Sandy got into his car, thinking about the most meaningful moment of the whole interview. You think I had the last heart attack carrying her body to its resting place in Leakin Park.
That Julie Saxony had been found in Leakin Park was a matter of public record.
That she had been murdered somewhere else? That information had never been revealed anywhere. Sure, one could infer it, especially if one knew the topography of the park, could spot the telling omissions. But a guy would have to be paying very close attention.
Tubman “Tubby” Schroeder had been paying very close attention to the details around Julie’s death, the one in the one-two punch that had convinced him to change his life. The question that Sandy couldn’t decide was whether he was carrying a torch or trying to bury one.
March 14, 1974
Julie knew how to drive, had picked it up when she was only thirteen, but she had never bothered to get a license. Andrea had driven them to Baltimore and they had only the one car and then Julie fell in love with Felix. And because she didn’t have a car, he drove her home one night and came inside the little apartment she shared with Andrea. That led to him finding her a better apartment, in Horizon House, this new high-rise with a rooftop pool, although the view from the pool included the jail, which amused Felix greatly. Of course, getting a license wouldn’t keep Felix from driving her home and coming inside her apartment, but if she got a license, Felix might buy her a car. He had said as much. An Alfa Romeo. But Julie knew what the car would be-her going-away gift.
No license, no car.
No car, no going away.
She knew it was silly and yet-sometimes, silliness worked. Look at Susie, propped up on a telephone book in her boyfriend’s absurdly large Cadillac, piloting them toward Washington, D.C. She had already made four wrong turns and they weren’t even on the Capital Beltway yet. Julie had built in extra time for Susie’s waywardness, so she wasn’t concerned about being late. She just remained amazed at how well life worked out for Susie, who didn’t have a care in the world or a thought in her head.
Perhaps those two things were connected.
“What do they do, again?” Susie asked. The whole thing was really over her head. It was as if the literal overheadedness of life allowed her to let everything else fly by her, too.
“Well, you strip down-”
“Like we do?” Teasing. Susie wasn’t stupid, just not willing to make an effort. Thought Julie was crazy, going for her GED and then starting classes at community college.
“No, I get to wear a bathing suit.”
“And that’s it? You just put on your bathing suit and do, like, a cannonball off the side?”
“There are questions first.”
“Like a test.”
“Sort of.”
“Do I have to be there for that?” Worried, as if she didn’t even want to be in the same room as a test.
“No, you don’t have to come inside at all.”
“I don’t want to sit in the car, though. Tubby says it’s bad to run the heater and the radio off the battery and I’ll go crazy, alone with my own thoughts.”
Yes, it would be crazy-making to be alone with Susie’s thoughts. Lonely, too.
“There are restaurants nearby. You can go have a cup of coffee or something.”
“Okey-dokey.” Susie used such phrases with complete ease. She was only four foot eleven, although she claimed five feet, and her popularity as a performer might have been disturbing if it were not for her enormous chest and wasp waist. She was a pocket Venus with a natural tumble of honey-gold curls and saucer eyes, and Julie would have quite disliked her, except for the fact that Felix never looked at her twice. In fact, he called her “my little freak” in private and thought the men who flocked to see her were pervy. But Felix hadn’t become a rich man by making judgments on what people wanted. Sure, he had standards. He was strict about drugs at the club, strict about drugs in general, but that’s because that enterprise generated more heat from the authorities. He was also rather straitlaced about sex-girls got fired if they got caught doing any kind of play-for-pay. That was the by-product of having two daughters.
Three, Julie reminded herself. He had three now. Michelle had been born almost a year ago, less than ten months after her relationship with Felix began. She still had a hard time believing that Felix had a baby daughter.
She pulled out a compact and studied herself in the mirror, even as Susie made the mistake of taking the Connecticut Avenue exit and had to circle back to the Beltway, saying cheerfully: “Well, I knew I was looking for a state.” As if that was a rarity in D.C., a street named after a state. Julie’s makeup was conservative for this occasion, her hair pulled back into a smooth ponytail. She was less sure of the outfit. Short-but everything was either short or long these days, and she hated the maxi look. The shift dress barely skimmed her knees, although the sleeves went past the elbows, and she had paired it with boots and a trench coat. She looked-what did she look like? A young mother, someone who played tennis and kept up with fashion. Cool, but conservative.
Not unlike Bambi Brewer, whom Julie had seen shopping at the little grocery store in Cross Keys after a morning at the indoor tennis barn.
Julie pointed out the various places where Susie could wait for her on Wisconsin Avenue, but Susie fretted that she could never parallel park this huge boat of a Cadillac. At almost three hundred pounds, Tubby, Susie’s boyfriend, needed a big car. But even with the seat pulled all the way up, Susie could barely see over the wheel. It probably would be hard for her to put the car in reverse, or see out the rear window.
“I’ll just go round and round,” she decided.
“It might be a while,” Julie warned.
“I don’t mind.” The amazing thing about Susie was that she didn’t. Chances were, she would end up getting lost just making a circle. She wouldn’t mind that, either. Julie didn’t want to look like Susie, but she wouldn’t mind being like her. Free as the breeze, not a care in the world.
She took a deep breath and walked inside the synagogue, trying not to let it intimidate her. It was just a building, like any other. She had a right to be here. Or would have the right, soon enough.
“Thank you,” she said to the one man she knew among the three who sat in judgment of her. “I appreciate you getting this on the schedule so swiftly.”
“You were very diligent in your study,” he said. “Besides, we needed to get this done before the holiday.”
“St. Patrick’s Day?” she asked in wonder, then corrected herself. “Oh, Easter, of course.”
She wasn’t swift enough to cover the second mistake and he winced. “You mean Passover, Julie.”
“Sure, right, because the Last Supper was a seder.” See what a good student I am, Rabbi Tasmin? “I just got confused, because I didn’t see how Easter could be a problem, but I thought because we’re in D.C. and it’s a federal holiday-”
“It’s not, actually,” said one of the two rabbis she didn’t know. She hadn’t been able to focus on their names when they were introduced, but maybe she could get by with calling him rabbi, or even rebbe, although it might sound funny, coming from her. Felix laughed whenever she tried to say a Yiddish word.
The rabbi said: “Easter doesn’t have to be designated a federal holiday because it always falls on a Sunday. But it’s treated like a holiday for all. This is part of the life you are choosing. You’re used to being mainstream, of having your ways seen as ‘normal.’ Are you really ready to have a life that is otherwise? Of having to ask for holidays that your work doesn’t grant?”