“Shut the fuck up wit’ alla this confirm and analyze shit, Rodriquez! You’re tellin’ me that not one but two fuckin’ scum bags are loose on our kids and the cops are what? WHAT? Talk to me, Rodriquez! Tell me the cops at least know as much as you know!” He had crushed his hat between his meaty hands and his eyes were wide and wild and spittle had formed at the corners of his mouth.
I raised my palms and shrugged. “I don’t know what the cops know or don’t know, Carmine. Not for certain. My guess is that yeah, they know they’re looking for two different guys.” I thought about what Dr. Bader had said: This is New York City, after all. “I can’t explain why they’re working it like they’re working it, but I guess they’ve got their reasons. I can tell you that as the parent of a victim, you’re entitled to certain information. Like the police report. Like the hospital report. I need that stuff, Carmine, from you and from all the other parents. I already talked to Arlene Edwards and Bert and Angie Calle and I’m going to talk to the other parents...”
“Whatta you want with the police report and the hospital report? That’s about my little girl, Rodriquez. Whatta you gonna do wit’ that?”
“Dr. Gertrude Bader, at NYU, is the specialist I told you about. She studies the brains of these psychos. She knows what makes them tick. She can do what’s called a profile. Can tell me who to look for. She can tell me for certain, once she reads all those reports, that there are two different perps.”
“What kinda doctor is this Bader broad?”
I winced. I could envision Dr. Bader hearing herself being called a broad. “She’s a psychiatrist and she teaches in the med school.”
“Same kind as Doc Mason, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Which means she’s gotta keep confidential anything she reads in those reports, right? Just like Doc Mason?”
I wanted to smack myself. My heart was breaking for fat, mean Carmine Aiello. “That’s right, Carmine. Your daughter’s privacy is totally and completely protected.”
He nodded. “I’ll get the fuckin’ reports. First thing t’morra mornin’ I’ll get ‘em, you can count on that.” He opened and unfolded his crushed fedora, as if it were a natural act, and attempted to smooth out the wrinkles. “By the way, Rodriquez,” he said on his way to the door. “What made you change your mind?”
“About what, Carmine?” I asked.
“About findin’ these fuckin’ rapists, that’s what. You weren’t gonna do that, remember?” His snarl was back in full force. This was the Carmine I knew and hated.
I remembered and I didn’t know what changed my mind and I told that to Carmine. Then something like the truth sprang from my mouth. “Maybe it’s my turn to shit or get off the pot. Which reminds me. I’m pulling Jill Mason’s surveillance. Nobody will try anything with her covered like that, and it’s time to get out of your pocket.”
He nodded and scratched his balding head. “Yeah, my pocket’s feelin’ the pinch, no question about it. But I gotta tell you what a piece of shit I’ll feel like if somethin’ happens to that lady, Rodriquez.”
“Not a goddamn thing is going to happen to that lady, Carmine, I promise you that! Not a goddamn thing is gonna happen to anybody, especially to any more little girls!”
He gave me weird look, shook my hand, of all things, and exited into the bitter cold. Almost as if I’d stepped outside my body—like in those descriptions of near death experiences—and hovered above, I watched and listened to myself explode and was surprised, amazed, and even a little bit impressed. I didn’t get angry and emote—it wasn’t my style; and I certainly didn’t make a habit of pretending to be a knight in shining armor, ready to gird up and ride to the rescue of damsels in distress. So what the hell was I doing? How the hell did I think I could prevent harm from coming to Jill Mason? How did I imagine that I could prevent another rape or murder of a little girl on the lower East Side? I could not. But with every cell in my body I wanted to be able to protect them.
And then I crashed back down to reality and returned to myself and understood that the cause of my reaction was Yolanda and whatever was tormenting her. And tormenting me. Because for the first time since we’d met, I was not tethered to her. She’d broken away from me and I was drifting.
I some how had failed to protect Yolanda, to keep her safe, so perhaps I could save and protect the others. And if not that, then I could find the piece of shit who was doing the harm.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I woke up to ringing and pounding. Everywhere. In my head and at the door and from wherever the telephones were. After incredible effort, I managed to sit up and open my eyes. I was in my bedroom, on the bed, on top of the covers, fully clothed. Including shoes. The phone was ringing, the doorbell was buzzing and somebody was pounding on my door which, being steel, sounded like a warm-up for the end of the world. And all of it was happening, simultaneously, inside my head.
I held it in my hands and squeezed, praying that all sound would cease, but God doesn’t answer the prayers of drunks. I’d learned that from my favorite aunt in response to the behavior of my favorite uncle. Now I knew how Tio Enrique felt when he held his head and prayed for deliverance. What I didn’t understand was why he subjected himself to this experience on a weekly basis. I groaned loudly, which was a mistake, and inched my self toward the edge of the bed, far enough so I could dangle my legs over the side. I released my head and placed my hands on the bed and pushed myself to my feet. I prayed some more: that if I passed out, I’d fall back on to the bed instead of on to the floor. But I only swayed, and wondered whether that meant my prayer was answered. I didn’t see the phone that lived in the bedroom.
I answered the door first, since I didn’t know where to look for the phone that lived in the living room if it wasn’t on the table or on top of the television. I’ve never liked phones that didn’t hang on walls or sit on tables and I was promising myself to be truer to my personal likes when Mike Smith barreled into my living room.
“Man, answer the damn phone!”
“Can’t find it, Mike,” I mumbled and leaned into the wall as he brushed past me toward the sofa. He tossed about the pillows and some newspapers and picked up the handset.
“What!” he shouted into the instrument. “Who is this?” He looked meanly at me. “He’s here but he’s in no shape to talk.” He gave me another look. “‘Cause he’s sick, that’s why. Got some kind of virus. Or maybe food poisoning. Puking his guts up. But I’ll tell him you called.” And with that he disconnected the call and tossed the phone back on to the sofa. “Will you push the buzzer and let Eddie in the building, please?”
He grimaced but I understood that it was supposed to be a crocodile smile and I pushed the door-release button. “How’d you get in if Eddie couldn’t?”
“None of yours,” he growled, sounding mean enough to make me think he meant it. “I’ve been calling you for two hours! You stink! What the hell are you doing drunk?”
“None of yours,” I growled back, sounding considerably less ominous. “I’ll be back,” I said, feeling a lot like I really and truly had either a virus or food poisoning. “You could make some coffee,” I added, and headed toward the bathroom as I heard Eddie’s feet pounding up the stairs. I stood under the shower alternating hot and cold for as long as I could stand it and by the time I dried and dressed, my head was beginning to clear and my stomach to settle. That’s when I began trying to remember when, how, and where I’d gotten drunk enough to sleep in my clothes on top of the covers. I remembered three round-trips between Sandra’s place in Brooklyn and Yolanda’s, and a dozen phone calls to both places from several bars. I didn’t remember much else and didn’t think I wanted to. I smelled coffee.
“What are you two doing here?” I stumbled through the living room and into the kitchen, where Eddie and Mike were sitting at the table, each with a mug of coffee and a third waiting for me. I sat down.
“Are you OK, Hermano?” Eddie asked, concern an
d worry darkening the deep furrows of his face.
My hands shook slightly as I lifted my coffee cup and they both noticed. I drank a few beers or a few glasses of wine on a semi-regular basis. I almost never drank to excess, and so rarely got drunk that I could remember—and count on very few fingers—each time. Anybody who knew me for longer than a month knew this about me. Mike Smith and Eddie Ortiz had known me for many years. “I don’t feel so wonderful this minute, but I’m not out of control. What are you guys doing here?” I asked again.
They exchanged a visual signal before Mike answered. “We don’t think it’s such a good idea to cut Dr. Mason loose. We think there’s a squirrel watching her, looking for a chance to make a move.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to put enough pressure on my brain to remember fully what message I’d left for them regarding Jill Mason, because obviously I had, at some point before I’d begun drinking, left them a message. “Why am I just hearing about this squirrel?”
“‘Cause we really didn’t have anything to tell you,” Eddie said dryly. “We notice this guy almost every day, in a different spot, always working real hard not to seem like he’s there and not to seem like he’s watching Mason. He hasn’t made a move so there was nothing to tell. But he’s there and he’s watching. We don’t want to cut her loose, Phil.”
“No choice. No more money,” I said, and chugged the rest of the coffee, hoping to jump-start my heart muscle. “Anyway, this limo service job has kicked into high gear, and there may even be a second company interested. I need you there.” I got up from the table, got the coffee pot, refilled all the cups, and sat back down.
They looked at each other again, like some old married couple who no longer need words to communicate, but I couldn’t read the message. “Who’s Sandra?” Mike asked.
I jumped and sloshed coffee out of the cup on to my hand, and felt the burn. “Why?” I asked, licking the coffee off my hand.
“That was her on the phone,” Mike said, an odd note in his voice. “She said for you to call her as soon as possible at her grandmother’s place.”
Sandra’s grandmother was sacred to her, and her Sugar Hill home was sanctuary. My hands began shaking again as I considered the gravity of her asking me to call her there. I’d met Mrs. Gillespie, had visited her home on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday party a few years back, but I’d never received the slightest indication that to call there would be acceptable. Sandra was one of those people who had definite boundaries, and her grandmother definitely was off limits to everybody except immediate family, Yolanda, and God.
“Is there something we ought to know?” Mike asked.
“Anything we can help you with?” Eddie added.
“I don’t know,” I answered with more honesty than I’d expected or wanted to share. “Something’s wrong with Yolanda and I don’t know what it is.” I knew there was no love lost between the two of them and Yo, but they understood and accepted her importance to me. “But when I find out, if I need your help, I’ll ask.”
“You want us to stop by the office and check on her?”
I shook my head. “She’s not there,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly.
Eddie shifted in his seat. He heard everything I hadn’t said. “Where is she?” he asked in a deceptively calm voice.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said, more slowly, “but when I get a fix on what’s going on, I promise I’ll fill you in.”
They stood up in unison and each man offered me his hand. I shook their hands and thanked them and still was drunk enough that I could have said something about valuing their friendship but they both were too macho for that kind of talk. So instead I told Mike he made a damn decent cup of coffee.
“Have to,” he growled. “It’s a necessary condition for a long and happy marriage.”
So much for macho, I thought, as they slammed the door behind them, leaving me with a solid reminder that I’d be days ridding myself of this hangover. I looked around for the phone and spied it nestled neatly in its base on the coffee table. I picked it up to dial and realized that I no idea what Sandra’s grandmother’s phone number was. Shit!
My hands shook again as I hauled the hundred-pound Manhattan phone directory from the bottom of the kitchen cabinet and lugged it into the living room. They steadied a bit as I leafed through the G’s until I reached GILLESPIE. I wouldn’t have thought it was a common enough name for there to be so many of them. I ran my finger down a couple of columns until I found the one on Edgecombe Avenue that I was looking for. And my hand shook again as I punched the numbers. Sandra answered.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Are you all right?” she asked, in kind of a whisper.
“No, Goddammit, I am not all right!” I didn’t whisper, and paid the price. Hammers pounded in my head and caused lights to flash behind my eyeballs.
“I teach all day today. I won’t be finished until three. I can meet you at your place by four, if that’s convenient.”
“What the hell is convenient, Sandra? Convenient would have been for somebody to tell me last night what the hell is going on so I wouldn’t have died of worry and fear. Convenient would be for you to tell me right now what the hell is going on instead of talking to me about your goddamn classes!”
“Phil, please. I know and I’m sorry.” She still was speaking in the kind of low voice that indicated she either didn’t want to be overheard, or she was trying not to disturb or wake someone. Her grandmother? Or Yolanda? “Will you meet me?”
“Whatever, Sandra,” I snarled and hung up the telephone. Now that I knew that Yolanda was safe, if not necessarily sound, I allowed my anger full reign. They were treating me like some miscellaneous acquaintance instead of like a person of crucial importance in Yolanda’s life. Hell, in both their lives!
I re-played last night in my mind and didn’t gain any more insight into what had triggered Yolanda’s escape—there was no other word for it—from the office, but I did recall that after Carmine left I called the other parents and asked them to do what I’d asked of Arlene Edwards and of Bert and Angie Calle and of Carmine: get the police and hospital reports regarding the rapes of their daughters. That knowledge calmed and pleased me. I hadn’t been so out of touch that I’d lost all sense of self and of responsibility. That had occurred later in the evening, when I began drinking and riding the goddamn train back and forth to Brooklyn and generally behaving like an idiot.
I shook my head, hoping to clear it of idiot-related memories, and readied myself to go out into the world. Mike and Eddie had straightened up the living room, so all I had to do was turn off the coffee pot and put the cups into the sink. I’d wash up later, since I had to be home at four o’clock. I’d bring in dinner and make it an early evening. Exactly what was called for to eradicate a monster hangover. Then, as I was thinking of Mike and Eddie, I remembered their message: some “squirrel” was keeping watch on Jill Mason. A weirdo. A nut case of some kind. But what kind? A real genuine, bona fide, craze-o, or one of the neighborhood freaks allergic to gainful employment looking to pick up a few bucks by scaring a rich woman? If they had thought for a second that the guy was professional and dangerous, they’d have alerted me the first time they spied him, and they’d have done more than suggest that we keep watch on Dr. Mason. But whatever or whoever “squirrel” was, he worried them enough to mention it.
I grabbed up the remote and switched on the television to New York 1 for the weather report: cold, cloudy, windy. New York in December. I switched it off and bundled up and spent the two-story descent to the street trying to decide whether to skip my morning rounds when the first snowflake nailed me right between the eyes. Cold, cloudy, windy. I wasn’t so hung over that I’d missed hearing the word “snow” in the weather forecast. I looked up into the truly cloudy sky and was smacked by a truly windy flurry of stinging flakes. Decision made: no morning rounds for me. So I walked slower than usual, letting the cold work on the hangover while I work
ed on sorting out my feelings.
The first thing I felt still was anger. I couldn’t help it. I was mad as hell at Yolanda...and at Sandra. And I was hurt that they had some secret they were keeping from me. And the wound cut even deeper because they felt it necessary to keep a secret from me. Then mad took over again: how dare they mistrust me! Shit. This was getting me nowhere. I didn’t understand why so many people thought it was such a good idea to explore feelings. It felt a lot more productive to assess how good a job the cold was doing on the hangover, and where I was going to stop for coffee and juice, since I was assuming that Yolanda wouldn’t be at the office. I knew there was a Starbuck’s within a few blocks of the office and I was trying to place the corner in my mind when the decision to go see Jill Mason presented itself.
Endowed with a sense of purpose, my feet picked up the pace and I resolutely turned the corner, into the wind. I tried, and quickly abandoned, looking for the squirrel Eddie and Mike said was watching the psychiatrist; it was not possible to look for or see anything or anybody specific in the driving wind and snow, especially when I didn’t know exactly who I was looking for. I tucked my head down and hunched my shoulders up and jogged the four blocks to the building. I pressed the buzzer, said my name when the receptionist asked, and was admitted. The two people in the waiting room were clients: Patricia and Pamela Starrett.
Patty Starrett stood up and crossed the room to meet me, hand extended. She was a large, solid woman, almost as tall as I am, and graceful and fluid as a dojo. She had heavy, thick and copious blond-streaked-with-silver hair which she arranged artfully on top of her head. Her eyes were brilliantly blue and when she greeted me, her smile was warm and her grip firm and dry. She, like Arlene Edwards, seemed to draw strength from the attack on her child. Like Arlene, she displayed no trace of embarrassment or shame, and was totally committed to doing whatever was necessary to halt the rapes and help heal the little victims.
“Your call last night was a true ray of hope, Mr. Rodriquez, and I’ll be visiting the hospital and the precinct today.”
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