False Witness (25 page)

“Transferring the goddamn mohair thread innocently to his goddamn jacket. Goddamn it, Bobby Jones. I mean, yes, that’s possible, but my God.”

“But Lynne, that’s what we’re doing here, right? Examining every possible angle, evaluating what you have to bring to the Grand Jury?”

“I hardly think I’ll offer them your ‘innocent mohair thread theory.’ I rather think I’ll go with my own ‘guilty mohair thread theory.’ Which I consider more likely.
Much more likely.”

The one area that caused problems—more among the men of my Squad than among the women—was the very basic question: why had Sanderalee Dawson invited Dr. David Cohen, a.k.a. the culprit, to her apartment in the first place? Her explanation was unlikely: she had turned her ankle; he claimed to be a doctor and offered to massage it. Her explanation was downright silly.

“A pickup,” Sheila Kennedy, one year out of Fordham Law School, said abruptly. “Two adults meeting and mutually agreeing to return to her apartment. So what?”

“So it sounds like soliciting,” Sam Hendrikson volunteered.

“We won’t go into the old clichés about ‘prostitutes can be raped,’ shall we?”

Ms. Kennedy took offense at that immediately. “Really, Lynne. Are you suggesting that Sanderalee was out prostituting herself?”

“What Sanderalee actually said,” Bobby Jones said carefully, “was that she thought she recognized the runner. She thought she knew him from the Jog-gon-Inn. Alan Greco told us that Sanderalee often brought ‘runners’ home with her.”

“It’s a given that she invited a man into her home,” I said. “No one alleges that he forced his way into her apartment. And no one is accusing Sanderalee Dawson of good judgment. That’s all beside the point.”

“And at what point does sexual intercourse become rape?” one of our young law students asked rhetorically. “When the lady says no.”

“When the lady says no
prior to penetration
and the gentleman proceeds either through physical force, fear or coercion. Sanderalee had a perfect right to invite anyone she wanted up to her apartment. She had a perfect right to allow him certain expectations of a sexual nature. We are not evaluating her common sense, her morals, her wisdom or her promiscuity. Even if he hadn’t beaten her, but merely forced her through threat or coercion, she has a right to charge him with rape.”

“Even if she asked for it?”
Sam Hendrikson inquired.

I took one deep breath and pressed my hand over my eyes. “Yes, if you mean that by her actions prior to the sexual act, by her invitation to her apartment, by her general and specific behavior, she led him to believe she was interested in him as a sexual partner. According to Sanderalee, the man had her sit down, he manipulated her ankle exactly as he said he would. He told her he was a doctor and did in fact work some kind of adjustment on her ankle. She was getting ready for some kind of sociability: she was in the process of pouring out Perrier when he assaulted her from behind, without warning. Christ, maybe if he’d just waited, sipped his Perrier and listened to some music, it might have turned into a night of love. But he didn’t. What he did was what he apparently had in mind all along: he viciously beat and physically subdued her. He raped her through the use of superior physical force, fear, coercion. He half killed her. All of which was hardly necessary, given the rather pleasant circumstances in which he found himself.”

“Which means,” Sheila Kennedy said solemnly, “that this kind of sexual assault was what he needed; was what he apparently had in mind from the first encounter.”

“We don’t have to get into David Cohen’s mind. We just have to describe his actions. His motives are loony-tunes as far as we’re concerned. We leave that to the shrinks.”

Which covered the rape charge. For about the tenth time that day. During the endless discussion and argument and reviewing we went over the other potential charges. Again, again, again: the sodomy, the felonious assault by some version of open-handed karate-type blows; the assault with a deadly weapon; assault with intent to kill; the mutilation-dismemberment.

Someone raised a question about the fact that when Sanderalee was found on the kitchen floor, she was wearing her running pants and a sweater. Her bra and bikini underpants were found tossed on the living room floor. In her state of shock, had she been capable of partially dressing herself? Would she be able to recall doing so? No big deal, just a little peculiar, but something we would have to prepare for: against a defense attorney’s questions. Stick to the facts: if you don’t remember, Sanderalee, then you don’t remember—period.

Finally, “I don’t anticipate any problems with the Grand Jury on any of this, really. Given the extent of the injuries inflicted on her; given the ferocity of the assault. There will be one or two questions relative to her judgment. Remember, Alan Greco told us, Bobby, that he’d been afraid of just this kind of thing happening. He said she’d apparently picked up the wrong guy. That it hadn’t surprised him. I will grant to the Grand Jury that Sanderalee showed very bad judgment. We’ve got until trial date to handle this case—to defend Sanderalee’s honor and to cop out on her judgment. Which led to her being raped, sodomized, beaten, mutilated. At the trial, we’ll let the good Dr. Cohen’s attorney question Sanderalee’s motives in extending what is, in effect, a street-corner invitation to a stranger.”

“Or to a stranger she thinks she recognizes. From having seen him around the Jog-gon-Inn,” Bobby Jones added, his eyes fixed on me intently.

And then, when we had all decided to call it a day, a weekend, there was a phone call about our good Lucy Capella, who, I wish sometimes, was not all that damned good.

Not only had the city reached the boiling point, not only were people robbing, looting, hitting, hurting, shooting, pillaging and just plain messing up, but now good strong reliable Lucy Capella was not to be available, when she was most needed.

Lucy and her damned stray dogs.

L
UCY CAPELLA HAD BEEN
on her way back to New York Hospital from her day off at her small rented home in Queens when, in the glare of flashing headlights, she saw a large, bone-thin, terrified, injured dog cringing against the wall of an underpass on Grand Central Parkway.

As God does occasionally watch over her own, this abandoned dog had been waiting for rescue by Lucy Capella, who had never in her entire life refused a needy human—infant or crone—or any animal in any stage of distress.

She pulled over as best she could in the not-too-heavy late Sunday afternoon traffic, set up her ever-handy blinker lights, yellow and red, managed to cajole the wounded creature into the back of her station wagon—which was fully equipped with all kinds of benign animal lures: old bones, dry feed, catnip for the kitties, cookies, smelly old dog blankets and pillows. The animal once safely installed in the nestlike arrangement, our Lucy had yet to achieve personal safety. She was sideswiped by an angry motorist who had appointments to keep and would not grant Lucy the twenty seconds or so required for her to safely collect her blinker lights and enter her vehicle.

She managed to get into the station wagon, call in the license number of her hit-and-runner, request ambulances for herself and her new dog.

When a local emergency ambulance arrived, Lucy steadfastly refused, as only our iron-and-steel little nun could, to ride in the ambulance without the injured dog, who had in fact thrown itself into her arms and growled weak but serious threats to anyone who tried to separate them. It might actually have been Lucy herself faking the growl, but it sounded real enough to cause a problem. She insisted the medical entourage first deliver the dog to the Animal Medical Center on the East Side of Manhattan at Sixty-second Street and then double back with her to the hospital in Queens that had human jurisdiction.

Lucy’s left leg and right arm had been fractured and she had two black eyes and a scraped chin, yet the first thing she extracted from me at her bedside was a promise to check on the progress of Ambrose at the animal hospital.
Ambrose?
The wonderful wounded starveling had been so named in honor of the ambulance attendant who had finally given in, said what the hell, let’s either take both of them to the Emergency Room at the animal hospital or the ER at the people hospital; we can’t stay here arguing forever: neither this lady nor this dog is gonna give.

The animal hospital, somewhat impressed by Ambrose’s arrival in a people ambulance, accepted him immediately but refused Lucy, who was then returned to Queens.

I was able to assure Lucy that Ambrose was not only going to survive, he was going to prevail. He had been featured on the late news and would be an early-edition front-page
Daily News
dog with adopters lining up. The story was receiving a great deal of play: it was a welcome change of pace from all the riot, destruction and terror stories that had been confronting us for the last few days. Some public relations back from City Hall even put out a line that his Honor, the Argumentative Mayor, was interested in adopting Ambrose. They were that desperate for a good word re City Hall.

Lucy did not have a care in the world. Her friends from the old lapsed-priests-and-nuns commune, who had been cat/dog sitting her own collection of pets while she’d been on extended duty at New York Hospital with Sanderalee, would not only continue, but would also take care of her when she returned from the hospital.

So I left Lucy warm and cozy and reassured: encased in casts, bruises and a nice resolve to get that monster who sideswiped her.

I took advantage of having a driver and, before going home, paid a quick visit to New York Hospital. Sanderalee was sitting in “Lucy’s room,” half-heartedly reading a magazine. As soon as she heard me approach, her head ducked down and she adjusted a filmy veil, which she had attached to a couple of hair clips to float over her face. Actually, it was quite attractive and almost looked like a glamorous new style—as long as you didn’t see beneath the veil. Sanderalee favored soft lights and distances. She dropped the magazine as she stood up, her right hand touching first the veil and then the heavy cast in which her left hand rested.

She had heard about Lucy’s accident.

“I didn’t know Lucy was a Miss Molly. A professional kindheart,” she said in a peculiar tone. “I suppose every now and then, one of the collectors of the ... maimed and the ugly and the ... unwanted pays a price for her charity.” She walked across the room and stood with her back to me for a moment. Somewhere, she had lost me. I couldn’t quite figure her attitude. I had thought she and Lucy were friends. “She is all right though, isn’t she?” The question was asked coldly.

I assured her that Lucy would be fine; it would be a matter of time and healing.

Sanderalee turned and raised her face toward me. Her green eyes glowing from the top of the veil seemed very deep and steady but her voice revealed her restlessness.

“When can I get out of here? I’m sick of this place, Lynne. When is something going to happen?”

“When
you get out of here isn’t up to me, Sanderalee. That’s up to the doctors. You know that. They’re amazed at your progress. It’s good that you’re anxious to get out. I’m a great believer in a person’s pushing herself. The question is, where will you go? Have you given that much thought?”

“I’ve given it ‘much thought.’ I have a place. I don’t care to discuss it right now.”

“But not back to your apartment?”

She drew her shoulders up, pressed her arms close to her body to suppress a shudder and shook her head. “Never. Never.”

“That would be my reaction, too. Look. I’m preparing the case for the Grand Jury and ...”

Her body hunched forward as though she’d received a blow to the stomach. She shook her head and there was a soft moan coming from her clenched mouth. “Not me, though, Lynne. Not me ... I won’t have to ... Lucy told me that you’d go ahead without me ... that I won’t have to ...”

Of course, it would have been much better for her to appear before the Grand Jury: the living proof of the damages inflicted on her.

“No, Sanderalee. It’s okay. I’ll make the presentation myself. I have your tape. I have all the medical documents to show them. You won’t have to appear.”

She sat down and rested her heavy cast across her body. Her long fingers played with the edge of her veil and her voice was very soft, dreamy. “The plastic surgeon has told me that it won’t be too bad, fixing my face. My lip. He’s pretty sure he can do a good restoration. That’s what he called it: restoration. Like I was an old painting or something. They can do a lot of things; they’ve put together worse than ... than mine, he said. He said that with time, with healing, with ... time and healing, you wouldn’t even be able to ... Oh, Lynne, I’m very tired. Sometimes I think it’ll be all right. This will all be over with. And then, I look at this ... this ... thing.” She touched the swollen fingertips that curled inward on the edge of the cast. “My God, this was my
hand.
Look at it. You know, someday they’ll take the cast off and all the bandages and
I don’t want to see it.
It’s like a ... a horrible growth ... something that isn’t part of me ... something ... alien. Oh, God, sometimes I wish I could just turn time back. Very far back, years back. But then, I ask myself, where would I stop it? At what point would I stop time? And I try to find the perfect moment, the perfect time that I would want to start from and I get stuck. There doesn’t seem to be a ‘perfect moment.’ Maybe it’s all been one big crock. Goddamn, I’m tired.”

I wished I could think of something clever or sustaining or reassuring or wise or important or comforting to say to her. I wished I knew what Lucy would say.

“Can I get you anything, Sanderalee? Anything at all?”

She raised her head. I could see the outline of her face as the veil floated against her. The wiring on her jaws had been loosened considerably; the lower lip torn but healing. Several broken teeth had been removed and she was having dental work as part of the reconstruction process. Her eyes were still beautiful and alive; only her eyes were still Sanderalee. They regarded me with a look of anger and then the look softened, filled with pain and somehow, it seemed, with pity. For me? for herself? Who knows?