The Wisdom of Perversity (37 page)

“No!” Julie cried in agony.

Brian took her hand and pledged, “And we still go public.” He turned to Jeff. “All of us tell our story to the press. Whether we get Klein and Rydel confessing on tape or not. That's the deal, Jeff. Take it or leave it.”

Jeff rubbed his face. “Okay,” he said, and rubbed again, harder. When he dropped his hands, he begged her, “Please, Julie. Let's not humiliate ourselves for nothing. Let's get him on film. Right, Bri? Let's at least make sure we totally fuck him.” He smirked bitterly. “You should excuse the expression.”

One Second of Remorse

February 2008

THE EVIL MAN
arrived in a wheelchair propelled by his adopted son, Sam Rydel. Rydel was dressed not to be recognized, wearing a New York Yankees cap pulled low, sunglasses, a windbreaker, jeans, sneakers. Richard Klein was also hard to find in his clothes. His bald skull, forehead, and both eyebrows were covered by a ribbed black beanie and his puffy down coat was pushed up to his chin. Only a stripe of the old man's face was visible and most of that was covered by the oversized frames of his eyeglasses, whose thick lenses made his eyes loom large and dwarfed his nose. He seemed deliberately dressed to send the message: dementia.

“Follow me,” Jeff said, without a greeting. He turned and led them through through his hotel suite's hallway and into the vast living room, its panoramic view of a snow-covered Central Park glistening in the bright sun on the clear, cold winter's day. Rydel's head was lowered to watch where he was going while he pushed the wheelchair. Once in the main room he removed his hat and sunglasses, squinting eyes drawn first to its sweeping view, then opening wide at the surprise of two strangers.

“Who are they?” he asked. Rydel looked puffier, older in person than in the photographs. He wasn't over six feet as Julie had come to imagine; he was no taller than Gary, maybe shorter. And the cold, remorseless eyes—they were full of fear.

“You don't remember? Ask Cousin Richard,” Jeff said, pointing at Klein.

Rydel blinked twice, very rapidly as if he were toting up sums on a calculator. Then his face went blank; he shrugged, turned his back to them, bending over the wheelchair. That blocked their view of its occupant while he removed the beanie, unzipped the down coat without removing Klein's arms, and untied what turned out to be a gray scarf.

Waiting for this unveiling, Julie couldn't breathe normally. She could only take sips of air before her throat would close up, as if oxygen had become poisonous. The harder she tried to force the air down into her lungs, the quicker she choked on it.
Am I hyperventilating?
she wondered.

Brian had to pee. Waiting for Klein and Rydel, he had drunk an entire carafe of the Four Seasons' strong coffee. In the previous hour, he had gone to the bathroom three times, the last just ten minutes ago. It couldn't be that there was more in his bladder to expel, but waiting to talk to Klein for the first time in forty years, he had to tighten his pelvic muscle to squash the urge to go.

At last Rydel finished and stepped to the right of the wheelchair, revealing a frail old man in a beige cardigan sweater worn over a white shirt buttoned to the collar without a tie, and baggy blue corduroy pants with what looked like food stains on the broad lap it formed. Julie's eyes dropped to his thick-soled orthopedic brown shoes. She was momentarily fascinated by Klein's thin ankles in white compression socks. They appeared to be too skinny to stay in the shoes should he try to walk. If he ever walked. He didn't look as if he could.

While they had waited for Klein and Rydel to arrive, Jeff had been bursting with anxiety. He had settled in a chair only to jump up immediately and once again check his hidden recording devices or to press buttons on his iPhone, presumably checking e-mails. He had announced the time every ten minutes. He had seemed so nervous Julie couldn't imagine he'd follow the plan. But now, having finally gotten his cue, he looked calm. He even managed a pleasant smile as he said, “Hi, Cousin Richard. Been a while. Twenty years?” Klein's magnified eyes stared up at Jeff with the curiosity of a three-year-old. He appeared interested but puzzled, as if Jeff were speaking a foreign language. Brian thought it was a first-rate performance. Klein wasn't pretending he didn't know someone was talking to him. Just that he had no idea who he was or what this person was saying.

“I told you,” Rydel said. “This past year he really declined. He doesn't know who anybody is. He thinks I'm one of his nurses.” Rydel addressed Klein in a loud voice, enunciating each word meticulously. “Dick, this is Jeff. Harriet's son. You remember Jeffrey. Jeffrey Mark. You're so proud of his success as a director and producer.”

Klein nodded once and managed a thin parting of his lips, revealing teeth that were either dentures or caps, Brian couldn't be sure. Then the smile faded and he looked away, as if embarrassed that he didn't know Jeff and felt too tired to keep up the pretense he did. That was another brilliant stroke, Brian decided. A clumsy faker would rely on drooling stupefaction or that he mistook Jeff for someone else.

Jeff bent over Klein's wheelchair, hands on his knees. He spoke in kind and gentle tones. “That's okay, Cousin Richard. You don't have to pretend with me. And you don't have to pretend you don't know what's going on because Brian and Julie are here. They don't want anyone to know what you did to them, either. I'm sure you remember them. They were two of your favorite victims. This is Brian Moran.”

As Brian stepped up to Klein's wheelchair, he glanced at Rydel. Rydel goggled at him. Rydel knew who he was now. Brian bent over to let Klein see his face.

Klein's fish eyes came up to investigate him. The old man nodded slowly, as he had with Jeff. Again Klein smiled hesitantly, and again his eyes slid away, face expressionless, eyes focused dully on the middle distance, which happened to be Brian's chest at the moment.

“And this is Julie Rosen,” Jeff said, continuing to speak in the friendly tones of a host. “Better known to you by her maiden name, a name I'm proud to share with her, Julie Mark.”

Julie had been watching Klein's reaction to Jeff and Brian. She was surprised that he had light blue eyes, so light they were almost white; she had remembered them as hazel or some other brownish color. Otherwise she recognized Klein's features as a decaying version of the middle-aged man she once knew. But the confident, wheedling, energetic personality really did seem gone. She pushed that thought away.
He's faking,
she insisted to herself.

When Jeff finally said her name, she saw in the periphery that Rydel's body language had changed from sullenness to alarm and that he took a step as if to get between Jeff and Brian and the wheelchair. But they cut him off as she stepped up to Klein.

Rydel called out in a desperate voice, “He doesn't know who you—”

Before he could finish, she had bent down toward those enormous limpid eyes, rising to look at her, taking her in with a wondering puzzlement, his head, like with Jeff and Brian, nodding, a sliver of smile appearing. It was the smile, she decided later, that got her so angry she went off script. She spat on him. Only a thin stream of watery saliva came out and landed square on his pale, spotted forehead.

“Hey!” Rydel shouted, and collided with Brian, trying to reach her.

She was busy watching Klein's reaction. He cried out like a startled baby. Two bony hands that looked too big to be supported by their frail wrists came up to shield his face. They trembled uncontrollably. He made more noises of fear or pain, but they weren't words.

“Get her off him!” Rydel shouted. Brian, taller and stronger, was easily keeping him away. Jeff stood beside her, watching Klein as if he were directing him in a scene, a hand on his chin, brow furrowed thoughtfully. Julie also watched the old man's hands flail, trying both to hide his face and to push away an invisible attacker. Her disappointment deepened that faking or not, this feeble creature was nothing like the vigorous, crazily bold man who, in her own home, her mother and father a split-level floor away, had grabbed a fistful of her hair and pushed her head onto his purple swollen penis.

She stepped back and looked at Brian to signal he could let Rydel go. She had no more spontaneous anger to release. If she was going to get angry enough again to attack him, she'd have to work herself up to it. She felt utterly exhausted, her muscles struggling to support her. She would have been glad to lie down and take a nap.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” Rydel complained. He knelt beside Klein, a monogrammed handkerchief in his right hand while he gently lowered the old man's bony hands with his left. Klein whimpered and shut his eyes tight, wincing as if he expected to be hit.

Does he beat him?
Brian wondered with horror and a trace of glee that he was immediately ashamed of.

“He doesn't know who any of you are. He doesn't even know me,” Rydel insisted while wiping Klein's forehead clean. The old man stopped whimpering. His hands relaxed, dropping into his lap, but he kept his eyes shut tight. He had almost no lashes, Julie noticed. “It's okay,” Rydel said softly to Klein. “No one will hurt you again. I promise.”

Someone hit him recently.
Brian was convinced, again appalled, again a little pleased, and then he realized he was starting to believe Klein was senile.

Rydel got to his feet. He confronted Jeff, who was still regarding Klein thoughtfully. “What the fuck is going on? I agreed to see you and you alone. I told you Dick is suffering from dementia. It's been happening to him gradually for five years. This past year he's fallen apart. I brought him to prove it to you. You said if I did, you'd agree how we were going to handle everything. Is there a problem? If there's a problem on your end, I'm outta here.” He abruptly added, as if just reminded that he ought to ask this, “And who the fuck are they?” He nodded at Brian and Julie.

“You know who they are, Sam,” Jeff said, back to their script. He didn't seem thrown by Julie's ad-lib. “I certainly don't have to remind you, Cousin Richard,” he said, leaning around Rydel, trying to talk to the wheelchair's occupant. Jeff immediately gave that up and addressed Rydel: “You remember, Sam, giving Brian and me a tour of
The Tonight Show
set. And you also enjoyed the services of Julie's father as your dentist for several years.”

This was Julie's proper cue. She almost couldn't pick it up she felt so tired, so hopeless. She had to take a deep breath—at least now she could inhale properly—to get the words out. “You watched at Aunt Harriet's apartment while you . . .” She bent down to address Klein. His eyes were open, unfocused, in the general direction of their feet. His mouth and jaw were working as if he were chewing. What unsettled her the most was that he no longer appeared to be fearful. He glanced up at her with untroubled curiously, as if he had never met her. “You put your fingers in my vagina. You did it in front of Brian and Jeff and”—she turned away from the wheelchair, relieved to be able to look from Klein's vacant gaze to Rydel's cornered, knowing eyes—“you watched. And you smiled. You enjoyed watching him molest me. But that wasn't the most fun you had. What you really enjoyed was when Klein pushed my mouth onto his penis. Remember what you said? You said, ‘Put it in her pussy. I want to see it in her pussy.' ”

“I never said—” Rydel stopped himself. For one second Rydel seemed to collapse from remorse and guilt. He brought his hands up to his mouth, face breaking apart from an overwhelming need to sob. Just as suddenly he mastered himself, face numbing, restored to wary sullenness. Now he backed up without looking where he was going, until he bumped into one of the fake urns. He glanced at it, surprised that it was made of
papier
-
mâché.

“Watch it,” Jeff said. “That's a prop, a prototype for my next picture.”

“I've had enough of this bullshit,” he said, then walked purposefully to the back of the wheelchair, grabbing the handles, releasing its brake.

“Go on, Jules,” Jeff said. “Tell him.”

“Tomorrow we're going to hold a news conference,” Julie said. “We're going to tell what you and Klein did to each of us.”

Rydel tilted the wheelchair up to turn it around. Klein's head flopped back as if he had no neck muscles. Rydel paused to say, without a trace of defensiveness, “I honestly don't know who you are.”

It enraged Julie enough for her to admit in front of Brian, “I'm going to tell them how after he shoved my mouth onto his penis, he said I wasn't being fair, that I had to kiss yours, and you took yours out and put it my mouth.”

Julie glanced at Brian, to check whether he was hurt that she had kept this detail from him. He nodded encouragingly. She looked back at her tormentors.

Rydel made a disgusted face. “That's bullshit,” he said.

With Klein tilted back like that, the suite's floor to ceiling windows beyond the couch were front and center for his watery eyes. “Park,” he said pleasantly, the first word he had spoken. “Park,” he repeated.

“Yes, that's the park,” Rydel said irritably but, Brian noticed, also reflexively as if he were in the habit of humoring a demented old man.

“Once we tell what happened to us, the floodgates will open,” Jeff said. “Everyone in the past forty years who you and Cousin Richard molested and raped will come forward.”

Brian spoke his lines: “And sooner or later the statute of limitations and your wallet won't be enough to stop an indictment.”

“Cousin Richard won't go to jail,” Jeff taunted Rydel. “Especially if you corroborate that he's senile. But you will. You'll lose all your money and you'll spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Rydel let go of the wheelchair. Klein's head flopped forward. He moaned. “And this is all gonna happen,” Rydel said in a sneering tone, “because of what you say I did when I was fifteen?”

“No, of course not just because of that,” Brian said. “Think of who is saying all this. At the very least your reputation is fucked. You know what Julie can say about Klein and your relationship to him. You know what I can say. Everyone will believe us. First of all, it's true, and second of all, why would we make it up?”

Rydel reached into his jacket, removed the Yankees hat and put it on. “Good-bye,” he said to Jeff.