Night Watch

NINETEEN

I tried to catch up with McKinney as he headed around the corner toward the conference room. “Where are you going?”

“Ellen called. She says you’re making Blanca flip out. She wants some help.”

“Look, Pat. That’s how Mercer and I work. We’ve got to clean up the stuff that’s extraneous to the case so it doesn’t compromise what she’s going to testify to under oath in the grand jury. She’ll settle back down. You can’t have her lie tomorrow and then double back on it when she’s being prepped for trial.”

McKinney stopped short of the conference room door and put his hands on his hips. “You let Lem be all up in your face like that time after time. Did you at least get anything out of it?”

“Nothing. But about Blanca-”

“As far as I’m concerned, Alex, you could have taken a rowboat back from France and we’d still be in the same position on this case without what the district attorney refers to as your expertise. I’ll be sitting in for the next few hours. It’s kid gloves in regard to Blanca from this point on, you get that?”

He opened the door and Ellen Gunsher couldn’t conceal her pleasure at seeing him. Blanca and Mercer were drinking coffee and snacking on something. They hadn’t resumed working in the ten minutes I was out of the room.

McKinney picked up my pad and pen and moved my things to the far corner of the table, out of Blanca’s direct line of sight. He let Mercer remain beside her, and he set himself up next to Ellen.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Blanca,” Pat said. “Ellen will be the one asking the questions, today and in the grand jury. The detective and I may have some additional things we’d like to know, but it will be mostly Ellen, and it will be only about what happened when you went into Mr. Gil-Darsin’s room to clean it. Are you okay with that?”

“What about her?” Blanca tilted her head in my direction without making eye contact with me.

“Alex is here as an observer. That’s all. We want you to be comfortable.”

Blanca looked at me head-on and smiled. I may have aggravated her for the first hour, but she knew she had won the second round.

“Remember what I just told you,” Mercer said. “All the words have to come from you. We can’t suggest them to you. We can’t change them. Nobody’s here to judge what you said or what you did, we just want the truth.”

So there had clearly been discussion advising Ellen not to put words in the accuser’s mouth. Maybe that would help this time.

“I want you to tell us everything that happened from the minute you showed up at the hotel for work on Saturday,” Ellen said. “In as much detail as you remember.”

“I don’t have to talk about my boyfriend? Or how I got asylum?”

“No, you don’t. Just about Saturday.”

Blanca Robles began with the time she arrived at the Eurotel to start her workday. The time clock backed up her arrival, and video captured her in the neat uniform in which she began her rounds. In the two hours that followed, we got an exquisitely detailed version of the day’s events, now including an entry into the room adjacent to MGD’s before she was summoned to clean his suite.

I made notes about slight inconsistencies-what most prosecutors liked to call the hallmarks of truth-and areas of inquiry for Ellen to consider.

We took another break at 2 P.M., when we were working Blanca Robles hard through the occurrence of the assault. Then while everyone stretched and left the room to freshen up, I retreated to my office and closed the door.

I’d had no calls from either Luc or Mike, and I was uneasy about being kept completely in the dark. I couldn’t think of any reason not to call the restaurant to see what Luc was up to. Surely the Brooklyn homicide detectives would have contacted him by this time.

I used my cell phone to dial Le Relais, and waited for the hostess to answer. When she did, I counted on the crackling noise in the connection to make my voice indistinguishable from any other American calling to speak with Luc.

“Good evening. Is Monsieur Rouget there?”

“No, madame. He’s not here at the moment.”

Eight o’clock in Mougins was the height of the dinner service, and his absence would have been remarkable.

“Has he gone home?”

“No, madame. Monsieur Rouget didn’t come to the restaurant this evening. I haven’t seen him today.”

“Merci, mademoiselle. Thank you very much.”

“Is there any message?”

“No, thank you.”

I hung up and dialed Luc’s house. After five rings, I put down my phone.

There was a knock on the door and Mercer let himself in. “You ready to finish up with Blanca?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s get her through this one, beginning to end. Then you and I can make a punch list of what we need to run down.”

“Have you heard from Mike?”

“Nah. He must be sleeping off last night’s job.”

“Did he tell you?” I rubbed my eyes and looked at the floor.

“About the matchbox? Yes, he did, Alex. Just stay focused on what we’re doing here. Don’t tie yourself up in knots over this.”

“You think Blanca’s telling the truth?” I asked.

“It’s not her strong suit. But she’s holding her own on the twenty minutes in the hotel room. Nothing shakes her off that story. And the DNA doesn’t lie. We know there was a sexual encounter, and so far Blanca’s the only story in town. C’mon back in, Alex. We’ll wind this down shortly.”

Everyone settled in around the table again when Mercer and I got to the conference room. Blanca had reached the part of the narrative where she retracted her original statement about cowering in the hallway as she waited for MGD to leave. Instead, she returned to the adjacent suite where she had left some of her cleaning equipment, as the computerized record of the swipe of her key card would ultimately confirm. Minutes later, confident that her assailant had departed, she reentered his suite.

Ellen wasn’t bothered by that fact, but Mercer didn’t like it any better than I did.

“Why did you go back into his room?” he asked, as gently and non-accusatorily as he could.

Blanca was silent.

“I mean, weren’t you afraid he might still be in there?”

Most victims would go to any extreme not to be confronted by their rapist again.

“He was in a hurry to leave. I knew that.”

“But suppose he’d forgotten his phone, say, or his briefcase, and returned to get it. Didn’t that possibility frighten you?”

Blanca cocked her head but didn’t answer.

“Did you touch anything in the room?” he asked.

Blanca had reentered the crime scene before reporting the attack. It was impossible to know whether she had compromised any of the physical evidence, intentionally or not.

She hesitated before answering. “No, I didn’t touch anything. It made me sick to see the bed where he attacked me. I just looked around and then I left.”

“There are two bathrooms in the suite, Blanca,” I said. “Did you go into either of those, to see whether they needed to be cleaned?”

She shook her head from side to side. “I told the police no. I never went into either one of them.”

So she went in for the express purpose of changing the linens-sheets and towels-but now says she didn’t do that. In his softest voice, Mercer asked, “Did he leave any money for you-like a tip-on the dresser or night table?”

That idea had not even occurred to me. What if the exchange had been sex for money, and Gil-Darsin had promised to leave cash in the room? That would be a strong motivator for Blanca to return, and a reason for her to get back at him by crying “rape” if he had skipped out without paying.

“Are you accusing me of taking money, Detective Mercer? Is that what you think? I’m telling you again this isn’t about the money,” Blanca said, working herself into a real huff.

“I was talking about a tip, Blanca, for your housekeeping services.”

“And one more thing-and I don’t mean no offense to you personally, Detective, but this is ’xactly how I feel. Nobody-nobody-could pay me enough to put my lips on a black man. You understand me?”

Everyone around the table froze. Class, power dynamics, and international politics were all in the mix-and Blanca Robles had just thrown in a wild card that would offend almost every juror in Manhattan.

“Blanca-we need to talk about this,” Pat said.

There was a knock on the door and Laura poked her head in the room. “Mickey Diamond just called from the courthouse steps,” she said, referring to the veteran crime reporter for the New York Post. “He wants to know if Battaglia will comment about the four o’clock press conference.”

“What conference?” Pat McKinney asked as Mercer walked to the window and looked down.

“Law and Order filming downstairs again?” I asked.

“This time it’s a reality show,” Laura said. “It’s called The Evening News.”

“What now?”

“Mickey says Byron Peaser’s taking center stage any minute. He’s waiting for Ms. Robles to come down.”

Blanca rose to her feet, picked up her purse, and gave us all a very self-satisfied smile.

Pat McKinney reached out his arm toward Blanca. “What’s this about? We’ve done everything possible to protect your identity and keep the wolves away from your door. You’re not appearing at any press conference, no matter who’s calling the shots.”

“Peaser’s filed his lawsuit against Gil-Darsin,” Laura said. “Fifty million dollars.”

“What?” McKinney was practically screaming. “Before we go to the grand jury?”

“Blanca called Peaser from my office this morning,” I said. “She told him we’d caught her in some lies. This is a stunt to hold Battaglia’s toes to the fire, to keep the pressure on him to get an indictment sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t want you out there with him, Blanca. There’s no reason for you to go public at this point. Do you understand me?” McKinney said.

“Mr. Peaser’s my lawyer, Mr. Pat. He believes in me,” she said, scanning the room as she stared each one of us in the eye. “He’s the only one looking out for my good.”