Authors: Edward Conlon
The cop closed the door of the interview room and locked Lopez inside. He looked at Nick, awaiting instructions. Napolitano and Perez walked over; Garelick waited at his desk, watching to see if there would be a general summons for assistance. Napolitano laughed. “Nick, you want the fuckers or the fuckee?”
Nick was thankful for the offer of help. Would it be enough? It was the kind of thing Esposito sorted out quickly, and Nick missed him.
“ ‘Want’ is not the word.”
“I know. Which bit you gonna take?”
“I’ve dealt with the girl before. I’ll talk with her.”
“Fine, we’ll get the boys. They’re all together?”
“Yeah, they are. Nap, would you mind bringing Mrs. Ballsack down there to the hospital with you? And the father of the other one? What’s his name, Officer? And what’s your name? Never mind. I’ll go down and see them. You come with me, to the Bronx. We’ll talk to the girl. You drive. I’ll tell you where to go. Garelick can stay—Sorry, Garelick. Would you mind watching this guy in the room, while we’re out?”
“No problem.”
Nick was talking to himself, but no one disagreed. The cop followed him downstairs, and it wasn’t hard to spot Mrs. Ballsack hovering at the waiting area, gripping her plastic seat at the edges, letting go and gripping again. There was a row of these seats, red, blue, and yellow, fixed to a steel rail, like in a bus station. Decency, dignity, comfort were to be avoided; people might feel encouraged to stay. Mrs. Ballsack was a heavy woman, in an ankle-length down jacket and slippers, hair in curlers. Night shift or nonworker? When Nick walked into the room, she stood up and walked over, quivering with indignation. He had an idea she’d prepared her opener.
“Do you have children, Detective?”
“Yes, three.”
“Boys or girls?”
“One of each.”
“How old are they?”
That was enough. Nick had thought he was past caring, but apparently he wasn’t, raising a hand to stop the conversation. He almost called her Mrs. Ballsack, which wouldn’t have set the right tone. Still, it had to stop.
“Ma’am, this is not about me.”
A truer lie was never spoken. She started to cry, turning away, then toward him again, wondering whether to be angry, guessing it would not work.
“Detective, I just, I just … He’s my only son, and that crazy, that crazy mutha—! That crazy
cabron
, what he did to my baby, he—”
That was a nice word,
“cabron,”
as if Grace had been cheating on her father with the boys.
“Were you there when it happened?”
“Are you crazy? Are you stupid?”
“Ma’am, watch your mouth. How old is your son?”
“How old? What kind of question is—”
“How old is your son?”
“Eighteen, but he’s a baby…. He’s just a baby, and that
animal
, who cut him …”
“That animal saw his daughter with three young men. She’s thirteen. She is a baby. Eighteen isn’t. I know your son was assaulted. I don’t know if he committed a rape. How old are the others?”
That was the wrong thing to say, for so many reasons. If it wasn’t a rape, it was a terrible accusation. If it was, he shouldn’t have warned her. So wrong, all of it, but it shut her up for a second, and that was all he wanted. She shouldn’t have asked about his children. Couldn’t she count?
Mrs. Ballsack shuddered, then yelled, “My son is not bright! My son is slow! And he went with his friend, this man’s son!”
She pointed to a little man in the corner on one of the bus seats, who was with her, up to a point. Nick surmised he did not understand what she said.
“This idiot’s son, Enrique, he is fifteen years old! And my son, he knows him from the building, and it’s idiot Enrique’s idiot friend, Flacco—what’s the little shithead’s name?—this little prick, he’s only fourteen, but he’s the one who brings ’em both into it! Some little
puta
from down the block, he says, she’ll do ’em all! My son is in a special school. He is a baby….”
She broke down in tears. The little man went over to her and patted her shoulder. Ballsack sobbed to herself, bending over, holding her knees. And then she pushed his tender hands away, and rose up and bellowed, “I want to talk to another detective! This one has no feelin’s, no feelin’s at all! I wanna ’nother detective to talk to!”
Ballsack spoke for public benefit, playing a part, but her anguish was genuine. Funny how people started to say that, that they wanted someone else to talk to, a more sympathetic ear. This time, Nick would accommodate her.
“Another detective will be down to talk to you.”
Nick turned and walked away. When he was outside the precinct, he turned to see if the young cop was still with him. He wasn’t sure if he wanted him to pay attention, wasn’t sure what he wanted him to take away from all of this. Ugly, all of it ugly. The cop nodded uncertainly and got the car, and Nick sat in the back. He was tired and lay down. Cops don’t ride in the back of cop cars; the backseat was for non-equals, prisoners and dignitaries. The young cop seemed confused, unsure whether to take offense. Nick remembered the last time he’d been chauffeured, couldn’t guess when the next would be. No point in dwelling on that, at the moment. The cop knew how to get to the hospital in the Bronx, didn’t need directions. Nick closed his eyes. They were here.
The doctor had finished her exam, was packaging her samples in a box to give to the cop. The doctor was a slender woman with a brown ponytail, young, probably closer to Grace’s age than Nick’s. She had a no-nonsense air, brusque but not unkind. Grace was on a bed behind a curtain, five feet away, and Nick and the doctor went to the far side of the emergency room to talk. Filipino nurses and Nigerian doctors shuffled between cardiacs, diabetics, asthmatics.
“How is she, Doctor?”
“Basically, she’s fine.”
“Really? No trauma?”
“Nothing physical. And emotionally—well, she’s pretty matter-of-fact about it. I don’t know her social history, her personal situation, aside from a few basics. But she’s only really sorry the party was over so soon.”
“Not her first time, then?”
“No. She said she slept with one of the boys once before, and there was another boy she slept with three times. There’s no symptom of disease, either—she said she always used a condom—but we have to wait for blood work. If she was twenty-three, or thirty-three, I’d say, ‘Just be careful,’ and walk away. Even though she’s only thirteen, I can’t think of any other advice. If she was my daughter, I’d chain her up in the basement. I know I’m not supposed to say that. I couldn’t say she seems maladjusted, but we’ll make a referral for counseling. She’s bright. She answers questions directly. She asked me about medical school, how long it would take, how much it would cost. Very self-possessed. She brought her homework with her, so she could keep busy while she
waited. She doesn’t seem to think much of her father, but that’s not really unusual for the age. Do you have something to tell me, something I should know?”
“Not that I can think of, right now.”
“How old were the boys?”
“A little older, not much.”
“Well, unless there’s anything else, I have other patients. Go ahead, talk to her, and please let me know if anything changes.”
“Is she decent?”
The doctor laughed as she walked away. “She has her clothes on, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The cop did not follow when Nick went back to Grace, behind her curtain. Nick called out “Hello!” before he pushed the heavy blue polyester drape aside. Grace wore her school uniform, and she sat on the side of her bed, digging through her backpack. Her books were spread out. She straightened her glasses before she looked up, smiling.
“Hi! I remember you!”
“I remember you, too, Grace. How are you?”
“Fine.”
She closed the books on the bed, and began to put them into the backpack. Nick waited for her to finish. She sat up properly, as if in class, and waited for him to begin.
“Grace?”
“Yes?”
“What happened today?”
She rolled her eyes and exhaled, brushing her bangs back from her forehead. It seemed like she was being a good sport about things.
“I liked Enrique, and Flacco was his friend. I slept with Enrique once. He dared me to, and I figured, why not? Flacco said Enrique would only come over if I did him too. And the other one, the fat one, I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t really get it up. And that’s when he came home, my father…. I feel bad, how they got beat up …”
“None of them made you do anything? Did any of them hit you, or hold you down? Did they threaten you?”
“No.”
“Did you ever tell them to stop, or want them to stop?”
“I got tired of the fat one after a while, but he was tryin’. Flacco laughed at him. That was mean.”
“That’s not what I meant. Were you ever afraid?”
Grace looked down and said, “Yeah …”
“When?”
“When my father came home.”
“I didn’t mean that, Grace. Did your father ever do anything to you, anything that ever made you uncomfortable?”
“All the time!”
“Like what?”
“Any time I see him!” She rolled her eyes, and let out a harsh laugh.
“I don’t mean that, Grace, and I think you know that. You’re very grown-up, and so I know I can talk to you like a grown-up. I’m asking if your father ever touched you, or ever did anything sexual to you.”
“That’s disgusting!”
All of a sudden, she was a child again. She stuck her tongue out, then pretended to throw up. She packed up the rest of her books, shaking her head.
“How about your mother, Grace?”
That stopped her, but only for a moment. She looked ahead, at no one, gathering her thoughts. She zipped her book bag shut and faced Nick.
“She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry. My mother died, too. I was young. I was your age. It was bad.”
Grace looked at him, intrigued by the confidence. For a moment, Nick felt like he was lying, as he had about his babies half an hour before, saying what was useful. Grace’s rueful half-smile of understanding reminded him that he had not lied.
“Sucks, doesn’t it? A real shit sandwich.”
Nick laughed. It was the perfect thing, the only thing to say. She knew what it was like. When was the last time he’d really talked to anyone? And the only one who understood, truly, right now, was the hostess of a juvenile gang bang. Grace raised her eyebrows, rolled her eyes. She shrugged. Nick knew the shrug.
“Nobody gets it,” he went on, not altogether for her benefit. “You know what I mean?”
“Nobody.”
“My mother died of cancer. How did yours die?”
“She didn’t kill herself.”
The hardness in her voice was unexpected, as was the direction the
talk had taken. She had strayed from the shared grief, and he had to follow, at a polite distance. The conversation became an interview again, and Nick was sad for the loss of a companion, almost a friend. He regretted that he had to step back to his old role, as the nonjudgmental elder. It was a bore. He was afraid he would lose her, but he had to fall back to it, asking for what came next.
“I didn’t say she did. Who says that?”
“My father … He said it, not to me. It was on the phone with somebody, but I was listening. She didn’t. And she didn’t love him. I don’t even know if he’s my father. My mom said he was, but she only said that when we came back to live with him. When she was sick. She wanted to die, she told me she did, and when she was in the hospital in the end, she told me to help, but I wouldn’t….”
A child again, crying and pushing her backpack over, crying for a full minute, two, then stopping all of a sudden. She wiped her nose clean with the whole of her skinny little arm, then looked at the snot, and made a face. She wiped the arm with the heavy blue curtain. Nick wanted to offer her something, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be a teddy bear or a cigarette.
“Do you have a dog, Grace? Did you ever?”
“No. Why?”
He didn’t know why. He hadn’t believed her father when he’d said that he had a dog, but Nick was suddenly, strongly interested in the real reasons why Lopez had been in the park. That had been only months ago, but it seemed like ages. After all the failures of containment, the stories that spread like diseases, Nick had become less respectful of mysteries and boundaries. His new impatience had begun to work through other parts of his system, and it would have made him a better detective, had he a heart to match his cold curiosity. He wanted to know more, in case it made him care, even as he suspected it would not.
“I don’t know, maybe a dog would be good company for you…. They’re very loyal…. What was your mother sick with?”
“She had AIDS. She hooked up a lot, and she never used a condom. She had a hysterectomy after me, so she knew she couldn’t get pregnant. I’m not like that. I’m careful. Believe me, I know how it is out there. Can we go home now? I have social studies and math homework left to do.”
Nick was put off by the affectation of hard-won bar-whore wisdom, but he was impressed how she had recovered herself, had become practical
and self-possessed again. He was unsure whether he was touched more by the tumult and justice of her tears, or by how she could stop crying and get back to work. He had forgotten to take her picture off his desk; maybe he would keep it there for a while. She slipped off the bed and hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders.
“All right, Grace, we can go. We’ll take you. But what you did today? Please don’t do that anymore. You could get sick or pregnant.”
“I always use condoms.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess. But you could get hurt. Boys are stupid enough as they are, but when they’re in groups, they’re the worst things in the world. And a lot of people, they wouldn’t treat you the same because of it. That may not be fair, but it’s how it is. Did you tell anyone about being with boys before?”
“I was going to tell Sister, at school tomorrow. She’s strict, but she’s nice. She likes me, and I can talk to her.”
“Let’s hold off on that. Ready? Ready to go?”
“Yep.”
“Come on, then.”
On the drive home, Nick sat in the front. He didn’t want to talk to Grace anymore, though whether it was because of her dark side, her bright side, or her freak side, he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to think about it. Nick called Napolitano, who said the boys at the hospital were fine. Scrapes, bruises, cuts. Even Ballsack wasn’t so bad, just a couple of stitches, nothing permanent. His mother was still aggravated, mouthing off, until Napolitano explained what “cross-complainants” meant, and sex offender registries.