Night Watch (18 page)

Mercer pulled his chair up beside her. “Alex is doing her job, Blanca. We can help you only if you tell us the truth.”

“But I
am
telling you the truth about how this man attacked me. That got nothing to do with Hector and his problems.”

“I’d like you to sit up and look at me, Blanca,” I said. She continued to ignore me.

“You listen to Alex,” Mercer said, and she lifted her head from the table.

“You’re here because everyone on this team believes you and believes what you told us about your attacker.”

“Then why do you keep talking about my lies? They don’t have anything to do with my case.”

“They have everything to do with your case, Blanca. Because the most important evidence we have is
you
. You and your word. Only two people were in that hotel room, and only one of them is telling the truth about what happened. Gil-Darsin has a lawyer—an extremely good lawyer. When he questions you at the trial—”

“You just said he won’t be there.”

“This week is the grand jury, not the trial. In several months, when there is a trial, his lawyer will get to question you in detail. He’ll take the twenty minutes in that hotel room and he’ll keep you on the witness stand asking you questions about it for hours, maybe for days. Ellen explained this to you yesterday, didn’t she?”

Blanca took several deep breaths while I talked.

“I didn’t get that far,” Ellen said.

“The lawyer will be allowed to ask you about every action in the hotel room. And Gil-Darsin will feed him his own version of events, too.”

“But they won’t be true! That man is disgusting. He’ll say anything to get out of this.”

“Probably so, Blanca. But his lawyer can also ask you questions about other things in your life. His lawyer will claim you’ll say anything to earn yourself twenty million dollars, or whatever amount you sue him for. Maybe the judge will let him ask about your boyfriend.”

“Why? I didn’t go to jail. Hector did.”

“Well, was he living with you when he was arrested? Did the federal agents question you? Did Hector put any of the stolen money in your name?”

Both Blanca and Ellen were unhappy.

“Not ready to tell me? A subpoena will get me all the answers I need,” I said. “Did you know, Blanca, that your phone call to Hector was taped today?”

I thought fire was going to come out of her mouth when she opened it. “I can’t believe you would do that to me, Ms. Alex. I want Mr. Peaser here.”

“We didn’t do that to you. Every call to a federal prisoner—except when he’s talking to his lawyer—is taped by the prison authorities. We can find out everything you’ve said to Hector since you were assaulted. Every word.”

The angry woman slumped back in her chair.

“How about your application to the U.S. government for asylum, Blanca? Did you tell the truth to them, when you were under oath?”

“Of course I did,” she said, slamming both hands on the table.

“You’re sure about that? ’Cause if you did, you’d be the first witness I’ve ever worked with who did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I know the circumstances that made you leave your home. They’re detailed in the police reports. I know how you and your family were tortured and mistreated, and how justly you deserved asylum in this country.”

“So why should I lie about that?” She raised her head, thrusting her chin at me, besting me with her life’s tragedy.

“Because just about every person who comes here for asylum, no matter how good the reason, tries to make his or her story a little bit worse. Everyone knows that his neighbors and his relatives and his friends are looking for exactly the same thing, and so each one tries to embellish—”

“Embellish? What this means?”

“Exaggerates, Blanca. Each one tends to exaggerate just a little bit, to get an advantage over the next person. It’s not a great big lie, because the Truth Commission did terrible things to your people. We know that happened. But suppose I came from your village, and suppose my cousin was applying for asylum, too. We were both raped by the soldiers, let’s say. And our fathers were made to disappear. She knows half the town is looking to escape just like we are, so she tells the Americans that her brother was killed, too, and that all her animals were slaughtered. Not true—she didn’t even have a brother—but all the rest of what she said can be verified, so she takes the chance on these facts. I want to leave the village just as much as she does, so when I hear what testimony she gave, I exaggerate my own story. I say both my sisters were killed and—”

“I had no need to do that, Ms. Alex,” Blanca said, lowering her voice and her head. “The worst things happened to me. Worse than anybody’s life. I told Detective Mercer all of them.”

I spoke softly, respecting the atrocities she had survived. “And they are exactly the same things you told the government lawyers, under oath?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So, when the State Department releases a copy of your affidavit to me—”

“When is that?”

“Maybe by Monday, maybe earlier. When I get those papers, there won’t be any surprises for Mercer and for me?”

Blanca’s arm darted across the table and swept Ellen’s notepad and pen into the air, so that they landed on the floor with a thud. “Those papers are sealed up, no? What do those papers have to do with my getting raped the other day? Are you crazy?” Her anger was on full display. “What happened to me in my country don’t have nothing to do with this man. This Gil-Darsin man.”

“Listen to me, Blanca. If you think you’ve seen my temper yet, I can promise you that you have not. I don’t care if you exaggerated to get asylum here. You wouldn’t be the first person to do that. I
don’t care if you lied about Hector because you were afraid we’d think badly of you because you have a boyfriend in prison. But the judge
will
care about those things, and so will the jury. And the judge is allowed to tell the jurors that if you have lied to them, they can either disregard the lies and convict this man for what you tell them happened to you when you walked into his hotel room, or—”

“That’s what I want them to do. To—how you call it?—to disregard these other things.”

“Or the judge can tell them that because you lied about other things—things that have nothing to do with Mr. Gil-Darsin—they don’t have to trust you at all. They can throw out your entire case because you’ve lied to so many people—even under oath to the government. Do you understand me? Do you understand how important it is for you to tell the truth?”

Blanca Robles was not only angry. She was stubborn, too. Large teardrops formed in each of her eyes and clung to her lower lids for seconds, before rolling down her cheeks. They were the first sincere tears I thought I had seen today. She stared straight ahead and refused to answer.

“You get what Alex is telling you, Blanca?” Mercer asked. “She’s giving you another chance. She wants you to start all over again from the beginning, in your own words. It doesn’t matter what you told me and Ellen and the other cops on Sunday and yesterday. It doesn’t matter what you told Mr. Peaser. You’ve got answers for everything, including why you went into that other room in the hallway after you were attacked. You’ve just got to give us every one of those answers truthfully—not what you think we want to hear. That’s the only way this team can take you into the courtroom. You good with that?”

Blanca Robles slowly nodded her head. “I’ll talk to you, Detective Mercer, and to Ms. Ellen. But I don’t like you,” she said, pointing a finger at me.

“Then pretend I’m the judge,” I said. “Ellen will ask the questions and I’ll just listen.”

There was a knock on the door. I stood up to open it. Laura was there with the delivery order, which would make for a good late-morning break.

She put the cardboard box in the middle of the table and Mercer started to pass the coffee around.

Laura motioned me to follow her. I stepped outside the room. “Any calls?”

It was almost 6
P.M.
in Mougins, and now Luc would be about to start the dinner service at the restaurant. If he hadn’t phoned yet, it would be hours before he would be free again.

“Nothing you’re hoping for. But you’ve got a visitor, Alex. Lem Howell’s here, and he says he’s not leaving until he talks to you.”

“Alexandra Cooper,” Lem said, smoothing his pomaded hair as he watched me approach him down the long corridor. “I can always gauge your level of excitement about seeing me by the pacing of the click of your heels on the tiled floor. And I would say that you are either delighted by my unexpected appearance, or I have gotten your very easy-to-get goat by showing up here today.”

“It’s the goat thing, Lem. I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

“What did I teach you about keeping your cool, young lady?”

“If I ever had cool under your watch, I lost it to global warming. About face, sir.”

I didn’t break stride until I had passed Lem and made the right turn to the elevator bank. He followed after me, linking his arm in mine when he caught up to me. I brushed him off.

“On closer examination, Alexandra, I’d say you look jet-lagged, harried, and maybe even a wee bit heartbroken.”

“You usually do better than one for three. Yes, I am jet-lagged and extremely tired. I’ll even give you half-credit for harried. But who’s feeding you the heartbroken line, Lem? I thought you’d be delighted to know that I’m madly in love.”

“Well, you are keeping that factoid well hidden beneath those
large circles under your sweet green eyes. My mama would be encouraging you to put some tea bags on them to reduce the swelling. The tannin in the tea calms it right down, soothes the skin, and—”

“Who’s spreading the heartbroken story?”

“I’m just saying you did that round-trip elopement to France in record time. Did they take the Concorde out of mothballs to get you back here? It can’t be you flew home for this loser of a case, so I’m thinking you and Luc had a spat.”

“Think harder next time,” I said, reaching out to press the down button. Of course—Baby Mo had been an occasional guest at Luc’s restaurant. Doubtless he knew people in Mougins, and Lem must have told him I spent time in that part of the world. I needed to tell Battaglia about that remote connection before the news reached him some other way.

“Let’s talk about Mr. Gil-Darsin,” Lem said.

“Call me.”

Lem didn’t budge. “Now’s the perfect time.”

“You know I’m busy. And I know the reason you wormed your way in here is to try to eyeball the accuser. Cheap trick, Lem.”

The elevator doors opened and three young assistants stepped off with their files, headed down the wide corridor to the Appeals Bureau offices.

“I hear she’s a sturdy girl, Alexandra. Not so easy to push around.”

The doors closed and my adversary still hadn’t moved, so I pressed the button again.

“Save it for the jury, Lem. What’s the bail situation you wanted to discuss?”

“Your office went overboard, asking for Gil-Darsin to be remanded without bail. This isn’t a homicide.”

“No, Lem, it’s a rape. Or as you said to the court, it’s ‘
only
’ a rape. He’s facing twenty-five years and he lives in a country that refuses to extradite rapists to America.” I paused to look at Lem. “You want to tell me what your client says about how his DNA
wound up on the floor of the hotel room? Oh yeah, and on this woman’s uniform?”

“I don’t want to say anything right now.”

“This is a rare moment indeed. Lem Howell with nothing to say. I thought for sure you’d go with a love story, Lem. That is so your style. Housekeeper walks into the room. Ivorian diplomat is taken by her earthy good looks and, wait now—a triplicate—the sadness, the horror, the despair she carries everywhere with her in those deep pools of brown eyes. They bond instantly—or wait, maybe she was even the aggressor. Of course she’s the aggressor—she’s bigger than he is. And after all, he wasn’t even sated by the lover who left his room at two
P.M.
”

Now I had Lem’s full attention.

“The lover?”

“Yes, Lem. We know about her. The girlfriend. The hotel says she’s a regular whenever Gil-Darsin is in town. A Frenchwoman living in New York, working at an investment bank. She’s on all the surveillance tapes. We’ll have her name shortly.”

He took a step toward me, so that we were standing nose-to-nose, and took hold of my wrist with his right hand.

“One thing you’ve always had is perspective, Alexandra. Don’t lose it here.”

“Was it about money, Lem? You haven’t tried that one yet. Going for that hooker approach?” I said, with a laugh. “Maybe he ordered up a prostitute dressed as a French maid and got confused when the housekeeper came to the door.”

“You’ll never get past the grand jury, Alexandra. You don’t begin to know what problems Blanca Robles has.”

“I was working for you eight years ago when you assigned me the case of the nun who was raped in her convent uptown. But for that young woman, Lem, every witness who ever walked through those doors has problems.”

“Not like this.”

“Crazy women get raped, too, remember? The patient in the
psych ward at Met Hospital? You were the first person to take her seriously. Liars and prostitutes and junkies and full-on whack jobs are victims, too. They cart all their baggage into this office with them and we sort through it till we find the truth.”

“Blanca lives on the margins. She’ll play you for a fool if she sucks you in. She’s been doing that all her life. Talk to her neighbors, talk to—”

“What happened to the high road, Lem? You always insisted to the young lawyers you trained that we take the high road, and there you go, ferreting around in the gutter for all the garbage you can find.”

I tried to wriggle my wrist free of Lem’s grasp, but he was holding me tight.

“Screw the high road, Alexandra. You’re going to look like a chump when the smoke clears. Be more reasonable. Come up with a price tag for bail and I’ll surrender my client’s passport until you sort this out.”

“And an ankle bracelet for good measure?”

“Shame on you. Think of that image, young lady. A black man out of Africa in shackles? It’s a vulgar image. It likens my client to a slave. I say the passport and a hunk of change.”