I walked to the window bank at the end of the hallway that faced the short side street, Hogan Place, which was the actual entrance to the DA’s office. The bank was halfway between Battaglia’s suite and Laura’s desk and offered me the privacy to make a call.
“I am so steaming mad,” I said into my cell phone to Joan Stafford. Of course someone at the private club to which he had once belonged had given me up to the district attorney.
“Whatever happened to ‘good morning,’ Ms. Cooper?”
“So far I can’t say that it’s been very good. Did your mother ever tell you that she had eyes in the back of her head when you were a kid? Knew everything you did, no matter where you were? I feel like that all over again with my boss.”
“Then you should have asked him where Luc is,” Joan said. “All I can figure is that he’s off chasing the one-armed man.”
“What now? Didn’t you reach him?”
“Better take me off your payroll, girl. The bad news is that he’s not answering his phone at all, as irresistible as I think I am. The good news is that I called that she-devil, Brigitte, and he’s not with her.”
“So what do you think?”
“Didn’t you ever see that Harrison Ford movie—with the one-armed man?”
“Are you talking about
The Fugitive
?”
“Precisely.”
“Oh, Joanie, just when I need you to be sensible, here you go writing fiction again.”
“Think of it, Alex. Suppose the French detective—
le flic
—actually thinks Luc’s a—what do you call them these days?—a person of interest in the murder of Lisette Honfleur.”
“No one could possibly think that.”
“Say he’s Inspector Clouseau. Completely incompetent. He thinks that.”
“I’ll give you completely incompetent,” I said.
“So he leans on Luc, freaks him out. Wants everyone in town to believe Luc is guilty to sort of make him crack. Then Brigitte turns on him, ’cause she doesn’t want the kids involved. I’m telling you Luc’s running around out there like a fugitive, chasing the one-armed man who’s really the killer.”
“And I called you to calm me down. What was I thinking? I’ll talk to you later.”
“No, no, no, no, no! Don’t hang up on me. Where’s Mike? I bet he’d agree with me.”
“Joanie, I adore you, but I’ve got work to do. I don’t think Mike’s all that into Luc, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we’re about to be disconnected.” I turned off the phone and stormed back to my office.
“Don’t even stop at your desk,” Laura said, holding up both hands to stop me. “The whole team’s in the conference room with Byron Peaser and Ms. Robles. Better get yourself down there if you don’t want to miss any of the fireworks.”
I reversed direction and walked down the corridor.
From behind me I heard Ryan Blackmer’s voice. “Wait for me, Alex.”
“Are you making yourself useful?” I asked, forcing a smile.
“Checking the hotline.”
“Any messages about Gil-Darsin?” The Sex Crimes Unit had long had a dedicated phone line to take calls from victims or witnesses, many of whom were hesitant to notify the police but trusted the reputation of our pioneering office. Whenever a major case broke and there was a likelihood that the offender might have a recidivist history, the press secretary added our hotline number to the media releases.
“Nada.”
“So we’re still at one vic,” I said, continuing down the hall.
“Hold it a minute. Don’t you think it’s strange? Okay, so the guy’s a womanizer and all that. Plenty of stories to support how he comes on to every woman in his orbit. But rapists don’t just start with violent behavior when they’re fifty-eight years old, do they?”
“Never had a novice that age before.”
“It’s one thing to seduce someone, but it’s a different animal to come raging out of the bathroom and assault a complete stranger. The hotline is stone-cold. That never happens when you’ve got a serial rapist.”
“I’m with you on that.”
“And I’ve called every Eurotel where Baby Mo is likely to have traveled on WEB business. No reports, no complaints, no violence. Affairs, yes. Attacks, no. Only that whack job in France who waited eight years to decide that after she held hands with him during a professional interview, maybe he thought he had a green light.”
“That’ll go nowhere,” I said. “She’s beyond the statute of limitations.”
“She’s beyond belief, is what she is. So why didn’t you make that argument to Battaglia?”
“I just forgot, Ryan. Sorry, I know how strongly you feel about slowing this down.”
“Are you okay, Al? It’s not like you to forget to tell the Boss something like that.”
“Tired. Stressed out about doing the right thing on this.”
We were a dozen feet away from the conference room when I heard Byron Peaser ranting at someone through the closed door.
“She didn’t know it was there, don’t you understand that?” Peaser shouted.
Ryan opened the door for me and we went back inside. Peaser was having a standoff with Pat McKinney, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that.
“Look, Byron, Detective Wallace just got a call back from Citibank about the subpoenas he delivered last night. They told him there are five accounts in Blanca’s name. Five bank accounts—I’m asking her to explain that.”
Blanca Robles, dressed in a black suit that Peaser probably bought her for the occasion, started to answer. “I swear I didn’t know—”
“Hush up, now, Blanca. You see, Pat,” Peaser interjected, “that scumbag boyfriend of hers must have forged the signature cards and opened these accounts in her name. Whatever criminal enterprise he was up to, we simply don’t know. Just another jerk taking advantage of this poor woman.”
I couldn’t believe McKinney was letting Peaser give answers—or suggest scenarios—to rescue Blanca. “I find it works better, Pat, if we have Mr. Peaser wait outside.”
Peaser threw up his hands, obviously aggravated by my appearance. “So Ms. Torquemada comes to join us again, in case my client needs a little more waterboarding. You didn’t get your fill of questions yesterday?”
“We go where the truth takes us, sir,” I said. “Maybe Ms. Robles doesn’t like that, but it’s pretty much the way we operate here.”
“Well, is it taking you to the grand jury or not?” he asked, pounding his fist on the table.
“Two
P.M.
sharp, Byron,” Pat said. “If you’ll step out and let us get back to work with Blanca, I’ve reserved half an hour and we’ll be the first case of the afternoon session.”
Peaser picked up his briefcase, gave me his best “drop dead” expression as he passed me, and left the room.
Ryan Blackmer stood next to me, whispering in my ear as the team took their places around the table. “I’m never going to say ‘I told you so,’ Al, but there’s a new piece of garbage under every rock you pick up with this broad.”
I nodded my head while Ellen reminded Blanca Robles about what the remainder of the day would entail. “I’ll give you another rock to look under, Ryan. Will you cut a subpoena for the IRS for her tax records this afternoon, and don’t tell McKinney that I asked you to? It’ll take a good two weeks for them to come back, but at least we’ll know if she’s playing any games on that front. And you are welcome to a huge ‘I told you so’—in the middle of Times Square—if you’re right about this.”
We spent the rest of the morning prepping Blanca for the questions, exactly as Ellen had scripted them. Unlike a trial, there would be no surprises for the witness in the grand jury. Now that she had gone public in a televised press conference, the usual jitters occasioned by facing twenty-three grand jurors in an amphitheatrical setup would be less of an issue.
Mercer kept Blanca company while she ate lunch. The rest of us further refined the questions down to the barest bones possible to make out the charges.
At quarter of two, we walked upstairs to the grand jury waiting area. Row after row of uniformed cops with gun cases and drug arrests picked up their heads when our small army came in. The photo of Blanca Robles on the courthouse steps was on the front page of both tabloids, and a buzz rippled through the witness benches as the warden went inside to make sure there was a quorum.
A few minutes after two, Ellen Gunsher went inside the jury room. I entered behind her and walked up the third tier of steps, to perch on the windowsill behind the foreman.
Ellen spoke from behind the table at which her witnesses would be seated. The court reporter was next to her, taking down every word.
“My name is Ellen Gunsher. Today I’ll be presenting to you the case of the People of the State of New York against Mohammed Gil-Darsin.”
Baby Mo’s name was an instant wake-up call to the jurors jaded by dozens of cases heard throughout the last three weeks of their monthlong term. Newspapers rustled as they were put away, muffins and sodas were deposited in totes and backpacks, and everyone gave Ellen his or her undivided attention.
“I’d just like to remind you that in the event you have read any accounts of this matter in the papers, or heard any stories on the news, you must put aside all that information. When I submit this matter to you, I will ask you to vote solely based on the evidence you hear today from the witnesses who appear before you.”
The jurors all nodded their heads, although it was unlikely that any of them could be held to that standard, any more than it was possible to enforce the fact that the proceedings within the jury room were deemed by the law to be secret. By day’s end, most would be bragging to family and friends that they had heard the evidence about the scandal between the infamous MGD and the housekeeper.
Ellen walked to the door and admitted Blanca Robles, who followed her to the front of the room. She appeared to be appropriately nervous—which jurors always liked—and scanned the faces in the room. If she was counting the number of black men, I figured she’d be disappointed to know there were seven of them.
She remained standing while the foreman, who had a heavy Spanish accent, administered the oath.
Ellen spoke next. “Would you talk in a loud, clear voice and tell the jury your name, your age, and in which county you live?”
The pedigree questions were short and simple. There was no other mention of Blanca’s personal life. Information about her imprisoned boyfriend was outside the scope of the direct examination.
On to the work history. Where was she employed, for how long, and in what capacity? Had she ever met or known Mohammed Gil-Darsin before Saturday?
“Would you tell us exactly what happened from the time that you entered Mr. Gil-Darsin’s room on Saturday evening?”
Blanca had taken direction well. She made eye contact with the foreman—most likely because she identified with his Latino accent—and crossed herself before beginning to speak.
She told her story even more convincingly than I’d thought possible, playing to the audience with every exaggerated gesture in her. Gil-Darsin grabbed and pulled and pushed her, his naked, erect thing rubbing against—
“Do you mean his penis, Ms. Robles?” Ellen asked, needing to establish every element of the crime.
“Yes. As God is my witness I can’t say that word in public.”
Some of the jurors were riveted on her expressions and movement, while others focused on the wall clock above Blanca’s head or stared into their coffee cups. The language of sexual assault wasn’t easy for most people to stomach.
“Then he put it in my front—”
“Do you know what a vagina is, Ms. Robles?”
“Of course I do. Is there he put it,” she said, clasping her hands together in front of her and murmuring something under her breath.
“What did you say?” the court reporter asked.
“I was just praying.”
I walked to Ellen’s side and whispered to her. She nodded and said, “Please strike that last question and answer from the record. I’d like to ask the jurors to disregard what the witness said, please.”
Ellen got her back on track with a handful of leading questions. There was no adversary to object to them.
“Did the defendant put his penis in your vagina?”
“Yes.”
“Did the defendant put his penis in your mouth?”
“
Dios mío
, yes,” Blanca said, as tears rolled down her cheeks and the expression on her face looked like she had swallowed a fistful of lemons.
Ellen moved through the outcry, meeting the police, being subjected
to a hospital examination—and within six minutes, the witness had completed her testimony. It was merely the outline of the crime, but enough of a legal foundation on which to send a man to jail for the next twenty-five years of his life.
If Blanca Robles’s case was to make it to a trial six months from now, Lem Howell would likely take these six minutes—and all the flesh that had been left off the bones for this presentation—to skewer the woman for the better part of three days in a courtroom.
“Thank you, Ms. Robles. You may step out.”
Before she could push back from the table, the hands of three jurors shot up in the air. I followed Ellen to the first one and listened as the ponytailed guy in a flannel shirt and jeans asked her, “What about the lady’s lawsuit? I know what’s in the papers isn’t evidence, but I got some questions about her lawsuit.”
“As your legal advisers, sir,” I said, “we must tell you that lawsuit is not relevant to this proceeding. There is a separate forum—the civil court—in which that matter will be decided.”
Grand juror number eight seemed displeased by my response. I guessed he had the blue-collar reaction of a pox on both their houses—the wealthy African son-of-a-thieving-dictator and the hoping-to-win-the-lottery maid who might have been too melodramatic for this guy.
We crossed the room to reach number thirteen, a retired high school principal in her late sixties. “You didn’t ask her if she screamed. I want to know whether she screamed when she says this guy attacked her.”
“I’m going to decline to ask that question, ma’am,” Ellen said. “There is no legal requirement that any victim of a crime has to scream.”
“I’d still like to know why the girl didn’t scream,” she said, a little louder than was necessary.
Behind her was the assistant foreman of the grand jury, an African American businessman in his early forties. “So, what did Mr. Gil-Darsin say about this?”