The Deadhouse (27 page)

Corinne's face screwed up in disgust. "You mean those New York City
hot dogs that sit in that dirty water in those pushcarts all day? I
couldn't possibly eat that stuff."

No, but she could drink a six-pack of some liquid concoction without
a clue about what was in it or how it would mix with her medication,
and never even blink. Teague left the room to call in an order for
Corinne and a few cups of coffee to keep us all going.

Gorinne rested her head, cushioned on her crossed arms, on the table
in front of her. "Would you like to tell me about the evening, or as
much of it as you can remember?" I asked.

She had met Craig at the party at about midnight, and they were
really getting along well together. After a few vodka and cranberry
juice cocktails, they left to go to a bar somewhere in the East
Nineties. That's where she had the Brain Tumors. Maybe three of them.
Maybe five.

"Was he coming on to you at all?"

"Like, what do you mean?"

"Did he seem to be interested in you physically? Did he ever touch
you or kiss you?"

"Oh, yeah. We were dancing, I remember that. The jukebox was playing
music and I asked him to dance with me."

"Fast or slow?"

"Slow stuff, mostly. He was kissing me, you could say."

"Were you kissing each other?"

"Sure. But I know what you're gonna say. And that doesn't give him
any right to have sex with me, especially if he didn't use a condom."

"Did you see anybody else that you know at the bar?"

"No. He's the one who decided where to go drinking. I didn't know
another soul."

"How about the bartender? Were you talking to him?"

Corinne thought for a minute. "Yeah. After we'd been there for a
while, most of the place kind of cleared out. He and Craig were having
a long talk about something—movies, I think it was. They both liked the
same kind of movies. Science fiction, stuff I don't know about."

"So there's a good chance, if Teague stops over there tonight, that
the bartender can help put together some of the things you don't
remember when it came time to leave the bar?"

"Like, what do you mean?"

"How you two were acting toward each other. He might recall some of
your conversation, if you had any in his presence at the bar. How many
drinks he served you and how drunk you were. Or what kind of physical
interaction there was between you and Craig." It was often useful to
remind a witness that other people we could talk to might actually be
able to help us reconstruct some of the things she had been too wasted
to think about clearly.

"You're really going to speak with that bartender?"

"Don't you want us to? After all, part of what you claim is that you
didn't go to Craig's hotel room willingly, under your own steam."

She extended one arm out on the table in front of her and rested her
head back down on it. "What if he tells you, like, that Craig and I
were making out while we were in the bar?"

"That still doesn't give him the right to force you to have sex with
him, or to take advantage of you if you weren't participating." I fed
her back the line she had tried to use earlier to get me to act on her
complaint. If Craig had engaged in a sexual act with her after she had
passed out, we might be able to establish the occurrence of a crime.

"Yeah, well, what if the bartender tells you that we both went into
the men's room for a while? What's that gonna do to my case?"

"That depends on what you tell me happened in the men's room,
doesn't it?"

"You're gonna be all judgmental about it." Corinne focused her eyes
on a spot on the ceiling, above my head, and looked even more sullen
than she had when I arrived.

"I have no reason to be judgmental. You tell me what the facts are,
I'll tell you whether we've got evidence that proves a crime was
committed."

"But it's only my word against his?" She was whimpering now.

"That's all we need—your word—in any case. It used to be different,
twenty years ago. There had to be more proof than the story of the
woman who brings the charge. But now, rape is like every other crime.
Your testimony—your
credible
testimony—-i
_s
what
I present to the jury. Then you're cross-examined by Craig's lawyer.
After that, Craig tells him everything he remembers."

I paused to let that fact sink in. "Corinne, what happened in the
bathroom at the bar? Did you have sex with him?"

Her eyes returned to the spot on the ceiling. "Not sex. I gave him a
blow job. I didn't let him touch me."

I had told her I did not have to make judgments about people. That
didn't stop me from wondering about her definition of sexual acts.
Maybe it was a generational thing, although she was only ten years
younger than I. I had heard it enough times that I had learned to train
the young lawyers in my unit never to accept a victim's
characterization of the encounter when she said there was "no sex."
Ask, I taught them, exactly which body parts made contact with the
other person. Most of us make too many assumptions about what other
people call sexual acts.

Now she was rubbing her eyes and yawning. "You know, Miss Cooper, I
never wanted to call the police about this. It wasn't my idea. That
woman at the hospital made me do it. The only reason I went to the
emergency room was to get a morning-after pill. I mean, like what if he
had sex with me, didn't use a condom, and I find out I'm pregnant?"

"Do you think that's what happened?"

This time she groaned. "I don't know. I just don't know what
happened. Don't you get it? That's exactly what I told the doctor who
examined me. And after he told me he couldn't see anything unusual,
that's when the counselor told me that maybe I was raped."

"Maybe?
We don't charge people with felonies, Corinne,
'cause 'maybe' they did something bad. I have to believe a serious
crime was committed before I authorize the police to make an arrest.
And I have to persuade a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt,that the
person charged committed that crime. I can't ask them to guess. I can't
ask them to fill in the blanks that you don't remember. If Craig had
intercourse with you when you were unconscious, that's another
thing—that's a crime. But nobody goes to state prison for twenty-five
years because you got drunk and then don't like the way the night ended
for you.

"And Teague and I will have to spend a lot of time trying to figure
out which of those things is what actually happened."

"But how can you do that?"

"Maybe we won't be able to. But we'll start with the bartender.
We'll see if there's a desk clerk at the hotel who saw you coming in
with Craig. Maybe even a security surveillance tape that will show you
walking with him. It might suggest whether or not you were in any
distress—or instead, that you were laughing, having a good time. I'll
get the records of all the charges from his bill. See if there was any
room service, any minibar use, any pay-TV movies charged to Craig's
room during the time you were—"

"Oh, jeez, let's just forget about it then." Now she was moving from
apathy to anger.

"You don't have to do all that work. That's Teague's job. Did I
remind you of something you had forgotten? Did you have more to drink
in the hotel room? Get into bed with the guy to watch a movie?" It
wouldn't be the first time.

"Where's the detective? Can I talk to him a minute? I mean, like I
have a plane to catch."

"Teague and I are here because you wanted our help. We'll get you to
the airport. Please try and answer my questions. One call to the hotel
and we'll have some of this information anyway. It's all part of the
record that goes on the guest's bill." Corinne was fuming. She wouldn't
look at me for almost a minute, and then she spoke.

"All right, so we had some more to drink. He ordered up a bottle of
champagne. Is that against the law? I had a couple of sips of
champagne."

Nice nightcap for a bunch of Brain Tumors. The chances were good
that there would be a charge for an X-rated movie on Craig's bill,
shortly after room service arrived with the chilled bucket of bubbly.

"How about the movie, Corinne?"

"It was so gross I couldn't even watch it after the first ten
minutes. Like group sex in a hot tub or something.
He
was
into that shit. Not me. Look, let's just forget about this. I don't
think I have much of a case." She twisted her watch around on her wrist
to see the time. "If I don't go now, I'll never make this flight." She
stood up and opened the door.

"This morning, when you woke up, did you ask Craig what had
happened?"

"Yeah, I asked him. He was like all surprised I didn't remember. He
said we—um—we like made love. That he thought I was having a really
good time. I just know I wouldn't have done that if I had been sober.
Not without a condom."

"But you weren't sober, Corinne. That's what alcohol does, that's
what drugs do to us. They change the way we act, they loosen us up.
Sometimes we say and do things we wouldn't have done otherwise.
Sometimes it makes us more vulnerable to many kinds of danger."

"Well, I'm just too hungover and tired to deal with this now. I
didn't want him arrested. I just wanted to teach him a lesson anyway.
Please, can I go home?"

Teague had paid the delivery boy and returned to the interview room
with Corinne's sandwich. I left them alone so that he could try to
soothe her and get her to go over the more complete version of her
story, which she had neatly trimmed for him on the first telling. The
hot coffee tasted good at the end of a long day, and I walked back to
sit with the sergeant and talk about the rash of holiday assaults.

The door to the squad room opened and Mike Chapman burst through
before I could finish the cup. "Yo, Sarge. Be sure you get blondie
delivered right to the door of Walter Cronkite's apartment when she
leaves here. The most trusted man in television can take care of her
for the night. Gotta run."

I stood up, holding my finger in the air to signal that I'd be ready
in a minute. "Teague doesn't need me anymore. I can—"

"Sorry, kid. Just got a call from the boss at the Nineteenth
Precinct. Seems like little miss Annie Oakley made an attempt to get
into your building through the garage. Tried to get one of the
attendants to let her in with his key. Slipped him twenty bucks. I'm
meeting the cops over at P. J. Bernstein's. See if we can pick her off
the street before she starts target practice. You and lover boy are
grounded for the night, understand?"

I didn't have time to protest. Mike turned to leave, but stuck his
head back into the room. "And by the way, I checked with Freddie
Figueroa, the detective who canvassed Lola's building the day after the
murder. Remember Claude Lavery, 'Professor Ganja-R-Us,' Coop? The
upstairs neighbor? On the DD5, all Figueroa had written for his
interview with Lavery was that he was in his apartment, working on a
research paper and listening to classical music. Didn't see or hear
anything unusual on Thursday afternoon. Freddie asked Lavery if he knew
the deceased. Said he did, but that he hadn't spoken to her in over a
month."

19

Jake dropped me off at the Roosevelt Island tram station at Second
Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street on his way to La Guardia in a cab at 8
A.M. Friday morning. He was back off to Washington to cover the
end-of-the-year resignation of the secretary of agriculture. I climbed
the three-tiered staircase and watched one of the two cable cars pull
out of the station as the second arrived and unloaded its crew of daily
commuters.

With a few minutes to kill, I called Mike and found him still at
home.

"I assume that you would have phoned me last night if you had any
luck finding my friend, Miss Denzig."

"We rode around the neighborhood for almost two hours. Nowhere to be
seen."

"I'm on my way over to Bird Coler Hospital to do that hearing. Jake
won't be home in time for dinner tonight. Why don't you see if you can
lure Mercer into town for our Christmas celebration. I'll think of
someplace lively to go, okay?"

"Let me see what's cooking. You still planning to take a scenic tour
of the island when you're done?"

"Yes. Nan asked one of the students who stayed in town during the
holidays to show me the dig site. I'm headed out there now, so I may
poke around a bit before I come back. Can you still meet me after I
finish at Coler?"

"I'll beep you if I can get there."

There were only seven other people going to the island at that hour
on this cold December morning. Two of them had tennis rackets and were
clearly headed for the bubble in the sports complex at the foot of the
tram station. I wondered what the business of each of the others could
be. The young conductor opened the doors of the car and we all boarded.
There was a bench at each end, with four large poles to hang on to at
various points on the floor, and straps with metal handles hanging from
the roof's interior.

Like a cable car at a ski resort, the doors closed and the heavy
tram lumbered off, rising on thick steel wires as it lifted off above
the city streets. I could see the people in the automobiles that were
cruising down the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge ramp. Powerful winds rocked
my massive carriage and it shuddered mildly as its several sets of
wheels rolled over the stanchion at the first tower.

In the sky beyond, I watched a steady stream of takeoffs and
landings heading to and from the La Guardia Airport runways, and below
that, three gray stacks belching smoke from some unidentifiable factory
in Queens. The crossing took less than four minutes, and I snaked my
way out behind the other passengers, who all seemed familiar with the
routine. A bus waited at the exit path, and I fished a quarter out of
my bag to pay the fare.