Date Rape New York (13 page)

Chapter 19

Thai food or Russian? Grazia sat cross-legged on her bed, trawling her laptop for online menus of Midtown Manhattan restaurants. She had closed the curtains against the evening blackness and turned on every light in her room. She still felt breathless from her scrambled rush down the icy sidewalks from the Brazilian Bar.

She had willed herself not to look behind her for her imagined attacker. Instead, she had controlled her whirling thoughts by identifying what was triggering her fear. By the time she had reached the Hotel Fiorella, she had concluded that the trigger was simply walking alone down a dark street—a common panic trigger for many women, Cindy had said. Identifying triggers to emotional reactions took practice, she could see. Perhaps a lifetime. The thought was discouraging.

She ordered Beef Stroganoff. In Italy, she ate more meat than in New York, and the lack of it might be part of her weak feeling. Then she phoned hotel security and made Edmondo promise to bring up her dinner himself. Grazia was still convinced that the rapist could reach her room any time he chose. He had done it under Manuel’s very nose.

Where was Manuel? He hadn’t replied to her emails. She tapped in his cell phone number again, but it was still out of service. Suspicion poisoned her mind. Could Detective Cargill be right? Had Manuel taken her to her room and assaulted her? Had he looked the other way while someone else took her upstairs? She stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. She couldn’t feel clean—in body or mind. As she was drying herself, her laptop chimed—a video call from Francisco. She pulled on her yellow silk dressing gown, slapped on lipstick, pinched her cheeks to bring up color, pasted on a smile, and connected.

“Where have you been?” snapped Francisco. “Bar hopping again?”

“Your bodyguards follow me even in New York?” If his bodyguards had been tailing her, she wouldn’t be in this mess, she thought wryly.

Francisco rubbed his hand over his face. The diamond in his wedding ring winked under the desk lamp. He leaned forward, his face distorted as it filled the screen. “Where did you get the idea to write in the contract proposal that Kourtis would repour the cement?”

“It shows intent to meet new earthquake standards,” she lied. “Did you talk to him?”

The screen went black without his reply.

Grazia wiped the perspiration from her forehead. She hadn’t told Francisco the real reason she put in that clause about repouring the cement, and she wasn’t going to until she found what the anonymous caller meant by “fascinating conversation.” Laura had said that Grazia had talked about her job successes. Grazia was praying she hadn’t talked about Kourtis.

A tap on the door made her jump. She peered out the peephole. Edmondo was bringing her takeout supper. She waved him inside.

“Edmondo, does the hotel keep a record of phone numbers called into the reception desk?” Grazia asked, sliding the container into the microwave.

“Those phones do have call history. But the memory only goes back five calls.”

“So the call that Luigi took yesterday evening for me was saved in the call history.”

“Yes, but it was erased by the following calls. We get hundreds a day.”

“Did Luigi write down the caller’s number? He had time to do it if the number was saved for the five succeeding calls. Luigi was concerned enough about the message to notify you; surely he would write down the number. It was on the caller ID panel.”

“Luigi didn’t tell me the number, no.”

“Have you heard from Manuel? He may be the only witness who can identify the man who brought me back here Saturday night.”

“No word from Manuel, Miss. He’s in Italy with his mother.” Edmondo lowered himself into a chair and leaned forward with his hands on his thighs. “Miss Conti, let me ask you a hard question.” 

Grazia drew back slightly. His posture was a typically threatening male one. She had faced it across negotiating tables plenty of times in her career. She had faced it when she was doing legal work at the Naples women’s shelter when men came wanting to bring their wives or girlfriends home. It amused her to watch men trying to intimidate her, but now the room felt too small, the door too far away.

“What question?” she said. She meant to sound authoritative, but her voice sounded insignificant, and she was appalled to hear it tremble.

“Are you sure you want to find this man who attacked you? Taking him to court in the US is complicated. Let’s say that your detective locates a suspect and actually gets a positive DNA match. That’s only the beginning. You will have to come back to New York and file an accusation. You will have to decide whether to file a criminal charge or a civil suit. You will have to describe every painful detail to a prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney and a lot of strangers.”

“I can handle that.” She forced strength into her voice.

“You think you can, Miss Conti, but the accused will have a good lawyer. He will claim that his client didn’t assault you. He will say you consented.”

“But I have bruises! And the medical tests will show I was drugged.”

“The lawyer will tell the court that his client was drinking alcohol. That means he had impaired judgment. So he couldn’t have intended to rape you. No intent, no assault. He will also claim that you had been drinking, so you had no control over your judgment. Therefore you can’t say that you didn’t consent. In fact, he will say that you consented. It will be your word against his.”

Grazia’s legally trained mind quickly understood, but she pretended she didn’t. “So what?”

“You need independent proof that you were forced to consume the drug against your will.”

“One of those Italians may have seen him drug my drink. Or maybe my friend, Laura, saw.”

“You also need a witness who saw him force you to have sex against your will.”

Grazia tried to hide her dismay. “It happened here, in my hotel room! No one saw.”

“See how hard it is to prove you were attacked? Miss Conti, whoever this man is, he can attack it again—easily. You don’t know what he looks like, so you can’t protect yourself. That kind of man will punish you for trying to find him. He will do far worse than rape. You could have permanent scars on your face, for example. Give up this search, Miss Conti. Change your flight and go home tomorrow. Put this all behind you.”

Anger filled Grazia. Before now, she had been afraid—afraid that her attacker was stalking her and afraid he would attack her again. She was the hunted. Edmondo’s words brought anger instead of fear. In her legal career, especially when she was working at the women’s shelter in Naples, she had handled plenty of threats. And this was a big one. “I’ll do what I choose to do, Edmondo,” she replied evenly. “And my choice won’t be made because of fear.”

After she locked the door behind Edmondo, Grazia went to the window and stood looking at the snowy street and the people bundled up against the cold. Her heart pounded, and her body shook, but this time it was anger. In her country, many assault cases that women brought against men went nowhere because the men called the women delusional, hysterical, liars, even prostitutes. Now she was in the same position, with no witnesses who saw her get drugged or assaulted. She didn’t know her attacker’s face so she couldn’t spot him. Should she give up and go home tomorrow like Edmondo told her?

At the women’s shelter, one of her clients had been a secretary who had been sexually assaulted by her boss. No one would believe her. Grazia had urged her to persist in her lawsuit. “Your silence is the perpetrator’s defense,” she had told the woman. “Speak up!” Now Grazia herself was considering silence.

On impulse, she called Beth Israel Hospital. After a few minutes, Janine picked up the phone.

“My memory is coming back,” Grazia told her. “I’m sure I’ll find this man.”

“Memory is slippery,” cautioned Janine. “You think you remember, and the next day you remember it differently. The police detective may never find this guy. So what? You’re still you. You aren’t a victim, unless you decide to be a victim. You can’t be a doormat unless you lie down.”

“I am going to make him suffer like I am suffering,” Grazia continued, with fervor. “He took hours of my life from me—hours that only he knows. I want to find out what happened. And then I will punish him if it’s the last thing I ever do!” Anger filled her. “I will cut off his . . . his . . . ”

“Balls,” supplied Janine. “You’re talking about revenge, and revenge isn’t
healthy. Revenge poisons the soul. Put that guy in your rearview mirror and start driving.”

“Not revenge, then. Justice.”

“There’s a thin line between revenge and justice. Folks start out saying they want justice, and pretty soon they’re after revenge. Revenge will keep that guy in your rearview mirror no matter how fast you’re driving.”

After their conversation, Grazia looked out at the snowy street for some time. Then she called Detective Cargill. His voice sounded tired but lightened when she identified herself. “Any leads?” he asked.

“I was talking to Edmondo, the night security guard,” Grazia began. “He was telling me that finding the man who assaulted me would be close to impossible and the experience will be horrible for me if we do find him. I’ll have to tell my story over and over. He said the perpetrator could come after me and do worse things than . . .  what happened. Now I don’t know what to do. What is your advice?”

“What do you want to do?” Cargill asked.

Grazia faltered. She couldn’t determine if the detective really cared about what she wanted or was posing this difficult question to duck wasting time on the phone with an annoyingly persistent victim. She plunged in.

“Everybody gives me different advice. Janine says I won’t remember everything that happened because the drug prevented me from forming memories. She says I should put the guy in my rearview mirror and start driving. Cindy says that trying to reconstruct painful events before I am emotionally and psychologically able to handle them might delay my recovery and that trying to remember holds me in the past. She says I should use what happened to me to learn about myself and become a stronger person.”

“Cindy’s got all the right words.”

Grazia hurried on. “I went to a hypnotist today to get past my fear. She believes that I have memories of what happened. She unblocked some today, but she stopped the session when I became distressed. She said my brain didn’t want to remember. We made an appointment for tomorrow, in my hotel room. But she isn’t sure it’s a good idea psychologically. Now I’m really confused. What do you think I should do, Detective?” 

He was some time answering. At last, he replied. “If you ask me as a police officer, I’d tell you to remember all you can. Then we can locate the offender and achieve some sort of justice, although with drug-facilitated, justice is rarely possible for all the reasons that Edmondo gave you. If you ask me as a human being what you should do, I’d say, think about what kind of life you want from now on. Then ask yourself, ‘Do I need to know this man’s identity to lead that life?’ If you decide you need to know, then continue your search.”

She waited, but that was all. “So I have to know the life I want before I can make this decision?”

“No, you just have to think about it.”

“And thinking will lead to knowing?”

“Maybe. For sure it will lead to more thinking, and then the life you want might just happen by itself.”

Chapter 20

Something was chiming over and over—ping, ping. It dragged Grazia out of her recurring nightmare—the terror, the shouting, the glint of gold. She sat up, nightshirt sticking to her sweaty back. The chiming was a video call to her laptop on the round table.

Het smartphone read Tuesday six a.m. She felt lethargic, groggy, disoriented. Her blurry gaze fell on her suitcase lying open on the floor. Now she remembered. After two hours of tossing and turning the previous night, she had unlocked the closet and swallowed a sleeping tablet. Sleep had arrived so quickly that she hadn’t even replaced the lid on the little vial sitting on the bedside table.

The incoming call was chiming again. She got up and peered at the screen. Francisco. What more could he want? She pulled on her yellow silk dressing gown and glanced in the mirror—pale face, shadows under her eyes. She applied lipstick, ran her hands through her hair, and rubbed her cheeks. She forced a smile and hit “accept.” In seconds, Francisco’s strained face was staring at her, his eyes wild.

“You bitch!” he shouted. “You worthless piece of—”

Grazia clicked “close.” She walked around the room, taking deep breaths. This was one reason she was leaving her job and leaving Francisco. She was sick of his violent temper. When he blew a fuse, the shouting reverberated throughout the office suites. His rage always abated, and he apologized, usually with gifts. But never before had he called her foul names. Grazia put coffee into the coffeemaker. She poured herself a glass of juice and drank it.

The chiming started again. She counted to ten and clicked “accept.” “What’s the problem? And no swearing, please.”

“TV news reporters have been calling all morning. They woke me up at dawn. Some informer told the Building Safety Department and the press about our client, Kourtis.”

Grazia’s throat went tight. Her voice was hoarse. “What did they say?”

“You know perfectly well!” he shouted. “You drafted the contract terms. You’re in New York blabbing to strangers in bars.”

“What are you talking about?”

Francisco rubbed his eyes. “Don’t play games with me. You knew that Kourtis was pouring substandard cement. That’s why you wrote in your draft of his new contract with the construction firm that Kourtis would repour the low-quality stuff he was using. You knew that Kourtis was using refugee laborers from the migrant camps, the ones the coast guard pulled off sinking boats. You must have known they were unsupervised, operating at night under hazardous working conditions. That’s why you drafted that Kourtis had to employ qualified labor and provide safe working conditions.”

Grazia’s lips had gone numb. Francisco wiped his eyes and his mouth with his handkerchief and flung it on the desk.

“Building-safety inspectors raided the Kourtis construction site in the middle of the night—accompanied by all the major media. They filmed police carting off refugees in police vans. The site is shut down along with Kourtis’ other construction sites, pending inspection. Kourtis is in jail without bail. The prosecuting attorney won’t let me talk to him. They’re holding the refugees in deportation cells. You can bet that the prosecuting attorney is promising them asylum if they testify against Kourtis. The law firm representing Kourtis was just on the phone. They’re claiming the informer is one of us. You’re the only one who broke security protocol.”

“Kourtis and I spoke briefly and without details,” Grazia lied, her heart pounding as she thought of the confidential information she might have blurted out at the Brazilian Bar after she was drugged.

Francisco’s eyes narrowed. His voice grew deadly calm. “How did you know that Kourtis was pouring substandard cement? Who told you? Answer me!” Francisco was shouting again.

It was an effort to keep her voice calm. “I went to Kourtis’ construction site one night and talked to the cement workers.”

“You what?”

“It’s part of my job, Francisco, you know that. Every week I visit the construction sites of the clients I represent to make sure they’re on schedule. About two o’clock in the morning, the day before I came to New York, I was driving home from a party and I drove by his construction site. There was hardly any traffic and I had my window open. I heard the cement mixers operating. I had visited the site the previous afternoon and I saw them shutting down the mixers. So I got out and banged on the gate. A worker opened it. The man was African, spoke no Italian but a little English. It didn’t take five minutes to figure out that they were African refugees that Kourtis had bussed in from a refugee camp. He was paying them practically nothing. They were working without lights under dangerous conditions.  I saw the cement they were pouring. It was terrible quality. The workers were happy to talk. They knew what cement they were pouring. 

“I thought about this a lot, Francisco. People’s lives are at stake here. When I was in New York, I called Kourtis by video call. I explained that I wasn’t going to let him abuse refugee workers. And I wasn’t going to let him construct a building that would crumble in the next earthquake.”

“Why didn’t you tell me!” Francisco raged. He paced the room like a caged leopard, passing back and forth across the screen, behind him the skyline of Naples.

“Because you would have ordered me to look the other way and let the night work finish as quickly as possible. You would have replaced me on the negotiating team with a lawyer who doesn’t care about earthquake standards. So I confronted Kourtis directly.”

“And Kourtis just said, ‘Sorry, Grazia dear, I’ll repour all the cement?’” Francisco’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“I told him that if he didn’t, I would alert the Naples Building Safety Department.”

“You blackmailed a client!” Francisco slammed his fist on the desk in fury. “Gerasimos Kourtis, of all people. You know his reputation.”

“It’s the only language he understands.” She hurried on. “I told him I had documented everything, including photographs, and sent a copy to a friend. He promised to stop the midnight work and start repouring the cement.”

“But he didn’t. And now some informer has reported him to Building Safety and the press. I’ve issued a statement that my law firm had no knowledge of the situation but the refugees will tell them a woman came by the site and it won’t take long for the press and the Building Safety Department to figure out who you are. They’ll hit me with criminal charges along with fines. And the penalties they’ll hit Kourtis with could ruin him. The TV news is having a field day. We can’t kill this with a bribe or two.” Francisco put his head in his hands. 

“Anyone driving by could have spotted the night work going on, like I did,” Grazia said, thinking wildly. “A reporter could have heard the cement mixers churning. Maybe someone from Building Safety drove by. Those refugees were happy to talk. What about Kourtis’ office staff—someone might have had qualms about the substandard cement. When I spoke to him on video communication, we used his system.”

Francisco waved away her words. He reached for a glass of water. A glint of gold caught Grazia’s eye, his gold watch. “We’ve got to shift the blame to someone else. We’ve got to find that informer and show that the informer knew long before we did, and didn’t report it.” Francisco looked at her with deadly calm. “Anything else you’re keeping from me?”

“No,” she lied, wondering how long it would take him to find out she had been drugged and raped and had probably talked about Kourtis to Laura, a lawyer working for the contractor who had hired Kourtis to pour the cement. “Have you notified Miranda Security Systems?”

“Miranda Laterza and her computer security team have examined our Naples office. They claim our system wasn’t hacked. That’s because the leak didn’t come through us. It came through you and your computer in New York. You’re fired. For good, this time.” He broke the connection.