17
Duck
Early to bed and early to rise, prison is no place for night owls. I toss in my narrow bed and hallucinate espresso and perfect hazelnut biscotti, I hallucinate luscious scallop cruda and crisp Prosecco, I hallucinate a sloppy Corner Bistro burger and a beer. I hallucinate.
Days at Bedford Hills are as you’d expect: uniform. Each gray morning feels like waking in a nightmare of junior high—the matchy- matchy industrial light and flat gray palette, the burbling sense of fomenting unease, the prismatic instability of pubescent psyches, and the unremitting similarity of one day to another. Visiting hours punctuate our amorphous days, as do jobs, meals, bunk inspections, group therapy, the rare fight and its consequential lockdown.
Excitement is movie night, the occasional party, or the infrequent altercation that gets seriously ugly. Blood occasionally gets spilled, none mine.
Bedford Hills, despite its country club name, is a maximum- security penitentiary, and it’s awful. No one wants to live by another’s schedule, particularly not criminals and especially not writers. We’ve done everything we could to avoid living by anyone else’s rules. But I’m white and educated and these privileges get you as far in this incarcerated world as they do in that free one. I’m lucky, and I know it. I’ve always been lucky. Yet I still look out windows crosshatched by wire grating. I still wander the exercise yard and curl my fingers around the fence. My fingertips graze freedom. They can almost
touch it.
I never will.
Unbeknownst to me, Emma’s building had installed a silent alarm, trip-wired to activate if the porter’s door opened before anyone keyed in the code. Emma, too, had grown more security conscious. She’d seen an uptick in her hate mail, and she figured it wouldn’t hurt to install a silent alarm. As I tickled her lock into springing open, Emma had been sitting on the fire escape, smoking. Her phone signaled an intruder. She called the cops, who, because of the porter’s door, were already en route. As for the phantom Emma asleep in her canopied bed, well, it simply happened that her pillows had fallen in the shape of her tiny body—or, perhaps, the pillows were just pillows, and my unconscious created a body out of fabric, filler, and goose down. In any case, Emma was never in any danger, while I was clearly a danger to others, and to myself.
I attacked Emma; I got arrested; and Wasserman pounced.
Murder trumps assault, so the trial was moved to Suffolk County, where it began in October 2014, just over a year to the day when Casimir, delicious duck in belly and sharp ice pick in throat, died.
What can I say about the trial that you don’t already know.
Maggie wore a stunning procession of ecru suits. I wore an expression of “relatability” and an ankle monitor. I did not take the stand because Maggie’s team thought it was “not a good idea.”
Maggie said I’d “damage” my case. She was probably right. I’ve always been impatient with my inferiors. It’s a weakness.
Ultimately, I was charged with a laundry list of offenses: murder in the first degree, assault in the first degree, arson in the first degree, tampering with physical evidence, and two counts of criminal trespass in the first degree. Justice was served hot, fresh, and juicy in the Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, Long Island, where the courtroom seemed built by the same visionary designers responsible for such architectural flights of fancy as the American Airlines Admirals Club lounge at JFK. But what aesthetics can one expect from a committee. No group will ever agree on any design that’s truly beautiful; a group will always default to bourgeois blandness.
I sat as the silent star of the theatrical show. My trial was a pageant, a drama, a soap opera. It was This Is Your Life played out in grisly photos, cell phone records, guest cameos, and scraps of paper. To be fair, Maggie was gorgeous; she swaggered and swept
her hand through the air, seeding it with life; you couldn’t take your eyes off her. Spectacled and beaky, the judge looked owlish and conservative, but he had no visible tell. His gaveled hand never tipped, not until sentencing. The D.A. was a man who might have been pretty in his youth; now in his forties, he was faintly porcine, one of those men who moves as if he had fifteen pounds of undigested red meat sitting in his colon. He was adequate, a typical mediocre white male whose career advanced because he was not entirely horrible. Women have to work so much harder than men to appear half as convincing.
Questioning the witnesses early in the trial, Maggie stalked like an ivory-coated cat, but I was looking forward to watching her go head-to-head against Detective Wasserman. I saw the detective almost every day in court. I’d turn my head, and there Wasserman would be, her muscled draft horse’s body swathed in yet another polyester-knit pantsuit. I played a solitary game of imagining painful deaths for Wasserman. A creative mind can spot a hundred homicides in a roomful of common office supplies. A ballpoint pen swift and hard to the temple or eye. A superfluity of Scotch Tape around the nose and mouth. A well-strung window shade. The judge’s gavel looked heavy enough to serve as a bludgeon. I’d have gamely given it a go.
I waited and waited for the watching Wasserman to appear in her official capacity. I wanted to see Maggie gut her—and I wanted to see what Wasserman had on me. I wanted to hear from Wasserman’s own naked mouth that she had colluded with Emma. I wanted to bear witness to my own destruction because how many of us get to see our own undoing. All humans are bad. Most of us merely live our lives with our worst, most unethical acts lying like bodies clad in concrete, undiscovered, quiet, and dark. What is heaven but the hope for righteous acknowledgment, and what is hell but the fear of discovery.
Finally, the D.A. called Wasserman to the stand. Dreadlocks bouncing, she strode through the court in a brawny rush of moss- gray lady-suit, put her hand in the air, and made the solemn pledge.
Sitting in that honey-blond witness box, Wasserman’s eyes glinted with profound enjoyment; she relished every second on the stand.
She savored each question, and she delighted in each curt, thoroughly professional answer with a nearly libidinal abandon. She and the piggish D.A. performed a practiced dance together, a polished pas-de-discipline capered for my benefit.
I imagined Maggie’s slow evisceration of Wasserman. I saw my beige lioness stripping the flesh off the State’s evidence, gore staining her maw. I envisioned Maggie the surgeon, Maggie the drone operator, Maggie the butcher.
My imaginary Maggie, it turned out, was more effective than my flesh-and-blood Maggie. Maggie did her best, but Wasserman’s wounds magically knit when the D.A. and the detective revealed a singular piece of proof, one incontrovertible testament to my unquestionable presence in that Robbins Rest house on that cold October Sunday, the selfsame night that Casimir met his early end and the house met a well-lit match.
You’re wondering what Wasserman had that tied me so inexorably to that place and that night. You’re wondering about the thing that cooked my goose, broke my burro’s back, sealed my carceral fate. It was a piece of paper. Just one slip. Something that could blow away in a breeze. Something that you or I would toss away without a second thought. Something inconsequential and light, yet weighty enough to lock me away for the rest of my natural life. It was almost nothing, this piece of paper. It was a receipt, if you can believe it.
As the Robbins Rest house burned in a bright and shining conflagration, this bit of paper stayed safe. Unthinking, reflexively, I flung it into a lidded metal wastebasket, and there this bit of paper had lived, protected as if in a vault. The D.A. showed Wasserman and the jury a series of crime-scene photos of the trash can.
Outside, inside, wide-angle, and close-up, never has a trash can been so documented. It was like a celebrity on the beach, photographed from every angle.
The trash can was made, appropriately enough, by Simplehuman. Black and sooty, the can’s exterior was scorched, and while its bin liner melted around the can’s lip, its contents remained remarkably preserved, almost fresh. And there, among the scrapings of the breadboard, the wrappers from the manchego and the Comté,
the ends of avocados, fennel, and oranges, lay this pristine piece of paper—a receipt from Ottomanelli’s, my butcher of choice, a shop with whom I’ve had an account for decades, and the place where I had bought the duck breasts to confit. Like a relic of a medieval saint, this slip of paper remained unburned, almost clean, pristine, and undefiled. It defied belief, yet there it lay in the D.A.’s porky hand, carefully bagged in plastic with People’s Evidence #547-A2 stamped upon its sleeve.
I thought I’d born witness to some repressed joy in my life, but nothing rivaled Wasserman’s when the D.A. trotted out that Ottomanelli’s receipt. From her nose down, Wasserman was all cop- like professionalism, thin-lipped and terse. From her nose up, however, she was radiant. Wasserman might’ve been all clipped No, sir, and Yes, sir, and the redheaded woman at the defense table, sir, but I saw through her detached probity. On the inside, she was singing; though rigid and still, she was practically skipping as she sat in that burnt-umber witness chair. When the D.A. showed the videotape of my answering “Ottomanelli’s” to Wasserman’s offhand question about where I bought my meat, Wasserman broke. She grinned. She couldn’t help it. She could have spontaneously combusted from the effort she required to contain herself.
Maggie gave the swinish D.A. a good fight. I don’t blame her for losing. I blame the receipt. I blame the Simplehuman. I blame the tender debris.
Maggie and her team of freshly scrubbed young lawyers worked to undo Wasserman’s damage. The Ottomanelli’s receipt was bad, but it was circumstantial at best. Little remained to link me to Casimir. His phone logged the number of my disposable cell phone long since disposed of. His calendar lined up with mine as much as I’d said it had—there were no other surprises to put us in the same room at the same time. The room service waiter and the hotel cameras told no tale that I’d not already admitted: Casimir and I had enjoyed an intimate relationship. The waiter and the grainy footage didn’t aid my case, but beyond raising the pedestrian hackles of the unenlightened jury of my peers, they did nothing to prove I’d killed him either. The medical examiner proved that Casimir had died
before his body had burned, but there was no way to prove murder.
His flesh was too crispy to reveal the ice pick’s deep pricks.
Even the arson specialists were split—denatured alcohol is a fantastic accelerant; it burns quickly and leaves almost no trace. The investigator hired by Suffolk County argued for arson; the investigator hired by Maggie argued against it; and the one hired by the homeowner’s insurance company said the cause was indeterminate. My murder trial was a muddle of evidence, and for a long time, our case looked pretty good. At best, the receipt was secondary evidence for the murder and not enough to convict; at worst, it showed I had trespassed. And, of course, I assaulted Emma. There was no explaining that away.
The smoking gun was Emma, you see—just not in the way I’d expected, for in thinking she had betrayed me, I betrayed myself.
While the hordes of strangers, writers, and murder buffs who crowded the seats of the Suffolk County Courthouse were disappointed that they didn’t get to see me take the stand, seeing Emma made up for it. It was, after all, the first time that Emma Absinthe, world-famous artist, had stepped foot outside of her Hell’s Kitchen atelier in decades. This in and of itself was news; Art in America had never before covered a murder trial.
For the majority of my trial, the courthouse crowd had been comprised of media types and rubbernecking gawkers, but the day that Emma was to appear, the assembly shifted. It grew Goth and glittery, fancy with millinery and festive with tulle. There was an improbable number of waif-like girls, sylphine boys, and humans who refuse easy gender categorization, a group united by their abject worship of Emma, their omnipresent sketchbooks, and their expertly lined eyes. There were adults, too, people who had taken a personal day or had merely called their secretary to cancel the day’s appointments. Few art buyers and fewer art sellers ever get to meet Emma. She customarily performed her meet and greets through the remote beauty of Skype. For decades, Emma had grown to be a celebrity while also being a person rarely seen in the flesh. The courthouse almost levitated with the sheer giddiness of her physical presence.
Emma did not disappoint. Called to testify, she swept through the honey-oak doors in a tiny lacy torrent of black taffeta and teetering Louboutin ankle boots. Emma didn’t look like a woman who’d not seen the world outside of her own apartment in twenty years. She walked into that party as if she were walking onto a yacht, pale skin glowing almost opalescent under the fluorescent lights, red lipstick an arterial nod. She didn’t just take the stand; she owned it. I felt a rush of emotion for my friend. Then I remembered her milk-white face on the night I’d tried to kill her, and my hot feelings slowed to a simmer and cooled. She was not my friend. She was a witness. One pale hand in the air, Emma pledged to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.
Emma has long been an ardent atheist.
The piggish D.A. began by asking Emma about our relationship, how long and in what capacity we had known each other. Maggie poised like a pointer, interjecting objections at almost every turn, calling irrelevant, immaterial, leading, and hearsay. With every point the judge granted, the D.A. narrowed his eyes, as if searching the mist for his lost way home. The courthouse felt like a tennis match, spectators restraining themselves from polite clapping. I could see a trickle of sweat on the D.A.’s jowls. Emma, however, was cool as bisque and twice as satiny.
“Ms. Absinthe,” the D.A. said, “can you please tell the court what you heard Ms. Daniels say on the night of January nineteenth?”
“I don’t recall,” Emma said, her voice steady and clear.
“You don’t remember what she said?” The D.A.’s pink tongue flicked wet over his lips. “I will remind you that you’re under oath, and ask again. Do you remember what Ms. Daniels said to you just before she struck your bed with a knife?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Let me see if I can refresh your memory. More than one police officer has testified to the effect that Ms. Daniels said—and I’m reading from New York City police officer depositions here—to the effect of ‘You told the detective what I said about Fire Island, the ice pick, and the house fire.’ Does this quote jog your memory at all, Ms.
Absinthe?”
Maggie raised her voice and objected in whisky tones. The judge overruled and directed Emma to answer the question.
The courtroom hushed. Emma looked at her hands and then she looked at me. She had a queer expression, one I hadn’t seen in decades, not since we lived together in that Pennistone dorm room and she was just Joanne Correa with the mushroom-brown hair, unfathomable love of cats, and parade of Gunne Sax dresses.
Emma lifted her chin and looked into my eyes before she spoke.
“Perhaps. I can’t say for certain.” Emma looked away from the court, out the window, toward the sky. Everyone’s head followed. The D.A. grew flustered and looked at his notes.
“Did you have any previous conversations with detectives, Ms.
Absinthe?”
“Only when I called nine-one-one when I was alerted that someone was breaking into my apartment, and, of course, after the arrest.”
“Nothing before that emergency phone call?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea to what Ms. Daniels was alluding in referencing, and I’m going to refer to the quote I read you earlier, ‘Fire Island, the ice pick, and the house fire’?”
Maggie objected. It was sustained. The question was withdrawn.
“Let me try again, Ms. Absinthe. Did you and the defendant ever discuss the events of the night of October 13, 2013, the night Casimir Bezrukov was murdered?”
“Yes.” A thrill ran through the courthouse. A chill passed through my chest.
“You did. Can you please tell the court when?”
“She came over to my apartment some night in late December.
She told me that a lover had been found dead. On Fire Island.”
“Was that all, Ms. Absinthe?”
“Well, we drank quite a bit.” The courtroom laughed. Emma was charming them, or her celebrity was. Either way, I could feel Maggie’s delight.
“Did Ms. Daniels tell you anything else about the events of
October 13, 2013?”
“Not to my recollection, no.”
“You are stating for the court, under oath, that Ms. Daniels told you nothing else about Casimir Bezrukov, neither on that night in late December nor on any other occasion.”
“Yes. Dorothy never said anything else.”
“Ms. Absinthe, you were assaulted on the night of January 19, 2013. Do you see the person who assaulted you in this room?”
Emma almost rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course, Dorothy Daniels, at the defense table.”
The D.A. shuffled papers. “Can you think, Ms. Absinthe, why the defendant might have broken into your apartment and assaulted you?”
Maggie objected—leading the witness. The D.A. retorted, calling for relevance. The judge called them to the bench, where a hushed, impassioned powwow took place. The players broke and returned to their honey-oak tables. The judge overruled and told Emma to answer the question.
“In all honesty, Mr. Lezard, I’ve no idea.”
“None at all, Ms. Absinthe?”
“None at all.”
Perhaps Emma had not, after all, gone to Wasserman. Perhaps she had tattled no tale. In fact, it was entirely likely that I had not confessed. I had, perhaps, merely gestured in drunken fuzzy arcs toward the murder, never announcing my guilt. Emma had never betrayed me—unless, of course, she had. Was this Emma a performance Emma, one she was wearing to make herself feel better about my going to jail. Or was this the real Emma, the one who would never forsake a friend. Forgery or authentic, Emma was artful, and I couldn’t tell the real from the copy.
And yet, there was no dodging the fact that in my vortex of paranoia, I had attacked Emma. I had picked that first lock, and I had picked the second, and I had uttered a string of incriminating things just before Emma and a phalanx of cops saw me bury my cleaver in her body pillow—points to which Emma and at least three of the police officers would testify. There was no way to sidestep these facts, there was no way to wrap them in fondant and pretend they were edible. I had made the trap, stepped in it, and found it clapping closed, steely and cold, around my leg. And it was my attack on
Emma, the phrase I blurted before cleaving Emma’s pillow, and the receipt that, together, convinced the jury, seven women and five men, that I was guilty as sin.
I’d spent the weeks leading up to the trial out on bail on house arrest. These weeks were dear, sweet, beautiful days. I cherished every single one with a kind of bittersweet, grudging love, feeling each moment melt like chocolate. I couldn’t move around much—the terms of my bail included an ankle bracelet and strict travel parameters—but that’s what you get when you’re a rich, white murder defendant. Still, I could cook, and I could order in from FreshDirect. Sadly, Ottomanelli’s cancelled my account, which broke my heart. I could read and sleep in my own bed, and I could pack up the apartment where I’d lived for more than a decade, deciding what would go to charity, what would go to storage, and what I could have with me in prison. I couldn’t bring much—a few books, a coverlet, some photos—prison is like death in that whatever you have you can’t bring it with you. If I won the trial, I was going to move to Europe; if I lost the trial, I was going to move to prison. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t know for how long. I knew only that it wouldn’t be my choice.
Judges and juries are notoriously brutal on violent female offenders, a category to which I belong without question. Nature abhors a vacuum; jurisprudence hates a violent woman. We can forgive any number of men murdering their wives and girlfriends. But we have a hard time extending the same compassion to women who kill their husbands and boyfriends, even though women have many more reasons to be driven to it. Culture refuses to see violence in women, and the law nurtures a special loathing for violent women.
Unfettered violence, anger unleashed, the will to destroy, the need to undo—these acts run counter to everything we like to think we know about the feminine nature. Yet women weren’t always the angels in the house, and angels weren’t always benevolent beings playing harps on the tops of trees. We like to forget that men imprisoned women in the house and expected gratitude in return.
In the end, the terminally middle-class jury of my supposed peers found me guilty of second-degree murder, first-degree assault, and third-degree arson, along with various minor charges having to do
with evidence. I was sentenced to life, plus twenty years; I’ll be looking forward to probation about ten years after I’m dead. People have asked and I have yet to answer, but my last meal before going to Bedford Hills was duck. Not duck confit—that dish is tragically ruined. It was a Long Island roast duck, whole, rather naked of frills, but still beautiful and crispy and perfect. It sang of flight and of fall and of lives made of freedom in the water, on land, and in the air. It’s likely the last time I’ll ever eat duck, and it was good.
