‘I understand that. You were stuck in a childless, abusive marriage and Davy wouldn’t let you escape. It’s natural to look for comfort under those circumstances.’ I might have added that comfort takes many forms: an embrace, a kind word, a birthday gift… or eliminating the discomfort at its source. Instead, I asked, ‘How did you meet him?’
‘Davy brought Dante around when they became partners.’
‘They were friends?’
‘Dante felt sorry for Davy. He was trying to help him.’
‘Then you believe your husband murdered Clarence Spott?’
‘Davy was convicted of manslaughter, not murder. If you remember.’ Ellen settled back in her chair, noticeably more relaxed now. True, she knew about good cop/bad cop, as did virtually every mutt I interrogated. But that didn’t mean she could resist its charms.
‘I know we spoke about this before,’ I said, ‘but I want you to describe your husband’s abuse.’ I nodded at the tape recorder. ‘For the record.’ When she hesitated, I added, ‘That’s why we started from the beginning. We just want to get your story down once and for all.’
As I’d hoped, the question triggered a response Ellen was unable to control. She’d been rehearsing her grievances for many years. Her injuries were her drug of choice, her dope, and like any junkie, she couldn’t get through the day without them. Even in her most relaxed moments, they hung just below the surface, ever ready to impede an attack of conscience.
I let her run on, nodding occasionally as she described a series of progressively gruesome incidents. Her husband, or so she told me, was given to sexual humiliation. By submitting, she was usually able to avoid his fists. But submission (and survival, too) had its own penalties. Over time, she’d built up a reservoir of self-hatred deep enough to drown in. And drown she did, falling into a depression that marked every hour of every day.
‘Suicidal ideation,’ she declared, her voice by then as soft as my own, ‘that’s what the shrinks call it. You think “suicidal ideation” describes my state of mind, detective?’
‘I think it lacks poetry.’
She looked at me, her gaze mild, and I had the distinct impression that she wanted to trust me, as she’d once trusted Davy Lodge, as she’d trusted Dante Russo. For just a moment, I felt hopeful. Maybe if I got past her anger, she’d finally come clean.
From suicide, Ellen Lodge again turned to her destroyed expectations. Everybody, she claimed, has a right to a life. Her husband had taken hers as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger when he’d jammed his gun into her mouth. She was no longer the person she’d been when she met David Lodge. She was not the person she would have become had she never met him. Instead, she was an embittered, childless, middle-aged woman scrabbling for economic survival. The two thousand a month she got from Greenpoint Carton didn’t cover her mortgage and taxes.
I watched Ellen’s reserves gradually ebb, watched her shoulders slump and her breathing slow, until the little hand on the dial finally pointed to empty and she came to a stop. By that time, I was ready.
‘Betrayal,’ I said, my voice so soft Ellen had to lean forward to catch my words, ‘I know what it is. My parents were junkies. They did coke, speed and whatever pills they could get their hands on. Percocets, Dilaudid, Codeine, Valium, Darvon, Ritalin, Demerol.’ I paused long enough to take a breath. ‘They got away with it because this was back in the Seventies when people were more tolerant of druggies, and because it’s almost impossible to fire civil servants, which both of them were. They missed a few days of work? They came in late? They snorted coke twice an hour to get through the day? Well, I remember one time my father was suspended for a week, and another time my mother was forced into rehab, and there might have been other punishments as well. I wouldn’t know about them because my parents mostly acted like I wasn’t there.’
I shifted my weight slightly, and crossed my legs. My eyes drifted to my hands, as if my revelations were so intimate I couldn’t look her in the face. ‘You know, when you’re a kid, you blame yourself for everything. That’s because if you’re not causing your own pain, you have no control at all. In some ways, it’s like having a gun put to your head. I mean, where are you gonna run to when you’re a five-year-old? To your relatives? My mother was from St Louis and my father’s parents were living in Arizona. Plus, my parents’ friends were druggies, too.’
When I finally raised my eyes to meet Ellen’s, her gaze was intense, but not skeptical. Encouraged, I again spoke.
‘OK, so you’re a kid and your parents barely know you’re alive and you blame yourself. What do you do?’
‘You try to become better.’
‘Is that what you did with your husband?’
The question produced a short, choppy laugh devoid of mirth. ‘Yeah, why not? I was only eighteen when I married Davy. I thought if I did better — if I cooked better, if I wore that lingerie he liked — things would improve. Ya wanna hear something really sad? I used to read sex manuals on how to please a man.’
‘Well, I didn’t go quite that far. But I started keeping my room clean, which was mostly what my parents complained about. I mean, by the time I was seven, my room would’ve passed a military inspection.’
‘And your folks?’
‘I got a couple of pats on the head, but then the novelty wore off and it was like it never happened. Ya gotta picture them here, Ellen. Most of the time, they used downers and I’d find them laid out like zombies on the couch. When they lucked into a few grams of cocaine, they’d suddenly come awake. I swear, it was like a resurrection. They’d pile the coke on a mirror, then place the mirror, dead center, on what was supposed to be the dining-room table. And that’s exactly where they’d remain, staring down at that pile until it was fully consumed. I’m tellin’ ya, I figured out, at a very early age, that the pile was a lot more important than I was. I wasn’t allowed anywhere near it.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Most of what I’d told Ellen, up to that point, was true, if greatly oversimplified. But the truth didn’t matter to me, any more than I minded using my personal history to lure Ellen into making a statement against her penal interests. And, yes, Ellen Lodge was right about my grandfather. Which only put me on a par with any other good detective. The important thing was that I had Ellen’s full attention as I began to play with the facts.
The long-term failure of my clean-bedroom strategy, I declared, hadn’t discouraged me, not in the slightest. And why should it? A few pats are better than no pats at all. Just ask any dog.
I went on to describe how, in the course of about a year, I became a cleaning maniac, a master of the vacuum cleaner and the dust cloth, the mop and the broom. I was the scrubber of bathrooms, washer of windows, polisher of floors, king of the laundry. There was nothing I wouldn’t do, no effort I wouldn’t make, until the apartment was finally clean enough to withstand the scrutiny of a nineteenth century German housewife.
As I plunged into pure hyperbole, I became more and more animated. By degrees, my mouth expanded into the sort of comfortable smile that might be exchanged by two members of a support group over a post-session cup of coffee.
‘One time,’ I finally declared, ‘I painted the entire living room while my parents watched re-runs on Comedy Central.’
‘You lie. There wasn’t any Comedy Central thirty years ago.’
‘No, I swear. It took me five hours, but you want to know the most amazing part? My parents’ eyes never left the screen. And they never laughed, not once. They were too stoned.’
Ellen’s smile was both amused and ironic. ‘God,’ she said, ‘when you look back, you feel like such an idiot.’
‘That’s not the way it is for me. I don’t blame myself, never. Hey, I haven’t spoken to my mom in twenty years. When my father passed, I wasn’t at his bedside and I didn’t go to his funeral.’