Murdering Mr. Monti

by Judith Viorst

“Used to be right,” Elton Jr. replied. “But you’re not reading the papers. All the morals in England, they have declined. The Queen’s son Charles—the heir—he’s fooled around. Her horsy daughter Anne—she’s fooled around. And both her daughters-in-law—that Princess Di and that Fergie of York—they’ve fooled around.”

  “Fooled around?’

  “Yeah, fooled around. You’re not supposed to say fuck when it’s the royal family. Anyway,” Elton Jr. continued, “if that could happen right up there in the palace, this English broad and the common people gonna be doing all kinds of crazy shit.”

  It was clear from Billy’s “uh-huh, uh-huh” that this lecture on the demise of British morality had been persuasive. When they rejoined me, both were prepared to go over the details of my murder plan. Everything could be settled, I said, except for deciding the night of the murder itself. This item of information would depend, I explained to Billy and Elton Jr., on the victim-to-be’s response to a decoy dinner invitation from my associate.

  “Who is this here associate?” asked Billy.

  “A woman who has already made herself known to the v-t-b,” I replied. “Her code name is Elizabeth Fisher-Todd.”

  We went ever the plan.

  1. Elizabeth Fisher-Todd makes a dinner date with the v-t-b and arranges for him to pick her up downtown.

  2. She pretends she forgot something urgent at her (fake) apartment building, to which they drive so she can pick it up.

  3. She tells him to wait in the parking lot of her (fake) apartment building, and saying, “I’ll just be a minute,” she disappears.

  4. Billy and Elton Jr. join the in his car and drive him to a location of their choice. There, in a manner they solemnly swear will be both swift and painless, they murder him.

  “As soon as Elizabeth Fisher-Todd makes the dinner date,” I said to my accomplices, “I’ll ring you chaps with all the final details. You’ll find the second half of your payment beneath the passenger seat of the v-t-b’s car. The first half’—I opened my purse—“will be paid right now.”

  High fives were exchanged, by which I mean I gave each gentleman twenty-five hundred dollars. After which I took the Metro back to Cleveland Park, climbed up the hill, and telephoned Joseph Monti.

  • • •

  In the honey-toned drawl of Elizabeth Fisher-Todd, I invited Mr. Monti to join me for dinner. Since Jake would be off at a conference from Saturday until late Sunday and tied up with meetings on Monday and Tuesday nights, I could offer my prey a choice of four different evenings. To guarantee his acceptance I made it lubriciously clear that the dinner I was proposing would be but the appetizer of long and very satisfying, feast. I knew that I was making him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  He refused.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he told me, “and I won’t deny that I’m tempted. But I have to say no. I am a married man.”

  Since when did that ever stop you? I wanted to ask, but Instead I drawled mildly, “Why, honey, I’m quite perplexed. I thought you told me you were a separated man.”

  Mr. Monti astonished me by conceding that although this was the case, he was hoping it wouldn’t be the case too long. He said he missed his family; most particularly his wife, to whom, he further conceded, he had done wrong. He said he was mending his ways and that forsaking women like me was number one on the list of the ways he was mending. And when, in desperation, I urged, “How about one final fling before you tread to the paths of righteousness?’ I was—I could hardly believe this!—given a lecture on the sanctity of marriage. A sanctimonious lecture from the very same brutal beast who had violated my body and who intended to kill my boy in exactly one week!

  “So tell me,” I quickly regrouped, “will you and your family be getting together for Thanksgiving?”

  “No,” Mr. Monti replied. “My wife isn’t ready for family occasions yet, she says.” He sighed. “They’ll all be eating turkey together. And I’ll be eating turkey all alone.”

  Without really thinking it through, I jumped in with, “Why eat turkey alone? I’m invited to the home of”—I named a major figure in government—“and you’re more than welcome to come with me, I’m sure. Strictly,” I hastily added, “as a friend.”

  Mr. Monti pondered my new and safely nonsexual offer. “It depends on what time,” he finally replied. “There’s something important I have to do—something I have to do personally—in the evening.”

  And I know what it is, you murdering monster, I said to myself, Aloud I said, improvising frantically, “Well, they”—the So-and-So’s—“will be serving their meal mid-afternoon. It should work out jes fahn.”

  But how could it work out jes fahn when fifteen people were dining at my house on Thanksgiving? How could I be with them if I had to be in a car with Mr. Monti too? Well, I couldn’t be in that car, so there was only one thing to do and—resourceful type that I am—I promptly did it. I changed the plan.

  “Our hosts,” I told Mr. Monti, “will send a limo to pick us up. And I guess”—I pretended to calculate—“they should probably stop to fetch you before they fetch me. So let’s see.” I pretended once again to calculate. “You should look for their limo and drivers around one o’clock.”

  “Their limo and drivers?” asked shrewd Mr. Monti.

  “That is right,” I drawled. “Their regular driver and their driver-in-training. All of the better people”—I spoke in my surely-you-know-this voice—“have a spare.”

  • • •

  Billy and Elton Jr., when I chatted with them on the phone, did not love Plan B.

  “We’ll have to steal a limo,” said Elton Jr.

  “How will we get our final five grand?” asked Billy.

  “I’ve got my own Thanksgiving dinner to go to” said Elton Jr.

  I promised them that it all would work out—except I was speaking British, not Southern—jes fahn.

  • • •

  On Friday morning I unexpectedly ran into Josephine at Elizabeth Arden’s, where my very own Lawrence had slicked back her rich red Botticelli curls into a sleek, straight, somewhat . . . masculine hairstyle. Her clothes—she dressed as I disrobed—worked well with her new do: a gray pinstriped pants suit, a buttoned-down shirt, a pale silk paisley tie, and a soft slouchy hat. “You’re looking very . . .” I paused for a moment and then came up with the obvious word—“very handsome.”.

  “Thank you,” Jo said solemnly. “I appreciate the adjective. I’ve been getting in touch with the masculine part of my psyche.”

  “How interesting,” I murmured, as I hung up my blouse and wrapped a green robe around me. “And how does it compare”—I slipped my feet into paper slippers for my pedicure—“with your feminine part?”

  Whoosh—it was as if I had pulled out the cork in a bottle of champagne. Jo was burbling, bubbling, effervescing. “Stronger. Braver. More independent. Less eager to please, to compromise, to sell out, to—” She stopped, ducked her head in embarrassment, and then continued at a calmer pace. “We need to become aware of the full spectrum of our sexual identity before we can make an informed sexual choice.”

  Elisa, ready to wash my hair, peeked into the dressing room. “One sec,” I told her, hating to break away. Surely, I thought, before we part I could come up with something to say that would help Wally’s cause.

  I could. And indeed I did. I sometimes astonish myself.

  “I think it’s great you feel stronger, braver, more independent, and all that good stuff,” I told Jo. “But why do you call these masculine characteristics? Isn’t that sexual stereotyping?” Josephine looked abashed. “I mean, why can’t we call these feminine characteristics. Feminine characteristics that any good, decent man would embrace in the woman he loved.”

  Jo was chewing her lower lip, chewing on what I said. She straightened her shoulders and tightened the knot on her tie. “I see what you’re saying,” she told me as she buttoned up her coat. “I’ll discuss it next week with my friend Vanessa Pincus.�
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  • • •

  Who has a dinner for twelve six days before she’s serving turkey to fifteen? What can I tell you? I am an overachiever. My Friday night fete was a smash and the very next day I was setting the table for next Thursday, this time with place cards to artfully mesh my more disparate-than-usual Thanksgiving guests, which included Rose and her daughter Miranda, who planned to fly in from L.A. and who’d already let me know that she wished to be seated as far away from her mother as possible.

  It was going to be a very intense Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, I was feeling completely relaxed.

  My mellowness could be attributed to two different but deeply mellow-inducing conditions: The fact that I was saving the life of my son. And the remarkable improvement in my marriage.

  For on Carolyn’s recommendation I had tried to be more forgiving toward my husband, whose response was to be more appreciative of me, which made me even more forgiving and him even more appreciative, and so forth. You could call it, as I did in one of my wittier newspaper columns, AN UNVICIOUS CYCLE. I found my unvicious cycle powerfully soothing to the soul.

  But nothing could be more soothing than the certainty that Wally was safe from harm, that—having enlisted the aid of two professionals—I had ensured Mr. Monti’s death. This time there’d be no slip-ups. This time his fate was sealed. I had beaten the beast at his homicidal game. There’s nothing in the world, I thought, reveling in my monumental triumph, that can stop a can-do woman who is propelled by the primitive passions of mother love.

  I had won. Yes, won! I had rescued my son. Joseph Augustus Monti was a dead man. My victory had swept away my tensions and anxieties. My victory had left me sweetly serene.

  • • •

  On Sunday the telephone rang and someone said, “Gobble, gobble, gobble,” and hung up. Unpleasant though this was, I remained serene.

  On Monday Jo told Wally that she was going to have a drink with Vanessa Pincus. Unhappy though he was, I remained serene.

  On Tuesday Jeff, who’d been trying to sell his Anacostia buildings at what was a truly desperate cutrate price, dropped the price of his buildings even further. Insolvent though he was, I remained serene.

  On Wednesday, at lunchtime, Rose arrived. With Hubert.

  Hubert announced his doggy delight at being back in D.C. by bounding into the dining room and seizing one end of my tablecloth in his teeth, the tablecloth on which the silver and dishes and glasses and napkins were already placed, along with the candlesticks and the three sets of salt and pepper shakers, plus the centerpiece of Indian corn and gourds.

  “Don’t yank!” I pleaded with Hubert as I rushed into the room to avert disaster.

  Hubert yanked. I remained serene.

  • • •

  On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, sweet Wally was planning to rise before dawn to drive to Dulles, where Miranda, who had taken the 10 P.M. plane, also known as the Red Eye, from Los Angeles, was due to arrive at 5:42 A.M. Well before dawn, however, Wally already was quite otherwise engaged, having received a phone call from Dwayne’s mother.

  “You’ve got to come over here right away. He’s acting awfully crazy. He’s acting awfully crazy, and it’s my fault. If only I’d let him keep that snake when he was eight years old, and I took his pacifier away way too early, and I should have—”

  Wally interrupted. “Look, I need to hang up and get going. Meanwhile, you should try to make him talk. Talk with him about anything—positive stuff if you can—but just try to keep him talking. I’ll be there soon.”

  I’d picked up the extension on the first ring—Jake never stirred—and listened, along with Wally, to the news. Now I went up to his room and said, “I think I ought to come with you. I’ll keep her calm while you are dealing with Dwayne.”

  Wally said, “No, I don’t think so,” thought again, and changed his mind. “Yes, okay. She knows you. She trusts you. Come. But, Mom—”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “This time, no advice.”

  Five minutes later—Wally preoccupied, I planning to give Dwayne’s mom just a little advice—we were on our way.

  Dwayne’s mother, her eyes red and swollen, greeted us in one of Victoria’s Secrets, She pointed to Dwayne’s bedroom where, she explained, her son had triple-bolted the door. While Wally tried to gain entry, I gently led her to the couch and whispered comforting words into her ear, to which she replied with a torrent of lacerating self reproach that never stopped until Dwayne finally said to Wally, through the door, “Yeah, what do you want?”

  Wally said, “Let me in. Whatever it is, we’ll talk about it. We’ll work it out.”

  “It can’t work out,” Dwayne said. “It’s useless. Hopeless.”

  “I know it feels hopeless,” said Wally, “but I promise we’ll find a way.”

  “No way. No way out,” said Dwayne. “I’m doing it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Wally asked.

  “Kill myself,” said Dwayne. “I’m going to jump out the window. I’m jumping right now.”

  And though we heard the window thrown open, and Dwayne climbing up on the sill, and the thud of his body as it hit the ground, none of us—as we raced outside to despairing Dwayne’s prostrate form—felt terribly panicked. The apartment, you see, was located in the basement.

  • • •

  It was only after I looked at Dwayne, who’d suffered nothing more than a chipped front tooth, that terror started surging through my veins.

  Not because poor Dwayne had jumped out the window.

  But because he’d jumped out the window wearing a turkey costume.

  14

  •

  I-THINK-I-CAN-I-THINK-I-CAN

  As you know, I’m deeply proud of my (truly mature) capacity to apologize, to unflinchingly admit it when I’ve been wrong. And since, as Pope has observed, to err is human, I have—a goodly number of times—been wrong. Never, however, let me concede, have I been as massively wrong as I’d turned out to be in the case of Mr. Monti. I mean, if errors were earthquakes, this would be a 9.9 on the Richter scale.

  Dwayne, not Mr. Monti, had been sending those murderous messages to Wally. Furthermore, Dwayne saw himself as the turkey and clown. Furthermore, those messages had been warnings not of homicide but of suicide.

  I’d made a big mistake. A big mistake.

  Now it’s true I’d been right in believing that somebody out there was threatening death, THE CLOWN TURNS INTO A GHOST, as well as THE TURKEY TURNS INTO DEAD MEAT, have, you’ll agree, a decidedly fatal sound. All that I’d actually erred about was who, exactly, intended to do in whom. But this was the kind of error which, if I didn’t stop Elton Jr. and Billy immediately, would end up with Joseph Monti’s being in no condition to accept my apology.

  I had to stop Elton Jr. and Billy immediately.

  For ratty though Mr. Monti had been—and continued to be—I no longer could claim that he deserved to die.

  • • •

  Since Wally was going to need to be spending some time with Dwayne and Dwayne’s mother, I offered to drive to Dulles to pick up Miranda. But first there was one imperative piece of business I had to attend to: I had to find a telephone so I could tell my hit men to cancel the hit, I cruised the darkened streets till I found a pay phone which not only worked but which I’d be able to use without being mugged, and hastily deposited twenty-five cents.

  “Yo, this is Billy and Elton Jr. Limited Partnership, Inc.,” said Billy on the answering machine. “We’re out on a job right now but if you’ll please leave your name and number we’ll get back to you.”

  I hung up the phone and had a 9.9 on the Richter scale dizzy spell. I also gave serious thought to throwing up. Never in my entire life had I yearned to converse with a person the way I yearned to converse with the absent partners of Billy and Elton Jr. Inc. With trembling hands I picked up the phone and dialed their number again—and again a machine, instead of my cohorts, answered.

  “I say,” I said at the so
und of the beep, doing my British accent, “it’s Prudence Gump here. I’m calling to inform you that the business meeting planned for today has been canceled. Definitively, permanently, nonnegotiably, now-and-forever canceled. I’ll be phoning again to make sure you received this message.”

  I jumped in the car and drove, far faster than my usual cautious pace, to Dulles. As soon as I got there I horried to the phone. Please let a human being answer, I prayed to To Whom It May Concern. “Yo, this is Billy . . .” et cetera, said the recording.

  This time I left them a message to leave me a message that they had indeed received my message. “If you put it on your machine, I’ll be able to get it,” I said, “the next time I ring you up.” I told them that though I much preferred to speak with an actual person, “I would find such a message”—this was the understatement of the ages—“quite quite reassuring.”

  It was time to greet my niece at the mid-field terminal.

  Miranda, brown bangs and dark glasses obliterating half her face, arrived in skinny jeans and a well-cut sports jacket, striding along on funky shoes with the odd giraffelike grace of Diane Keaton. “Hi, hi,” she said, enveloping me in a warm but speedy hug. “So how’s The Rose—impossible as ever?” After which, from baggage-claim area right up to my front door, she obsessed about her mother, my sister, “a woman who,” she rat-a-tat-tat complained, “can’t even remember—my friends don’t believe this—which programs her daughter produces, and has yet to take the trouble to sit down and watch one, though you know—admit it, Aunt Brenda—that if Hubert was doing some dog-food commercial on television, The Rose would not only be watching, she’d be sending engraved announcements to the whole world.”

  I murmured something intended to be nondenigrating to Rosalie while deeply sympathetic to Miranda, a tightrope walk I have mastered over the years and can do with minimum attention. Which was all I had available since most of my attention was consumed with concerns about stopping Billy and Elton Jr. from murdering Mr. Monti.

  They were picking him up at 1 P.M. It was now almost 7 A.M. I desperately needed to know that the mission was scrubbed. But restraining myself from rushing once again to the telephone, I decided I’d wait for an hour and use the time to do some work on my Thanks-giving dinner. By eight, Jake, Jeff, and Rose—Miranda was trying to take a nap—were drowsily making their way to the kitchen table. I gave them a brief report on Wally’s predawn melodrama and left the room. “The coffee’s done, there’s muffins and juice, I’ve already eaten,” I told them over my shoulder, as I hustled right upstairs to the telephone. And when yet again I heard the same thwarting “Yo, this is Billy . . .” message on the machine, it struck me for the first time that I might be unable to head off Billy and Elton Jr.