Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (21 page)

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?"