Compromising Positions (31 page)

“Judith.”

“Yes?”

“Promise you won’t do anything crazy. You won’t go to see Brenda Dunck before Monday, before I’m with you. Please?”

“Why would I do something like that?”

“Because you want to be independent. But promise you’ll wait for me.”

“I promise.”

“We’re in this together.”

“I know,” I said, as he lifted my sweater over my head.

“The adhesive tape itches,” I complained to Sharpe.

“You’re just nervous.”

“Of course, I’m nervous,” I hissed. “I’m a middle-class Jewish suburbanite, not some crazed guerrilla with a grenade between my teeth. You come over here with a policewoman who wires me up and then says, ‘You’re being very, very brave.’ And then you give me a fifteen-minute lecture on how I shouldn’t sit in any soft, upholstered chairs because you want to be sure the transmitter will pick up my screams and God forbid a single, solitary sound should be muffled. What do you want, Nelson? You want me to be calm?”

“Shhh,” he said, hugging me. “Now, listen, if she makes any threatening gestures, or if you feel even the least bit suspicious about anything, just say ‘Mrs. Dunck.’ You call her Brenda normally, right?” I nodded. “Good, then if I hear ‘Mrs. Dunck’ I’ll know that you need me and I’ll be in within thirty seconds.”

We sat in the kitchen, waiting for a call from the surveillance team that Dicky had gone. I reached into the pocket of my denim skirt, the only thing I owned with pockets large enough and loose enough to conceal the transmitter, and felt for the switch; I was to turn it on the moment I rang her doorbell.

“Stop playing with it. Leave it alone, for Christ’s sake.”

“And you’re telling me I’m nervous? Nelson, you have a terminal case of projection; you’re a wreck. Relax. I’ll be all right.”

“I know. I know. Sorry.” He blew an absent-minded kiss across the table and stared out of the window at our bird-feeding station. “Listen,” he said, turning to me, “let’s go through this one more time. The transmitter’s working fine. So if for some reason something goes wrong and we don’t hear anything after one minute, we’ll be in. That means you’ve
got
to start talking the second she opens the door. I don’t give a damn what kind of inane conversation—recite poetry or say, ‘Hi, Brenda. How’s tricks?’ or something. But talk.”

“I’ll tell her I’m from the ASPCA and I’m investigating a report about cruelty to animals.”

“Listen, she’s built like a brick shit-house. Old Prince is a lucky dog.”

“That was a sexist remark.”

“That was a sexist picture I saw.”

“If you think she’s so wonderful,” I said caustically, “why don’t you go in and try your luck? She might be receptive.”

“Judith, would you please try to relax?”

“Up yours.” I glared at him and he reached over and held my hand. We sat that way for about five minutes, until the phone rang. “That’s probably the surveillance team. You answer it.”

“Look, it’s your house, you get it. It could even be Brenda.”

It was Sergeant Fuller from headquarters. The team had radioed in that Dicky had left five minutes earlier.

“Do they know I’m sleeping with you?” I asked, putting on my coat.

“Who?”

“All your homicide people.”

“Are you nuts? Of course not.”

“Then who do they think I am?”

“A very smart broad who’s helping me with the case.”

“Why do you have to say ‘broad’?”

“Come on, Judith. Let’s get moving.”

I arrived at the Duncks’ at nine forty-five. Reaching into my skirt pocket, I turned on the transmitter and rang the bell. No answer. I wanted to say “Nobody’s home” loud enough for Sharpe to hear, but decided that if Brenda opened the door, it might seem somewhat odd. I rang again and hummed “Yankee Doodle.” This time there were footsteps. The door opened.

“Hi, Brenda. Sorry to disturb you, but I’d like to talk.”

“That’s all right,” she responded. “Come in. I’ve been working around the house and didn’t have time to get dressed.” That was patently false; her eyes were still puffy from sleep, and she shuffled slowly back into the house, clutching a navy blue quilted robe around her that she hadn’t had time to fasten. When we reached the entrance to the living room, she turned and stared at me blankly. “What is this all about?” she asked.

I gazed at her, not really wanting to begin. She had no makeup on, only a glaze of the night’s facial cream, and she seemed worn and fragile. Minuscule red veins ran through her cheeks, and the residue of eyeliner, two black dots in the inside corners of her eyes, gave her a slightly cockeyed appearance.

“It’s about Bruce,” I said.

“Bruce,” she echoed, pulling her bathrobe tighter around her.

“Please, let’s sit down,” I urged, walking into the living room. I selected the rocking chair, removing my coat and arranging my skirt so as not to stifle the transmitter. “You know I’ve been speaking to a lot of people,” I said.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Well, I’ve come up with some information that I think is important for you to know about. Shall I begin?” She nodded. “You know that your husband was informing against Bruce. He was telling the government about Bruce’s involvement in that pornography business.”

Her eyes opened wide in amazement—or a brilliant imitation of it. She let go of her bathrobe and it opened slightly, displaying not the diaphanous blue nightgown I had expected but a chaste, white flannel one, with pink rosebuds and red trimming.

“What do you mean?” she said. “What did Dicky know about anything?”

“Remember you mentioned that Bruce had given him some business? Well, do you know what it was?”

“Something about dental hygiene. For the schools.”

“No,” I said. “It was pornography.”

“No.”

“Yes. And when Bruce’s cohorts didn’t pay what your husband thought they had promised, he agreed to inform against them.”

“Oh, God.” Brenda clasped her hands together until the knuckles gleamed white. “Oh, my God.”

“Did Bruce say anything to you about it?”

“Bruce? What do you mean?”

She studied her blue carpeting, clearly uncertain as to how to deal with me.

“Come on, Brenda,” I persisted, not wanting to give her time to analyze the situation.

“He said, I mean, Bruce said...” She stopped. I fixed my eyes on her. “Bruce said once, when I happened to run into him, that Dicky didn’t appreciate all he’d done for him. So I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said Dicky was being a little bit greedy.”

“And then what?”

“Nothing. He changed the subject. He said it wasn’t important and he didn’t want to drag me into it.”

“And did you speak to Dicky about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said slowly, “because he doesn’t like me to poke my nose into his business.”

“Dicky told you that?” She nodded. “When did you and Bruce have this conversation?”

“I forget. No, really. I can never remember when things happened.”

“Was it after you and he began sleeping together?”

Her entire body shook as if she had been taken with a sudden high fever. “Who told you that?” she whispered.

“What?” I asked, afraid the transmitter wouldn’t pick up her voice. She repeated the question. “Brenda,” I said, “I can’t tell you the source of my information. But let me reassure you. It’s still a deep secret. No one wants to hurt you or ruin your reputation. All they want is to find out who killed Bruce. Okay? Now, I’m here to help you, to give you whatever information I have and to listen to whatever you have to say. Look, I’m not going to give you a lot of bull and say I’m your friend and that you should trust me implicitly.” I knew Sharpe would be annoyed by this, but I wanted to be as straight with her as possible. If I took the warm, loving friend line, she would probably recoil. “But I know what’s going on,” I continued, “and I sincerely want to help you. So I’d like you to tell me about it.” Pausing for a minute, I swallowed and took a deep breath. “Brenda, I saw the pictures Bruce took of you.”

She began crying. Not a loud wail, but a silent rash of tears that poured over the oily coating of her facial cream. She wept and wept. I handed her a tissue from my handbag. “Brenda,” I said, more for the transmitter than for her sake, “tell me about it.”

“I can’t,” she sobbed.

“Brenda, I’m not here to make judgments. If it’s any comfort to you, there are a lot of other women in the same boat.” She looked at me, her small, dark eyes ringed with red. “That’s right. Bruce had lots of affairs, and he took lots of photographs. Really, he seemed to have a great need to do this, and I guess the need gave him the persuasive power to convince a lot of women. So you’re not alone. Now, please, tell me exactly what happened.”

She sat still, only her hands moving, the right hand kneading and squeezing the left. “You swear you won’t tell anyone?” she pleaded. This put me in a bind. Of course, I literally wouldn’t have to tell anyone; it was all being recorded and my recollection would be redundant.

“Brenda, I’m not going to spread it around. God, it could have been anyone—even me.” She looked dubious. “It’s true. And I won’t spread it all over Shorehaven. I swear to that. I’ll only give information that has a bearing on the murder, and then I know someone on the police force who is very, very discreet.” I could envision Sharpe pounding his fist against his dashboard and cursing me. “Now tell me,” I insisted.

“Well,” she said softly, “it all began a couple of weeks before, before he was killed.”

“Could you speak a little louder? I have a slight hearing loss.”

“Sorry. I said it began about two weeks before Bruce was murdered. It was like this. He called me up one morning and just started talking. You know, just friendly. Asked how I was doing and all that. Then he asked me to meet him for lunch.”

“Exactly what did he say on the phone?”

Brenda shifted slightly into a good little girl position, back straight and hands clasped. “I forget.”

“No you don’t. Come on,” I insisted, keeping up the pressure.

“Well, he started by saying things like he was thinking about how I looked in a bathing suit last summer and how...I’d rather not.”

“Brenda, you’re not going to shock me.”

“All right. He said my body drove him crazy and he wanted me.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said, I said nothing. I mean, I was surprised. And then he said he knew I’d felt the same way about him for years and it was time we stopped playing games with each other. So I said I’d meet him that afternoon. Just to talk.”

“So you had been attracted to him?” I asked.

“A little,” she said, so offhandedly that I knew it had been a lot. “So I met him and we had lunch and we went to a motel.”

“And?”

“And I slept with him.”

“No photographs?”

“No, not until the third or fourth time. The fourth, I think. I mean, I met him every day, and the fourth day he called and said that Norma was going to be away all day at a tennis clinic so why didn’t I meet him at his house.”

Fleckstein must have felt in a terrible bind, I thought. With an indictment looming over his head, pressure from his Mafia pals, he was willing to defile his cozy little nest. “What was the state of your relationship at the time?” I asked.

“Well, he said he loved me. The first day we were together, in the restaurant, he told me that he had worshipped me from afar for years and that the only reason he had stayed married to Norma was because she was Dicky’s sister and it was the best way he knew to keep seeing me.” She spoke quickly, as if to glide over the blatant dishonesty of his words. “It meant a lot to him to see me, he said. Even if he couldn’t have me. You see, he said he had always loved me but didn’t think I could ever care for him.”

“What made him change his mind?”

“He said he finally decided that it couldn’t go on like that. He had to have me or know for sure that I would never care.”

“And the pictures?”

“Please,” she pleaded, “I don’t want to talk any more.”

“Come on, Brenda. I know it’s difficult but it’s important.”

“Well, the third time we saw each other, at the motel, he started telling me about his sex fantasies.”

“What were they?”

“Raping women he saved.”

“Saved?”

“Yes. From fires and things. And then being a shepherd in the Alps and doing it with the shepherdess and the sheep. And then he asked me mine. So I told him a couple of things.” Sharpe, I knew, would take this in stride, but I had a painful image of the men on the surveillance team snickering.

“And so the next day you went to his house,” I said slowly. “And there was Prince.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t the way it looked. Not really, I mean, he, the dog, wouldn’t do anything. We were just kidding around and all that. You know. The dog couldn’t, he didn’t have a, an,” she lowered her voice, “an erection.”

What an incredible let-down, I thought. “And what did he say about taking the pictures?”

“He? Oh, Bruce. Well, he just wanted to remember this moment always. That it was a symbol of our mutual trust. He said he’d put them in a safe where no one would ever see them.”

“Did he talk to you at all about Dicky?”

“No. Just what I told you, about Dicky being greedy.”

I shifted my position in the rocking chair. The transmitter rested lightly against my right thigh. “Didn’t he ask you anything about Dicky? Anything at all?”

“Well, naturally we talked about Norma and Dicky. He said they were sexually repressed because their parents were prudes.”

“How did he know Dicky was repressed? Did he ask you about your sex life?”

“Well, we talked about it a little.” I waited. “I mean, I told him a few things. He had told me about Norma.” She examined her wedding band. “So I told him about Dicky. That sometimes he didn’t get aroused too easily. That’s not unusual, you know.”

“Is he impotent, Brenda?”

She sighed. “Yes. Not when we were first married, though. But the last two or three years.”

“You don’t have sex with him at all?” My voice sounded subdued, as though I were discussing a common medical problem, chronic postnasal drip, nagging backache.