A Farewell to Legs (9 page)

That cut through Ethan’s perpetual haze. “Bart
Simpson called?” he asked excitedly.

Abigail was not as talkative during dinner, even
when Ethan made an awkward stab at dinner conversation and Leah
actually used a fork on her mashed potatoes. Abby was seriously
unnerved by threatening phone calls we received during the Madlyn
Beckwirth story, and was now clearly dealing with the possibility
that they’d be starting up again. Maybe the ten grand was-n’t
enough of an incentive to write about Legs.

After the kids beat a hasty retreat to the
television, I started to load the dishes into our dishwasher, an
ancient model which, I believe, simply made a lot of noise and
spritzed a little water on the dishes. They often had to be washed
by hand after they came out. Abby was clearing the table and
leaving the dishes in the sink for me to transfer when dishwasher
space opened up.

Our kitchen isn’t huge, so we often had to get out
of each other’s way. And while I never mind bumping into my wife, I
did notice we weren’t talking as much as we usually do.

“Do you want me to quit the
Snapdragon
story,
because I will if you do,” I said.

“No,” she answered in a heartbeat.

“You sure?”

“No,” she admitted, wiping her hands on a dish
towel. “But we need the money, and there’s no evidence there’s any
danger from one phone call. It could even have been a wrong
number.”

“Maybe it was a telemarketer for a security service,
doing the set-up call.” Abby smiled. As always, that was reward
enough for me.

“Where are you going to go with the story?” she
asked, moving into professional-Abby mode. “You can’t report it by
reading the other reporters’ stuff.”

I sat at the kitchen table. “Thanks for the vote of
confidence,” I told her. “Well, Friday I’ll have lunch with Steph,
and she’ll give me more details about their marriage, and what she
knows about the way Legs died.”

“And where will that lead?”

I shrugged. “Where it leads. I don’t intend to move
down to D.C. for months until something happens. I don’t think you
want me to do that, either.”

“Of course not. Who’d take out the garbage?”

“Please, I’m overwhelmed with your sense of romance.
Anyway, after I have some more to go on, I’ll know where to go.” I
could hear the kids arguing in the living room about which side of
the couch one or the other of them was inhabiting, so I stood up
and headed in that direction.

“Sure, run from your problems,” said my wife.

I turned back to face her. “Another crack like
that,” I said, “and you’re going to have trouble getting me into
bed tonight.” I pivoted back toward the living room.

Abby chuckled. “Yeah, right,” she said.

L
ouis Gibson’s funeral was
a television event unparalleled since the last television event,
and certain not to be eclipsed until the next television event. The
President did, as advertised, show up, although he did not speak.
Stephanie, to the disappointment of any heterosexual man over the
age of 35 (and a good number of them under 35), was dressed,
conservatively, in black. She dispensed with the traditional veil,
and therefore managed to avoid looking like Lady Bird Johnson.

Standing next to Stephanie were her two sons, whom
CNN identified as “Louis Jr., 22, and Jason, 17.” Next to them was
Legs’ brother, and CNN was once again helping out, telling me his
name was Lester Gibson, and that he was three years older than
Louis.

From what I could tell, he was a couple of inches
shorter than Stephanie, and shorter than Legs, too, and had opted
to avoid the hideous comb-over Abrams had noted, in favor of a
toupee that looked like someone had tossed a Caesar salad onto his
head.

Stephanie did not appear to speak to Lester, her
sons, or anyone else during the service. To her credit, she didn’t
weep openly, considering how little she seemed to be grieving for
Legs when I had spoken to her. Lester looked a little shook up, and
had to keep taking off his dark sunglasses to mop at his eyes.

Legs’ mother, Louise Gibson, was doing more than
just dabbing at her eyes. She was letting loose on national
television. Her sobs could be heard over the commentator’s
whispered tones (to remind us that this was a funeral, and not the
opening of trading at the New York Stock Exchange, but a tone which
unfortunately sounded more like the play-by-play at a golf match).
At one point, her knees almost buckled, but Jason held his
grandmother steady.

He and his brother, lucky boys that they were,
favored their mother. Junior had Stephanie’s almond-shaped eyes and
graceful chin, and Jason, the younger one, still hadn’t lost all
his baby fat, but did not, as best as I could tell from his
infrequent close-ups, resemble his father, which is all either of
Crazy Legs’ sons could hope for, really. Maybe they’d both keep
their hair, too. Rich kids have that kind of luck.

The eulogies were impressive, if your political bent
was just to the right of Genghis Khan. Anti-abortionists,
anti-civil rights activists, anti-just-about-everything-elses, all
spoke of what a dear and valuable friend they had lost. I couldn’t
help thinking the country was in a considerably more positive
condition now that Legs had bitten the big one, but rebuked myself
that such thinking was cruel and insensitive. Besides, there were
fifteen more just like him looking to take his place. No doubt the
jockeying for position had already begun.

I discussed the funeral and its impact on my career
with Mahoney as I drove us to racquetball that night. Mahoney and I
had started playing racquetball when it was the hot new sport in
the mid-eighties, and had been playing, on and (mostly) off, since
then. We’d taken it up again recently, having separately despaired
of our waistlines and inability to run up the stairs the way we
imagined we used to. Of course, my waistline was more an issue than
Mahoney’s, since he gets some sort of exercise or another running
around New Jersey fixing broken transmissions and other automotive
ills for a large car rental agency based at Newark Liberty
International Airport (EWR).

The racquetball itself was immaterial, anyway.
Especially to me, since I always lost. What was important was the
time I got to spend with my closest friend, letting him needle me
until I wanted to jam a racquet down his throat, handle last. There
are friendships, and there are friendships.

I was driving, so the cassette deck, and not
Mahoney’s ancient 8-track player, was ruling the musical choices.
Mahoney was always interested in new music, but it never failed to
compare unfavorably in his eyes to his Sixties and Seventies
favorites. Still, he was willing to listen to the A.J. Croce album
I had on, particularly after he heard A.J. is the late Jim’s
son.

“He’s not bad, but he doesn’t sound like his old
man,” he said, adjusting the volume from dominating to audible.
“He’s got that gravelly voice, like Rod Stewart.”

“Not sounding like your old man can be a real plus,”
I said. “Think how it’ll help Steph’s kids if they don’t talk like
Legs.”

Mahoney sat back and sighed. “I can see this is
going to be a theme evening.”

“I’m trying to work it out.”

“So you’re obsessing. That’s how you work things
out.” Mahoney played with the fan button on the heater, then
noticed the heater wasn’t turned on, and forgot about it.

“If you’ve got a better method, I’d like to hear
about it,” I said. The guy in the BMW ahead of me had decided turn
signals weren’t necessary for those with upper six-figure incomes,
and I’d nearly plowed into him, swerving at the last second.
Mahoney hadn’t batted an eye.

“It’s whatever works for you,” he said. “Me, I like
to take stock. What do you know for sure?”

I was trying to remember which right turn I was
supposed to make. “Almost nothing. I know Legs had become some kind
of right wing lunatic and somebody stuck a big knife into him just
when he was done playing Hide the Cocktail Frank with his latest in
a series of blond secretarial school drop-outs.”

“It’s nice you’re not taking this story personally,”
Mahoney said.

“You’re not helping.”

“And you’re not trying. You’re letting a 25-year-old
crush on Stephanie Jacobs cloud your judgment.”

I found the correct turn, but had to jam on the
brakes to make it. Looking at Mahoney, you’d have thought he was
watching an unusually slow-moving game of chess. “What judgment?” I
asked. “I’m not letting any crush do anything, since I haven’t got
anything to go on yet.”

“When a man gets himself killed in the apartment of
his mistress, the first place to look is. . .”

“. . . With his wife, yes, but you and I
both know Steph was two hundred and fifty miles away when it
happened, because we were standing in the same room with her.” I
pulled into the parking lot at the Hillsborough Racquet and Fitness
Club, and quickly found a space.

Mahoney got out of the car and pulled his gym bag
from the back seat. “We know she was there when the cops called
her, because we saw her take the call,” he said. “How long had
Crazy Legs been dead before they called her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly. Were there fingerprints in the room other
than Crazy Legs’ and the blonde’s?”

“I don’t know.”

“Even more exactly. Did Stephanie make a big
withdrawal from her bank account recently, maybe to pay somebody
who might like to stick a knife into her cheating husband?”

“I don’t. . .”

We started up the stairs to the lobby door. “That’s
my point. If you weren’t still living in 1977, you’d be asking
these questions. But it’s Stephanie Jacobs and her unbelievable
body, so you’re giving her a pass.”

He opened the door for me and we went into the club.
“I hate it when you’re right,” I sighed.

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, pal. Wait’til you see
the new serve I’ve developed.” I groaned. It was going to be a long
night.

T
he faxes from McCloskey
began arriving on a daily basis, each one less informative than its
predecessor. After a few days, I started putting the same sheet of
paper in the fax machine at night, and after a few days, it was
completely black.

I’ll spare you the gory details of my night of
racquetball. Suffice it to say I got all the exercise I so richly
desired. Still, after the usual pandemonium the next morning, I
managed to drag my sorry butt to the car and drove to the local
YM/YWHA, where I perform those tasks I laughingly refer to as a
“workout.”

The Y was once a very large residence, a brick
structure parked in one corner of Midland Heights that overlooks
the Raritan River and reminds us of the good old days, when Midland
Heights actually had the room to include a home with 23 rooms,
columns in the front, 20-foot ceilings, and four fireplaces.

About 30 years ago, it was determined that said
residence was far too grand for a town like ours, and so it was
bought by the YM/YWHA, converted into a public facility and,
eventually, expanded to include an indoor, Olympic-sized pool, a
Jewish pre-school, a basketball court, a couple of meeting rooms
and, to my everlasting consternation, a “fitness center,” where
young and (especially) old alike could kill themselves on any
number of torture devices.

My current device of choice was something called an
“elliptical trainer,” which presents itself as a sort of
“Stairmaster-Meets-NordicTrack” contraption, requiring constant
pedaling motion by its user, who is not allowed the luxury of
sitting down, as with the old exercise bicycles. Level of incline
and resistance can be regulated through a control panel, and the
thing is actually sadistic enough to tick off the seconds you’ve
spent and the calories you’ve burned on an LED screen right in
front of your face.

Among the initiated, we call the elliptical trainer
by its more appropriate name, “The Medieval Instrument of Torture,”
or “MIT,” if you’re an acronym fan.

I had my Walkman headphones on, and was playing a
compilation cassette I’d made of fast-paced, inspirational songs by
Paul McCartney, ELO, Santana, Sam Phillips, Matchbox 20, Bare-naked
Ladies, and Fastball, among others. If the beat is fast, you’ll
move your torso quickly to keep up with it. At least that’s the
theory.

I try to avoid looking at the other people in the
room while I’m working out. For one thing, I wouldn’t be too nuts
about them looking at me. I’ve been meaning to talk to the Y
management for years about their sadistic predisposition toward
putting mirrors right in front of the MIT. But I also keep my eyes
averted because the Y’s fitness center is often populated with
Jewish exercisers over the age of 70, and that’s a preview of
coming attractions I can live without, thank you. If I’m ever
spotted on the MIT wearing corduroy pants, black, orthopedic shoes,
and a button-down short-sleeve shirt, it’ll be time to put me out
of my misery.

So I usually close my eyes and let the tape motivate
me as best it can. But today, I was on the lookout for the nosy
type of parent who can be of help in any story involving the
Midland Heights school district, and I got lucky. Faith Feldstein
took the MIT right next to mine about five minutes after I got
on.

Faith, a past president of the PTO at Buzbee School
and present Board of Education member, is the queen of Midland
Heights concerned parents, which is to say, she is never happy with
the way the school system deals with anything, and is therefore a
prime source of information and gripes on any school-related
subject.

I had to admit, though, that working out had
benefited her greatly. In the slinky unitard she was wearing, it
was clear she’d lost a good 20 pounds in the past year, and was
looking quite fit, for a woman in her early forties, or for that
matter, any other age. I, on the other hand, was wearing a baggy
pair of sweat pants from the Gap and a T-shirt announcing the
upcoming video release of
Forrest Gump
, so you can imagine
how swell my ensemble was making me look. I nodded in Faith’s
direction, and she smiled the vague smile you get when someone
isn’t exactly sure how they know you.