Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence by Judith Viorst Page B

back,” he conceded grudgingly. “But that doesn’t cancel out that I was robbed.” He explained his deal with Marvin—“I retained the right to accuse this punk of the theft”—but that didn’t seem to galvanize the officer, who clearly was not responding with a blazing-guns, call-out-the SWAT-team sense of urgency to Mr. Monti’s increasingly wild accusations. A few more rounds and Raging Bull was raging, “Family problems? I’m not talking family problems—I’m talking crime.” And then he slammed down the phone with a red-faced, furious “Enough! I don’t speak to sergeants. You’ve got my number—have the police chief call me.”
    He slumped back into his black leather chair, tap-tap-tapping the telephone with his pinky ring.
    “I think I’ll go now,” I said with a smile as I took out my peach-glow blusher and brightened my cheeks. I looked fine. Mr. Monti was looking bruised. But not for long. “Don’t think, Mrs. Kovner”—his venomous voice stopped me dead at the office door—“don’t think that you are going to beat me out. If I don’t get Wally on this, I’ll get him on something, dealing drugs or even spying—I’ve got a couple of friends in the CIA.” He laughed. “Yeah, I’ve got friends and they could fix him pretty good. Fix him for a while. Fix him forever.”
    I stared at him. He was trying to scare me, right?
    “And it won’t be, you know,” he went on, “just little Wally who’s going to get it. There’s Jeff—you heard what’s doing with him?” I nodded. “And then there’s your husband. Your husband the fancy pediatric surgeon. Your husband and those two malpractice suits.”
    Mr. Monti was pushing hard, but I didn’t intend to let him see I was shaken. “Those stupid lawsuits!” I snapped, “I can’t believe those people are suing. They’re being just incredibly ungrateful.”
    “Ungrateful?” said Mr. Monti. “These are heartsick, heartbroken people, their children’s lives shattered by a surgeon’s knife.” He puffed out his cheeks and slowly blew the air from his pursed-up lips before he continued. “But lucky for them, a friend of mine—I’ve got my friends at the hospital—looked up their records and helped me track them down.”
    “Tracked them down to do what exactly?” I whispered, though I already knew the answer.
    “To tell them it wasn’t too late to sue the pediatric surgeon who messed up their children. And”—his (once so melting, now so menacing) big brown eyes lockedonto mine—“to offer them my help with their legal expenses.”
    •  •  •
    While I never refrain from criticizing the medical profession for being (this is a partial list) insensitive, greedy, arrogant, conservative, and patronizing to women, I also (where it’s appropriate) am always willing to give the doctors their due. I have nothing but praise, for instance, for my artful cosmetic surgeon, who rescued me from upper-eyelid droop. I adore my nimble internist, who is the Jascha Heifetz of the sigmoidoscope. I am even willing to grant that the sadist who deep-cleans my gums four miserable times a year is, though made of stone, the finest periodontist in the Washington area. And I’m totally convinced that my husband, Jake, whatever his personal inadequacies, is a brilliant, gifted, dedicated surgeon. (You don’t have to take my word for it; there are major—major!—hospitals in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles where they’re begging on bended knee for Jake to please be their chief of pediatric surgery.) So when, a few months back, I heard that the Tesslers and the Malones were suing Jake for malpractice in the treatment of Tara Tessler and Kenny Malone, I knew (and this was before I knew that Joseph Augustus Monti had put them up to it) that Jake was being persecuted unjustly.
    At the time the suits were brought, it was almost impossible to get my husband to talk about them. He was evasive, dismissive, cryptic, and abrupt. He was also