Lily White (42 page)

“Go on,” I said, trying to recall if the autopsy report mentioned anything about skin cells under Bobette’s nails or any possible DNA evidence that would corroborate Norman’s statement.

“Just for you,” he repeated. “You’re my lawyer. Anything I say to you is confidential.” He wiped the tears away, this time with his hands. “Anyhow, I got back and went into the house.”

“You had a key?”

“No. I’d pushed the little gizmo on the side of the door so it wouldn’t lock. The door was open. I went in. I remember, I was calling out, ‘Bunny’—that was my nickname for her. ‘Bunny, if you have two glasses, I have a bottle of champagne.’ Except I never finished the sentence.” He rubbed his chin. I could hear the rough scratch of his beard.

“She was dead?”

“Yes. I knew right away.”

“And Mary?”

“Standing there. Hysterical. Trying to talk.”

“What was she trying to say?”

“‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’”

“To Bobette?”

“No, to me. I started saying, ‘Why? Why?’ But then I realized I had to get her out of there. I didn’t know if she’d fought with Bobette and if there had been a ruckus someone could have heard. Even just her hysterics. She was getting louder and louder: If someone was passing by the house, or if for some reason the tenant came home … I
had
to move, so I grabbed her and pulled her out of the house.”

“You didn’t touch anything?”

He closed his eyes as if viewing the scene. “I bent over to see if there was a chance Bobette was still alive. Objectively, I knew she was dead. But I thought, well, maybe if the breathing was suppressed or something, I could call 911 and get out of there before they came. I may … I think I may have held her face in my hands.” He shuddered. “Already, it was colder than a face should be. You know?”

“You didn’t touch her neck?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what?”

“I took Mary by the arm and I pulled her toward the door.”

“The front door?”

“Initially. But then—I couldn’t believe this. She sticks her hand in her pocketbook, one of those shoulder bags, and takes out a tissue and starts wiping the doorknob and the thing where you turn on the lights.”

“The switch plate?”

“Right. I knew the more we did, the longer we stayed there, the more chance there’d be for leaving some trace. So I grabbed the tissue. I was going to use it to open the door, but then I realized it would be stupid for us to be seen walking out the front together. Mary’s—you know—noticeable. I was already thinking I didn’t want anyone to think in terms of the, uh, crime committed by a man with a woman. I wanted Mary completely out
of the picture. So I led her out the back door. I used the tissue to open and close it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I went toward the front. I took a quick look around. No one was there. So I got her into my car and we drove home.”

I waited. What was I expecting to hear? We lived happily ever after? Norman did look better for having opened up, that much I noticed. The crying had stopped, and some color had returned to his face. Still, he seemed feeble, as if trying to get back his strength after a terrible illness.

“When did you talk to Mary?”

“When we got home. She was too hysterical in the car.”

“What did she say?”

“That Bobette had come down and surprised her. Started shouting at her: ‘Get out!’ That’s the one thing that sets Mary off. Shouting.”

“It makes her violent?”

“No. Not with me, anyway. We’ve had a couple of fights, and I’ve raised my voice, and all that happens is she”—he swallowed hard at some sad memory—“falls apart. But I think if someone else is yelling … I mean, that incident in Maryland.”

“That incident where she beat up Carolyn Knowles,” I elaborated. “Brain concussion, a couple of cracked ribs, facial contusions.”

“Yes.”

“Did Mary and Bobette argue? Did Bobette know her connection with you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. All Mary told me was about the yelling, that all of a sudden she was on a different planet or something. She didn’t know what she was doing until …” His hand drifted up and softly touched his Adam’s apple. “Until she looked down and saw the thing she was holding between her
hands and shaking was Bobette’s neck. I probably walked in a few minutes later.”

“How long were you away when you went to get the champagne?” I asked.

“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“You drove away. Mary probably went in right after you left. She surprised Bobette. Right? Strangled her. Bobette’s strong, but so is Mary—taller, in much better shape. Did she have any bruises, by the way?”

“Bobette? I didn’t notice any.”

“No, Mary. Any signs of a struggle, of Bobette fighting back? Black-and-blue marks—”

“On her wrists,” Norman admitted sorrowfully.

“So what happened next? You’re back home. Is Mary still hysterical?”

“Close. I calmed her down a little. I kept saying: ‘I know it’s not your fault.’” I thought—as I often do when listening to accounts of my clients’ lives—how pleasant it must be to receive such easy absolution. “Finally, she stopped crying,” Norman continued. “I put her to bed, tried to give her a sleeping pill—”

“You have trouble sleeping? Or does she?”

Norman shook his head. “Neither of us. It’s just sometimes … Sometimes I slip a pill—a capsule I open up—into whatever the lady I’m working on is drinking. I mean, if she’s staying up late and being boring and I want to get home. I always carry a couple in my wallet. Anyway, Mary is very antidrug and said no. So I sat with her until she dozed off.”

“Then what?”

“Then … nothing.”

“You stayed home? Watched TV?”

“No. I went out and drove around. Tried to think.”

“How long were you gone?”

“I don’t know. Hours. It was pretty early—around six-thirty,
seven, at night—when I found Mary at Bobette’s. But by the time I got back home it was already getting light.”

“Where did you drive?”

“I don’t remember. I know I wound up on the New York Thruway. Finally, I got so exhausted, I pulled off into one of those service areas, where the Dunkin Donuts and Burger Kings are all in one building, and had some coffee. Then I turned around and came home.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. I told her we had to get out of town. Not that they could trace me, but why hang around Long Island longer than necessary. I wanted to leave then, but Mary was so shaken—she kept falling apart, crying hysterically. Then she got a bad period. So I made the mistake of letting her rest. We were going to leave first thing Tuesday morning, like at five-thirty, and go somewhere warm. San Diego, I was thinking. Once we got out of New York, we’d ditch the car I was driving and buy a new one.”

“You had the cash Bobette drew out of the bank?”

“Yes.”

“You opened the envelopes the cash was in?” He nodded. I was relieved to see he wasn’t lying; his fingerprints had been on the tape that had sealed the bank envelopes. “Where did you open them?”

“At Bobette’s.”

“How come?”

“Just to make sure she gave me what she said she would. I always do that. Hold up the envelope and make some little joke about can’t wait to see the money that’s going to change my life. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the lady will say: ‘Open it.’ Sometimes they’re nervous about me. They go to the bank but only take out part of what they promised. But I always check. If I catch them, believe me, they’re always ready to run back and get the rest.”

I was feeling uneasy. Tales of masochistic women always make me uneasy, and unease makes me think of food. I had a little bag with a yogurt and a plastic spoon in my attaché case. Vanilla. I kept wishing I could open it up and gobble it down. “So, Norman,” I said, trying very hard to forget the yogurt, “unless I can get you an acquittal or keep hanging juries until Holly Nuñez gets worn out, you’re going to go to jail for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Yes.” His spine seemed to crumple, but he did not cry again.

I sat quietly for a minute and looked down at my hands, trying to assimilate everything Norman had told me and trying to forget I wanted to eat. My latest diet book said hunger pangs last only ten to twelve minutes. Think of something else: I noticed that I had chipped the nail on my right index finger, that I had what appeared to be a smudge of breakfast cottage cheese on my watchband, and that even under the harsh prison lights, I still did not have any brown age spots. By the time I looked back at him, I knew: “You’re not telling me the whole story, Norman.”

He didn’t pretend to be stunned, and he didn’t act as though I’d hurt him to the quick. “What do you think I didn’t tell you?”

“Look, you and I seem to be playing poker now. So I’m not going to show you my hand. You tell me what you left out.” It would be nice to say I knew precisely what he was holding back, but I didn’t. I just had a strong sense that Bobette didn’t simply surprise Mary, yell at her to get out, and then get strangled. It was too pointless. Yes, I know homicide often is pointless, to say nothing of stupid, but this story didn’t quite add up to the usual senselessness.

“I think they must have had words.”

“About what? You?” Norman nodded yes. “Somehow, Bobette found out that this intruder was connected to you?” When he didn’t respond, I asked: “What were the words they had about?”

“Getting married,” he muttered.

And then I was sure I knew. “You
were
going to marry Bobette, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said softly. “We got the license that day, before we went to the bank.”

“If you were marrying her, why did you want the cash?”

“I just wanted it, free and clear. For all I knew, she could turn out to be a cheapskate. I mean, she kept saying she wanted me to take over everything for her so she could be—you know—a housewife. I’d oversee the bars, collect the rents and manage the properties. But I couldn’t be sure. I figured if it turned out she wouldn’t let me take over, I’d know in a couple of weeks. That way, I wouldn’t have to hang around waiting for crumbs. I could leave and still have close to fifty thou.”

“What were you planning on doing with Mary?”

“Nothing. I mean, we’d keep on like always. I’d be out all day, tell Bobette I was seeing to business. But I’d spend the whole day with Mary—and whatever nights I could. It wouldn’t be ideal but …” He wrapped his arms around himself. “I needed to rest for a year or two. To put my life on hold. I love Mary with all my heart, but I couldn’t keep running around the country doing what I was doing, like I was still a kid. Being World’s Greatest Lover to a bunch of ladies who … forgive me, but who I didn’t give a shit about. Setting up the Love Nest over and over in every damn new town. Wading through the responses to my personals ads. I had been doing it so long. There was no fun left. Maybe because I really was in love. That’s the kicker, isn’t it? I’m in love with Mary, in love for the first time in my life. So what do I do? Get ready to marry someone else.”

“Did Mary know?”

“I told her the night before.” He looked away and mumbled to the floor: “I guess that was a mistake.”

“I guess so.”

“But listen, I swore to her nothing would change. All it would
mean was that for a while she’d have to spend the nights without me. But in terms of real time, I’d be with her
more
than ever before. And then, in a year or two, I’d start making it so tough on Bobette that she’d pay me big bucks just to get out. Then Mary and I could go someplace, and I’d never have to work the ladies again.” His eyes grew filmy. “We could have had a beautiful life.”

“Except Mary didn’t see it that way.”

“No. She didn’t believe me when I told her I would always be true to her.” Norman looked me right in the eye. “But I will be.”

“You could’ve knocked me over with a feather!” Terry Salazar said the next morning. Terry’s life is a series of brief but passionate romances with clichés; he meets a new one, hangs around awhile, then moves on to the next. He’d been getting knocked over by feathers for the past couple of months, and it was starting to irritate me. “There I was, in the county clerk’s office, looking at this piece of paper that actually says that Bobette Frisch and Denton Wylie are okay to get married in New York State, and I’m thinking: Holy shit! Haul out the smelling salts! The guy told the truth for once in his life.”

“All right,” I said, swiveling back and forth in my desk chair. It’s the sort of motion you see in the movies, big tycoons twirling from side to side, a phone in one hand, a cigar in the other. But it soothes me and helps me think when I’m feeling pressured. “This makes me so nervous. I hate it when I think a client is innocent. I mean, not guilty is different; that I can deal with. I
like
knowing someone has a real defense for the crime he’s accused of, that I don’t have to get overly creative. But actually innocent?” I shuddered. It was only part pretense.

“You think he’s conning you, Lee?”

“How would I know? That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

“Take me with you to see him. I’ll let you know.” Terry noticed
I was looking on my desk for something to throw at him. “I’m not saying you’re not smart. You are.”

“Especially compared to present company.”

Terry seemed to think I was engaging in banter, not truth telling, so he gave me his wink-grin combo. “But you’re a
woman
,” he insisted. “That’s his specialty. Conning women.”

“Stop it. I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I can’t get through a day without someone trying to con me. Let’s just dope this out.” Terry looked agreeable. He loved long, meandering discussions—and why shouldn’t he have, at his hourly rate? “Norman Torkelson used the name Denton Wylie with Bobette.”

“Right,” he said.

“Is there any possibility at all that there was a real Denton, that Norman is or was pulling some sort of scam involving a real person—or a dead person—that’s beyond my ability to comprehend?”

“I can’t see how. This Denton who applied for the marriage license gave his age as thirty-five, which is what Norman says he is. Now, objectively, Norman looks about thirty-five, doesn’t he?”

“Somewhere around there,” I agreed.