Compromising Positions Read Online Free PDF Page B

by wheat futures. But I couldn’t imagine any patient having solid information on Fleckstein. He was one of those professionals clever enough to make small conversation with a patient, so you’d feel comfortable enough to return instead of going elsewhere to have your gums deflated. But my instincts were that he had no depth, no substance, the type who could play tennis with a man for eight years and never ask where the man grew up.
    “Great stuff, honey,” he’d say to a woman he’d just slept with; he’d call her “honey” because he couldn’t quite remember whether her name was Joan or Jean or Jane. And he didn’t want to offend. Fleckstein wanted her to feel comfortable enough to come back again.
    But there had to be more to Marvin Bruce than this, because men just like him live until seventy-six and keel over on the fourteenth hole of a Florida golf course. Even though I had barely known him, he didn’t seem the sort to get involved enough with someone so that she would care enough to kill him. A forty-two-year-old man still slim enough to wear tight, streaky, French-cut jean suits and a gold ID bracelet on a hairy wrist would normally grow old gracefully, metamorphosing into khaki leisure outfits and ultimately into navy blazers with silk ascots to hide his crepey neck.
    The more I considered, the more certain I became that Fleckstein had a secret life. Not a hot little blond number tucked away in an apartment in Queens. Certainly not a cool, secret connection with the CIA or FBI. Men like Fleckstein, bourgeois to the soul, lack moral and physical courage; their patriotism extends to standing for “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a baseball game.
    But from what Bob had gleaned from Claymore Katz, Fleckstein had become involved in a very dirty business with some very dirty people. A normal suburbanite will take certain risks, especially for money. But why would a man like Fleckstein find himself so deeply enmeshed? Why would a dentist with a practice good for over a hundred thousand a year find himself, on the verge of a criminal indictment, with a fatal wound in the base of his skull?
    He seemed so ordinary, just another thread in the community fabric. We ate at the same restaurants, sent our children to the same schools, probably used the same plumber. But he was dead.
    Bathing Joey: Did Fleckstein die for his sins? The moment he felt the murder weapon piercing the soft skin covering his medulla, did he regret trying to become a mogul of the porno pix biz? Bathing Kate: Did he see who killed him? Was it one of his women? Did he have one last pang that somehow he hadn’t satisfied her completely? Making dinner: Had it hurt? At the table: trying to discuss my musings with Bob.
    “Judith, can we please change the subject?”
    “Why? This is interesting.”
    “The children are here.”
    I looked at them, Kate peering at Bob and me, intent on our conversation, Joey rummaging through the fruit bowl, a large bunch of grapes on his plate, untouched. “Don’t you want to watch television? Maybe I Love Lucy is on?” Joey bolted and ran for the den. Kate looked at me quizzically, knowing that I must be truly desperate to allow them this boon.
    “But, Mommy, you said that I Love Lucy rots your mind.”
    “Only if you watch it all the time. Once a month is okay.” She clutched her half-eaten pear and shuffled out of the dining room.
    A great tactical coup, but now the enemy was on the alert. There would be no way, short of swinging a machete near his groin, that I could get Bob to discuss the Fleckstein case with me. I had been too animated. I hadn’t asked him about his day. I hadn’t told him about mine, about wallowing in the joys of hearth and home.
    “Enough about this murder business. You don’t mind that I sent the children downstairs? I just wanted some time alone together.”
    He gave me his cute little self-effacing smile, where he cocks his head to one side and lowers his eyes. He always smiles