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  Hoping that humor might actually salvage this mess, I leaned across the table, looked to both sides, then stared into her eyes and whispered, "I told him: 'Chuck, it doesn't matter what you say. Every time I look at her, my dick gets so hard I just can't stand it.'"

  She stared back for a moment then burst out laughing. "No shit? Did you really tell him that? That is great."

  The ploy cooled her down. She pushed back into her seat still chuckling and began picking at her steak again. Just then, we were joined by one of her acquaintances, another lawyer named Jack. She introduced us and said she wanted him to meet me. Before he could make any small talk, she told him about Chuck.

  "They've already been to see him," she said, pointing at me. "Chuck Rosenthal himself. Can you believe that? But you know what Gary told him?"

  Jack shrugged his shoulders and looked at me. Catherine urged me on.

  "Go ahead, tell him what you told Chuck."

  "I told him that trouble is my middle name."

  Jack grinned, but Catherine insisted.

  "No, no, not that. Tell him the other thing. You know. C'mon."

  "OK. I told him that when I look at Catherine, my dick gets so hard I just can't stand it."

  Clearly this had touched a nerve. She cackled again while Jack acted as if he wasn't sure how to react. He gave a little grin and mumbled, "Pretty funny."

  When they brought our check, Catherine paid with two one-hundred-dollar bills.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  October 1979

  I still see them everywhere and each time I do, I can't help but stop and wonder what's going on behind the scenes. My heart goes out to them because I remember when I fell into the divorced dad's limbo, and I know how hopeless it can feel. For me at that time, I had no place to take my daughters, outside of McDonalds. At the same time, I had to work at sorting myself out, and that involved rebuilding my self-esteem through self-improvement. Each day I had to work and keep my job because that supported everything. And I also needed a few drinks each day just to help me relax. It was into that arena of chaos that Catherine began to compete with all the other distractions.

  Although I've always been a hard drinker, I'm no alcoholic. I know the difference between an alcoholic and a drunk. I can overindulge and have on many occasions. But I've always been able to stop. Fortunately, I am a funny drunk and not abusive. I know because others have told me. Once, I tried to become an alcoholic, years earlier, when I noticed than many great writers suffered the ailment. I drank every night for two weeks. It wore me out. Finally, I just gave up on that idea. Then I went a month not even wanting a drink, and that made me question my manhood.

  "What would Hemingway think?" I asked, after ordering an iced tea instead of a scotch. "Sissy?"

  So, the drinking during my period of the divorce crazies created no problems. But other activities vied to crowd my schedule. Immediately after Cindy confessed her affair, I had made an appointment with a therapist and discussed things with him for several weeks. I wanted to learn if I needed psychological repairs. I lasted only a few sessions, describing my attitudes on life and the events that had brought me to his door. Our last appointment had been the evening of October 15, just before I went to pick up Catherine for our drive to the beach house. Although I had some existentialist attitudes on sex and relationships, he told me he considered me true to my beliefs and didn't see anything else I could do to save the marriage. Cindy had made the decision to split up, so she had control. I could have tried therapy for a longer term, but we didn't see where that would lead. In fact, he felt I didn't need any help. Since I was comfortable with myself, I would be difficult to change.

  In addition to the shrink, the booze, and the job, I also had enrolled in several classes designed to expand my personal horizons. I had a couple of guitar lessons, rekindling an activity I had abandoned as a teen. I took a lesson on snow skiing, conducted on a huge slanted treadmill. And I signed up for a canoeing class. I quickly concluded I wouldn't enjoy the skiing, and I never had time to practice the guitar. But the canoeing class introduced me to someone who eventually would play a catalytic role in later confrontations with Catherine.

  That class took place on October 20, the Saturday of my first week with Catherine. By then I would have been happy just to skip it. But I had committed, and the instructor needed me to balance his boating couples. He put me in a canoe with another novice, a girl named Denise, who was about ten years younger than me. She was an attractive college student looking to expand her own horizons. The instructor had the class working in a polluted body of water through a wooded section of downtown Houston. Called Buffalo Bayou, it actually has been Houston's primary water artery to the Gulf of Mexico, expanded in 1916 at the mouth to create one of the world's largest ports at the Houston Ship Channel. Upstream, however, in the upper-crust neighborhood of River Oaks, Buffalo Bayou accents a picturesque backdrop for landscaped yards and urban greenery.

  It should have been a simple trip for a couple of miles along gently flowing waters. But Denise and I started talking. She started swinging her tits around, and the canoe started rocking. Before I knew it, we were in the water, and the canoe was filling up. Denise was laughing, but I felt humiliated. The canoe had sunk, and all the other students had passed us. Try as I might, I couldn't get the canoe out of the muck. So we just left it, and walked out of the woods to a rendezvous with one angry canoe instructor. By this time darkness had fallen, and he had to return upstream to fetch his canoe. I helped as best I could, but he did most of the work, pulling the vessel up a hill through thick trees and bushes to his trailer. I invited Denise to get something to eat, and she accepted. During the meal she revealed that she still lived with her parents, and I knew she was the wrong match for me. I still lived with George. At least Catherine had a bedroom, even if she still lived with Mike.

  Through it all, I struggled with my obligations to my girls. Cindy continued to live in our house with them, and I was sure Uncle Al had assumed some sort of quasi-residency there as well. My visitations had to involve trips away from my home since they could hardly visit me on George's couch. Cindy and I had not established any definitive visitation schedule, preferring to remain flexible while sorting out our living arrangements. I was so desperate I agreed to spend a weekend in our house with the girls so that Cindy and Uncle Al could get away. Otherwise, I tried to find places we could go. At just eighteen months, Shannon didn't know what was happening, and there wasn't much I could do with her outside her playroom. I took four-year-old Little E swimming at a Y.M.C.A. and planned other activities. I could tell the separation was tearing her apart, but I didn't know what to do. When she asked me what she had done wrong, I tried to convince her it wasn't her fault. I was overwhelmed by the amount of planning required to make all of this work. I started feeling bipolar with two personalities—one for my kids and another for my new life as a swinging single. And I felt really detached from my former life, as if my daughters had become a distant memory of some other past I had only imagined. Just a few weeks before, they had been as much a daily part of my life as eating or sleeping.

  The situation indeed was outside my control. I had made it clear to Cindy that we could stay together somehow, that I could live with her infidelity if she could live with mine. She could have lived with mine, but she didn't want that. She said she had bigger plans and believed she could make a better life for our girls with Uncle Al instead of me. My moods swirled between melancholy and anger, culminating in frustration. But I still believed that eventually the fog would clear, and I would find some way to work this out as well.

  I capped that first weekend of Catherine trying to combine a couple of my obligations. I had promised Little E a trip on Sunday—the day after my ill-fated canoeing adventure—to the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation in Livingston, Texas, about a two-hour drive from Houston. Then I invited Catherine along, and we went in her car. It proved an awkward day as I fought to merge my diverging personalities, and I
had some concerns about exposing Little E to Catherine so soon. They had a great time together, but I suspect each one had a hidden agenda.

  "That kid is ready to rock and roll," said Catherine, paying Little E a high compliment. "I wish I could have one like her some day. You are a lucky guy."

  And that night I got Little E's side in a phone call from Cindy.

  "I heard all about Little E's new golden-haired princess," Cindy said, sounding a bit jealous. I was sure Little E had exaggerated her description in a childlike ploy to irritate her mother, and I tried to control my glee in seeing her succeed.

  "It's all part of the divorce experience," I told Cindy. "You have to get used to these kinds of things."

  "I know, I know," she said. "It's just so strange to hear her talk about someone like that after being with you."

  "And I know exactly how you feel."

  The next weekend I spent at our house babysitting the girls, and I invited Catherine over for that, too. She seemed eager to carve a place in their lives. But events of the next few weeks were destined to make that the last time ever I exposed them to her.

  TWENTY-NINE

  October 1979

  Once they learn about the violence and intrigue that eventually ended my relationship with Catherine, most folks are amazed to learn that the civilized portion of our liaison lasted only about four weeks. They can't imagine how such a short affair could generate the kind of hostility destined to occur. They suggest that four weeks is barely long enough to get acquainted, much less develop a checklist of transgressions to justify murder. But that month from the middle of October until just before Thanksgiving in 1979 proved potent enough to light Catherine's fuse. Our relationship was to continue in some form until its explosive conclusion in January 1980. But those days in late October and early November would stand as the only period of civilized companionship we ever would know.

  Civilized, however, did not mean perfectly peaceful. We were still getting acquainted, too, testing the boundaries of the reputations and baggage we'd carried into this thing. The timing couldn't have been more perfect for either of us. She had been right when she described us both at the lowest points in our lives, clutching for any companion to pull the other into the future. Events moved quickly in those weeks as we designed a blueprint.

  Although I moved November 1 into a bedroom at Jim Strong's house on Greengrass Drive in northwest Houston, I had been spending most evenings with Catherine and continued to do that until the middle of the month. She was a great drinking buddy, and we usually finished each day at a bar before heading out to the house she shared with Mike. It quickly became easier to leave my two-hundred-dollar Chevy Vega in front of that house and ride each morning into the courthouse area with her. She welcomed my services as a driver, and it gave us plenty of time to talk, revealing other aspects of her secret agenda for me. I also started seeing signs of the problems that lay ahead.

  "I need commitment," Catherine said one morning in late October, stunning me with that kind of demand so quickly after we'd just met. But she appeared shocked by my response.

  "Isn't it a little too soon to start talking like that?"

  "I need it for my career. I need to find someone who can satisfy my physical needs so I can put that part of my life aside and focus on my law practice. That's advice I heard long ago from a law professor on how to succeed. And I'm way behind schedule. This Tedesco bullshit has held me back. I have to get busy."

  Without thinking, I challenged her: "Didn't you take a calculated risk that might happen when you went chasing after the estate? You had to know how much time and effort that would take."

  She startled me when her voice seemed to change into what I could only describe as a low-pitched growl. It would not be the last time I would hear that sound.

  "I…had…no…choice," she snarled in a rhythmic staccato. "It…had….to…be…done. And…it…is…not…over. That…is…why…I…need….to…know….what….you…are…doing…with….me."

  I made a mental note to be careful in the future when challenging her motives on the Tedesco case and peeked from the corner of my eye while driving to make sure she hadn't sprouted fur around her jowls. I let her catch her breath, then offered a response.

  "Of course, I know you felt like you had to do that—sue for the estate—and, I understand. But I don't really know what to say about commitment. I have no plans for commitment. For Christ's sake, I'm just getting out of a commitment. I can't think about that now."

  Catherine sat biting her lip and gathering her thoughts. She collected herself enough to resume speaking this time in what I could only describe as a businesslike tone of voice, as if negotiating a contract—albeit a strange one.

  "So you think you can just fuck me, have your fun, and then go on your way?"

  Exactly, I wanted to say. You've been reading my mind.

  But instead I bit my tongue and just mumbled, "No." Then I realized how surprised I was to learn she might care about something more than the sex. I had begun to think she might be a clinical nymphomaniac, based on our brief time together. And she hadn't demanded much of a courting ritual before dropping down on the beach for our first embrace. I actually had respected that modern, sexually-independent attitude.

  But now, I wanted to ask, It turns out you're just another old-fashioned girl? I bit my tongue again and all that emerged from my mouth was another, "No, not at all."

  "Nothing is free," she said before I could start talking myself into an even deeper hole. "You need to remember that nothing is free."

  What are you, a prostitute? I wanted to ask. But my mind quickly predicted her likely reply: Aren't we all? The only difference is that some of us charge more than others. To that, I might even have to agree. And I realized she did not appear prepared to accept exposure to my wit and charm as payment enough for the sexual delights she considered so valuable. I understood I was running a considerable tab in her view and knew our day of reckoning could prove expensive. I wondered if she was charging interest. So I whined for pity.

  "Catherine, I need some time. I'm really confused right now, and I really enjoy your company. You make me laugh. But I can't be making any commitment decisions yet. If you tell me you need to find someone who can give you commitment, then you'll have to look for someone else."

  "You can't tell me you love me?"

  After just two weeks together, she was talking about love? Questions bombarded my mind, but I didn't have time to sort them out. Catherine awaited an answer.

  "Of course, I love you," I replied, feeling guilty the second the words left my mouth. I had only said that to three other women: Cindy, Boop, and my high school sweetheart. And, I had always struggled with the phrase. After much soul-searching over the years, however, I had learned to shrug it off. I considered it meaningless, the same as handing someone an open-ended contract. Each person has a unique definition they consider universal. I asked my high school sweetheart for a definition one time, and she told me it meant I should be willing to die in her place. After hearing that definition, I made a mental note to never ask that question again. I had survived two marriages without a serious dissection of the phrase. It could not have been any more ridiculous for me to tell Catherine after two weeks than it was for her to ask. To me, it was like answering yes when your kid asks, "Are we almost there?" Besides, it seemed like she wanted to hear it from someone—maybe anyone. But I decided to follow up with a bit of humor.

  "What if I said you're just a piece of ass?"

  Catherine hesitated while mulling that over. Then she grinned and replied, "As long as you say I am your piece of ass, that's all right. I like that."

  "Good. I would hate to stop fucking just to start making love."

  THIRTY

  October 29, 1979

  As my move into Jim Strong's house approached, we were discussing the details in the pressroom when he asked about Catherine.

  "I'm reminded of times I went camping with my dad," I said. "Did yo
u ever put a stick into a fire and try to see how long you could hold until the flame moved up and burned your hand?"

  "Of course," he said. "Who hasn't? But I was always an expert at throwing the thing down before it reached my hand. How about you?"