...And Never Let HerGo

girl to a list of smirking surmises about her transgressions. She had once dated a man of another race, she had had a “nervous breakdown,” and she had anorexia. Still saying how good he was in keeping confidences, Tom wrinkled his forehead trying to think of more of Anne Marie’s alleged secrets to tell the jury. “There are probably other confidences she shared with me,” he apologized, “but I don’t remember right now.”
    To anyone listening, Tom’s testimony about Anne Marie was a brutal exposure of her life as
he
wanted the world to see it. There was no way of knowing if what he was saying was true. In his recitation, Tom was always the kindly friend who gave her good advice on friends, relatives, and financial matters. He had been unfailingly generous. He had bought most of her clothes and made sure that she had enough to eat. He alone had known what really went on in her heart.
    At one point, Tom told the jurors that Anne Marie hadn’t even been a very good Catholic. “Anne Marie was not a devout Catholic just as I’m not a devout Catholic. . . . We were both what are referred to as ‘cafeteria Catholics.’ Those things we liked, we did—and those things we didn’t like, we ignored.”
    No one doubted that Tom was directing his own case now. The life seemed to have gone out of Joe Oteri. He would ask a short question and his client took off from there. Tom was a race car out of control, talking about whatever he wanted and apparently convinced that he was making a good impression as he described Anne Marie’s failings and his efforts to look after her.
    From time to time, he reminded the jurors: “I’ve tried very hard not to trash people.”
    On December 21, Joe Oteri had finally moved through Tom’s tedious asides and comments to the evening of June 27. Tom confirmed that he and Anne Marie had gone to the Ristorante Panorama. They had gone there, he said, to discuss her problem with anorexia—over dinner. “And so we weren’t yucking it up,” Tom explained. “The atmosphere was serious but not any worse than that.”
    Then he went on to say that “something serious” had occurred regarding the menu, however. “Panorama has two types of calamari on the menu; one is breaded and deep fried and the other is not—it’s sautéed in a garlic sauce and it’s terrific,” Tom told the jurors. “Well, she brought us the wrong calamari dish. And Anne Marie was quite upset—she had worked so many years in restaurants that she had no patience for people who make mistakes like that. . . . She had the idea most of the day in her head she was going to eat one of her favorite dishes that night and the waitress screws it up . . . so she was very upset about that.”
    Otherwise, Tom said, their meal had been pleasant. They had drinks and wine, and they had discussed leaving more than a 20 percent tip even though “the waitress was a klutz.”
    They had left Panorama about nine-fifteen. “We talked mostly about the Olympics on the way home.” Tom said he’d told Anne Marie he could get tickets for her, “and she got all animated . . . and said, ‘You lie!’ She was quite excited.”
    He thought it had taken them about half an hour to get to Wilmington, driving down I-95 and exiting at 202 southbound. They had gone to Anne Marie’s apartment first. “We had talked about if she was awake enough—[so] we decided to watch
ER
together . . . at my house because my house was cool and her house was hot as blazes. . . . So she ran upstairs, took the doggie bag from the restaurant with her—I want to mention that. She said she was probably going to change. She was used to me every week giving her her food supply, the things I learned she would eat. And so I think I had a little Acme bag with some soups and grains and things like that that she brought up as well.”
    Tom added that the perishables he had for her were in his refrigerator on Grant Avenue. “The apartment was so hot she came right back down again.”
ER
was about to start, he said, and she kept clothes at his house she could change into; he had T-shirts and small-size men’s gym shorts there.
    “Did she turn on the air conditioner in her apartment?” Oteri asked.
    “I don’t believe she did.” She hadn’t been up there more than ten minutes, Tom said.
    “What time did you arrive back at your house on Grant Avenue?”
    “ER
had started—but just barely.”
    “So that would place it at shortly after ten