Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

those round, silent tears that drift down cheeks and leave trails. “Please,” she whispered, “don’t do this to me.”

“I just have to get to the truth.” I realized I was whispering too. “Bonnie, can you shoot?”

“Yes.” I could barely hear her. “But I swear to God, I didn’t kill Sy.”

Jesus, I thought, I almost have her. Almost. “You have to understand,” I told her gently, “people swear to God all the time. ‘I swear to God, I’m innocent.’”

“But I am.”

“Prove it to me.”

“How?”

All I had to do was pull her in very slowly, lovingly, as though seducing the most reluctant of women. “We can rule you out with a simple little test. Come with me. I’ll drive you down to Headquarters, stay with you the whole time.

You just give a small sample of saliva and blood—a pinprick, nothing more. And then you’re in the clear.”

For a long moment there was silence. I heard the deep hum of the refrigerator and then the click of Moose’s paws as she toddled back into the kitchen, across the tile, to look up at us. She didn’t understand why we weren’t having fun.

“Come on, Bonnie.”

I imagined her beside me in the Jag on the way to Headquarters, our arms and shoulders touching when I took a curve; I thought about the heat that MAGIC HOUR / 195

instant of friction would give off. Shit, I don’t want this fantasy.

But then, at Headquarters, my bewitchment would finally be over. In that hard fluorescent light, I’d see Bonnie Spencer for what she was: a killer. Of course, she hadn’t meant to do it. Of course, if she could live the moment all over again, Sy would still be alive. And of course, she was, without a doubt, honestly and profoundly sorry. But still, a killer. And seeing her in that merciless light, I would no longer be able to desire the thing I most hated. Murderer.

I would no longer spend every goddamn obsessed minute creating different scenarios of kissing her, caressing her, fucking her: in beds, in chairs, on tables, in showers, on floors, in cars, on the beach, in the ocean, in the woods. I would be relieved of my madness. I would save thousands staying away from pay phones. I would go to my wedding with a peaceful mind and a loving heart.

All of a sudden, I felt sick, awful—the opposite of dizzy: heavy-headed. Despair settled on me. In that terrible moment, I wondered, How the hell am I going to live out the rest of my life without this woman? For a minute I truly could not speak. Then, I don’t know how, I got it together: “Let’s go, Bonnie.”

“No.”

“Come on. You’ve got everything to gain, nothing to lose.

Let it be over.”

“I want you out of here.”

“Bonnie—”

“Don’t come back. I won’t speak to you again.”

“Honey, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to.”

“No. And I’m not your honey. Not by a long shot, you son of a bitch. If you have any more questions, you can speak to my lawyer. Now out.”

196 / SUSAN ISAACS

Robby Kurz came swishing over to my desk, licked his pinkie and ran it over his eyebrow. I told him: “Hey, you’re not telling me anything about yourself I don’t already know.”

“Gideon is outside,” Robby simpered, in an exaggeratedly faggy way. Well, what do you expect from a cop? A gay rights button? “He’s simply dying to see you.”

“Gideon who?”

“Are you ready for this?” He waved a business card.

“Gideon Isaiah Friedman, Esquire. Of East Hampton, sweetie.

Attorney for Bonnie Spencer.”

Gideon Friedman walked toward me. He didn’t take little mincing steps. And he didn’t lisp or wave a limp wrist. Still, you knew what he was. Maybe it was that his getup was impeccable country lawyer, English style: awesomely casual, perfectly cut brown tweed suit with a tattersall shirt, green knit tie and shoes that looked like wing tips, except they were brown suede. Or maybe it was the flawless haircut, where every single strand of brown hair lay smooth against his head, as if his skull were magnetized. Or maybe it was that he was too boyishly handsome for a guy in his late thirties, with that innocent, round-eyed, ultra-upper-class queer look male models have, the ones who always have very long scarves tossed around their necks in interesting ways. Forget his name; he had the look of one of those guys with a wood racquet who leap over the net at the Meadow Club.

Or maybe it was just the way he checked me out when I stood up to shake his hand. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I responded.

“I’m here representing Bonnie Spencer.” He had a breathy voice, like a waiter in one of those trendy, expensive seafood restaurants, Fish Hampton or whatever, that open and close every summer because

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nobody, not even the most pretentious schmuck from New York, would voluntarily eat rare scallops more than once. I looked at him and thought: Oh, Christ, Bonnie’s going to sit in Bedford for twenty-five to life.

“Why don’t you sit down?” I suggested. He sat in the plastic chair next to my desk and glanced around the squad room. I figured he’d murmur, Oooh, how butch! or at least cross his legs at the knees. “Well, Mr. Friedman, what can I do for you?”

“Well…” And suddenly he stopped being a homo. He became a lawyer. “Why not start by telling me what this bullshit is about Bonnie coming in and taking blood and saliva tests to ‘rule her out’ as a suspect.”

“I meant that. Sincerely.”

“Give me a break. You were referring to that DNA testing, right?” I shrugged. “What’s the story here? Sy Spencer was shot from a distance. Are we talking about some perspiration that dripped onto the murder weapon? A little saliva? Did the perpetrator drool?” It was weird, the hard-edge-lawyer sarcasm presented in that whispery waiter’s voice. “Or was there some kind of a fight, and you have blood—or skin cells from under Sy’s nails?” For