she waited for cover of darkness, and sought out clubs that opened late and stayed open later. She'd worked the night owl shift in Las Vegas, after all, and the sight of the sun coming up as she emerged from some smoke-filled sub terranean lounge was nothing new to her. And as far as gaining entree to some of the city's more trendy spots, that proved no problem at all. Barry had already provided Samara with identification asserting that she was twentytwo, not so much to get her into places or served drinks as to protect himself from charges of cradle robbing. And on the rare occasion when Samara's fake ID or good looks alone failed to get her through the door, her last name more than sufficed.
But Manhattan proved to be no Vegas, where what hap pened there stayed there. It wasn't long before the tabloids picked up on Samara's late-night outings, and word got back to Barry. At first he put up with it, figuring she would get it out of her system. But soon the rumors got uglier, linking Samara to men, and backing up words with photos.
MR. JAYWALKER: Were the rumors true?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Do you mean, was I seeing other men?
MR. JAYWALKER: Yes.
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, I was.
MR. JAYWALKER: And were you sleeping with them?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Some of them.
MR. JAYWALKER: How did that come about?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I allowed it to. I was bored, I had no life. It was like Barry had turned this switch on in me, showed me what lovemaking was, and what intimacy was about. And then he'd tried to turn the switch off, just like that. I was eighteen, nineteen by then, I guess. I'd had sex, but I'd never made love before. I wanted more of it.
MR. JAYWALKER: What was Barry's reaction?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I'm sure he was embar rassed, horrified, whatever. I guess the word I'm looking for is humiliated. It was very important for Barry to be in control of absolutely everything. And here I was, six months into our marriage, running around like a tramp. I'm sure it was very hard on him, to suddenly feel out of control, like a victim.
MR. JAYWALKER: You used the word tramp. Were you taking money from these men, or gifts, as you'd done back in Las Vegas?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, it was nothing like that. Barry gave me all the money I needed. I didn't want his money, I wanted a life.
It didn't take too long for things to come to a head. Within months, Samara's photo had made the front page of every tabloid, many times over, as often as not with a generous helping of leg or cleavage, as she dodged the cameras on the arm of some minor celebrity. It didn't help matters that the men were uniformly young and good- looking. Barry cornered her one afternoon, literally cornered her, in the living room of his Scarsdale man sion, grabbing her by the arms and demanding an end to her behavior.
MR. JAYWALKER: And?
MS. TANNENBAUM: And I threatened to call the police.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you agree to his de mands?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, not unless he'd let me get a job or get pregnant. And he wouldn't. So I told him I was moving out, that I had friends with money who'd take care of me. In order to stop me from doing that and humiliating him even more, he agreed to get me my own place in the city. All he asked was that I be more discreet about what I did and who I did it with, and that I continue to act like his wife in public, when he needed me to. Appearance was very important to Barry.
MR. JAYWALKER: And how did that work out?
MS. TANNENBAUM: It worked out okay, for a while. He bought me a town house in Midtown and set up a joint bank account so I could furnish it. It gave me something to do, something I found out I was good at. At least I think I was. It also gave me space. I know that's a dumb California word, but it's how I felt.
MR. JAYWALKER: You say it worked out okay for a while.
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes. But the tabloids and the gossip columns are like sharks. They get a taste of blood, and they keep coming around for more. I know it was my own fault, for having started it all in the first place. But they'd stake out my home, follow me whenever I went out, snap my picture on the street corner, in the supermarket, wherever they could. If I squatted down to pick up a tissue, the next day there'd be a shot up my skirt. If I bent over instead, it would be of my butt. One time, they got me coming out of a women's health clinic, where I'd gone to have a breast exam, 'cause I thought I'd felt a lump. The photo made all the front pages, and the headlines made it sound like I had AIDS or herpes, or had just gotten an abortion. Somebody sent copies to Barry, and he went absolutely nuts. I don't blame him, re ally. I would've, too, if I'd been in his shoes.
Samara had tried to rein in her behavior, spending less time at her place and more at Barry's penthouse apart ment, or their home in Scarsdale. But with Barry con sumed by work and often absent for days at a time, she would eventually gravitate back to her own place, her own life and her own friends. Even as she could see the humiliation her behavior brought him, she felt powerless to change her behavior.
Occasionally there would be flare-ups, intense shout ing arguments filled with threats and ultimatums. Never was there physical force, yet never was there resolution, either. Instead a stalemate of sorts set in, with Samara able to continue defying Barry because by that time she had too much on him. Even as he held firm to the purse strings to her life, she would threaten to go public with his fears, his foibles, his anxieties and his sexual neuroses. If theirs was a love-hate relationship, it was sorely out of balance, with precious little love and more than enough anger to go around. Barry hated Samara for continually humiliating him and victimizing him, while Samara hated Barry for keeping her trapped in a prison without walls.
MR. JAYWALKER: How long did this stalemate continue?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Forever. I mean, we made some adjustments, some accommodations over the years. We continued to see each other and appear to gether in public when some occasion called for it. But privately, we led our own lives. I stayed at my place, and Barry at either of his. He hated it, but that's the way it was.
MR. JAYWALKER: How about your finances? Who looked after them?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Barry had lawyers and ac countants who pretty much took care of everything. If something needed to be signed, one of them would call and come over, have me sign. But mostly they took care of things without me. Barry had met me when I was eighteen and didn't know anything. By the time he…he died, I was twenty-six and had learned some stuff. But to Barry, it was like I was fro zen in time. I'd always be the eighteen-year-old cock tail waitress who couldn't be trusted to write a check. That was a big part of the problem right there.
MR. JAYWALKER: Let's go forward to August, August of a year and a half ago, the month Barry died. How did things stand between the two of you by that time?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They were pretty much the same, I guess. I was no longer a favorite of the tab loids, but every once in a while I'd do something stu pid, and there would be my photo, with my hair messed up or a nipple showing, or something like that. And Barry would get humiliated all over again and go ballistic, and we'd have a good scream over it.
At which point Judge Sobel interrupted, politely as always, and asked if it might be a good time for the midafternoon break. Some judges fall asleep during testi mony; others try to take down every word on a laptop; still others work on shopping lists, bill paying, check book balancing and Little League lineups. Matthew Sobel listened. And from listening, he knew that Jay walker had reached the moment when he was about to have Samara describe the evening of the murder, and he decided that the jurors should be as fresh and alert as possible for her account.
'It would be a perfect time,' said Jaywalker.
The day had gone reasonably well, he felt. If, in the afternoon session, Samara had been guarded emotion ally, and surely she had been, at least she hadn't allowed her reticence to cut her answers short. Perhaps the
