“Because it's anti-romantic?”
I nodded.
“At a certain age, romance becomes problematic,” he said. “Transient and overrated.” He took the needle in one hand, and rested his semi-tumescent cock on his thigh with the other. “This, however, is interesting.” He smiled, holding the hypodermic for a moment. “A 30-gauge ultrafine needle.” Another smile. “It takes some getting used to. Closing your eyes is not the best way to proceed.” He was like a dentist explaining a root canal. A driblet of liquid appeared at the top of the needle. “Two raindrops of a high-potency corticosteroid, by name prostaglandin E-1, into the spongy tissue here . . .” He showed me. “. . . where there's no nerve ends, and where you can take the needle . . . and poke it in . . .”
He thrust, humming the mournful dirge of the bull ring. “. . . like a bullfighter finishing off a bull.”
I shuddered and turned away. When I looked back, he was smiling. “It takes a moment, but it works.”
It did.
We watched
Nightline
afterwards. Live from an execution at a prison somewhere in the Midwest. There was Poppy McClure wearing a black designer duffel in the prison parking lot. Lecturing Ted Koppel in his Washington studio about George Bernard Shaw's views on the death penalty. “Ted.” She was fiddling with her earpiece. “Are you telling me you are not aware of Shaw's attitudes on the death penalty? Even as soft on Communist Russia as he and the Webbs were?”
“Do you know her?” Jack said.
“Only from the various green rooms we've been in together.”
“She's a horror.”
“Actually, she's rather funny. Once you get past her politics.”
“Is there anything else?”
I suppose he had a point. I still liked her. “I was on C-Span a few years go. She'd been on a day or so before. The story I heard was her husband was screwing an intern in the green room while she was on the air.”
“Serves her right.”
“For what?”
He looked at me for what he seemed to assume would be a lecture. On-screen there was a shot of the ambulance that would remove the body of the deceased from the prison premises and then a tight shot of a window on the second floor that was identified as the room where the electric chair was located. Most of the victims whose rights I lobbied for were in favor of the death penalty. I wasn't, but it was an opinion I chose never to make public, and always cut off any discussion of what my view actually was.
I changed the subject. “I read you were going to write a movie about that black man who was skinned alive out there. Parlance. Edgar Parlance. And the two who killed him.”
He shook his head. “No one to root for.”
“Parlance.”
“You don't root for a dead man. What's his backstory? Will anyone give a shit three years from now when a picture, if it's made, which I doubt, comes out?” He yawned and stretched. Mr. Johnson still stood tall. It suddenly reminded me of the field hockey stick I used as a teenager at St. Pius V Intermediate School. Sister Boniface was the coach. What she told my parents about me was that I was a delicate stick handler. A skill perfected, after field hockey, in more one-night stands than I preferred to count. “That's the upside of the needle,” Jack said when he saw me staring.
Again I traced the scar on his chest and then moved my finger slowly south of his navel. Dr. Singh's proposed implant with its pump, reservoir, and dual cylinders could not possibly have been any more efficient than the needle carrying the two raindrops of prostaglandin E-1. Maybe Jack was right about romance. There was something to be said for efficiency. And for stick handling. “Some upside.”
The wakeup radio switched on to NPR as it did automatically every morning at five. Weekends I did not do the StairMaster or the rowing machine in the exercise room I had fitted out in the large pantry off the kitchen. There was no
BBC World Update
on Saturdays, just concert music. Mozart's Concerto number 3 in G major, with Itzhak Perlman on the violin and James Levine conducting. I listened for a moment, stretching and wiping the sleep from my eyes. When I finally put my feet on the floor, I stepped on one of his cuff links. I looked back at him. He still had a hard-on. His right leg hung out of the bed, but his cock stood up like a rocket on a launching pad. I was full of cock metaphors. Lacrosse stick last night, rocket this morning. The needle and the vial of prostaglandin E-1 were on the bedside table along with their tiny carrying case. I wondered if he had given himself an extra boost. As a way of wishing me good morning. I massaged the hard-on for a moment, getting in the mood, but he did not move. His eyes were closed, his face peaceful but drained of color. Even before I said “Jack,” I knew he was dead. I felt for a pulse in his neck, but there was none. On his wrist he wore a MedicAlert bracelet. I read the instructions: “Aortic valve prosthesisâtakes anticoagulantsâallergic to penicillin.” Already there was evidence of postmortem lividity pooling at his thighs. I could not think of what to do, so I gathered his studs and cuff links from the floor and put them on the table next to his penile injection kit. Then I took his credit cards, California driver's license, and money clip from his tuxedo trousers and placed them next to the studs and cuff links. Next I folded his pleated dinner shirt and hung it and his bow tie and his dinner jacket in the closet. Then I sat in the chair and tried to follow Itzhak Perlman. Mozart soothed my nerves as I tried to guess what had happened, and what I had to do next. In my criminal practice I had read countless death certificates. I knew the words appropriate to the failure of an aortic prosthesis. Myocardial infarction. Pulmonary embolism. Rheumatic valvulitis with stenosis and/or insufficiency. Bacterial endocarditis. Stroke. Suddenly I got up, went over to the bed, and tried to pull his paisley boxer shorts over his buttocks. Over his fucking cock. His body fell heavily onto the floor. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. So much for getting him dressed. For a moment I felt like crying, then went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was still naked. His come stained the sheet and was crusted on my stomach. Shower. I could always think in the shower. I let the water flow over me and for some demented reason decided to wash my hair. I felt like Mary Martin in
South Pacific.
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair, wash that man right out of my hair, and send him on his way. Except he was dead. Not that easy. Was this worth learning about my mother? And my father? I always tend to forget him. What did Jack say? About my being a victim's rights lawyer and my father being a steady provider of victims. Goddamn Jack. What would it cost to disappear him? Who could do it? No. Pull yourself together. Do not do anything illegal. Better to be embarrassed than disbarred. I dried myself off, pulled on a pair of jeans and a cashmere sweater. My nipples looked like chestnuts under the cashmere. Not something I wanted the boys from EMS to see. Under the circumstances. With a stiff and his still-stiff johnson alongside my bed. I pulled off the sweater, found a bra, wadded toilet paper in the cups, put it on, and then the sweater over it.
No more chestnuts.
It was still not five-thirty. Take stock. I lived on a cul-de-sac. The Bonaventures next door were on a frequent-flier trip to Albuquerque visiting the daughter they didn't like and the granddaughter they did. The O'Learys across the street were in Japan for the economic summit. The Ackerman house on the other side had been empty since Marvin Ackerman's posting as DCM in Warsaw. The Nigerian economic attaché who had rented it would not move in until March. The Sheridans were in the middle of a messy divorce and the bank had taken over their house. That pretty much took care of the neighborhood. Saturday. Slow news day. A blessing. His death might not hit the papers until Monday. Look around. See if there is anything to get rid of. The needle and the prostaglandin E-1. Definitely. It was not as if this were a crime scene. No. Not thinking. If there was an autopsy, the toxicology results would indicate the presence ofâwhat did he call itâa corticosteroid in his system. As if his stiff dick was not a dead giveaway. Dead. Why did I think
dead
giveaway? Jesus. Where to put the paraphernalia of erection? In the change pocket of his dinner jacket. Where it might be overlooked. The glasses and the half-empty bottle of red wine. Out of the bedroom and downstairs into the kitchen. Rinse the glasses. A swig of wine, then a cork in the bottle and into the fridge. For cooking. Back to the bedroom. Put his socks in his patent-leather shoes. Try pulling on the paisley shorts once again. Over that fucking thing. Which was what it was. A fucking thing. Why didn't it go down? It was like penile rigor mortis.
Success.
At least a little dignity.
Then the large protuberance made its way out of the fly in his shorts.
What the hell. I couldn't do any more.
R.I.P., John Broderick.
Now, be prepared: 911 brings EMS.
D.C. police will pick up the 911 and dispatch a squad car.
Daddy had taught me how to talk to cops. Look them in the eye. Don't bullshit, but don't tell them anything they do not need to know. Do not lose your nerve.
I dialed 911.
CHAPTER FIVE
EMS was discreet and professional. The paramedics noted the MedicAlert bracelet with its reference to an aortic valve prosthesis and the necessity of anticoagulants. They asked the name of the deceased individualâ“individual” was their wordâand how long he had been on the premises and if I had been aware of any signs of cardiac unrest prior to his becoming deceased and when had I noticed that he had in fact expired. I thought credit cards and driver's licenses expire, not people, people die, but “die” was not a word that seemed to figure in the paramedics' professional vocabulary. They made no mention of the residue of sexual activity on the rumpled bed or the still-erect penis sticking out of the shorts on the deceased individual. I was in a penis mode now, not dick, prick, cock, or johnson. I had considered changing the sheets, but another piece of advice from my father was never do anything that might invite suspicion. Humiliation is not an indictable offense. They asked how the deceased happened to be on the floor, and I told them, I hope in a flat uninflected voice, that I had been trying to put on his shorts. By this time, the squad car had arrived, and the paramedics told the senior uniformed officer that the cause of death appeared to be MI, that MI was consistent with the type of heart surgery indicated both by the deceased's MedicAlert bracelet and by the scar on his sternum, that there was no evidence of foul play, that the name of the deceased was John Broderick, his ID was on the bedside table, and perhaps it would be best if they interviewed me in another room as they thought it might be unsettling for me to watch as they bagged the body. As I left the bedroom with the two policemen, I heard one paramedic whisper to the other that they would need a van with a sunroof if the deceased did not lose his wood. Humor on the EMS beat.
Downstairs in the kitchen the officers declined the coffee I had made while waiting for the paramedics. The officer who did the talking looked familiar. His plastic name tag identified him as WILKES, and my inability to immediately recognize him seemed to irritate him, one more proof he did not need that white people thought all black men looked alike. “Two years ago,” he said finally. “Alex.”
Of course. He was the officer who came to my house that night. Another weekend, another sexual misadventure. Two days on Nantucket with someone else's husband. Name of Kris. As in Kringle, he would say to people he just met. That should have been clue enough. Kris as in Kringle told me he could not leave his wife and marry me because she had not signed a pre-nup, and a divorce would leave her with assets he was not willing to surrender. Getting off Nantucket in mean March weather meant chartering a fishing boat to Hyannis, and more seasickness than I care to remember. Then a rented car for the endless drive to Washington. Fury kept me awake. I should have known by then that someone else's husband was always a bad idea. It was nearly 3 a.m. when I got home. I wanted nothing but a bath and some red wine, the more expensive the better, which in moments of duress I find soothes the fragile psyche no one seems to think I have. I was opening a bottle of Prieuré-Lichine when I saw the red light blinking on my answering machine.
Four messages. First a hang-up. The second from Marty in New York. Martha Buick had been my roommate at Smith. When it was a straight school, she liked to say. Before it became Sappho State. Marty was maid of honor at my first wedding, matron of honor at my second.
Hi,
her message said.
How many times?
Marty had an avid interest in my sex life, enjoying it vicariously, I suspect, more than I did actively. She was married to Jimmy Sebastien, the marriage seemed to work, or at least they did not get in each other's way, they had three kids, Jimmy put seed money into start-up companies and was very rich. While Marty ran a modeling agency she called VVV, the three
V
s standing for
Veni, vidi,
viciâ“I came, I saw, I conquered.” She was good at it. VVV, or Three V, as it was called in the fashion world, was the agency all the hot young models wanted to join. Marty's home and office was a former warehouse in the West Village. Everything was white, gray, stone, minimal, the floors polished concrete, the spaces lit with photographer's lights, photo blowups of her clients from shoots around the world covering the walls. On the top floor, under a huge skylight, there was a lap pool. Marty traveled to the spring and fall collections in Paris and Milan in Jimmy's G-4, and she was guardian angel and foster mother to some of the weirder specimens of the female gender, many of whom were burned out, in rehab, or DOA by nineteen. She knew all about Budd Doheny's quirks and collection of erotica and of course she would want to know every nuance of my thirty-six hours on Nantucket. She was also the only person to whom I had ever confided my speculation about the identities of my real parents, the speculation that Jack had confirmed in what he did not realize would be his final bequest.
Then an automated message from a bank promising high interest and free travelers' checks if I would open an account, and a chance to enter the draw for a Lexus sedan, with CD player, wraparound sound, alarm system, and a computerized navigator screen. The last message began with a desperate guttural voice. “This is Alex. Listen, I can't meet the schedule, I need more time, you have to give it to me, you owe me that, you fuck . . .” Suddenly he began to cough, that smoker's cough I still remember from the days when my father chain-smoked, two packs a day, maybe three, his face almost purple from the exertion, veins about to burst. Alex seemed to gasp for air, and I could hear a strangled exclamation, “Oh, shit,” and then a noise that sounded like the last water in the tub going down the drain.
“Alex,” I said. “Alex,” as if I were talking to a real person, not a machine, and then there was a banging that cut the message short, the caller had hung up or fallen on his telephone; at any rate the connection was severed. “Sunday, ten forty-eight p.m.,” the neutral voice on my answering machine said, logging the time the call came in, and then, “End of final message.”
I didn't know any Alex.
Like a good Samaritan I called 911. It took a while to convince the operator that I would like someone to listen to the message from Alex. Officer Wilkes had responded to that call, too. He asked some questions. I recognized the tone. It was the one he would use on possible perps, somewhere between threatening and hostile. Was it my voice on the machine? No. It was computer-generated. Saying? Leave your name, number, and a brief message after the beep. It give your number? No. Let me hear it, he said. My truthfulness was not to be taken for granted. So we were acquaintances, after a fashion. “Did you ever find out . . .”
Wilkes nodded. “Alex Dimanche. Dimanche is French for Sunday, they tell me, although I bet you know that already, I bet you speak it, French.” He made it sound like an accusation. “Small-time gambler. Into his shy for twenty-seven K. Couldn't make the vig. Afraid his ankles were going to get broke. Which is what almost happened. The muscle came to rough him up, but he was dead by his telephone. They steal everything they can carry, then being good citizens they call 911, tell 'em where there's a body going rank. Reason he called you was he transposed your number with his shy's.”
“I would have appreciated knowing.”
“Why?”
More advice from my father: Never argue with a hostile cop unless he's on the stand under oath. Then eat him alive.
“Your friend Broderick, first name John, he live here?” Wilkes asked. I said no. “In D.C.?” I shook my head. “Where's he staying then?” I think the Madison, I said. “You might let them know they have a room free,” Wilkes said. “You wouldn't have a Q-tip, would you?”
I found a box in a drawer on the serving island and handed it to him. He cleaned his ears vigorously as I watched, closely examining the wax he had dislodged, then arched the Q-tip toward a wastebasket. It missed. He made no effort to pick it up, just stared silently at me. Resentment seemed to leak from him, like sweat. Finally I retrieved the Q-tip from the kitchen floor and deposited it in the garbage pail under the sink.
The paramedics were bringing the body bag downstairs. They strapped it on a gurney and pushed the gurney into the van.
Officer Wilkes brushed by me without a word, followed by his partner, who had not spoken the entire time he was in the house. Wilkes opened the passenger door on the squad car, and then surveyed me over its roof. “You call the Madison,” he said after a moment, pointing a finger at me. He made it seem like a warning. “Hear?”
I closed the door before the EMS van pulled out of the driveway.
It was not yet six-thirty.
I did not call the Madison.
Nor did I call Marty Buick.
I was not up to any more explanations.
The obituary actually did not appear until Tuesday, and then in
The New York Times,
not
The Washington Post.
The cause of death was a heart attack, and the
Times
said he had died at my house. A reporter in the
Times
's Washington bureau had called to ask how long I had known Mr. Broderick, and I said he was a friend of my mother's, which seemed to satisfy him, and was true, after a fashion; it just wasn't the mother with Alzheimer's across the Potomac in Virginia. The obit was extensive, with an automatic “He was a good friend and a graceful, witty man” quote from former President Finn, but Jack seemed to merit the space allowance only as a lesser member of his own family. He was identified as Hugh Broderick's son, Augustine Broderick's brother, and the ex-husband of his first wife, the murdered radical attorney Leah Kaye. His two books, many screenplays, and discovery of the long-lost Blue Tyler were not mentioned until the penultimate paragraph, after the paragraph saying he was a much sought-after extra man in New York, Los Angeles, and various venues around the world favored by the gilded classes.
The
Times
said funeral arrangements were pending.
The phone began ringing early that morning.
Condolences first from Margaret and Duncan Dudley.
Followed immediately by Marty Buick. Marty assumed the worst, or considering her natural train of thought, the best. She said it reminded her of John Garfield and Spencer Tracy. Both of whom, she felt impelled to explain, died in the saddle. I replied quite sharply that “in the saddle” was an unpleasant figure of speech, and in any case it was inaccurate. Marty never gave up a position easily. Well, they were both someplace they should not have been. In beds not their own. And why hadn't I called in the first place? I thought I was your best friend.
I did not argue. Nor did I mention the prostaglandin E-1.
His death did not make the
Post
until Wednesday. Washington is a company town, and the
Post
less a newspaper than the government's trade paper, and in its scheme of things a G-12 assistant undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture gets billing over a Hollywood screen-writer. For the self-absorbed of Georgetown and Cleveland Park, Hollywood seems to exist only to give them someplace they think they can look down on, since it would never occur to them that the people who live in what they insist on calling “out there” are richer, smarter, meaner, and tougher than they are. It was only when a
Post
editor remembered Jack's name on the guest list at the president's annual dinner for the Supreme Court that his death was deemed worthy of the Style section. I was screening my calls by this point, and left the Style writer's message on my answering machine. The
Post
is across the street from the Madison, where out-of-town guests at White House events regularly stay, but no reporter bothered to check the concierge to see if the hotel had any information about the late Mr. Broderick. Grudgingly, the
Post
writer picked the bones of the
Times
obit, sneering at several movie stinkers Jack had written and digging up unsubstantiated stories (“Rumors persist . . . sources maintain . . .”) about sex and money in the Broderick family.
That evening I moderated a PBS panel in Baltimore on whether civil redress after acquittal in a criminal court constituted double jeopardy. I was so detached from the proceedings that I scarcely noticed when two of the panelists nearly came to blows, and a third suggested that the fourth was an “asshole,” an invigorating if unintentional departure from the deadening civility so characteristic of PBS. Afterwards the producer complained that I had so lost control of the panel that he would have to edit the tape rigorously before it was fit for broadcast. I just nodded and headed for my car. When I got home, there was a message on my machine saying simply, “This is Wilkes,” and then ten or fifteen seconds of silence before he hung up. And a second message from the writer who did the
Post
's “Reliable Sources” gossip column, demanding and self-important, he was on deadline and needed me to confirm new information about the circumstances of John Broderick's death.
Circumstances unspecified.
I called Marty and asked if I could come up and lay low with her for a few days until the story blew over.
It was at Marty's that I met Carlyle.