O, my God! I gasped, as I suddenly saw, on a shelf in his bedroom, a picture that made the blood freeze in my veins. Smiling and festively dressed, there we were—Jeff and Wally, Jake and I—in a silver-plate frame, a brutal black X slashed across each of our faces. The photo had been taken on the night of April 4. The night of my birthday party. The night that was the beginning of the end.
• • •
Some people like to throw a big blast for the birthdays that mark their decades, but I never wanted a thirtieth or a fortieth. Yet, as you will recall, the year of my forty-sixth was deeply symbolic to me. Without telling Jake exactly why I wished to celebrate this particular birthday, I made it clear that was what I wished to do. Which was how come there were sixty-two guests at our house on Saturday evening, April 4, swearing that I was looking real good for my age.
In my tosh-hugging midnight-blue crepe, in honor of which I had lost five pounds, I had to agree with my guests: I was looking real good.
I also was feeling good, though a little peculiar because beneath my roof that night were all the men with whom I had slept in my lifetime. Jake was there, of course, and so were Wally’s future in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Augustus Monti. Louis had been invited as my colleague at Harmony House and as my pal. And then, at the very last minute, I got a telephone call from Nora telling me that her husband had fallen ill and could she please bring Philip Eastlake.
At one point I watched as all four of my lovers converged upon the Design Cuisine buffet and attacked the sirloin filet and grilled baby vegetables. A question came to mind: Was I a star on a Donahue show called “My Mom Is a Slut”? or was I Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises? But then I told myself that I was allowed not to answer that question on my birthday.
Our guests took their plates to the tables for eight set up all over the house, filling the rooms with laughter and conversation, I heard Hillary . . . lowered the interest rates . . . CDF . . . CEO . . . NBC . . . great pedicure . . . they still don’t get it . . . the Vineyard. I heard carjacking . . . cut the defense budget . . . Jack Nicholson always plays Jack Nicholson . . . EEOC. Philip, having lobbed a couple of soulful glances at me, was pontificating on the Middle East peace talks, while Marvin was demanding proof from the woman on his right that a sixty-five-dollar silk tie was really superior to the beauty he was wearing—“nine-fifty, two for eighteen bucks.”
Josephine, with the camera that Wally had bought her and taught her to use, was shyly photographing the happy event, posing us four cute Kovners for a couple of family shots before we drifted off to our separate tables. When she held up the camera to shoot, however, her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t, at first, even manage to push down the button. No matter what she does, that girl turns into a nervous wreck, I said to myself impatiently—and unfairly. For later that evening I learned that it wasn’t photography that was making Josephine tremble.
Later, after our guests had finished their meal and crowded together in the dining room to watch me blow out the candles on my cake. Later, after Philip had bent to deposit a birthday kiss upon my cheek, murmuring a throaty “I want you. I need you.” Later, after Louis had whispered, “Best-looking premenopausal woman I know,” as he wrapped me in a warm but platonic embrace. Later, when people had started to leave, though several still remained, one of whom was Gilda, who happened to be not only our neighbor but our rabbi Emmanuel Silverman’s assistant rabbi.
Wally, Jo, her parents, and I were standing off to one side, sipping coffee and chatting, when Gilda—bright-eyed and bouncy, broad in the beam and beaming broadly—presented herself to Joseph and Birdie Monti.
“I didn’t want to go without meeting Josephine’s mom and dad,” she said, a warm rabbinical hand on Birdie’s arm. “This is not the time and place for a whole big discussion—”
“That’s right. It’s not,” my son interrupted.
“—but I’d just like to reassure you that conversion doesn’t mean you lose your daughter.”
All of us stared at Gilda. “What?” asked Mr. Monti. “What was that you said?”
“That just because your daughter’s converting to Judaism,” said Gilda, “doesn’t mean she’s any less your daughter.”
Our stunned little group collectively gasped. Jo’s cup and saucer dropped from her trembling fingers. Birdie Monti, bending to pick up the pieces, looked up to scan the clouded face of her mate.
“We were going to t-t-tell you all t-t-tonight,” Jo stuttered, utterly undone. “It was Wally’s b-b-b-birthday surprise for his mother.”
“And mighty surprised I am,” I said, with a desperate please-don’t-blame-this-on-me heartfeltedness. “When”—I turned to Jo—“did you decide?”
“Decide? What did she decide?” Mr. Monti demanded in a voice that silenced all conversation at the party.
“I think the rabbi just told you, sir,” said Wally.
“Let Josephine tell me,” Mr. Monti replied.
Gilda, red in the face and gasping apologies far breaking the news too soon, began to back away from our shell-shocked group. “I guess I first ought to let you all discuss this among yourselves,” she whispered nervously. “But please feel free to call if you have any questions. You know, like about the conversion classes”—Gilda kept backing away—“the Hebrew lessons, Leon Uris, the mikva . . .”
Gilda was out of there.
“Talk!” Mr. Monti bellowed to Jo. He cast a glowering glance around the room, where the guests who remained were maintaining a gape-mouthed silence. “Please,” he said oleaginously, smiling his sharky smile, “don’t let us interrupt your conversations.”
When the room started buzzing again, Joseph Monti turned to Josephine. “Okay,” he said to her, “you decided what?”
“To convert”—her voice could barely be heard—“to Judaism.”
“And why? Why are you doing this to me?”
“She isn’t doing it to you, sir,” Wally interceded.
Mr. Monti ignored him and imperiously repeated his question to Jo.
Jo, who had just finished chewing off all her fingernails one by one, now directed her small, perfect teeth to her cuticles. “It’s because of what you said about conversion,” she replied in a hoarse whisper.
Her father threw up his hands. “What did I say?”
Josephine opened her mouth to explain. Not a word emerged. She tried again. No words. Wally came to her rescue.
“You told us,” he said, “that conversion was the kind of accommodation, perhaps even sacrifice, that people in love should be more than willing to make.” He swept his expressive Mel Gibson eyes from Jo to Birdie to me. “That’s what he said.”
“And so beautifully put,” I added in an effort at a constructive intervention.
Mr. Monti ignored me.
“You knew what I meant,” he told Wally and Jo. “You both knew who was supposed to convert to what. I made”—his voice grew louder—“my wishes clear.”
Wally and Jo said nothing. Mr. Monti, his voice still louder, pressed his point. “Did I or didn’t I make my wishes clear?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Jo whispered. “You did. But then we decided—”
Wally and Jo explained that they had decided that if Jo converted to Judaism, and if Wally joined her in her Jewish studies, it would be a truly meaningful experience. Plus good for the marriage, not to mention the soul. Even if it involved, on Josephine’s part, some accommodation, even sacrifice.
Unfortunately, I was forced, though I could hardly bear to do it, to excuse myself and tear myself away. The rest of the guests were leaving and I was obliged to say some very long goodbyes. What was I missing? I wondered. What were they telling one another? Was Mr. Monti adjusting to the news? The occasional phrases that I could hear—like “mocking and disdaining me”—suggested that Mr. Monti wasn’t adjusting.
Indeed, by the time I rejoined the group, the man was taking exception most unattractively. Throughout the whole diatribe, Birdie Monti stood mute. “I’m
sure it’ll all work out,” I warbled, hoping to soothe an acutely strained situation. But everyone’s eyes were on Wally, who (in a sensitive, sweet, not one bit defiant way—that boy was born to be a social worker) had embarked upon a response to Mr. Monti.
“You know,” he said, “Rabbi Gilda was wrong. You’re going to lose your daughter.”
“Losing isn’t my thing,” Joseph Monti replied.
“But you aren’t going to lose her because she’s converting,” Wally persisted.
“I’m not losing—period,” he replied.
“You’re going to lose your daughter because she’ll be leaving you,” said Wally. “She’ll be leaving you to cleave to another man.”
“That’s not,” Mr. Monti said, “how it’s done in our family.”
For a couple of endless moments no one spoke.
“Daddy, please,” Jo whispered, breaking the silence.
“Not now, Josephine,” her father replied. “It’s getting late. It’s time for us to go home.”
He turned to Wally and me and, once more mobilizing that sinister sharky smile, placed one arm on my shoulder, the other on Wally’s. “A decision gets made,” he said. “It can get unmade, especially when that decision is making certain people real unhappy.”
“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” Wally replied.
Mr. Monti sighed. “When I’m unhappy,” he said, “everyone’s unhappy.”
He pressed on our shoulders, forcing the three of us into a tight, tense embrace.
“Talk to your son, Mrs. Kovner,” he said to me softly.
“Listen to your mother,” he said to my son.
“And in case you forgot what I mentioned before, I’ll mention it again. Losing”—his dark eyes glistened—“isn’t my thing.”
STILL DOING IT
• The Rest of October 28 and On into the Last Day of November
12
•
A LEAN MEAN KILLING MACHINE
“Losing isn’t my thing.” The warning words rang in my ears as I stood in the condo this late October morning. “Losing isn’t my thing.” The brutally X-ed out photograph of us four Kovners wobbled back and forth in my trembling hand. I set it down and continued methodically casing the condominium, desperate to find a way to murder the man who intended to X out my whole family. The photo, to which I kept coming back for another horrified look, fortified my homicidal resolve.
I was staring at it, transfixed, determined to do this man in-—but how? but how? but how?—when I noticed another photo on that same shelf. This one showed a tuxedoed Joseph and a white-gowned Birdie Monti coming out of church on their wedding day. It also—albeit circuitously—showed me the way to murder Mr. Monti.
For twenty-four years ago I had seen that same scene, that very same scene, of a bride and a groom coming out of the door of a church. What was it telling me? Where had I seen it? The answers danced into my head. It was telling me about killing people dead, and I’d seen it in a French film—a sinister François Truffaut film—called The Bride Won Black! The Bride Wore Black, starring Jeanne Moreau, whose husband was shot at the church on their wedding day. The Bride Wore Black, with Jeanne Moreau avenging herself on the men who had done the deed. The Bride Wore Black, where Jeanne Moreau, using five clever techniques, methodically murders the men who had murdered her husband.
I remembered every detail of every murder.
The second man was killed with a poisoned drink, a method which—remember?—I’d tried already.
The fifth was stabbed to death—too sordid for me.
And number four, a bit esoterically, was executed with a bow and arrow.
The first of Jeanne Moreau’s victims, however, had perished when she pushed him off a terrace. This Watergate condo had a terrace too, a terrace with a crenellated concrete waist-high barrier on which a man could quite easily climb and from which he could quite easily jump—or be pushed.
Now it’s true that I had initially abjured anything so directly hands-on violent. But with time running out and my dear Wally’s life in danger, I was starting to think a bit less fastidiously. Like Jeanne Moreau, I would have to consider a fatal shove from the terrace a definite option. A definite option. But not, let’s face it, my favorite.
My favorite option and clearly—as I checked out the condo, found what I wanted, and ran through my plan a few times—the best way to go was the way Jeanne Moreau had murdered her third victim.
Yes, that was the way to go. It was simple and certain, involved no blood, and was considerably less violent than shoves off terraces.
Now that I knew what to do, it was time to get the hell out of Mr. Monti’s apartment. But Mr. Garcia Fuentes would be back.
Before I left, I paused to review my Garcia Fuentes disguise in the living-room mirror, smoothing my mustache and tucking my hair into my cap. I slightly loosened my coverall straps so no hint of a bosom marred my manly form. It struck me as I studied myself, that I looked like Charlie Chaplin when he played a factory worker in Modern Times. I looked like Charlie Chaplin, but when I practiced speaking aloud, I was Charlie being dubbed with a—well, it’s difficult to characterize this accent.
“I’m a come-a feex-a you kitchen, mon,” I said to the reflection in the mirror. “The management send me up here. I’m a-gonna to paint you cabinets a leetle beet.”
“In that case I’m glad I caught you,” said a darkly familiar voice from the front hall. “There’s a couple of other places that need some patching.”
• • •
A year ago, in the midst of my my-life-is-about-to-be-two-thirds-over pre-birthday crisis, I was in New York having lunch with my sister Rose. “Don’t you ever worry,” I asked when we got to the key lime pie (one slice; two forks), “about dying?”
Rosalie put down her fork. “If that’s what we’re talking about at lunch, then you are the one who is picking up this check.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So tell me—do you?”
“No,” answered Rose. “And now can we change the subject?”
“But, Rose,” I persisted, “all of the women on Mom’s side of the family died at the fairly young age of sixty-nine. Which means—and honey, I don’t intend in any way to upset you—that you might have only ten and a half years left.”
Rosalie laughed a mirthless laugh. “I canceled an appointment with my chiropodist. I was going to have an ingrown toenail removed. I canceled the appointment because I—hah!—thought that lunch with you would be more fun.”
“Rose,” I beseeched my sister, “answer the question.”
Rose leaned back in her chair and said, “Honey, I don’t intend in any way to upset you. But you look exactly like Mom, so I guess you take after her side of the family, genetically speaking. And I look like all of Dad’s sisters, especially Pearl.” She sipped her Earl Grey tea. “And since Aunt Pearl is almost ready to get birthday greetings from Willard Scott on the Today show, I’ll start worrying about death when I’m around ninety.”
I nodded in silence at her flawless logic. Then I picked up my fork and attacked the key lime pie. “Oh, well,” I said when I’d finished every morsel. “I still have twenty-three years and four months left.”
“No,” Rose said. “You’ll live longer than that. You’ll figure something out. Here”—she called to our waitress—‘I’ll take that check.” She cast me a comforting smile. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You may have bad genes but, Bren, you’re so resourceful.”
• • •
You’re so resourceful, I told myself, when I heard Mr. Monti’s voice in the front hall.
Pressing my mustache firmly in place and pulling my cap down low, I resourcefully rushed to the kitchen and started painting.
• • •
“I no expecta you home, mon,” I said, when Mr. Monti joined me in the kitchen and poured himself an eight-ounce glass of milk.
“Yeah, well, my gut started acting up. The docs think I’m getting an ulcer. I had to can
cel the rest of my day and come home.” He took of his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and stared broodingly into his milk. “Did I say home? Hey, that’s a laugh. This place isn’t home. My wife took my home and left me with this ulcer.”
I put down my brush, raised my eyes toward the heavens, and waggled my mustache up and down sympathetically. “Ai, women,” I said. “They treat us vary bahd.”
(I won’t do the accent anymore, but imagine, please, an Italian Desi Arnaz, with just a smidge of West Indian thrown in.)
Joseph Monti waved his hand. “Keep painting,” he said. “Keep painting. For eighteen bucks an hour or whatever you guys are raking in these days, you can paint and have a discussion at the same time.”
I dipped my brush in the paint and resumed the painting.
Mr. Monti, sipping his milk with obvious distaste, announced, “Here’s my philosophy of life. You work to get what you want. And when you get what you want, you keep it. Whatever you have to do”—he slapped his hand down hard on the table—“you do to keep it.”
“Absolutamente,” I said, and kept painting.
“And if your enemy takes it from you,” Mr. Monti continued, “you squash turn like a bug and then you tear out his liver and feed it to the gizzards.”
I decided I wouldn’t point out that the word he wanted was buzzards, not gizzards. Nor did I plan to ask him if bugs had livers. Positivamente,” I replied to his remarks, and kept painting.
Mr. Monti stared at some vision beyond the kitchen walls, some vision of vengeance too monstrous for me to imagine. “Soon,” he rasped. “Without any mercy. I will be striking soon.”
Murdering Mr. Monti Page 23
