and bloodied. The book-club ladies were staring with a mixture of sympathy, embarrassment, and ill-concealed titillation.

  Mike’s wife stood up and walked out. Barry was motionless. To anyone else, he looked like a man watching a game from the sidelines. After all these years, though, Lynn was attuned to the more subtle indices: the tiny narrowing of the eyebrows, the minute thrust of the jaw. He was homicidal.

  “Mrs. Schulman, in your earlier testimony and your statement to the chief, you said that Lieutenant Fallon came to your house twice in connection with the Lanier murder. Is that correct?” Gwen Florio rested her hand on the witness stand’s railing, ready to finish her off.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And did he, in fact, ask you questions about Mrs. Lanier?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Mrs. Schulman, I understand that your husband was a prosecutor and you yourself have some experience as a newspaper photographer taking pictures at crime scenes. Is it your understanding that sometimes investigators will try to engage a witness in conversation instead of just asking question after question?”

  “I guess I’ve heard that.”

  “And did Detective Lieutenant Fallon try to do that on the two occasions that he stopped by your house?”

  “Yes, but …” She felt pitted, exhausted.

  “Didn’t he try to talk to you about whether Mrs. Lanier had any enemies?”

  “Sure, but …” She tried to rouse herself and put her guard up.

  “And did he ask whether Mrs. Lanier and her husband were having any problems in their marriage?”

  “Of course, but can I give a fuller answer?”

  Having found a new rhythm, Florio lunged ahead. “And didn’t you say, ‘Who hasn’t that’s been married this many years?’”

  Lynn flushed, hearing her own words being wielded against her. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Barry kept staring at a spot just over her head, his mouth slowly hardening.

  “And hadn’t you recently talked to the lieutenant about ‘getting together’ outside work?”

  “Socially.” Lynn turned to the board members, trying to make herself understood. “With the families.”

  But any sympathy that she’d hope to get from these dry gray men was quickly ebbing away. It didn’t matter that she was a middle-aged woman with an SUV, two kids in the local school system, and a big house on Grace Hill. They knew an ungrateful little whore when they saw one.

  “Over here, Mrs. Schulman. I’m the one asking the q
uestions.”

  Gwen Florio bared her lower teeth in disdain. “So isn’t it fair to say your relationship with the lieutenant wasn’t just the usual one between investigator and material witness?”

  “Of course not.” Lynn drew herself up, deciding she’d had enough. “He hit me when I tried to break up with him,” she said.

  Gwen Florio smiled thinly at the counterpunch. “Was that before or after he found out you were sleeping with his brother?”

  Lynn heard a reedy whisper and then a cymbal-like hiss from the spectator gallery. She looked up just in time to see Barry half-closing his eyes.

  “I wasn’t sleeping with him,” Lynn insisted.

  “Before or after you’d had sexual contact,” Gwen said blandly. “We needn’t get overly technical.”

  “Before,” Lynn conceded. “And it wasn’t …”

  “So was it really entirely unexpected you wound up kissing the lieutenant when he came by your house?” Florio cut her off again.

  “I didn’t kiss him. He tried to kiss me.”

  “Uh-huh.” Florio gave the men on the board a knowing look. “Wasn’t it actually a magnanimous gesture that he hugged you back, a sign that he was trying to forgive you for what you’d done to him and his family?”

  “No. It was something I didn’t want.”

  “Sure you didn’t.” Gwen Florio strode over to a wall and leaned against it, striking a pose of coquettish impudence. “Isn’t it true that you’re a woman worried about getting older?”

  “No. Not particularly.”

  “Sure you aren’t.”

  Lynn caught Mike staring at her and glared back at him, acknowledging his cleverness in hiring a woman lawyer. A man would have to think twice about going after her this aggressively in open court.

  “And isn’t it true that there have been strains in your marriage lately?”

  “No, not at all. I love my husband.”

  “Right.” Gwen Florio nodded. “But isn’t it true that after you came on to the lieutenant and he spurned your advances, you told your husband that you’d had an encounter in order to make him jealous?”

  “Do I seriously have to answer this?” Lynn looked at Jack Davis.

  The old lawyer gripped the sides of his chair and tried to hoist himself up again.