In the front of the car, Marino’s mouth ran like a faucet. Every story was twisted to make him look good. Now he was telling the uniformed cop driving about a coffee shop owned by his father-in-law.
“Sully’s Cup. Roosevelt and Union in Flushing. You know it?”
The uniform had heard of it. “But everybody knows Sully. He’s really your in-law?”
“You know it.” Then Marino made a joke and cackled like a hyena.
Peyton closed his eyes and wished himself back in the prison near Lake Erie, far from here.
“Last stop, jail!” Marino laughed as the other guy squeezed into a spot. “This is your stop, Doe.”
They were calling him John Doe because he wouldn’t give his name. What was the sense in giving the cops anything? Peyton knew he didn’t have much power, but the name thing was a small token of it. With no ID on him, they’d have to work awhile to figure him out.
By then, he hoped he’d have figured out a way back to Lakeview Shock. This arrest might be a good way back, but Peyton didn’t want to lose the little bit of control he had.
They chained him to a chair in the middle of a big room at the place they called Central Booking. At least now he could close his bad eye, which was getting all dried from being awake too long, and that could be bad. Cops all around looked right through him, like he was invisible. They took all his stuff, not that he had a lot, but he was worried about his walking stick. He didn’t like the way the cop called Marino had played around with it.
And the way Marino the cop kept bragging and pointing at him, showing him off like he was a trophy. “I got him!” he kept saying. “He walked right into our stakeout. Imagine dat!”
And then Peyton tuned in and listened to the garbage that was running from Marino’s mouth.
“Sarge, we got the serial subway rapist here.”
“Rapist?” Peyton’s head rose slowly. “You’re crazy.”
Marino cocked his head smugly. “I know, you’re innocent, right?”
Peyton pressed his eye closed and dropped out again, back to the closet to sort this out. They were trying to get him for raping someone? First, he didn’t do it.
Second, they didn’t allow violent prisoners at Lakeview Shock. He couldn’t ride this one out if he wanted to get back there.
“I didn’t rape anyone,” he said.
No one answered. No one seemed to hear him, but as he retreated, their words began to fit together like puzzle pieces.
Fits the description ... height and weight, black man, no facial hair ...
Duval argued that Peyton didn’t have the strength to take down those women with his limp and bum leg. “Did you see? I think his whole right side is bad.”
“That’s an act,” Marino argued. “I can tell.”
“Better talk to the DA’s office. See if they can make it stick.”
“Will do.” Marino cackled again, that sick noise, and said something about having friends in high places.
And suddenly Peyton was being poked and jostled out of the chair. “Come on, Mr. Doe,” Marino said, standing over him. The light behind him made the top of his head shine. It gave a sharpness to his cheeks and a pointed edge to his beard.
Just like the devil.
“You’re going down, buddy,” Marino said. “Way, way down to the Tombs.”
Chapter 6
“Change is good,” Keesh said under his breath. Not that any of the other prosecutors in nearby cubicles of the Complaint Room would care that he was talking to himself.
He turned away from the open document—a complaint he’d drafted based on a misdemeanor arrest. The suspect would be arraigned in the morning when the judges were out of bed and back on the bench. Judges no longer had night court, but the district attorney’s office needed staff to process intake twenty-four, seven. Such was the business of being a prosecutor. Would it be any better in Queens? He tried to imagine life without Manhattan. If he accepted the job offer, he would live and work in Queens. No more backup at the Midtown Tunnel, no more commutes in on the Long Island Rail Road. No more mosh pit on the seven train.
No more Bernie.
That was the biggest downside.
He’d also miss the Christmas lights in the winter and downing lunch as he walked through the park in the spring, but he figured they’d have lights and parks in Kew Gardens, too.
Cutting out Bernie would be the problem.
Of course, they would vow to stay friends, see each other on weekends, call, e-mail, text, tweet. But none of those synthetic forms of life made up for being with someone.
So, if he took the offer to move to the Queens District Attorney’s Office, the hardest part would be slashing through his relationship with Bernie.
They’d met during law school in that horrific class every law student complained about, the one where the professor called on students randomly and expected them to know the fact, issue, holding and rule of any one of a thousand torts. She’d been tight with Amy Silverstein already, friends from high school, and for the first week or so, he’d been content to watch.
Like an art student, he’d studied Bernie from various angles.
From the back, her hair was the main attraction, thick and bouncy and shiny. Like a precious metal, it gleamed with various hues: bronze, gold, and copper. From the side, you couldn’t miss the cute Irish pug he called her “ski slope nose.” Its cuteness was offset by her strong cheekbones and chin. Seeing her prominent profile, he had imagined her arguing a case before a judge.
But by far, Bernie’s outstanding feature, her most unforgettable quality, was her eyes. Her dark brown eyes seemed wise for their age. Those eyes had the ability to see past the physical façade to people’s souls. For a person in pain, Bernie’s eyes were a window of compassion, and though he always teased her that she was a pushover for a sob story, he cherished her gift for empathy.
Observing her back in that university lecture hall, he could tell she and Amy were tight, and he wasn’t about to play fifth wheel.
But one day, Amy didn’t show up for class. He waited in the seat behind Bernie and, as the professor went to take the podium, he slid into the empty seat beside her.
Her quick glance was meant to dismiss him.
That was disappointing, but he could deal.
As the lecture began, he flipped open his notebook and wrote the date. Beyond the weird vibe of sitting next to a very pretty girl, it was any other day.
As the professor gave final notes, he felt her beside him and realized her eyes had strayed to his notebook.
She gulped, suppressing a giggle. Then the noise of conversation and scurrying feet took over, and she let out a full-on laugh, bubbly and frenetic, like a bottle of seltzer opened too fast.
“Nice doodles,” she said.
He glanced down at the sketches that framed his notes, a landscape of geese flying in front of sunsets, a pirate ship riding a curling wave, a planet covered with Monopoly-style houses. “I like to keep my pen moving,” he said. “Especially in classes like this, when we’re not allowed to have laptops.”
She pointed to one in the corner. “This is my favorite.”
It was a sketch of a dragon, a goofy one with a pudgy paunch and only a small flame puffing from its mouth, which was missing two front teeth. He had captioned it in childish scrawl: “I drewd a dragon.”
“You can keep the flaming swords,” she said, “but my niece would enjoy that dragon.”
“Then she should have him.” He tore off the corner of the page, handed it to her, then glanced at the flip side. “And if she’s interested, she can brush up on Vaughan versus Men-love.”
“Thanks.” She pressed the scrap of paper to her heart, as if it were a precious thing. “She’s four, but you never know when a classic tort will come in handy. I’m Bernie Sullivan, by the way.”
“Rashid Kerobyan, but my friends call me Keesh.”
“Okay, Keesh. Since you’ve gifted me with this fine etching, let me get you a
latte or something.”
“Coffee would be good.”
They grabbed coffee, then lunch. He’d gone home to study that day, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her, about that unpredictable spark of energy Bernie possessed. She agreed to meet him at the library to study together. The next day they brought Amy and a few others into the study group. By the end of that semester he was sneaking her into his parents’ house whenever they went off for conferences or vacations. He’d had girlfriends before, but Bernie was the closest he’d found to a real partner.
They were great together, but it was too good to last, that was how Keesh looked at it. When his parents took them out to dinner after graduation, Dr. Ara Kerobyan did not hide his dislike of Bernie, who was most decidedly not an Armenian girl. Afterward, there’d been a showdown with his father. “That’s racism, pure and simple,” he told his father. “It’s about preserving a culture,” his father defended, his dark eyes penetrating and demanding as always. “Isn’t it bad enough that you did not go into the medical field?”
I’m not you, Keesh wanted to tell the old man. But his father did not allow him the luxury of a real argument, point for point. Instead, he had simply scowled and turned back to his computer, “the glue pot,” Keesh’s mother called it.
When Keesh shared the story with Bernie, he’d expected her to rally with him. Damn the torpedoes and your old man, too. But instead, she had admitted to getting flack from her own family. Her father, who in his career had served in Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the country, could not be comfortable with having Keesh in his home.
“It’s because of nine-eleven,” Bernie said. “I never thought of my father as a man with biases, but he keeps going back to the Twin Towers. When I tell him that being Middle Eastern doesn’t make you a terrorist, he clams up and tells me that I don’t understand because I wasn’t at Ground Zero.”
The small fissure in his gut, the wound begun by his father’s words, was torn wider by Bernie’s words. She was falling for their fathers’ brands of racism. She was willing to let cultural differences screw up the best thing that had ever happened to him.
That realization had hurt almost as much as his father’s demands.
He had tried to talk it out with Bernie, tried to make a case for them standing on their own two feet and doing what they thought was right. But in the end, practicality won out. Two law school students living at home, eating Mom and Dad’s food—yeah, they had needed to keep their parents’ support.
But they had stayed friends, good friends.
Bernie still framed his days, the way a simple frame could bring order and longevity to a picture of your life. But what would happen when Bernie faded from the picture?
Because he was going to take that job in Queens. He’d be a fool not to. They were offering a promotion and a place in their Trial Division, a spot that rarely opened up here in Manhattan.
“Knock, knock.”
He turned at the sound of Bernie’s voice and found her tapping on the wall of the cubicle. Her hair was pulled back in a scrunchie—she did that to look older and more authoritative—and she was wearing the tortoiseshell-frame glasses that always reminded him of the sexy schoolteacher who had to reprimand her pupil for being naughty.
God help him, he still wanted her.
“Hey. What’s up?” he asked.
“My question first. What happened with the interview? Did you ace it, or what?”
He straightened his necktie. “They want me to start April first.”
“Keesh! That’s great.” She came around the half wall and plopped in the visitor’s chair. “I knew they’d love you. Who doesn’t, right?”
Well, you, for starters.
“But I don’t know if I can allow you to go. Our study group is really breaking up, with Amy in private practice and now you going to Queens.”
“Well. We are out of law school now. All three of us passed the bar. I’d call the study group a success.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Wise guy. But I’m here on a mission.” She leaned to her side and crossed her legs, and though her pantsuit and black pinstripe jacket were supremely professional, he could remember a time when she had stretched out on his bed in a similar position, nearly naked. Those were some sweet days, and naughty nights.
He blinked, resolving to rein it in and focus on what she was saying.
“I just got a call from my brother-in-law Tony. He said that you caught a case of his. The complaint report would have just come in an hour ago.”
Keesh moved the mouse and clicked open his files. “What was it about?”
“Tony thinks he’s found the serial subway rapist.”
“That would be the case of a lifetime. How’d I miss that one?”
“Look under Tony Marino?”
He found the file. “Yeah, I asked him to release the suspect. Not really a suspect. No witnesses, but this says the man is disabled. Apparent limp and weakness on the right side. Some facial paralysis. Walks with a cane, and apparently this condition is new. From our forensics, the bruising and injury patterns, we think our rapist is right-handed. This guy isn’t taking anyone down with his right hand.”
“Mmm.” She frowned. “It sounds pretty clear-cut, but Tony wanted me to ask you if you’d reconsider.”
Keesh sat back in his chair and winced. “I hate to arraign a suspect when I got nothing on him. A black man walking in the subway at night reeks of racial profiling. That’s not great detective work, and it will probably end up being a waste of time and money. Not to mention a miscarriage of justice.”
“Maybe Tony knows something that isn’t in the complaint report,” she said, her mouth twisted to one side in an expression of doubt.
“Maybe.” The one time he’d met this Tony, Keesh hadn’t liked him much. Still, he was part of Bernie’s family, even if by marriage. “Why don’t you call him? Have Tony and his partner come up and talk with us.”
She smiled. “He’s on his way over.” And then she let out a laugh, that bubbling, contagious laugh. “I knew you’d do me a favor. Thanks, Keesh.”
She started to get up, but he held up a hand. “Sit tight there, missy. If this case is any good, I’ll need your legal-eagle mind.”
“If this case is legit, Tony will make detective and he’ll be even more intolerable than he is now.” When he shot her a look of surprise, she covered her mouth. “Did I say that? Bad Bernie. Bad.”
Chapter 7
Sitting across from him, shooting the bull, she felt dread begin to seep in, like seawater into a leaky boat. So Keesh was really leaving. Without Keesh, the office would be drab and cold, and when she rotated into duty in the Complaint Room ... she couldn’t imagine this frenzied process without him.
Keesh was her hero, and for a girl surrounded by men in blue, that was significant. Dad was legendary in the precincts he’d worked in; it seemed like everyone in the department knew Sully, the cop who’d worked till they forced him out, then opened a coffee shop right across the street from his beloved precinct. James did the right thing in his quiet way, and Brendan was always a helper, too.
But Keesh, broad-shouldered, beanpole slim in a suit, with eyes as dark as midnight and a thick five o’clock shadow that could give her an abrasive facial when he held her close ... no, those intimate days were over. But no one said she wasn’t allowed to get a jones from watching the smart, quick way he worked a case without diminishing anyone involved in it. Keesh stood his ground, but she’d never seen him yell, a feat in the very vocal playground of the district attorney’s office. He was her go-to guy, a touchstone for ideas, a safety net when she fell off the deep end.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without you hanging around here.” She kept it light, knowing he’d only feel guilty if she shared her true dismay.
His dark eyes remained steady, unfazed. “You’ll get some real work done for the first time in years.”
“Catch up on my files, maybe?” She capt
ured his scratch pad and started doodling on it. “But that’s the big joke. You never catch up in the DA’s office. It’s like products riding on a conveyor belt. The bad guys just keep on coming.” As she spoke she drew a sad face with teardrops falling from its eyes. The caption read: We’ll miss you, Keesh!
“But you’ve got a lot going on here,” he said. “You’ve started the advocacy group for Women Against Violence, and you’re making yourself a specialist in that area. People are starting to come to you when they land a domestic violence or rape case. One day you’ll be giving expert testimony in that area.”
She frowned, sliding the paper over to him. “Nice speech, but I’m still going to miss you.”
He checked out her doodle. “Nice sentiment, but that’s a terrible illustration.”
As he spoke she noticed Tony across the Complaint Room. His skin was the color of roasted squash. Unnatural. She waved him over, wondering how MK felt about her husband’s new look.
“Hey, sweetheart! How’s it going?” Tony reached out to her for a kiss on the cheek.
Bernie didn’t mind the kiss, but she didn’t like being called sweetheart. Thank God Keesh had caught this complaint instead of her. Generally, the junior prosecutors manning the Complaint Room worked their shift evaluating felony and misdemeanor arrests and drafting complaints for the cases they deemed worthy of taking before a judge for arraignment, when formal charges were read. And once an attorney caught a case in the Complaint Room, they usually handled it until the final disposition.
The one time that Bernie hadn’t been able to extract herself from working with Tony, it hadn’t gone well. He’d wanted to charge an inebriated stockbroker with assault just because the guy had cursed him out. Much as she appreciated Tony’s gusto, his chauvinism and stubbornness infuriated her.
Keesh rose and shook hands with Tony. “Officer Marino.”
“Tony. We’ve met before.”
“So you remember I go by Keesh.” Keesh pulled over an extra chair. “So tell me about this suspect.”
The Daughter She Used To Be Page 4