The Secret Lives of Married Women (22 page)

Finally he eased himself out of me, and pulled back the bedcovers, and motioned me beneath them. I kicked my shoes off and crawled to the place he’d made for me. Then he stretched out beside me and pulled me close, drew my head down against his chest.

“That,” he said, “was the best.”

I looked up at him and smiled, almost too spent for words.

“I mean,” he repeated. “That—was the very best—it has ever been.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. For me too, Darren.”

* * *

“So,” Nan said now, smiling faintly. “You worked out how the scene would go ahead of time?”

“Not the whole scene. Just the premise. On the phone that afternoon, I told Darren what the prosecutor had said years before, told him I wanted to act out his hate-fuck fantasy. He agreed to meet me at the party, already in character. But I didn’t know how it would play out. I left the details to him.”

“So he rose to the occasion.”

“And how.”

There was an awkward pause while I wavered over whether to say more. But then, why the hell not? I’d told her so much— too much—already.

“When Abel described your former job to me,” I said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I mean, it captured my imagination. It made me want to find out more. And...well, it helped me.”

“I’m glad,” she said.

I sat looking at her. Who knew what she was thinking? I had the feeling she saw me as an amateur, in every way. And after Abel’s trial, I could hardly blame her. It pained me to remember it, and I knew it always would.

Abel’s trial began on a bright clear morning. I’d been up since 5:00
A.M
.—there was nothing like the excitement of a trial— and yet I felt full of energy and an almost predatory joy. It was game day.

Abel sat beside me at the defense table, his dog at his feet and his wife in the front row behind us. He was very pale but composed and stoic. As always, I was reminded of the disparity in what was at stake here for each of us. I fervently wanted to win each trial, for myself as well as for my client. My name and reputation—and some measure of my livelihood—was on the line. But it was nothing compared to what was at stake for Abel. If we lost, he could go to prison.

I wondered how it felt to sit in a courtroom without being able to see the judge, or the jury selected just yesterday, the seven men and five women who would decide his fate. With no way to read their faces, no way to gauge the way things were going.

We heard the knock of the judge and the bailiff called out.
All rise. Oyez, oyez, oyez. This court of the city of New York is now in session, the honorable Kendra Jenner presiding. Please be seated.

I felt somewhat lucky that we had drawn Judge Jenner: a careful, thoughtful woman not given to gratuitous displays of power. She took her seat at the highest part of the room and issued the standard instructions to the jury: that they were to presume the defendant innocent unless or until the presentation of evidence was sufficient to dispel reasonable doubt. That opening statements were not to be taken as any such evidence, but merely as an outline of what each attorney hoped to demonstrate. And so on.

Kamin delivered his opening statement first, and he said what I expected. “Abel Nathanson cuts an impressive and sympathetic figure,” he began. “For years, as New York City’s only non-profit industrial developer, he snagged every grant, award and government subsidy in sight. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that means he used
your
hard-earned tax dollars to fund his ambitions. And beyond that, he cultivated the trust and the backing of countless elected officials, foundations and civic groups.”

He went on this way for quite a while, painting Abel as a con artist, raking in praise and prestige and public funds while siphoning stolen tax dollars into his pocket.

Then I rose to make my own statement, present my own picture of Abel Nathanson, and of course mine was like a photographic negative of Kamin’s, white in all the places his was black. Abel was a tireless crusader for all that was time-honored and true in our national commerce. He kept the American Dream alive for skilled laborers who would otherwise be forced to languish in the service sector. I went on for more than ten minutes about his many impressive accomplishments, his contributions to various charities, his adoption of an orphan, his triumph over his own disability. The dog was in the courtroom, stretched at Abel’s feet, and if I could have had Lulu there as well, I would have.

Eventually I came around to the crime in question. “Like any successful man, Abel Nathanson has his rivals. And unfortunately for him, his would stop at nothing to bring him down. John Bonney, Mr. Nathanson’s bitterest enemy, sent a decoy to meet with him during a time of dire financial stress for a member of his family. The mission was straightforward: to make Mr. Nathanson an offer he couldn’t refuse—one in which the welfare of his sister was the bait. And the sole purpose of this offer, ladies and gentlemen, was to lure him into corporate fraud.

“The kind of deal this decoy proposed to Mr. Nathanson is offered—and accepted—every hour of every day in the construction industry,” I went on. “Of course that doesn’t make it right. But it does raise the question of why the district attorney is acting as if Abel Nathanson cracked Fort Knox. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to ask yourselves what the D.A.—who hopes to occupy the mayor’s office next year—has to gain from doing the bidding of John Bonney, who has underwritten so many political campaigns. And beyond that, I want you to ask yourselves one further question: what will it mean to
you
, to
us
, to the very American Dream I invoked a few moments ago, if our justice system can be bent to the will of the highest bidder?”

I let this question linger in the air for a moment before resuming my seat, and then Judge Jenner asked Kamin to call his first witness.

“The prosecution calls Nanette Magdalene to the stand,” he said, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Abel clench his jaw.

Nan’s appearance was perfect for strategic purposes. She wore one of her high-necked blouses and a knee-length skirt, and her hair was held back in a simple chignon. She looked slender and self-possessed and feminine and fragile. I watched the faces of the jurors as she was sworn in, and I could see she had their sympathy even before Kamin began.

“Please state your name.”

“Nan Magdalene.”

“Ms. Magdalene, in 2006 and 2007, what was your job?”

“I was Abel Nathanson’s executive assistant.”

A few details of her job description were established and then Kamin got down to business.

“Ms. Magdalene, did Tom Roscoe meet with Abel Nathanson in the latter’s office on March twenty-seventh of last year?”

“He did.”

“Would you please tell the court what they discussed that day?”

“I wasn’t privy to much of the meeting,” Nan began. “They were in the conference room, which isn’t within earshot of the reception desk. But when Abel’s next appointment arrived, I went to let him know. The conference room door was ajar and I caught just a fragment of their conversation.”

“Do you have a clear memory of what was said?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Please tell the court what you overheard.”

“Well, Abel wanted a quote for work on his sister’s house. I heard him ask what it would cost her for a roof replacement as well as a new septic tank and field.”

“And then?”

“And then Mr. Roscoe said, ‘Well, listen, not only will I give you a good deal on that side stuff, but I can hide the residential charges in the Navy Yard bill.’ ”

This surprised me. I’d expected Nan’s version of the story to have the proposal coming from Abel.

Kamin was surprised too; ever so fleetingly, his face betrayed this. But after no more than the slightest pause, he spoke again.

“And how did Mr. Nathanson respond to that?”

Nan’s voice was calm and clear. “He said, ‘That’s very tempting, but I’m afraid I can’t consider it.’ ”

Kamin stood very still. Then slowly he tilted his head and addressed his witness with great deliberation. “Ms. Magdalene. Your answer just now is in direct opposition to testimony you provided a short while ago. Would you please clarify what you just said?”

“Absolutely. Lest there be any confusion on this point: Abel Nathanson immediately refused Mr. Roscoe’s offer.”

A murmur rose in the courtroom. I shot a sidelong glance at Abel, but he looked just as stunned as I felt.

Kamin turned to the judge. “Your honor, I hereby move to declare Nan Magdalene a hostile witness.”

I’d heard of this, but in my whole career, I’d never seen it happen. Once the judge consented, Kamin would resume his questions, but now he would be cross-examining her. He lost no time.

He approached the witness stand with a sheaf of papers. “Ms. Magdalene, here I have your sworn testimony from May eleventh of this year.” He flipped to the final page. “Tell us please: is this your signature?”

“It is.”

“Here you state that Abel Nathanson asked Mr. Roscoe whether he could discreetly transfer a private residential invoice to his non-profit’s publicly funded bill for work done on the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Do you remember testifying to this version of what happened?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then how do you account for telling the court a very different story today?”

“I was coerced into providing my false testimony of May eleventh.”

“Coerced? In what way?” he asked. “And by whom?”

“By the man behind this whole scheme to frame Abel Nathanson. I was blackmailed by John Bonney.”

In nearly a decade of watching him try cases, I had never seen Kamin so flustered. He was incredulous, stupefied. “By
John Bonney?”

“It’s exactly as Ms. Reeve has just said. John Bonney wanted to destroy my former boss. He paid a visit to my apartment one evening, before any of this began, and showed me compromising photographs he’d taken of me. He told me he would send them to the convent unless I helped him frame my employer.”

“The convent?”

“I was raised by an order of Carmelite nuns. They’re the only family I have in the world. And seeing such photographs would have devastated them beyond my power to describe. I can’t begin to put into words how terrible it would have been.”

Kamin recovered his composure. He turned to the judge. “Your honor, I have no further questions for the moment.”

I understood.
Never ask a question unless you already know the answer.
Kamin realized he was in over his head, that there was no telling what this witness would unleash. And even though I could be no more certain than Kamin about what Nan would or wouldn’t say, I was on my feet before my opponent had returned to the prosecution table.

“Ms. Magdalene, you mentioned compromising photographs of yourself in John Bonney’s possession. What did you mean by ‘compromising’?”

Nan’s answer was straightforward. “John Bonney was a frequent customer at an establishment called the Nutcracker Suite, where visitors pay to engage in sadomasochistic activity. I was an employee there. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he took pictures of me while I was naked, bound and blindfolded. Unfortunately, even while wearing a blindfold, I can be identified beyond doubt by the burn scar on my left arm.”

And here she unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse and pulled the sleeve up to reveal an angry red splash between her wrist and elbow.

The murmur in the courtroom rose to a din. Judge Jenner banged her gavel and called for silence.

“And Ms. Magdalene, you’ve testified here that with these photographs, John Bonney blackmailed you into framing Mr. Nathanson. Could you please tell the court what you meant by that?”

“The only hard evidence that Mr. Nathanson allegedly engaged in fraud,” she said, “are two estimates, bearing his signature, that were signed within 48 hours of each other. They are a list of exactly the same line items, but on the second one, the charges have been inflated in several instances, resulting in a forty thousand dollar difference. The fact that he signed the second so soon after the first—endorsing tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs for exactly the same job— would naturally warrant suspicion that something was amiss.”

“Yes, it would,” I said carefully. I was well acquainted with these two documents. “Can you provide an explanation for Mr. Nathanson’s signature on the second set of estimates?”

“I can,” she said. “As was our practice, on the afternoon that he signed the second set, I put the pen in his hand. I told Abel he was signing a document associated with a grant proposal. And then I set his hand on the line.”

Again, a hum of consternation from the gallery; again, a call to order.

“And this deception was what John Bonney required of you in exchange for keeping the aforementioned photographs to himself?”

“Yes, this deception and my testimony of May eleventh.”

I felt light-headed with astonishment. “I have no further questions.”

Kamin had risen again and now he advanced on Nan with renewed determination.

“If this alleged threat of blackmail held such potential
devastation
for you,” he asked her, outright mockery in his tone, “then how have you found the sudden resolve to reveal those secrets here today—with no apparent shame or hesitation— before the court, the public and the press?”

“I said I would be devastated if the nuns were to learn of them,” she said. “I don’t care about other people knowing.”

“Well—presuming what you’ve said has any basis in truth— wouldn’t Mr. Bonney be as free to mail those pictures today as he was on the day of your deposition?”

“Yes, but he won’t.”

“What would stop him now?”

“I was so frightened and distraught when he first came to me,” Nan said, “that I couldn’t think clearly. But since then, it’s occurred to me—regrettably late in the proceedings—that there was a way to ensure his discretion. On the specifics of that, I’ll need to take the Fifth.”

And for a moment there was not a sound in the courtroom. It was as if a collective breath had been caught and held. You could hear the slight din in the corridor just beyond the closed doors. Everyone in the room was momentarily stunned into silence: the judge, the attorneys, the jury, the spectators, even the defendant.