Aftermath (37 page)

Teresa apologized and continued. “Have you ever had an argument with my client, Mr. Bingham?”

Frankie thought about it and shook his head. “No. Never.”

“Is it reasonable to suggest that she's an easy person to get along with?”

Frankie thought this might be a trick question. It seemed as if Teresa was trying to get him to say something positive about Misa. Frankie refused.

“I wasn't around her enough to have anything to argue with her about.”

Teresa nodded, impressed by how he'd sidestepped the question. “You've been married for close to eight years and you've never had so much as a spat with your sister-in-law.” She paced some more. “Three years of babysitting and never any allegations of Shane being abused. But when your brother started babysitting the child—”

“Objection!” the prosecution interrupted.

“Overruled.”

Teresa continued. “Once your brother started babysitting Shane, allegations of molestation surfaced. The child was sodomized repeatedly by someone in his care.” Teresa looked at the jury, took in each of their faces, before turning back to Frankie. “Misa—who by all accounts has been relatively easy to get along with—thought your brother did it. And you think it was unreasonable for her to think that way?”

Frankie bit the inside of his cheek and looked at Misa's attorney. He glanced at his mother and noticed that she was wringing her hands.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it was ridiculous.”

Misa's heart sank. This wasn't going very well, in her opinion.

Frankie sipped from the glass of water in front of him. Teresa referred to her notes, looked at him over the rim of her glasses and took a deep breath. She was about to go in for the kill.

“Mr. Bingham,” she said. “I want to remind you that you're under oath.”

Frankie nodded.

“How many girlfriends had Steven had in his lifetime?”

Frankie sat stone-faced and glanced at his mother again. Mary pushed her glasses up higher on her nose and smiled weakly at her son for encouragement.

He shook his head. “I never met any of his girlfriends.”

Whispers could be heard throughout the room and Teresa frowned again.

“Your brother was thirty years old and had never had a steady girlfriend? Did you find that odd?”

“No.”

Teresa turned to the jury box, still frowning.

“No job. No home to call his own. No girlfriend.” Teresa scratched her head. “Did Steven have any friends?”

Frankie wiped his mouth with his hand. “No.”

“No job, no home, no lady in his life, no friends,” Teresa repeated for good measure. “Would you describe Steven as a loner?”

Frankie shrugged. “I don't know.”

Teresa nodded. She hadn't expected him to answer honestly and he didn't disappoint her. “What was Steven like as a kid growing up?”

“He was quiet, shy.”

“How about you? Were you shy?”

Frankie smiled a little. He had never been accused of possessing that trait. “No,” he said. “I was the more outspoken one.”

Teresa nodded. “How would you describe your childhood overall?” she asked. “Yours and Steven's?”

Frankie looked at his mother again. He thought about their conversations and knew that she was already feeling guilty for what she'd witnessed in silence. Here he was now, having to rehash the horrors in open court.

“It was tough,” he answered, shifting slightly in his seat.

“Please elaborate, Mr. Bingham,” Teresa urged. “Tough how?”

Frankie saw Mary cover her mouth with one hand, watched Gillian glance at her to see how she was holding up. He cleared his throat.

“We were broke, didn't have much, you know what I'm saying?” Frankie hoped that would be enough.

Teresa pressed on. “Aside from the financial hardships, would you describe your childhood as a happy one?”

Frankie shrugged. “I'm not sure.”

Teresa frowned. “You're not
sure
if you had a happy childhood?”

Frankie wanted to spit in her face. “I wouldn't describe it as happy,” he said. “Like I said, it was tough.”

Teresa tilted her head to one side. “Well,” she said. “What aspects of your childhood were unhappy?”

“My, um … my father used to … he had a problem with his hands.”

Teresa stopped pacing and stood directly in front of Frankie. She noticed some of the jurors leaning forward in their seats to hear better. Frankie's voice had gotten substantially lower.

“Your father beat you?”

“Yes.”

There was some chatter throughout the courtroom. Camille was mesmerized by what she was hearing. She had never known of the abuse her husband had endured as a child. Frankie hadn't shared that with her. She wondered how Teresa had known and what else would be revealed about the man she'd spent most of her adult life with.

Teresa folded her arms across her chest. “Did he beat your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Was your mother abused by your father as well?”

“She was,” he acknowledged. “But he didn't hit her, really. He just intimidated her, yelled at her, cornered her and punched the wall behind her, screamed at her. He saved his fists for me.”

“And this abuse took place all throughout your childhood?”

He nodded. “Yes, it did.”

Camille couldn't believe what she was hearing. Frankie's reluctance to be a father was beginning to make perfect sense.

Teresa started pacing slowly again.

“So from as far back as you can remember, your father terrorized your family. Is that fair to say?”

Frankie sighed. “Yes.”

“So when you turned eighteen, you must have been in a hurry to move out,” Teresa said, already knowing that Frankie hadn't lasted in his father's household past his freshman year of high school.

Frankie shook his head. “I left my parents' house when I was still in school,” he said.

“Which month and year was that, Mr. Bingham?”

Frankie thought about it, trying to recall when he'd fled his parents' home for the last time. He recalled he had spent his first Christmas at the Nobles family home that year, that he had arrived two weeks before the holiday and had been amazed at how jolly everyone was in Baron's house. His own home had been such a hotbed of conflict that it had come as quite a shock to find that some households were actually merry at Christmastime.

“December 1987,” he answered.

“So you were only fourteen at the time. And you were still attending school?”

Frankie shook his head. “I was at first. But eventually, I dropped out and started working odd jobs.” He had actually started selling hard drugs.

“Where were you living?”

“At my friend Mikey's house at first. Then his mother got arrested, he got put into foster care, and I started staying with my friend Baron and his family.” Frankie left out the fact that Baron's father had been the notorious Doug Nobles.

“Did your parents know where you were?” Teresa asked.

Frankie shrugged. “I don't think my father really gave a shit. I came around to see my mother from time to time when I knew my father wasn't there. So she knew that I was okay.”

“And Steven remained in the custody of your parents?”

“Yes,” Frankie said, his eyes downcast. He was still tormented by the fact that he'd been forced to leave Steven behind.

Teresa pulled out a file folder stuffed with papers. “The defense presents exhibit A, documentation outlining seventeen emergency room visits by Steven Dennis Bingham escorted by his mother Mary to Kings County Hospital with dates ranging from December 1987 through April 1988.”

Frankie frowned, glanced at his mother and saw that she was crying. He was confused. Teresa didn't leave him puzzled for long.

She looked at Frankie. “Your mother escorted your brother, Steven, who was only nine years old at the time, to the emergency room seventeen times with injuries ranging from black eyes to broken arms in the months following your departure from your family home. So it seems that once you left the family home, Steven became the object of your father's rage.”

Frankie felt his blood boiling. His mother seemed distraught as she cried silently in her seat. Gillian had wrapped her arm around Mary but it seemed to do little to comfort her as tears continued to fall.

“Your mother, Mary, brought Steven to the ER so often that she was warned that the next visit would result in a call to child protective services,” Teresa continued. “After that, Steven was never seen in that hospital's emergency room again. Were you aware of that?”

Frankie sipped his water again. “No, I wasn't.” He bit his lower lip to keep it from shaking.

Teresa pulled out a second file. “Defense exhibit B, your honor.” She plopped the folder down in front of Frankie, and opened it up to page one. “This is Steven's school attendance record.” She pointed to a highlighted section. “Can you read this part aloud to the court, Mr. Bingham?”

Frankie stared at the paper before him and felt his palms sweating, his pulse quickening. He cleared his throat and spoke into the microphone in front of him.

“It says that he had twenty-eight absences that marking period,” Frankie said.

“Please read the note attached to the page, Mr. Bingham.”

Frankie took a deep breath and read it.

“ ‘Steven Bingham has been excessively absent, and appears listless and unfocused on the few occasions he does make it to school. A number of his fellow students taunt him, making fun of his shyness and teasing him about his clothes. Bruises have also been observed on his legs and forearms on occasion when he changes clothes for gym class. A recommendation is being made to follow up with his parents to determine if there is an issue at home.' ” Frankie finished reading. “It's signed Christine Mahon.”

“Let the record show that Ms. Mahon was Steven's fifth-grade teacher, and that she made this recommendation to the principal of PS 236 on April 15, 1988.” Teresa looked at Frankie. “A visit was made to your family's home and the principal spoke with your father, who assured him that everything was fine and that Steven was just a clumsy kid who played too hard and injured himself from time to time. But that wasn't really the case, was it, Mr. Bingham?”

Frankie looked at the file in front of him and felt like shit. “Probably not.”

“Isn't it true that you allowed Steven to stay with you as an adult, to live off of you and to take advantage of you and your wife's generosity because you felt guilty about leaving him behind to be abused as a child?”

Frankie's hands fisted involuntarily. “No.”

“Isn't it true that you suspected all along that your father had substituted one punching bag for another once you moved out?”

“No!” Frankie yelled. “I spoke to Steven all the time and I asked him if my father was still hitting him and my mother. He told me that he wasn't.”

“And you believed him?”

Frankie couldn't stop the tears from plunging forth then. He looked at his mother and knew that he couldn't run from the truth anymore. “No,” he said honestly, his voice full of emotion. “I thought he was lying. But I couldn't prove it. And even if I could, I couldn't stop it. I was just a kid myself.”

The jurors were transfixed and the courtroom erupted in chatter. Judge Felder called for order in the court.

Teresa compassionately set a box of tissues in front of Frankie and waited as he took two tissues and wiped his eyes and nose. When he had composed himself somewhat, she got back to her line of questioning.

“You felt guilty for leaving Steven behind, didn't you, Mr. Bingham?”

Frankie nodded. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh, wiping his eyes.

“Isn't it probable, Mr. Bingham, that Steven lied to you and to the teachers at school and to the doctors in the emergency room out of fear of your father?” Teresa didn't wait for Frankie to answer that. “And isn't it true that you knew all along that the abuse had continued? That you gave your brother whatever he wanted as an adult in order to make up for the fact that you left him behind as a child? That you allowed him to take advantage of you out of guilt that you were the only one in your family who escaped your father's wrath?”

“I don't know,” Frankie said with tears still falling even though he wanted desperately for them to stop.

“You knew that something wasn't right about Steven, didn't you? You suspected that he had been damaged by the abuse he suffered in a way that was very different from you?”

Frankie pounded his fist on the witness stand, startling Teresa, who jumped back. Two court officers rushed forth and told Frankie to calm down. Teresa looked at Judge Felder and softly asked, “Can you instruct Mr. Bingham to answer the question?”

The prosecutor rose to his feet and requested a recess. “I think the witness could use a break.”

The judge agreed. “Court will take a fifteen-minute recess,” he ordered, banging his gavel again.

Frankie stepped down from the witness stand feeling like he'd just gone through an emotional trauma. Gillian rushed to his side and could tell by the look on his face that he needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. Mary stood nearby, her face tearstained, as well.

“Come with me,” Gillian urged, leading him and Mary out of the courtroom and down a corridor to an empty case room she'd noticed earlier on her way to the bathroom. She shut the door behind them and Frankie sat down on a chair nearby. Gillian walked over to where he sat and held his face in her hands, kissing his lips gently. She loved him so much and hated seeing him this hurt and vulnerable. “Talk to your mother. She's very upset,” Gillian said. She smiled at him, kissed him on the bridge of his nose, and walked out, leaving Frankie alone with his mom.