Roby had gone straight to Philadelphia when he’d read that and had confronted his father immediately. Not true, Rob had told him. He’d hired the detective from Louisiana because of the missing casino money. He had never suspected Maria of having an affair.
“Then how the hell can he say that to the papers?” Roby demanded. “That’s a slander against the memory of Mom!”
“It’s strategy, Roby. Lawyer’s strategy. You can’t let the victim get all the sympathy. You’ve got to make people realize that she might have some flaws, too.”
“Screw that. That oily snake is talking about Mom!”
“Roby, we’re playing hardball here and so is the prosecutor’s office. Carl Seely knows exactly what he’s doing and I don’t want to hear you calling him names.”
“Well, he’d better not call Mom names, either.”
That was the way it had gone for ten days. Rob left the psychiatric institution and went to stay temporarily with an old friend of his mother’s named Tessie McBride, who lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Aware of how closely Ocean County detectives had been following him, and apparently fearing arrest, he was not eager to recross the New Jersey state line.
Then, on October 12, Ferlin L’Heureux was arrested in Louisiana on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. He was taken to the Caddo Parish jail in Shreveport, where Andrew Myers was still being held on the same charge on $1.5 million bail.
“Neither arrest, of Myers or L’Heureux, will in any way, shape or form change my client’s position that he will continue to vigorously conduct an independent investigation and vindicate any innuendos and charges,” Carl Seely told the newspapers.
Seely said that Rob’s own condition was improving and that he was receiving care on an outpatient basis while staying with friends in the Philadelphia area.
The next day, Saturday, October 13, a self-employed steelworker named Ernie Grandshaw was arrested in Shreveport. It seemed there really was an Ernie Grandshaw. He, too, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Seely told the newspapers he expected that Rob would be next. “Based on the prosecutor’s theory, if the theory is what I believe it to be, then logic would dictate that at some point in time they’re going to return or unseal an indictment against my client,” Seely said.
By Monday night, October 15, it was all too much for Roby. Toward midnight, he left the silent, empty house and got into his car. He took a deep breath and drew back his right fist as far as he could. Then, screaming as loud as he could, he slammed his fist forward, punching a hole through the windshield. Then he threw the car into gear and drove as fast as he could in the direction of the bridge that stretched over the bay.
Later, Roby didn’t remember much about his ride. Just fragments, like the fragments of windshield glass that lodged in his curly blond hair as they blew in from the edges of the hole his fist had made.
His eyes were closed. He remembered that much. He was driving at a hundred miles an hour over the bridge to Seaside with his eyes closed and the glass flying and the wind blowing, not caring if he lived or died, feeling only pain and rage and hopelessness.
He also remembered that he’d screamed the whole way.
And that he’d felt so alone it was as if he were the only person on earth who hadn’t already died.
The eastbound bridge is the newer half, three lanes of smooth pavement with chest-high concrete barriers along both sides. It is not a bridge off which one can drive an automobile, not even at a hundred miles an hour with one’s eyes closed. Not even when one’s mother has been murdered and one’s father is about to be accused of having arranged it.
Roby made it to Seaside, even though that hadn’t really been his goal. He didn’t remember slowing down, he didn’t remember stopping, he didn’t remember opening his eyes.
But there he was. Alive. Alone. Out of breath. With a hole in his windshield and his radio on.
Then he heard the high, haunting notes of a harmonica. It was the opening bars of what had been, for several years, his favorite song. This was too trite to be believed, but there it was—“Take the Long Way Home” from Supertramp’s Breakfast in America album.
So you think you’re a Romeo
playing a part in a picture-show
Take the long way home.
Take the long way home.
Cos you’re the joke of the neighborhood.
Why should you care if you’re feeling good?
Take the long way home.
Take the long way home.
The image that burst into his mind was of the first time his mother had heard the song. They’d been out together doing errands—in fact, buying supplies for a surprise birthday party for his father—and the song had come on the station wagon radio.
But there are times that you feel you’re part of the scenery,
all the greenery is coming down, boy
And then your wife seems to think you’re part of the
furniture, oh it’s peculiar, she used to be so nice.…
You never see what you want to see
Forever playing to the gallery
You take the long way home
Take the long way home
The nice part had been that they were almost home when the song came on and if his mother had driven straight to the house they would have been there before it was over, so instead she took a circuitous route—“the long way home,” she’d called it—so that the two of them could listen to the whole song together.
But then your wife seems to think you’re losing your sanity,
Oh, calamity, is there no way out?
Does it feel that your life’s become a catastrophe?
Oh, it has to be, for you to grow, boy.…
Roby sat very still as the song ended. Then he brushed some of the glass out of his hair and out of his lap and drove back across the bridge, slowly and with his eyes open, to Sal Coccaro’s house.
It was well after midnight when he knocked on the door.
“Uncle Sal,” he said, “do you know any psychiatrists? I need help.”
11
Roby was admitted that night to the psychiatric ward of the Monmouth County Medical Center. Sal Coccaro contacted Rob in Pennsylvania to let him know. Rob, however, was obsessed by another problem: Felice, having rejected him, was not responding to any of his pleas for reconciliation. He’d called, he’d written, he’d sent flowers—for Christ’s sake he’d even tried to kill himself—but she had shown no signs of interest.
Now, he went back to his ace in the hole: he sent a tape. This one began with not one but two love songs, string-filled, syrupy compositions.
Then he began to speak, in a voice presumably intended to be a romantic whisper. “Hello, babe,” he said. “I can’t help but feel that the message these songs convey will tell you what I’m feeling. I’m sure you’re aware, too, of what’s been happening as far as I’m concerned. It’s all so crazy.” There were long pauses between his phrases, as if the words were so weighty he could not utter too many at a time. “I wrote a letter to you that I was going to send but I’ll read part of it to you and add my comments as I go.
“I’m terribly saddened by your concern about what other people—about what anybody is thinking or saying about me. You must know that that doesn’t matter. People will think what they want to. People that I thought were very close friends have turned against me and others that I didn’t know were friends have been very, very supportive.
“None of that really matters. What does is you. You and me. What you feel, what you felt, what I thought we had. And from all the things we said to each other over the past fourteen months it seemed to me that nothing was really important except what we felt for each other. The love that I was convinced existed.”
From his voice now it was hard to tell whether he was still reading, or commenting, or simply speaking. “For some reason,” he said, “something got in the way. I can’t believe that it was my deception of the financial sit
uation, or even the circumstances of the case—of my situation. When I see you, if I ever see you, I’ll explain to you, but you must know that I was in a corner, I really had no choice. You must know that I’ve been truthful and honest with you with one exception and that’s the total extent of my financial obligations.
“That really can’t be that important in consideration of what we felt, and hopefully still feel, for each other. I guess I felt that there wasn’t anything that could get in the way of you and me, which is why I wanted to tell you, started to tell you the rest of the story, the rest of the problems that plagued me for the past year or so—totally committed to resolve them, confident that we could have.”
To this point, his tone had been one of apparent sincerity. Now there crept in an edge of bitterness. “The other thing that I have to say, though, is that you should have stood by me, babe, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that Ocean County and the rest of the world is dumping a load of manure on my head. It shouldn’t matter to you. If you love me, stand by me.
“You’d gain so much respect for standing by the man you love in spite of everything. You’d have been The Lady. The lady that, regardless of what everybody thought, stood by the man she loved.”
His voice had sunk to a whisper so hoarse the tape almost did not pick it up. “You’d have been a hero,” he said. “A goddamned hero.” There was a long sigh, then a pause; then he resumed in a more conversational tone.
“I guess I wanted that so much. I didn’t get it. And I couldn’t understand it. I’m finding it difficult to discard the relationship that we had so recently. We had so much. There are so many reminders, especially the songs. Almost every other song, or every third or fourth song, is one of ours.” He paused again, then put a harder edge on his voice.
“And I hope it’s just as tough for you,” he said. “Really. Because I’m finding it very difficult to just throw it all away. I can’t do it. My friend Tessie McBride said something to me that seems to make sense now. She said, ‘If your relationship was built entirely on sex, then that’s not enough to hold it together in a situation like this.’
“I tried to convince myself and convince her that we really had more than that. She said, ‘You didn’t go out. You didn’t do anything.’ I said, ‘A couple of times. We were afraid to get caught.’ She said, ‘Shame on you. No wonder it’s falling apart now. Shame on you.’
“I thought about that and in a way she’s right. We should have built some memories, maybe once in a while going to dinner somewhere, away from the threat of being discovered. I can think back to the few times we did have dinner together, the most recent being at Garcia’s, how much fun we had just being together, laughing and drinking together and eating and sharing our food. How wonderful that was.
“Certainly, sex wasn’t something we needed to have every time. It was something we both craved, I realize, but it might have been more valuable to build a relationship on some memories, sharing things like dinner or doing something. After all, you had twenty-two years, we only had a year, and in our year all we did was make love.
“We talked an awful lot, and I—I felt that that was communication, that what we had, using our tapes, was more valuable than the things we might have done. Maybe it wasn’t, given the fact that we’ve fallen apart over a relatively minor issue—considering the scope of our relationship, it really was.”
Again, he paused, and when he went on it was in a tone of resignation. “The bottom line, babe, is there’s a big hole in my life where you were, and I’m hoping—I don’t want to fill it with anyone else. And I’d like to start over, with dinner and dancing, just you and me. My choice as to where, your choice as to when. A lot of talking. Let’s try again.
“Part of the problem is that I don’t know whether you’ve received my other tape or correspondence or the last rose I sent, or anything. I don’t know what you’re thinking and it’s driving me crazy. I need to know that you either don’t want any more contact, absolutely, positively, or that you might, or that you do. I just don’t know, and that’s the hard part.”
Through almost the whole tape he’d sounded like a high school kid who’d been jilted by a girlfriend, as if there were no larger context in which he existed—as if he were not a forty-five-year-old suspect in a murder case, expecting imminent indictment and arrest. Now, he made brief reference to the circumstances that were keeping him out of New Jersey.
“Just to fill you in on some of the details of what’s happened to me,” he said, “first of all, let me say to you, don’t believe all that you read in the paper. The rumors and stuff that have been flying around are just incredible. We’re convinced that they’re trying to play a pressure game, a psychological game, get somebody to break, but it isn’t going to happen. Because nobody’s going to admit to something that they didn’t do. And so it’s going to be a matter of circumstantial—stuff.
“Umm, I’m fairly convinced that we’re going to end up in court. When I say ‘we,’ I mean me and my attorney. And that you will probably be a witness. I’m also convinced that eventually it will be resolved favorably, in spite of all the circumstantial evidence that exists.” There was a long pause here, the longest on the tape. Then Rob said, “It’s gonna be a bitch, though.”
He concluded in a more upbeat tone. “I can make it through, regardless. But I’d like to know that the light at the end of the tunnel is shining on both of us, not just me. And more than that I’d like to know how you feel. One way or the other, I’ve got to know. There’s a return address on the back of this envelope that you can use to send a tape or letter. If it’s your last one, let it be.
“And if it’s the beginning, I welcome the beginning of the rest of our life. You’ve got to know that there’s hope for us, babe, in spite of all my failings—and in spite of yours, too. There’s a future if you want it. I don’t know what you want. Please tell me. And just remember one thing—in spite of everything, regardless of what happens, I love you and I always will. But you know that.”
Felice did not respond. A few days later, Rob returned to Toms River.
Roby signed himself out of the hospital three days after he’d signed himself in. It was Sal Coccaro who drove to Monmouth County to bring him home.
And it was Sal, two weeks later, who swung by the Marshall house late one Saturday night to say hello to Chris, who he knew was home from Lehigh for the weekend.
He found Chris alone, studying at the kitchen table.
“Where’s your old man?” Sal asked. “I heard he was back in town.”
“At the Holiday Inn.”
“What?”
“He went out a couple of hours ago, he said he was depressed about Mom, he needed to be alone for a while.”
“He needed to be alone so he went to the Holiday Inn on a Saturday night?”
“Yeah, he said he’d be down in the lounge having a drink.” Chris closed his textbook and looked at Sal. “Do you know what it’s like?” he said. “It’s like both of our parents got killed, not just our mother.”
“I know what you mean,” Sal said.
“We don’t have a father anymore,” Chris said. “First, he was with Felice all the time. Then when she dumped him he disappeared to Pennsylvania. Now that he’s back, it’s like he’s not back. He’s never at home. He’s got some new girlfriend that the investigator who works for his lawyer introduced him to down in Cherry Hill, and he’s got two or three others right in town. Roby and John say he brings a different one around here every night. His ‘physical needs’ is the way he explains it. Then he winks.
“Listen, Uncle Sal, we’ve got needs, too. Emotional needs. Here I go sounding like a crybaby again, but I’m getting worried. Except for you, nobody seems to give a damn about us. Roby and I can get by, I guess, we’re old enough. But what’s going to happen to poor John?”
“I wish I could tell you, kid. I can’t even tell you what’s going to happen to your father.”
“Do you really think h
e did it, Uncle Sal? Do you really think my father hired them?”
“Chris, it’s like I keep telling myself. This is America. Innocent until proven guilty. Let’s not convict the poor slob before he’s even been accused.”
“You know what I wish I had the guts to do?” Chris said.
“What’s that?”
“To ask him. To walk right up to him and just say, ‘All right, Dad, no more bullshit. Tell me the truth. Did you or didn’t you?’ Just like that.”
“But you can’t?”
Chris shook his head. “I’m his son and he’s my father, and no matter what kind of doubts I might have privately, I owe it to him to give him support.”
Sal stood up to leave. “You’re a good kid,” he said. “If I ever get in trouble, I hope my kids are one-tenth as loyal. But, Chris, I got to tell you. Faith in your father is one thing. But blind faith—where you won’t face the facts—that’s something else.
“Sometimes the hardest thing in the world can be to open your eyes and look at things the way they really are. But whatever you see, Chris, no matter how painful—it’s better than not seeing at all.”
“Maybe for now,” Chris said, “I’d rather stay blind.”
“Maybe for now,” Sal said. “But not forever. You and Roby both—you’re too smart and too strong for that.”
“But suppose he is innocent,” Chris said. “Which he certainly might be. I mean, not even the police have said he’s guilty yet. How do you think it would make him feel to find out that his own son had doubted him? I don’t think he’d ever forgive me. And I know I’d never forgive myself.”
“So what do we do, kid?” Sal asked, smiling.
“I don’t know, Uncle Sal. You’re the adult.”
“I guess we just keep talking to each other,” Sal said. “And keep remembering your mother in our prayers.”
A week later, Rob took his new girlfriend, Terri, to Florida for a long weekend. He told his sons he needed to get away from all the pressure. He stayed in the home of some old friends from Toms River named Stevens. During the weekend, however, it became clear to him that it was Molly Stevens, not Terri from Cherry Hill, to whom he was primarily attracted.