Likely To Die

4

IT WAS EIGHT-THIRTY WHEN I PARKED THE Cherokee on the narrow street in front of the entrance to the District Attorney’s Office and dug into my pocketbook to remove the identification tag that would get me through the metal detector inside the main door. I picked up my third cup of coffee from the vendor who wheeled his cart of bagels and pastries to the corner of Centre Street every morning and walked inside past the security guard who was too engrossed in a skin magazine to notice my arrival.

I liked to get to my desk at least an hour before nine o’clock, when the huge office comes alive with lawyers, cops, witnesses, jurors, and miscreants of every description, in addition to the noise of thousands of telephones ringing constantly throughout the day. In the quiet of the early morning, I can read and respond to motions in my pending matters, screen and analyze the case reports forwarded to me by assistants in the unit, and return some of the calls that inevitably pile up by the end of each working session.

There was no one else on my corridor yet, the executive wing of the Trial Division, so I flipped on the hallway lights, unlocked my door, and passed by my secretary Laura’s desk to hang my coat in the tiny closet in the corner of the room. It felt as though it was fifty degrees in my office, so I slipped off my shoes, climbed on top of Laura’s computer table with a screwdriver to reach the thermostat that some sadistic city engineer had locked into a metal grid out of human reach, and readjusted the heat to a comfortable level so I could settle in at my desk and get to work. My colleagues and I were entrusted with the safety and well-being of the millions of inhabitants and daily visitors to Manhattan but not with the temperature control of our decaying little cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building.

I dialed my deputy’s extension to leave a message on her voice mail. “Hi, Sarah. Call me as soon as you get in. Caught a murder with Chapman at Mid-Manhattan and we’re going to have to do a search on all our cases involving health care professionals, hospitals, and mental institutions. I’m probably going to need some help with my schedule, too.”

Next call was to my paralegals, who shared an office on the adjacent corridor. They were both smart young women who had graduated from college the preceding spring and were apprenticing with me for a year before going on to law school. “There’ll be a meeting in my office at ten. New case with lots to do. Forget about going to that lecture at Police Headquarters today-I’m going to need you here.”

I speed-dialed the number of my friend Joan Stafford, who was undoubtedly in the middle of her daily workout with a personal trainer, and got her machine. “It’s Alex. Scratch the dinner and theater plans for tonight and see if Ann Jordan wants my ticket. I’ve got to work. Apologize to the girls and I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” Joan had bought tickets for a group of friends to the new Mamet play that had opened two weeks earlier, but I would not be able to join them.

Rose Malone, the District Attorney’s executive assistant, was already at her desk when I called to ask for him. “What time is Paul due in?”

“He’s addressing the City Council at nine but I do expect him here before noon. Shall I add you to the list?”

“Please, Rose. I picked up a homicide this morning and he really ought to know about it.”

“He does, Alexandra. He just called me from the car and mentioned that the Commissioner’s Office had alerted him. I don’t know if you’re aware of it but Mrs. Battaglia’s on the board at Mid-Manhattan.”

Just once I’d like to tell Paul Battaglia something that he didn’t already know. The man had more sources than McDonald’s has hamburgers.

“I’ll be at my desk, Rose, so just call when he wants me.”

I flipped through my appointment calendar and made a list of the meetings and witness interviews that Sarah could cover for me, circling in red the handful that I would have to keep for myself. The computer screen lighted up when I logged on and I quickly typed a response to the boilerplate motion my adversary had submitted in a marital rape case in his halfhearted effort to suppress the admissions his client had made to the cops. Laura could format and print it when she got in, and I would proofread and sign it and have it in front of the judge well before his three o’clock deadline for my papers.

By the time I had finished writing, Sarah Brenner turned the corner into my office, both arms full of legal pads and case folders. “This is just a start,” she announced to me, shaking her head. “Let me grab some coffee and come back-the raptor had me up half the night. She’s teething.”

Somehow this meticulous young lawyer with enormous charm and a delightful disposition worked every bit as diligently as I did but managed to do it all while also being the devoted mother of a demanding toddler nicknamed for her uncanny ability to cling to Sarah and wail, usually in the middle of the night when she was trying to sleep. Now she was pregnant with her second, and still had more energy and enthusiasm for our work than half of the lawyers I had ever been shoulder-to-shoulder with during the most intensive investigations.

Sarah came back from the vending machine and sat in the chair on the far side of my desk. “Want to keep her for a few nights? Bring out your maternal instincts and all that?”

“I’ve got my own raptor. Chapman. Woke me up this morning to give me a case. I’d like to keep it, if the boss lets me, but I won’t do it if it’s too much for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not due for another five months. I’m perfectly healthy, and I’d much rather be here than at home.” Sarah hesitated. “I’ve been waiting for something to engage your interest again. You need a tough case to get you moving. I’ll handle all of your overflow. Promise. What’s this one about?”

I explained what I had heard and seen at Mid-Manhattan and what Lieutenant Peterson had assigned everyone to do.

“Just be sure it’s solved before I go into labor. I don’t want any home delivery job, likeRosemary’s Baby, but it’s chilling to think of some madman loose in a hospital. Wait until you start to review the cases we’ve had. I mean, they’re all in different facilities, and over periods of time, but it’s certainly eye-opening.”

I had investigated and tried some of them myself during the years that I had run the Sex Crimes Unit, but we had never tracked them as a single category. Sarah and I started anecdotally from memory, calling up to each other the cases we remembered from recent interviews and precinct referrals. When the paralegals Maxine and Elizabeth joined us at ten, we gave them the task of doing a hand search through our screening sheets, the record of every victim and suspect who had made a complaint about or been the subject of a sexual assault investigation in Manhattan going back almost a decade.

“Pull each one of them in which there is any mention, other than the victim’s examination, of the words ‘hospital,’ ‘doctor,’ ‘nurse,’ ‘technician,’ ‘psychiatric patient,’ or anything else that seems to be related to a medical setting. Xerox copies for Sarah and me. I want everything you can find before I leave here at the end of the day.”

Laura had also arrived shortly after ten and was given the same assignment for her computer files. They didn’t go as far back as our screening sheets but would be a faster check than the tedious exploration of those handwritten documents that Sarah and I had collected since we took over the unit-the most thorough record of sexual deviancy compiled anywhere in the world.

“Anything else I can help with this morning?” Sarah asked.

“No, thanks. I’ve got Margie Burrows coming down any minute. I’m going to reinterview one of her witnesses. She missed a few of the essential points first time around.”

Nothing unusual about that. Burrows had asked to be appointed to our unit and we had given her a couple of cases to work on, under our supervision, to check her skills. She had the requisite compassion and manner for working with rape victims-a trait some prosecutors come up short on-but hadn’t yet developed the critical eye to probe for inconsistencies. It was a delicate balance that some questioners like Sarah Brenner seemed to be born with and others would never be able to learn.

Sarah left as Margie announced herself to Laura. I invited her in and pulled up a third seat for the complaining witness, Clarita Salerios.

I had reviewed Margie’s notes, and knew that Salerios was a forty-seven-year-old woman who worked as a clerk in the shipping office of a large company. She was divorced, with grown children who lived in the Dominican Republic. Recently she had become severely depressed because of the death of her ex-husband, with whom she had tried to reconcile. One of her girlfriends had referred her to asantero -sixty-six-year-old Angel Cassano, who had been arrested for attempting to rape her several weeks earlier.

I introduced myself to Clarita and explained that although Margie had already interviewed her at length, there were some facts that remained unclear to me. Like, why asantero?

“Is no problem, Miss Alex. I tell you whatever you wanna know. I guess you call him a witch doctor.”

It would certainly hold my attention for a few hours and keep my mind from wandering back to Gemma Dogen. Of the thousands of matters I had worked on in the last ten years, none had involved a witch doctor.

Clarita explained that she had gone to the defendant several months ago to help her through her ex’s death. Angel-such an appropriate name for the job description-began by taking her to the cemetery where Señor Salerios was buried, in Queens, and performing some rituals there. Because he was partially blind, Clarita accepted Angel’s request to help escort him back to his apartment in the barrio. On the fourth or fifth trip, he invited her upstairs for an additional ritual.

By mid-February, Clarita and Angel skipped the cemetery visit and she went directly to his apartment. The ritual changed a bit. Angel suggested that the trusting woman take off all her clothes and lie on a blanket he placed on the floor in his room.

“Did you think that was strange, Clarita?”

“No problem, Miss Alex. Is mostly blind, the old guy.”

I nodded my understanding, remembering how many times I had urged cops and colleagues not to be judgmental of rape victims.

He put her in some kind of trance, she explained, and while she was meditating, he kneeled beside her and began to touch her.

“Where, exactly, did he do that, Clarita?”

“In my bagina.”

“I see. Go on.”

After a little while, she asked Angel to stop and he did.

“Wasn’t it unusual for asantero to do that?”

“I ask him why he do it. He tell me the spirits told him to do it to me.”

“Did you believe that, Clarita?”

She laughed. “Not no spirit of Nestor Salerios, I tell you that myself. I know that for sure. He used to beat me if another guy even looked at me, Miss Alex. He’s a jealous man, even if he dead now.”

I glanced down at the arrest report in the case, which the police officer had prepared when Cassano was apprehended. It noted that he had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath.

“Tell me, Clarita, what was Angel drinking that day, at the apartment?” Margie had made no mention of that fact, but that was probably because Clarita had neglected to bring it up.

“Let me think,” she said, looking up at the ceiling as though trying to decide what to tell me. “Rum. I pretty sure it was rum.”

“And did he make you drink it, too?”

“Yeah, he did. He tell me the spirits like it. But I just sip it a little bit. No much.”

Love Potion Number Nine. The only thing missing was the gypsy with the gold-capped tooth, but she’d probably be in it by Clarita’s next visit.

Clarita paid him for the session-I bit my tongue and didn’t ask if she tipped him for the extra ritual he’d thrown in at the end-and left.

The more surprising part of the story is that she called him again to go back two days later. Yes, she admitted, it had crossed her mind that perhaps what he wanted most was some kind of sexual relationship with her and perhaps he wasn’t such a holy man as she had thought. That’s the point in many of these stories at which I am reminded of those children’s puzzles that present a drawing of a neatly ordered room in which one object is inverted or out of place and the caption underneath reads, “What’s wrong with this picture?” In this instance, Clarita had already been sexually abused by Cassano, knew that what he had done was improper and inappropriate, and had been fortunate enough to extricate herself from his advances and walk away a few dollars poorer but without further molestation. Go back for more? Her loneliness, confusion, and vulnerability screamed out at me as they must have also signaled themselves to the blindsantero.

On her next visit, after some rum and a few invocations of the spirit, Clarita again fell into a trance, undressed, and lay on the floor. This time the spell was broken when Angel got on top of her body and tried to penetrate her vagina with his penis.

“I’ve got to stop you here and go back over a few things,” I interrupted. Things that aren’t in Margie’s notes.

“This ‘trance’ you describe, were you conscious? Were you awake and aware of what was going on?” I needed to make sure she had not passed out or been drugged or intoxicated.

“Oh, sure, Miss Alex. This time I keep all my eyes opened.”

“And this time, Clarita, did Angel begin by touching you with his fingers?”

“No, ma’am. I’m no stupid. I woulda got up and slapped him, he did that.”

“So the first thing that happened, he just laid himself down on top of you, to have sex?”

Again, Clarita sought the answer in the ceiling of my office. She looked back at me as she spoke. “Is right.”

Angel either had to have removed his pants, lowered them, or opened his zipper and exposed his penis before actually mounting her-but any of those actions would have given his target the time to save herself from his approach.

“Can you tell me exactly when it was that he took off his pants in order to have sex with you?”

“You’re right, Miss Alex,” Clarita said, pointing a finger in my general direction with a look of consternation on her face. “That’s a berry, berry important question, I think. When did the man take off his pants? I have to think about that some more before I could tell you.”

“We’ll come back to that. It’s okay. I know this is the part that’s hardest for you.” I eased her through the end of the story, where the defendant’s actions finally escalated from merely taking advantage of Clarita to criminal conduct. Once she decided she was not ready to receive the spirits, she pushed Cassano off her body and got to her feet. But when she ran for the door, still naked, the blind witch doctor followed with a machete that he picked up from the kitchen counter. With that, he forced her back into the room and demanded that she give him oral sex. She was only able to escape when she offered to go to the nearby liquor store to buy another bottle of rum and instead called 911 to summon the police.

I thanked her for her cooperation and patience, directed her to the water fountain for a break, and went back over the case with Margie Burrows, clarifying which parts of the incident were chargeable as crimes and which were not.

Laura opened my door to tell me that Rose Malone had called. The District Attorney had arrived and wanted to see me as soon as possible, before his luncheon date with the head of the editorial board ofThe New York Times. I sent Margie on her way with instructions for the grand jury presentation she would make later in the day, grabbed my pad with the notes I had assembled about the Gemma Dogen case, and headed over to Battaglia’s office.

Rose was standing at one of the file cabinets that ringed her office, paging through folders stuffed into the drawers like too many clowns in a Volkswagen. “I’m trying to find the last few op-ed pieces theTimes published on ‘quality of life’ crimes in the city. Paul’s trying to convince them to run a series on our success rate with neighborhood cleanups of marijuana dealers and prostitutes.”

She smiled at me over the sheaf of yellowing papers she was examining and that was my first sign that the D.A. was in a good mood. Rose was my personal early warning system.

“He’ll be right out with you, Alex. He’s just on the phone with his wife.”

I busied myself reviewing the few facts I had learned during my stop at the hospital, knowing that Battaglia was a stickler for detail and bound to want more information than I had here.

His voice boomed out at Rose from within his huge office. “Have you got Cooper yet?”

I answered the question by turning the corner and showing myself to him as he waved me in with the two fingers of his left hand that secured the ever-present cigar.

“If you know what’s good for my domestic tranquillity, you’ll tell your pals in Homicide to solve this one fast. My wife’s running the Mid-Manhattan fundraiser-the spring gala-and the tickets were supposed to go on sale in two weeks. The caterer from the goddamn Plaza called her at eight-thirty this morning when he heard the news asking for a check today to guarantee five hundredsaumon en croûte dinners in case the committee loses supporters over this. So much for the late good doctor. Is it yours?”

“I’d like it to be, Paul. It’s a rape-homicide and I’ve-”

He cut me off, not needing to hear things he already knew. “I take it you’ve been up at the crime scene already?”

“Lieutenant Peterson let Chapman bring me in on it. I stopped by for an update and then came down here to start checking M.O.s and parolees for similarities. I don’t think there’s a hospital in Manhattan where we haven’t had some kind of criminal problem in the past, so there’s a lot to look at.”

Battaglia puffed on the cigar, lifted one foot against the edge of his desk, and pushed back, letting his chair rest on its rear two legs. He stared directly at my face, eyeballing me to make me answer his questions without evasion.

“It’s a perfect assignment for you, Alexandra, if you’re up to it. Even though you got it through the back door. Nobody knows more about sex crimes than you, and I doubt the media glare, which I expect will be pretty intense, will bother you much.”

He left off the phrase “after the last time” but I met his gaze and returned it, telling him that I was looking forward to getting to work with the Squad.

“You’ll report straight to me on this one. And if Chapman gets any of his creative ideas, like dressing you up in a nurse’s uniform and having you work the midnight shift to try to gather intelligence, you’d make me very happy if you resist the urge.”

I laughed and assured Battaglia that I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that, while making a mental note to suggest to the team that we consider admitting Maureen Forester, my favorite decoy detective, to the neurological floor of Mid-Manhattan Hospital as a patient-for observation.