“You won’t be able to, Boss,” McKinney said. “It’s not just the locals. You’ll have reps from all the foreign press here as well. By mid-afternoon, you’ll have several hundred correspondents and photographers. It’s got to be the courthouse steps.”
Paul Battaglia crushed his cigar in the ashtray on his desk. “Tell Brenda to make sure there’s a podium out there. All the equipment I need. Get to work on my comments, Alex. And be sure not to steal any of my thunder for your bail app.”
“Of course not, Paul. You’ll have all the best lines.”
I told Laura to hold any calls or visitors. I got to work on the district attorney’s statement before I crafted a few short paragraphs to explain to the court the reversal of our bail position.
I knew that Lem would be spinning the media all day about why our team was walking back the cat on MGD. This was not the time to go head-to-head with him. I needed to retain whatever dignity Blanca Robles had left herself and to think about the impact of this change on the victim advocacy community I respected so much.
At one o’clock, Laura opened my door and put a turkey sandwich and soda on my desk. “You’ve got to eat something, Alex.”
I smiled at her. “You’re not old enough to be my mother.”
“But she called an hour ago, and I did promise to make sure to put lunch in front of you. I couldn’t swear I’d get you to put lipstick on before you faced the cameras, but food I could do.”
I blew Laura a kiss and got back to work.
Half an hour later, Ryan and Mercer came in together. They both looked distraught.
“Where’s the funeral?” I asked.
“It can’t get worse than this, Al,” Ryan said.
I threw my pen on the desk. “Something change? I’ll be out of ink before I get to the courtroom. What have you guys been up to?”
“I’m trying to keep Blanca and Byron here for as long as I can. I moved them out of the conference room, because the commotion is starting in front of the courthouse.”
“Where to?”
“I’ve got them up on the fifteenth floor, facing the rear of the building—no access to anything or anybody. Ordered in lunch and Blanca is watching some soaps on the tube. I don’t want them leaving the building until after Gil-Darsin is released. I figure the first shot at spin control goes to Battaglia,” Mercer said. “Then Lem. By that time, Byron Peaser will just sound like a bag of wind.”
“Why do they think they’re being kept here?” I asked.
“I told them you’re redrafting paperwork for her to sign. Blanca’s okay with it, and Peaser doesn’t want to let her out of his sight.”
“Then why are you two looking so miserable?”
“If you’re building the coffin for this case,” Ryan said, “I just came up with the last nail.”
“Let me guess. Her real name isn’t Blanca Robles and she doesn’t work at the Eurotel.”
“She’s good on both those counts. It’s her application for asylum.”
I looked up at Ryan and nodded. “That wasn’t going to be available to us until next week. Who’d you impersonate this time? The secretary of state?”
“I thought about it, but she has such a distinctive voice.”
“Thanks for your discretion.”
“Look, Al, I explained the situation to one of the deputies. They’d already pulled it from the system when they got the subpoena, but it was sitting on his desk until legal got to authorize its release,” Ryan said. “He read me through the whole thing.”
“Okay. I’m expecting some exaggeration. I’ve seen dozens of these. Unless there’s a bombshell, then—”
“There’s a bombshell,” Mercer said.
“It’s got everything Blanca told us the first day we talked to her, Al. The day you were still in France. So Mercer and I just went back over all the facts again with her.”
I put my elbows on the desk and started massaging my aching head. “What now?”
“The stuff about her parents and brothers—she swears that’s all true,” Mercer said. “And when I asked her to tell me one more time about the militia—”
“You mean the soldiers who gang-raped her?” I asked. “The story that brought everyone on the team to tears?”
“Yes, ma’am. That very one. It turns out that’s the story that she made up out of whole cloth.”
I dragged my hands down over my mouth, thinking of the consequences. “Blanca Robles fabricated a story of rape?”
“Completely. She admitted that to us just now.”
“That woman could have lied about almost anything else and still have a chance of being believed,” I said. “I could have argued to the jurors that all the financial crap and taxes and the asylum stuff in general was extraneous to the facts of the Gil-Darsin assault. But to look every one of us in the eye and make up the story of a sexual assault? We’ll never be able to sell this one to a jury that’s faced with convicting a man of rape in the first degree. Never.”
“We just thought you and Battaglia ought to know.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said, picking up my pen to do the edit on both my statement and the district attorney’s. “Hey, Mercer? You willing to walk the plank with me?”
“My distinct honor.”
“Quarter to four? Pick me up here and take me to Judge Donnelly’s part?”
“Sure thing.”
I honed and sharpened my words. If ever there was a time that less was more, this would be that moment.
At the appointed hour, I dragged myself out of my office and
walked through the great hallways with Mercer beside me. We took the elevator from the DA’s office wing to the thirteenth floor, Part 31 of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
As we stepped off, flashbulbs started popping, and the reporters who were waiting to be admitted to the locked courtroom were screaming out questions.
The court officers let Mercer and me in. Directly ahead I could see Lem Howell, preening in the well, gloating at the victory we were handing him.
“Alexandra Cooper,” Lem said, “I taught you well, young lady.”
“If you want to claim the credit for all this, just hop right on my back. That’s where everyone else seems to be.”
The judge came out of the robing room, ready for the sideshow that would have media clowns jockeying for seats as the pool cameraman set up his equipment, focusing on the two counsel tables. We’d all be in high def for the evening news. Since Donnelly tolerated no nonsense, the proceeding would be mercifully short.
“Mr. Howell, Ms. Cooper—good afternoon. As you know, Mr. Howell, Ms. Cooper contacted my clerk late this morning. I understand we’re going to have a change in bail status for Mr. Gil-Darsin. Has your client been produced?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Before we go on the record, do we have any housekeeping to do?”
“No, Judge,” I said. “I intend to be brief.”
“Very good. Does your client have any family members who wish to be seated in the front row, before I let the reporters in?”
“No, ma’am,” Lem said, barely able to suppress an enormous grin. “Madame Gil-Darsin would prefer to greet her husband outside the courthouse—when he is a free man.”
“This will be rich,” I whispered to Mercer. “Lem’s staged a grand reunion, played out for all the world to see. I should have figured as much.”
The officers led Baby Mo into the courtroom. Lem had provided
him with yet another suit from his vast collection of bespoke clothes, and a fresh shirt in cerulean blue, perfect for the television cameras.
The defendant tried to say something to me—thank you, I’m sure—but I turned my back to him to avoid the impropriety of that discussion.
“How the worm turns, Alexandra,” Lem said, positioning himself between me and the bench so that he could watch the press corps jam themselves into the empty seats.
“All’s fair in love and war, Lem,” I said, “and don’t forget that every dog has his day. That’s three, isn’t it? A triplicate of platitudes for you.”
“Don’t go bitter on me, young lady. Plenty of room for Paul Battaglia to do that. I have no agenda but to praise your fairness.”
“Save it for another time, Lem. It rings too hollow today.”
Judge Donnelly banged her gavel. “May I have your appearances, please?”
“Alexandra Cooper, for the People.”
“Lemuel Howell the Third, for Mr. Gil-Darsin.”
“You have an application, Ms. Cooper?”
“Yes, Your Honor. At this time, I’d like to request that Mr. Gil-Darsin be ROR’d—released on his own recognizance. We’d also like the court to consider asking to secure his passport, at least until the next court appearance.”
“Just to be clear, Ms. Cooper, this is the same matter on which your office requested a remand of this defendant just twenty-four hours ago?”
“It is, Your Honor.”
“Would you mind detailing some of the changed circumstances?”
“Of course,” I said, picking up my list of Blanca’s lies to read into the record.
I could barely hear myself speak over the rumble of the reporters behind me.
“Thank you, Ms. Cooper. Three weeks? Do you think you can resolve some of these issues in that time, Mr. Howell?”
“I am most certain, Judge Donnelly, that we can figure out the misunderstanding between the two parties by then.”
I wanted to scream out loud at Lem’s choice of the word “misunderstanding.” Buried in Blanca Robles’s twisted telling of the short encounter I was pretty sure there was a crime.
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Three weeks is fine.”
“May 20,” she said. “Are you able to arrange the surrender of your client’s passport, Mr. Howell?”
“If Detective Wallace would be so kind,” Lem said, reaching out his hand to me. “I believe the police, in their haste to detain my distinguished client, seized both his personal and his diplomatic passports.”
Lem underscored his point about MGD’s international prominence. Mercer passed both documents to Lem, who gave them to the clerk.
“Mr. Gil-Darsin, you’ll be taken in the back by the officers and processed for immediate discharge,” the judge said, with one more bang of her gavel after she announced that court was adjourned.
The defendant wrapped his arms around Lem Howell and gave one emphatic fist pump to the audience.
Reporters scrambled over one another to dash out of their seats and phone in their headlines.
I called Pat McKinney to urge him to move Battaglia to the front steps of 100 Centre Street as quickly as he could, before the unruly crowd assembled. I wanted him to make his remarks with as much dignity as possible, before Gil-Darsin played to the cameras.
I was the last one to leave the darkened courtroom, thinking that this had been the worst week of my entire life.
“Every accuser,” Paul Battaglia said, speaking into the bank of microphones that covered the entire podium, “every victim of a sexual assault who comes forward and reports these heinous crimes, is entitled to be met with the utmost respect by the men and women of the NYPD and my great office.”
Pat McKinney and I flanked the district attorney. The rest of the team lined up behind us, with Mercer over my shoulder, while the district attorney went on to describe the background of Blanca Robles and her odyssey through the week’s interviews.
“Tens of thousands of witnesses come to our office every year, from diverse and frequently difficult circumstances, many with imperfect pasts. If we are convinced they are truthful about the crimes committed against them, and will tell the truth at trial, we will ask a jury to consider their testimony to prove a crime.”
He had added an important riff about the proud history and high priority of his long tenure in seeking justice for sex crimes victims and protecting the vulnerable immigrant population of the city.
“…In this particular instance, the nature and number of the accuser’s falsehoods,” Battaglia said, reading the words I had written,
having edited them to fit his personal style, “the shifting and inconsistent version of events she gave surrounding her encounter in room number twenty-eight-oh-six of the Eurotel…”
The sea of reporters packed the entire roadway. Police had blocked off Centre Street from Hogan Place to White Street with the interlocking gray aluminum partitions—ironically known as French barriers—that had replaced wooden sawhorses for crowd control a decade ago. Uniformed officers stood side by side across the length of the curb that bordered 100 Centre Street.
A single car—a black limousine that would no doubt whisk Mohammed Gil-Darsin to his temporary home in Manhattan—was the sole vehicle that was positioned in front of the courthouse.
The only people standing still, not jostling to push closer to the steps from which Battaglia spoke, were the six enormous bodyguards—who looked as though they’d been plucked from some rapper’s entourage and who surrounded the sleek stretch sedan.
The district attorney commented on many of the specifics that had complicated Blanca Robles’s story. He separated those misstatements that were extrinsic to the alleged assault—asylum, bank accounts, tax records, phone calls—from those that related directly to her face-off with MGD and its immediate aftermath.
“…and my team, composed of some of the most experienced, senior lawyers on my staff, and representatives of this country’s pioneering and premier sex crimes prosecution unit, has ultimately been unable to credit the accuser’s version of the events of last Saturday beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Pat McKinney and I stared straight ahead. The late-afternoon sun was beginning to drop behind the Family Court building, but neither the direct glare nor the breeze sweeping in from the Hudson River caused even an eyelash to flutter.
“If
we
do not believe this accuser beyond a reasonable doubt at this time, then I cannot ask any one of these prosecutors to stand in front of a jury and ask them to require that of twelve good citizens of this county.
“We will press forward with our investigation, ladies and gentlemen. We urge the full cooperation of our witness, who has come to speak to us now only through her lawyer, Byron Peaser.
“We ask again, as we have from the outset, that she participate within the structure of the criminal justice system, rather than holding forth in media interviews and sponsored appearances. We hope that you, members of the Fourth Estate, will respect our need to see that justice is done.