Where the Truth Lies (50 page)

She snapped a finger at Vince. “Got a butt?” she asked. Then she looked back at me with a flat expression. “No offense intended.”

Vince tossed her his pack. If he was feeling something unusual, he was keeping it to himself. She caught the cigarettes, extracted one, and lit it thoughtfully. She took a very short drag on it.

“I guess the question,” she said, her low tone pushing smoke out of her mouth nice and slow, “is who pays me.”

So she was a hooker.

I hadn’t thought about it before, but it made so much sense to me that I was almost filled with admiration. What a fabulous setup, I thought. Work for room service in a hotel, tons of horny guys, even a few horny couples. Everybody’s on vacation, fun in the sun, she brings booze or champagne into the room, tight uniform, looking good, there’s a bed right over there and next to it a bathroom to wash up and gargle in afterward. What a clean, perfect package. And if you’re a married man, the hotel even lets her have a room of her own for a few hours. Hubby can say he’s having a couple of drinks with the fellas, and off he goes for a quickie in Room 308 with a view of a ventilator shaft just above (joke coming) the Ballroom.

Give the head of room service and the house detective a piece of your action and you’re set. No cops.“I was just delivering his eggs Benedict, Officer.” Clean sheets, fourteen hundred bedrooms to flop in … sure.

Vince and I had a lot to talk about, a whole fucking lot, but we sure as hell weren’t going to do it in front of some Irish whore. I felt awkward being naked in front of him, if not her. I walked over to my bedroom door and told her, “In here.” She got the tote bag she’d brought with her and followed me into the room. I shut the door behind us. My wallet was on the dresser atop my silk robe, and I withdrew three one-hundred-dollar bills and tossed them onto my bed, which is how you’re supposed to pay whores.

She looked at me with an amused expression. I suddenly felt as bothered by my nakedness in front of her as in front of Vince. I unfurled the folds from my robe and wrapped it around me quickly, tying its sash in a huff. She was laughing at me.

“What’s the big joke?” I asked.

“You’re flouncing,” she said, putting a lisp on thec. “I guess I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”

“Yeah, same here,” I snapped. “Take your money.”

“No thanks,” she smiled.

“That’s good money, considering you didn’t get anybody off,” I pointed out.

“I’m not a prostitute,” she said. “I use sex in my work to the minimal extent necessary. Sometimes, when I’m not working, I also enjoy sex, to the maximum. This evening was a case of a happy overlap. And it seems I’ve just found a skeleton that you two boys would probably prefer to keep in the closet. You wouldn’t want it to comeout of the closet, I’m sure.”

She was worse than a whore.

She said, “Lanny, I went to Hunter College—”

“That’s no excuse,” I sneered.

“And I want to do things. Things as big as what you’ve done. To do so, I sure could use a lot of money, and to get it, I sure could use this information I’ve acquired. All that matters is who pays me, and how much. If it’s you, it’s going to cost a lot. But it’ll only cost you once. If someone else pays me for the information … it’ll cost you forever.”

She walked back into the living room. Vince was over by the bar, hitting the Jack Daniel’s. God knows how much he had drunk while we were out of the room. He looked hurt, and resentful.

Maureen picked a bottle of champagne out of the ice bucket and poured herself a glass. “You guys sleep on it. Think about what it’ll be worth to you. I’m so fucking tired, I’m not even going home. It’s those Tuinals.” She dropped her tote bag by the couch and got under the sheets of the bed we’d been in.

She gave me a sweet, sleepy smile. “Hey, Lanny, nothing personal. The other times, you were a wonderful lover and you’ve got the sweetest little butt.” She smiled at Vince. “Guess you noticed that about him too, Vince.”

Vince snapped off the light by the bar, took his bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and looked back at her from the doorway of his bedroom. The living room was dark.

“Anyone can say anything about anyone, Maureen,” I snapped.

“You know I’m not stupid, Lanny. I can make it stick. If we don’t come to terms, the world’s going to hear the dulcet tones of Vince Collins crooning his swan song.” She yawned. “We’ll do business over breakfast. Order me French toast, will you? And think big, guys. Think very big.”

The bitch pulled the sheets over her head. I looked across at Vince, who’d ruined everything. He was too wasted to waste my words on. He gave me an attempt at a smile but fell against the door frame to keep himself standing.

I would never be able to love him like I had.

I closed the door connecting my bedroom to the living room. I put aDO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and fastened the chain lock in case the maid didn’t believe in signs. I left a wake-up call for eight and went to sleep, knowing that the telethon was the least of the ordeals I was going to have to face in the morning.

The Tuinals had really conked me out, and I slept through my wake-up call. The operator called Reuben in his room down the hall to see if he could wake me, but he couldn’t get in with the key he had because I’d chain-locked the door. He had to pound for two straight minutes to get me out of my stupor. I staggered to the door, unfastened the chain, and let him in.

I went into the living room and saw Maureen in the bed. I knew from across the room that she was dead. There was a mashed pillow over her face, and her body was lying at a funny angle. All the same, I shook her and tried to see if she had a pulse. I wondered if someone could have broken in, but no, I looked at the living-room door and it was still chained. I yelled for Reuben to get Vince while I worked on Maureen. Reuben ran out from my room, saw Maureen, almost fainted, and ran into Vince’s room. Next thing I know he’s calling me, saying he thinks Vince is dead, too, but Vince is just unconscious; I’ve seen him that way a dozen times. One too many Tuinals and eight too many whiskeys. I looked at Vince’s door and it was chained as well.

John, my friend, I have no idea when you will read this, but I’m not now reliving that night in 1959. In all the ensuing years since what I’ve described took place, here’s the thing I am stuck with: Maureen’s autopsy in New Jersey showed no indications of poisoning. She’d been alive when I went to bed. All three doors to the suite were chain-locked from the inside when I awoke and found her dead. Whoever killed her had to still be in the suite. Which left me with nothing better than this:

She didn’t kill herself.

I know I didn’t kill her.

And Vince couldn’t remember anything that happened after I left the two of them, she in the living-room bed, he framed in the doorway of his room.

So that, John, is how I’ve known for many years that my former partner and friend Vince Collins murdered Maureen O’Flaherty. I know this simply by default. It’s mathematics. Two possibilities minus me equals him. I don’t like those numbers, but that’s how they add up.

The one other possibility I’ve thought about over the years, John, is that somehow I did it, thatI was the one who had the blackout and that Vince, out of affection or loyalty, let me think it washe who had committed the murder. This would have been a noble sacrifice, but there were so many bitter words between us when we split up shortly after this terrible event that I think something would have slipped out or been said in anger.

I think Vince can be forgiven for two reasons. The first is, I honestly don’;t think he knew what he was doing. I don’t think he’s pretending not to remember. I think he was so far out of it that night that he truly doesn’t know what happened. That must be some kind of hell to live in.

The second reason to forgive Vince is that he was justifiably terrified that his incident with me (and whatever feelings may have been attached to it) would become public knowledge. In the fifties and early sixties, the slightest rumor of homosexuality could destroy a show-business career in an absolute instant. At that time, there were many arranged marriages for leading men with “tendencies.” One successful TV actor, playing the part of a man in your profession, John, even created a story of a wife killed in a tragic plane crash when no such wife had existed or crash had occurred. In the climate of those times, I can understand Vince’s totally appropriate fears.

Obviously I’m no babe in the woods here. You must have guessed by now that Vince and I together covered up his crime and found a way to relocate Maureen’s body to a hotel in New Jersey. I cannot explain how we accomplished this, for reasons that I’d prefer to keep to myself. This is the one criminal act thatboth of us committed, but if you’re reading this, then I’m beyond the reach of the American judicial system and will have to plead my case in a higher court.

For Maureen, I feel the least amount of sympathy I can feel for a victim of murder. I have never fully understood what game she planned to play with us. But upon witnessing Vince’s indiscretion, she clearly intended to gain the maximum benefit for herself or inflict the maximum damage on Vince and myself. I now believe that, from the outset, she got close to me with the sole intent of trawling for whatever she could turn up in our lives that might profit her.

I do feel terrible pain for her parents and I’m glad that by protecting Vince all these years, I’ve also protected them from learning more about their daughter than they should ever be told.

Finally, there is the obvious fact that I’ve known of Vince’s guilt and have never reported what I know to the police. Part of the reason for this is that I can’t prove anything. Not to the police, not to you, not to anyone but myself. The only reason I know that Vince killed her is simply because I know that I didn’t. He could make the same claim for himself. There are a number of times when he’s said to me, “But what if you’re lying, Lanny?” It’s a valid point.

Without our supposedly ironclad alibi, if the police knew anything of what I’ve just told you, they could probably pin the murder on both of us, since we both had so much to lose and were both locked up in the same suite with her the night she died. Florida’s electric chair has taken the life of more than one innocent man. If the police knew what I’ve told you here, I might be added to that list. Certainly it would be the end of my career as someone who makes people laugh. You can surely understand why I kept this matter secret until my life was over.

John, that’s the truth as best I know it and as best I can convey it.

I sat in my sunny little apartment, the smell of freshly burnt Polaroids adding its own wicked spice to the scent of Jungle Gardenia that usually inhabited the premises.

The document was extremely revealing, to say the least.

Or extremely self-serving.

Really, while all breathless revelation, it was just the “truth” as Lanny was choosing to depict it. And conveniently, it pointed all the blame at Vince.

The entire document really meant nothing. It hadn’t been notarized or witnessed in any way. The fact that it was purportedly addressed to John Hillman gave it no legal authority. I could write the same letter and mail it to him myself. Anyone could.

For that matter, there was nothing saying this had ever been sent to Hillman or to anyone other than me. And suppose one were to ask John Hillman to verify that he’d received this letter, what could he possibly say? After all, he wasn’t supposed to read it unless Lanny Morris was dead. Even if he had, all he could say to anyone about it (including the police or a judge in a courtroom) was that it was a privileged communication between attorney and client and that he could not reveal or comment upon its contents without his client’s permission.

On the absurd notion that Lanny Morris might have died last night, I turned on my TV. The local ABC affiliate had an afternoon news show that would be on in a couple of minutes. If Lanny Morris was dead, it would definitely be mentioned. Ah, there was my good friend Rona Barrett with her five-minute update on Hollwood. An informed public is a nation’s greatest asset. Funny, she hadn’t called me yet to co-host. Show business is so fickle. One day you’re someone’s best friend …

But what if this documentwas what it claimed to be? What could I glean from it, and, by the way, why in God’s name had Lanny sent it to me?

If this was the truth as best Lanny knew it … then I at last had my answer to the question of why Maureen O’Flaherty had died. She’d known too much and had intended to profit from it.

ABC was running a commercial for a special that night about the Watergate scandal. There was a shot of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and a clip of John Dean testifying. Behind him was his wife, Maureen, who had sat behind him every day, her blond hair pinned tight around her head like a halo. She’d been a stewardess, of the “Coffee, tea, or me?” variety, according to John Dean. That’s how he’d met her. I was willing to bet that, like Maureen O’Flaherty, she wasn’t quite as angelic as she was making herself appear for the benefit of Congress. Probably she—

A thought occurred to me. I went to the big legal portfolio in my bedroom, where I kept Xeroxes of clippings and articles written about Collins and Morris in the fifties. Kilgallen, O’Brien, Earl Wilson … Moe Cohn. There he was.

The scandal columnist out of Miami whose columns had, surprisingly, chosen not to speculate about the Girl in New Jersey. Cohn had faded from the scene fairly quickly, but he’d certainly raked up the local dirt in his brief prime. The byline photo showed a bald man in big sunglasses with a cold-blooded smile in the shadow of an oversized nose… .

Quickly, I grabbed a pencil and filled in his bald head with black lead. I was generous with it. And I tried to imagine rheumy, watery eyes behind the sunglasses.

I recalled that Maureen’s mother had been related to a more famous denizen of New Rochelle: the great George M., whose last name had also beenher family name. Cohan. And a standard diminutive of Maureen (as John Dean would tell you) is … Mo.

Yes. Of course.

Maureen O’Flaherty was Moe Cohn.