Date Rape New York (19 page)

Chapter 29

Detective Cargill drove south on Second Avenue and turned east onto St. Mark’s Street. He parked his Plymouth in a no-parking zone and plopped a police permit on the dash. “We’re taking a short walk,” he said tersely to Grazia, reaching across her to open the stiff passenger door.

Grazia lifted her tired legs out of the car and climbed over the ridge of ice-encrusted snow left by the snowplow. She stood shivering on the snowy sidewalk. Going out to dinner with Detective Cargill in the East Village had sounded appealing when he suggested it as they were leaving the Brazilian Bar, but now she wanted to be back in her warm room, wearing pajamas, with a hot meal delivered to her door from the restaurant of her choice. She looked around vaguely. Music was blasting out of bars packed with young people holding drinks.

Cargill drew her mittened hand through his crooked arm. “Hang on to me,” he ordered. “I don’t want my star witness in the emergency room with a chipped elbow. See that bar? And that one? And the next? They are full of young women disregarding their personal safety for the faint hope of meeting the man of their dreams. I don’t have firm numbers, but I would hazard that every Sunday morning, more than a few young women wake up in their beds or somebody else’s with no recollection of how they got there. They don’t go to the ER because they feel too sick or humiliated, or they aren’t legally in the country. You’ve got guts to go after these guys, Grazia, and I admire you for it. That’s why I’m out here risking my financial health to take you to dinner. I’m hoping you’ve got something in your journal that will help us find these bastards by Friday when I put you on the plane.”

Two blocks away, after walking past one music-blasting bar after another, a very subdued Grazia followed Detective Cargill down steep steps into a quiet Ethiopian restaurant with white linen tablecloths and soothing, stringed-instrument background music. She watched him cautiously sample his Ethiopian beer. For the first time since Saturday, she felt safe. She took a sip of her too-sweet Ethiopian wine. The Rohypnol was flushed out of her body by now, and she could risk a little wine to make this a real night out. She dug out her pen and recorded in her journal what she had learned at the Brazilian Bar.

“Too much happened today,” she reflected, sitting back and taking a second sip of the wine in case it had improved since the first sip. It hadn’t. She ran her eyes down the last pages of her journal.

“Francisco called at seven-fifteen firing me for being an informant on Kourtis. You dropped by while I was having breakfast with Raoul and interrogated him rudely. You drove me to Cindy’s office and gave me the worst news of my life. Then I walked to Chinatown. I met you for terrible tea and you tried to straighten out my head.”

“With moderate success.” He drained his beer.

Grazia smiled. “You dropped me at the medical examiner. On the way back I was pushed under a taxi and saved by a traffic cop. Then my hypnosis session, then the Brazilian Bar. Now we’re here. I hope I have strength to handle whatever comes next.”

Cargill waved at the waiter to bring him another beer. “You’re amazing. I mean that. You’ve gone through one horrible experience after another yet you get up every morning and keep looking for this guy. You even allowed a hypnotist to dig into your worst fears.” He looked at her carefully. “Is this determination coming from anti-anxiety pills? If so, you shouldn’t be drinking that wine.”

“I’m not taking any pills except the prophylactic AIDS. And this isn’t wine.” Still, she pushed it away and reached for her water. “I’ve got to keep busy—planning, doing, moving on to the next lead. Cindy says that some women react this way. Other women hide in their apartments and don’t go out for months. I know I’ll need counseling for a long time, but for now, I keep going by following Cindy’s advice about handling panic attacks. I only have two days, Cargill. I need to keep searching. I was mugged today. That means we’re getting too close for comfort. The young man who recovered my sack of clothes might recognize the mugger. The four Italians and Nick will recognize the Italian who bought the champagne. The monk and Jacky can identify the man who walked me home.”

“And Manuel knows who brought you to the hotel and who took you up to your room. His wife still claims he flew to Italy, using a one-way ticket that he bought at the airport in cash, if you believe that. He’s not listed on airlines with direct flights to Naples, and there are too many connecting flights for me to check. The Naples police told me they will visit his family home, but the officer I spoke to didn’t sound enthusiastic. That’s why I’m hoping you will call the Miranda agency. They’ll get out there in a flash.”

The waiter brought a platter of Ethiopian flatbread dotted with ground meats and pureed vegetables. Cargill tore off a piece of flatbread and scooped up some ground lamb. “The trouble is, we still need a suspect to show our witnesses. What’s new in that journal of yours?” he asked, mouth full.

“Oh! I found out that Edmondo was in the lobby Saturday night when I was there. Since the hypnosis session, bits of memory have been dropping into my head. I remembered that I came into the lobby and Edmondo was talking to Manuel. It was blurry but I’m sure.”

Cargill nearly choked. “He told me he was taking care of a guest elsewhere in the hotel.”

She tore off a strip of Ethiopian bread and scooped up some pureed pumpkin. “To verify it, just before you arrived tonight, I went into the security office and told Edmondo what I remembered. Edmondo changed his story a bit. He said he returned to the lobby and saw me getting into the elevator with Manuel. He said he covered the desk until Manuel got back from taking me to my room.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at the hotel?” Cargill’s voice rose.

“You said to tell you later what I was writing.”

“I’m having him picked up right now. Wait until I tell Stanley that his security officer is hiding information!”

Cargill had his phone to his ear. He gave a quick order, then looked at her sternly. “Next time you remember something, dream it, think it, get told something—tell me!  Somebody went after you today. Who knows what he will do next!”

Grazia stripped off another piece of flatbread and filled it with vegetable puree. “I was reading through my journal today. The gaps are filling in.” She took out her journal and flipped to the last page and scribbled a note about Cargill having Edmondo picked up.

Cargill watched her writing. “How many people know you’re keeping a minute-by-minute log?”

“Everybody I talk to, I suppose. I write in it all the time.”

“He wanted your journal.”

“What?”

“The man who grabbed your sack wasn’t pushing you under the taxi. He was going for your journal. He grabbed the bag of clothes to keep you from taking them to Italy and getting a DNA identity done there. Grazia, this man is close to you. He knows everything you are doing.”

Grazia lifted her hands. “You’ve said all along that typically a man who drugs a woman for sex targets a woman he knows.”

“But this guy is taking strong measures to keep you from finding him—not typical. Usually they lie low, disappear. We can narrow our search to men who know about your journal. Grazia, stop telling people what you are writing.”

“But how will I find this man if I don’t ask people questions and write down their answers? I still don’t trust my memory.” She flipped through her journal and read a passage carefully. “Cargill,” she looked up with a frown, “Evie emailed me the audio of today’s session. One thing I said was, ‘Why are you here?’”

“I heard you. I asked you if you knew who you were talking to.”

“Well, I didn’t translate it properly. The emphasis was not on ‘why.’ The emphasis was on ‘you.’”

“Ah. So the man we are looking for shouldn’t have been in your room. Or possibly in New York. You were surprised to see him.”

Grazia nodded.

“Who would this be?”

“No idea.”

“What about these memories of yours that are coming back. Is he in them?”

“Sometimes I feel that a vital memory is hovering just out of reach. I keep having a recurring nightmare about Mrs. Springer shouting ‘Jacky! Bite!’ and there’s always a glint of gold at the end.  Today I saw it again as I was waking up from the hypnosis. Monday, when I went to breakfast, the sun reflected on a man’s gold watch, and I practically ran out of the restaurant. I saw the flash again when I was talking to Francisco on Skype. His diamond and gold ring caught the light from the lamp. But I don’t know what this means.” She forced a smile. “Maybe the next nightmare will clear it up.”

“Nightmares hit when you least expect them,” commented Cargill, watching the waiter pop the cap on a bottle of beer and pour it into a glass.  “My advice, for what it’s worth, is get your feet under you. Then you can handle the nightmares.”

Grazia waited for an explanation, but Cargill was scooping up pureed pumpkin.

She took a sip of water. “Tomorrow I will Google the Italian men who were staying in Laura’s hotel or other nearby hotels Saturday night. They’ve probably all checked out by now, but if I recognize a face, Miranda Security detectives can track him down in Italy, get a DNA swab and an identity done in a lab there, and send it to the medical examiner here to match to what’s in my file. And then . . . ” Her voice trailed off.

“Then what, Grazia?” Cargill looked at her seriously. “You will tell the Naples police to arrest him? Didn’t you say sexual assault isn’t high on the Naples police priority list? That would be especially true if the assault took place outside Italy.”

“I’ll have him kidnapped and scare him into reforming. Kidnapping is an old Naples tradition.” She laughed feebly.

Cargill didn’t smile. “Watch out, Grazia. He could go after you. Let’s think this through for a minute. If we don’t find him here in New York, your chances of justice are essentially zero. Why don’t you give up this chase once you get home? Live your life.”

“This
is
my life, Cargill. I have to repair my reputation if that’s possible. But mostly,” she said, “it’s about trust. I placed my trust in the wrong guy, and he drugged and raped me. If I figure out how I trusted the wrong person, maybe I can learn how to trust again. I used to trust people; now I don’t trust anybody.”

“Nobody trusts everybody, Grazia, at least in the same way. We trust the baker to sell us a decent loaf of bread; we don’t trust him to give us financial advice. We don’t even trust ourselves the same way all the time. I trust myself to choose a good bottle of beer, but I don’t trust myself around a bottle of wine.”

“But I used to trust certain people . . . ” her voice trailed off.

“Let me guess. You trusted your ex-husband with your happiness, and he failed you.”

“So did my boyfriend. He lies. He says he wants to marry me. He says he leased an apartment for the two of us. But I hired a hacker to break into his email. He was emailing his wife that he wouldn’t leave her. He swore he wasn’t having an affair with me. And there was no email correspondence with apartment-leasing agencies.”

Cargill raised his eyebrows. “You’re having an affair with a married man?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “My boss.”

“Risky business, sleeping with the man who controls your career.” Cargill downed his beer.

“He fired me. He’s making me the scapegoat on this leak to the Building Safety Department.”

Cargill cleaned off the platter with a piece of flat bread. “Tell me more about what you do. All I know is what you told me in the emergency room, a smart contract negotiator.”

“I am—I was—lead negotiator in a Naples law firm with offices in Milan. I negotiate bids for infrastructure contracts between contractors and subcontractors, like cement pouring, electrical, plumbing. Sometimes I team up with other lawyers from my firm; sometimes I’m the sole negotiator. I know how to look calm but tough: never cross my arms over my body, always keep muscles relaxed, smile, never get angry or emotional.”

“The construction industry—so much money that’s so easy to hide.”

“The corruption shocked me at first. Then I stopped caring who was bribing whom. It was entertaining to watch money move under the table. But I’m sick of it. I used to work in a women’s shelter, doing legal aid for abused women. I felt useful, like my legal skills were doing some good.”

“Why don’t you go back there?”

She smiled ruefully. “I may have to, at least until I find a decent paying job. I’m getting fired because I discovered that our biggest client, Kourtis, was pouring substandard cement. I told Kourtis I would report him to Building Safety if he didn’t repour the bad cement during the next phase of the contract we were negotiating.”

“Blackmailing a client? You do take risks, don’t you?”

“One major earthquake and the building could collapse, Cargill. People would die, and it would be my fault. In any case, somebody else found out besides me, and informed Building Safety. Kourtis is in jail and my boss is accusing me of being the informer. He’ll make sure I get disbarred.”

“Did it occur to you that whoever spiked your champagne and assaulted you could have been sent by this Kourtis?”

“He had no reason to do that. My boss knew about it and was going to stop me from telling Building Safety. The contractor hiring Kourtis knew about it. The contractor’s lawyers knew about it. Everyone was hiding it to keep costs down and profits up. I’m taking the blame.”