Freaky Deaky

Chapter 8

On Tuesday, four twenty in the afternoon, the young woman with short red hair entered the lobby at 1300 Beaubien and stopped, uncertain. She expected to see police officers. What she saw was a bunch of black people with small children standing by the two elevators and in front of the glass-covered directory on the wall. It could be the lobby of an old office building, all tile and marble, and seemed small with the people waiting, the women holding on to the children trying to pull free. An elevator door opened and two young black guys came off grinning, playing with shoelaces in their hands, and were all at once gathered in by these people, who must be family. The young woman with short red hair edged her way around them and through a short hall that opened into another lobby, this one dismal with deep shadows, until she came to a long wooden counter beneath fluorescent lights. The uniformed police officer behind the near end of the counter, a black woman, looked up and said, "Can I help you?"

The young woman with short red hair said, "I want to report a rape."

The policewoman said, "This's Prisoner Detention," and glanced down the length of the empty counter. "You want to talk to somebody's with the precinct. They be right back. . . . I'll tell you what, or you can go up to Sex Crimes on seven, save you some time. Get off the elevator and turn right and it's all the way down the end of the hall. There be somebody up there will help you."

Chris was alone in the squad room, his desk piled with case folders he'd been going through for the past few days, learning about criminal sexual conduct in its varying degrees. At lunch he'd told Jerry Baker he didn't think he was going to like it. A guy throws a pipe bomb in somebody's house to settle a score, the guy could be wacko but at least his motive was clear. But why would any guy want to rape a defenseless woman? What was in his head? The interesting thing was that it didn't have that much to do with sex. Jerry Baker said, "Then what do you call it a sex crime for?" Chris told him the way he understood it, the rapist wanted to dominate or be destructive, or he gets off on somebody else's pain. So he picks on a woman he can handle. But the act didn't have that much to do with getting laid, per se. Chris said he wasn't sure he could interrogate a suspect they knew for a fact was guilty and not pound the shit out of the guy. It would require a certain amount of self-restraint. Or sit down and talk to the poor rape victim. That would be tough. He told Jerry the whole setup was different. Even the squad room. It was cleaner than other squad rooms, the desks were kept neater. There were even artificial flowers on some of the desks, if you could imagine, inside 1300. See, because it wasn't a twelve-man squad, it was a twelve- person squad, half the investigators were policewomen. Chris said he wasn't complaining, not at all, it was just different.

Yesterday he'd walked down to six and stuck his head in at Firearms and Explosives to see what was going on. It reminded him of when he was in the eighth grade his family moved from the West Side to the East Side and all that summer he rode buses back to the old neighborhood to be with his friends. Chris was going to meet Jerry at Galligan's at five, have a couple before driving out to St. Clair Shores. Working Sex Crimes in his dad's Cadillac.

It was almost four thirty. Maureen Downey had the night duty. At the moment she was off somewhere. Maureen had spent a few years in Sex Crimes, then was in Homicide for a while and came back, she said because she didn't like all the blood you found at the scene or going to the morgue to look at bodies and get the Medical Examiner's report. Chris heard that sharp, clean sound of high heels on the tile floor and looked up expecting to see Maureen.

It was a young woman with short red hair, very attractive, maybe late twenties. She came in, Chris couldn't help notice the way her legs moved in her skirt: a short straight tan skirt that went from above her knees into a loose tan sweater. A soft leather handbag hung from her shoulder. She seemed calm, even as she said, "They told me downstairs to come here. . . . I want to report a rape."

As though she were telling him she wanted to report an accident, something she had seen, but was not personally involved. Chris said, "Oh." He stood up, looked around and nodded toward a clean desk with blue flowers in a green ceramic bowl. He said, "I'm Sergeant Mankowski. If you'd like, we'll sit over there, have more room." Chris paused to watch the thigh movement in her skirt as she walked to the desk. He sat down again and opened and closed drawers till he found a yellow legal pad and a Preliminary Complaint Report form. Going over to the desk, where the young woman was seated now in a straight metal chair, Chris said, "This happen to someone in your family?"

She seemed surprised, the way her head raised. "It happened to me. I was forced against my will to have sex. If that isn't rape I don't know what is."

Chris noticed she had a slight southern accent, not much of one but it was there. She sat straight, looking up at him until he eased into the padded metal swivel chair behind the desk. Now they were looking at each other over the bowl of blue flowers. She had a long thin neck. Or it seemed long the way she was sitting upright or the way her hair ended just below her ears and stuck out on both sides, wavy red hair with a lot of body. Phyllis always had rollers in her pile of dark hair. Chris imagined this girl didn't have to fool with her hair much. He liked the way it ended and stuck straight out. She was holding herself rigid, showing him she was indignant, but didn't look as though she'd been beat up. Chris wondered if this was what they called in Sex Crimes a date rape.

"When did this assault take place?"

"Sunday morning, about two A.M."

Chris said, "Sunday? That was two days ago. Why're you just now reporting it?"

"What's the difference when it happened? I was raped."

Chris had been told eight out of ten rapes weren't even reported; they hadn't said anything about the ones that were reported late. "You know the suspect?"

She said, "Suspect? I don't sus pect he raped me, I know he did. I was there. Mr. Woodrow Ricks is his name."

There was that accent, soft, unaffected. It made her seem natural but also vulnerable. A guy rapes her, she calls him "Mister." Chris pictured the guy older. Looking at the PCR form he said, "I don't have your name and address."

She said, "I guess you want my real name. It's Greta Wyatt. My stage name I go by is Ginger Jones."

"You're an actress?"

"An actor; you don't say 'actress' anymore."

"I didn't know that." She did look more like a Ginger than a Greta. He liked Greta, though, better. "Let me have your address, too."

"I live for the time being at 1984 Junction."

Chris said, "No kidding. I used to live around there. Right by Holy Redeemer till I was in the eighth grade and we moved all the way over to the East Side, near Cadieux. I never wanted to leave that neighborhood."

"Well, you have a different feeling about it than I have," Greta said. "I can't wait to find a place and move out."

He liked her dry way of speaking, looking right at him. He asked for her phone number, wrote it down, and then her age. She told him she was twenty-nine.

"Married?"

"I was, I'm divorced."

"Children?"

"Not a one."

"You live alone?"

"I have been. It was my folks' house. They sold it when my dad retired from Ford's and they moved back home, to Lake Dick, Arkansas. I'm staying there just till the new people move in or they turn it into a Taco Bell, I don't know which."

"Is that where the assault took place?"

"Uh-unh, it was at Mr. Ricks's. I don't know the address, but he isn't there anyway, he's at the Playhouse. You know where I mean? That theater, it's just a few blocks from here. His big ugly limo was parked in front. I tried to see him. . . . I went there originally to see his brother. But they wouldn't let me in."

"What were you gonna say to him?"

"The rapist? Ask him if he'd like to come here with me, the son of a bitch. You want to meet him? Come on."

"We have to complete this report and have you sign a statement," Chris said. "Then what we do, advise him a complaint has been filed that could bring him up on a charge of criminal sexual conduct."

Greta said, "I love that police way you have of saying things. You're gonna advise him of a complaint--"

"I have to know his address," Chris said. "If it isn't in the City of Detroit it belongs in some other jurisdiction."

"It's in Palmer Woods off Seven Mile, great big mansion."

"That's the Twelfth." Good, it was a Detroit Police matter, he wouldn't have to give it to some cops out in a suburb. He wanted this one. "You were with this guy on a date and you went back to his house?"

"I was with his brother, Mark, the one owns the theater. He invited me on a cruise with him, this past Saturday, some kind of society thing to raise money, and after we got back we went to Woody's house for a party."

Chris took his time, looked up from the report form to Greta Wyatt. "Nice crowd of people, and here's this guy eating off the buffet table with both hands."

That opened her eyes.

"With a fur coat on," Chris said. "Is that the Woody we're talking about?"

"You know him?"

"You got off the boat and went out to Woody's. . . . Just you and Mark?"

"No, there were some other girls too. There were four of us from the boat, and then Mark picked up another one at Brownie's, but she was older. Somebody he used to know by the name of Robin. He spent practically the whole time with her."

"That make you mad?"

"Not a bit. I didn't know why he asked me, I just met him the day before. They were having auditions for Seesaw and I tried out because I played Gittel just a few years ago at the Dearborn Community Theater."

Chris said, "Gittel, huh?"

"Gittel Mosca. I thought I had the part, the way Mark was talking. Then I find out I have to go to bed with Woody."

"He told you that?"

"He practically did."

"Who, Mark or Woody?"

"It was when I went upstairs to change. Well, to dry off and put my dress back on." Greta stopped. "I forgot to mention, everybody had to go in swimming. If you didn't, Woody said his chauffeur would throw you in with your clothes on."

"Wasn't it cold?"

"The pool's inside the house, in a big room with a ceiling that goes up--like in a church."

"You have a bathing suit with you?"

Greta hesitated, but kept looking right at him. "I went in in my bra and panties."

Chris said, "Oh."

"The other girls didn't have bras. They looked at me like I was some kind of strange creature. It was like when we were little and we'd go swimming in the lake, this one girl's mama always made her wear a rubber inner tube. I felt like that little girl."

"The others didn't wear anything?"

"Couple of them didn't."

"So you were upstairs . . ."

"Uh-huh, and Woody came in the bedroom. I asked him to please leave, in a nice way, but he wouldn't."

"You have your clothes on?"

"I didn't have anything on. He comes right in, goes 'Ooops,' but he knew I was there. He had two glasses of champagne with him."

"He make the moves on you earlier?"

"Uh-unh, not till then. He offered me a glass of champagne, I said no thanks, so he drank them both like in two gulps, dropped the glasses and came at me. That's when he said, 'Yes, you're Gittel.' See what I mean? It was fairly obvious what the deal was. I told him no thank you, I didn't need the part that bad. But I could've been talking to the wall."

"What did Woody have on?"

"These tiny trunks you could barely see under his big stomach."

"Did he hit you?"

"Worse, he started kissing me, his mouth all wet and he had this awful breath from drinking so much."

"You scream?"

"For what? Who's gonna do anything? They're all downstairs getting stoned. Woody just threw me down on the bed and got on top of me. You know what he kept saying? 'Boy-oh-boy.' "

"You tried to resist?"

"He turned me over so I couldn't, got my heinie up in the air and my face pressed down in the bedspread. I never felt so humiliated in my life."

Chris didn't want to ask her the next question, but had to. "He sodomized you?"

"No, he turned me over so I couldn't hit him. It wasn't long after that he got off me, rolled over on the bed and went to sleep."

Chris said, "Did he, you know, perform the act?"

"I guess as far as he was concerned. He's laying there, this big tub, he starts snoring with his mouth open. That's a sight's gonna stay with me, if you can picture it."

"What'd you do then?"

"I got up and looked for something to hit him with."

"You didn't, did you?"

"I left."

Chris wasn't sure if that was an answer to his question.

"You didn't tell anybody what happened?"

"I came downstairs, Mark and his friend Robin were gone."

"You know Robin's last name?"

"I wasn't introduced to any of them. The other girls had cute names like Suzie and Duzie. The chauffeur opened the front door for me, gives me a little smile and goes, 'You come back and see us, you hear?' If I had thought of it at the time I would've said, 'Yeah, with cops.' I walked all the way over to Seven Mile and Woodward, went in a place to call a taxi and you know what it was? A motorcycle gay bar. I'll tell you something--what's your name again?"

"Chris."

"Chris, you live half your life in a house the refrigerator's on the front porch and come up here a teenager, I'll tell you, it's a shock to your system."

Chris said, "You're really from a place called Lake Dick?"

"Don't ask me who Dick was," Greta said. "I left there innocent and grew up as fast as I could. I got into acting and have worked for scale or below all my life, waiting for the big break. I was in that movie they were shooting here. I read for a part, it was a scene in a bar where I've just met this cop and I try to guess what he does for a living. The director said, 'Do it again, just like that.' I took the part not knowing anything about the movie or how much I'd get paid. But I had a choice. They tell me I have to go to bed with a fat drunk if I want a part, that's a choice too. I'll do it or I won't, it's up to me. But when I get raped against my will, then I'm gonna make some noise and tell in a court of law what the son of a bitch did to me. I don't care who he is."

Chris said, "Well"--taking his time--"what's gonna make it difficult, you report a one-on-one type of situation two days later, there's no evidence, nothing to use against him outside of your testimony."

Greta was frowning. "What do you mean, evidence?"

"See, ordinarily, if the complainant calls us right away a radio car goes to the scene, the woman is brought to Detroit General for a physical exam and usually her panties are taken as evidence."

"Her panties?"

"They might be torn, they might have traces of semen. Or they find semen, you know, inside the complainant. It's checked for blood type to match against the suspect's. But we don't have any evidence like that, nothing."

"So you aren't gonna do anything."

"I'll call him, have him come in . . ."

"When, next week sometime? I just saw his limousine over at the theater, but you're gonna call him when you feel like it."

"I'll call him as soon as we finish," Chris said, willing to be patient with Greta Wyatt, have a reason to look at her, listen to her talk. "I'll have him come in, ask him if he wants to bring a lawyer. . . . You understand, we can know beyond a reasonable doubt the man's guilty, but if we violate his rights in any way he's gonna walk."

Greta said, "Well, thank you very much," getting up, pulling at her short skirt. "I already tried to see his brother, Mark. 'Greta who?' the girl in the office wants to know. 'What is this about?' I work up my nerve to come here, you're worried about Woody's rights being violated. Hell with mine. I wish you'd taped this so you could play it back and hear what a pathetic little weenie you sound like."

Chris said, "Wait, okay? If I type up your statement, will you sign it?"

It didn't seem likely. She was walking out.

"Greta, if you'll cooperate we can at least bring him in. See if we can get him to admit it."

That turned her around at the door.

"Woody put it a little different. He said if I'd cooperate we could fall in love."