by Gerry Boyle
I looked at her.
“Just kidding,” Christina said, leaning toward me. “I’m trying to cheer you up, McMorrow.”
“I know. But I may be beyond cheering.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because I’m helping one friend and hurting another.”
“No, you’re not,” Christina said.
I felt a surge of anger, like something coughed up. I choked it back down.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I mean, really. You haven’t done either of those things. You haven’t helped Butch. You haven’t hurt Roxanne.”
“Yet,” I said.
“Yet,” Christina said.
“I told them to back off. Or I’d really go to the cops and the TV and the papers.”
“This man today?”
“His boss. On the phone.”
“Were you just bluffing?” Christina said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Does he believe you?”
“I don’t know. It’s so hard when they could be anywhere. This place. You don’t know.”
“Where they are?”
“Or who. Or which ones. Is somebody a cop or some goddamn killer? Are they the same thing? They switch cars, switch people, and I’m back to square one.”
We stared at our plates and at each other. No one spoke. It was Christina who broke the silence, saying, “I don’t know how to help you. But I know I’m enjoying your company.”
“Even with this?”
“Even with this.”
“I don’t want it to end up hurting you, too, Christina. Maybe you should leave the city.”
“I’m not going anywhere, McMorrow. I’ll do what I always do. I just replace the lock.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes, but the meal, the pretty delicacies, seemed silly. Lobster salad while Rome burned, I thought. And then I pictured someone torching this building at night. The factory floors and timbers, soaked with a century of grease. It would go up with a roar. I flinched.
“You okay?” Christina said.
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“What happens next? If you had to guess.”
“I guess they have to decide whether they can live with this stalemate. How long they can have me out here loose, with this damaging information.”
“Damaging to whom?”
“I don’t know. The guy on the phone. Conroy and the Boxer guy. The guys across the street maybe. The cops? I don’t know, really. I don’t know what I know.”
“And they don’t, either,” Christina said.
“But I know there’s something there.”
“Or why would they do all this?”
“Right.”
Christina finished her wine and put her glass down.
“So the way I see it, you’re right on the edge. You know enough to be a problem, but not enough to really go anywhere with it.”
I felt a rush of déjà vu. Another of Christina’s bursts of perception.
“So the question,” she said, “is how well do they know Jack McMorrow? Because if they know you, Jack, if they know what you’re like, they know you won’t be able to walk away. Not with Butch, your friend, asking for your help.”
I remembered Conroy’s words to the Boxer in the courthouse. A loose cannon . . . not a typical reporter . . . he takes things too far . . . he’ll stick around.
“They know me,” I said.
“Well, then,” Christina said. “That’s not good.”
We agreed to stay put because at least the cops were watching the loft. Sneaking in downstairs and cutting a lock was one thing, but a serious assault while police watched was another. Wasn’t it?
But stay put and do what? Field calls from reporters? Order out for more delicacies? Help Christina paint? Watch Butch be dissected on television? Read more about Johnny Fiore’s legacy?
The question hung there at the table. Christina made a pot of black tea. I poured. It felt very English. Inside we sipped; outside the natives were circling.
“I need to go out,” I said.
“Where?”
“Butch’s neighborhood in the Village, for a start. He had a friend there who runs a bar. And—”
I hesitated. Christina looked at me expectantly, leaning forward and showing the curve of her breasts.
“And there are other people I can visit. Victims—”
I hesitated again. It was Christina’s presence, but why would that matter? What was holding me back? Weren’t we in this together? Look what this had done to her—
The phone rang.
“The a.m. news cycle is beginning,” I said.
Christina got up and answered it.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “No, it’s fine . . . No, really. I appreciate your interest . . . I’m a big fan of your writing . . . No, of course I’m not just saying that, Richard. . . .”
She headed for her bedroom.
“Is this my big breakthrough?” Christina said, as she disappeared from sight. “I don’t know. You tell me . . . Oh, I know. It’s been just the craziest time. . . .”
I sat there for a minute and then I got up and went to Philippe’s room and got my money, my papers, the cell phone, and a notebook. I knocked on Christina’s door and she covered the phone and I pointed to the fire escape and she said, “Take care, Jack,” but then she was talking again.
“And catharsis is expressed in art. Yes, that’s it exactly, Richard . . .”
I started down the stairs, thinking Christina had a remarkable ability to take things in stride. I thought about it all the way to the parking lot, where I told the attendant I needed a car for a day or two. He looked at me, eyes narrowed, until I took out the cash and then he said he had one that might be available. I asked if it was stolen and he shrugged.
“Guy leave it, he don’t come back. I don’t know why. Maybe he got deported. Maybe he got killed.”
“Happens,” I said.
“Anybody asks, I say it got stolen.”
We agreed on a hundred dollars, because I was a friend of Miss Mansell. The car, parked against the sumac-lined back fence, was an old Camaro, white with one of those black brassiere things on the front and New Jersey plates. The interior smelled like cigarettes and there was a cardboard picture of a naked woman hanging from the mirror. For another twenty dollars, the guy drove it out of the lot with me crouched in the back.
No questions asked. After all, this was New York.
He got out a block away and started walking. I took the papers out of my pocket, spread them on the seat next to me, like a list of Saturday errands.
Talk to the rape victim.
Find the rapist.
Go to Butch’s neighborhood and nose around.
Figure out where it all fit into this horrific mess.
The cell phone was dying, a faint red light telling me to go home and put it in a charger. I spotted a pay phone outside a cafe on Atlantic Avenue, a Cuban place. There was change in the car’s ashtray. I was on a roll.
My hand over my ear to shield out the noise of the traffic, I called the number on the East Side rape clip. A woman answered with what sounded like “Brown, Brian and Alder.” I asked for Kim Albert and the woman said, “You mean Kimberly Bromberg,” and before I could disagree, she clicked off.
I waited. Watched the traffic for a black car. A white car. Anyone who seemed to be watching me. There were lots of black cars. White ones, too.
And then a young woman’s voice: “Ms. Bromberg’s office.”
“This is Jack McMorrow. I’m a reporter. I write for the New York Times.”
A white lie. Pale gray.
“Oh, hi. We have someone here who deals with the press and gives comments on the market. Let me connect you. His name is—”
“No, I’m not calling about the stock market. I’m calling to talk to Ms. Bromberg, if she’s the former Kim Albert.”
>
“She is, but she’s very busy right now, and we really like our press inquiries to go through that office. So let me—”
“This isn’t really a press inquiry,” I said. “It’s personal.”
“Oh. Does Ms. Bromberg know you?”
“No, but—”
“Then I’ll take a message. She’s not available at this time. If you’ll tell me—”
“I know she’ll want to speak to me right now. Just tell her I’m calling about George Drague.”
I heard her sigh. Give a little tick with her tongue. And then I was on hold again, and then Kim Albert, now Bromberg, was on the phone.
“Yes,” she said briskly.
I introduced myself. Asked her if she was the Kim Albert who was the victim of a violent crime in 1988.
“Who is this?”
I identified myself again, trying to sound reassuring. And then I repeated my question, and there was nothing reassuring about it.
“Yes,” she said warily. “What do you want?”
“Ms. Bromberg, I’m looking into several criminal cases from about ten years ago that may have been mishandled by prosecutors. Your case is one of them.”
For a moment, she didn’t answer. I could almost hear her swallow.
“You aren’t going to use my name, are you?” she said softly.
“Well,” I said. “It is a matter of public record.”
“Please. I know it’s probably on some court document someplace, but please don’t put my name in the paper.”
“Well, we can talk about that.”
“Is it money?”
“No. God, no. I’m a reporter. Really.”
“Well, I just got married, and it would just be—”
I steeled myself.
“I’d like to accommodate you,” I said. “Probably I can. First, what I really need is for you to just tell me a few things about your case.”
Confidentiality dangled in front of her like a carrot.
“Well,” she said, “I’m not sure what I can tell you. You won’t use my name?”
“We can talk about that. Would you rather we met in person? Because I can come over to—”
“No, no. I mean, this is fine. But I have only a couple of minutes. I have to run a meeting.”
I took out my notebook and pen. I’d prevailed, but at a price. Always at a price.
“I’ll make this quick, and I hope my bringing this all up again isn’t too painful for you.”
“No. Not if my name isn’t in the paper. Or anything that could identify me. Because they kept it all out of the papers before. My part, I mean.”
“They said you were a stockbroker. Is that still true?”
“More or less. It’s like calling a cardiovascular surgeon a doctor, but close enough.”
“And you were assaulted on the East Side. The circumstances were as described in the Times?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“And they arrested the man?”
“Yes, they did. Four days later.”
A car horn blared and I covered the receiver.
“Where are you?”
“A pay phone. I apologize. I forgot to charge my cell phone, so here I am. I’ve been interviewing people in Brooklyn.”
“For this story?”
“Yes. It could be.”
“And who’s your editor at the Times?”
“Ellen Jones. I work with her on the national desk.”
I pictured her writing that down.
“So I understand you called the mayor’s office about this. This was—”
“I called several times. I suppose there’s a record of that, too?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why did you call? Was there a problem?”
“Well, yes.”
“Could you tell me a little about it?”
She hesitated. Another line to cross.
“Just the basics,” I prodded. “Really. Just bare bones.”
“Well, okay. At first the problem was that I was told he was going to go to prison for a long time, and then all he got was three years.”
“Who told you he was going to get a longer sentence?”
“The district attorney, Mr. Fiore. He was very kind. I mean, I thought he was. He took quite a personal interest in my case. He said it symbolized what was wrong with this city, and on and on. He said he was going to lock the man up for a long time. It was in the paper. All his promises.”
“This was when he was running for mayor?”
“Yeah,” Kim Bromberg said. “I didn’t quite get that then. That part. You know, you’re the victim of something like this, it’s like the whole world should feel the way you do. I mean, it should be so obvious. But you know they can’t possibly. It’s very strange. Very isolating.”
More traffic. I covered the phone. Uncovered it.
“But Fiore didn’t lock him up?”
“Well, he pleaded guilty. I went to the sentencing. And the judge, he said he was going to follow the prosecutor’s recommendation. And he said up to three years. And I was sitting there and I almost fell over. I mean, three years. For what he did?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “So did they explain to you what happened?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Fiore and his assistant there, this skinny little guy, afterward they were falling all over themselves to be nice. They said there were sentencing guidelines and they were limited as to what they could do. And there was all this, I don’t know, specific stuff about what he actually did. How . . . how far he went. I guess that was true. It just wasn’t what I was led to believe at all. And my parents. My father, he’s passed away since then, he was just wild. I mean, he was sick, he had cancer, but he came down from upstate, and he threatened to go to his congressman and go to the press and make this huge stink. And Mr. Fiore said he could do that, but it wouldn’t make things easier for the victim.”
“You?”
“Right. But you’d have to know my dad. He was used to getting his way, being in charge.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, the dad in him edged out the CEO, I guess. But then, it was just seven months later, the man got out completely.”
“Out of jail?”
“Not even a year. They let him out on probation. And the district attorney’s office didn’t oppose it in court or anything. I was supposed to be notified, as the victim, but they sent the notice to my old apartment. I got it, like, three days after the hearing. I called up and asked what happened and they said, ‘Oh, that’s all done. He’s been released.’”
“Was Fiore involved?”
“No. It was somebody else. He was mayor by then.”
“And he was getting tough on crime and all that?”
“I know. That’s what was so strange. But by then my father was really sick, he had cancer and it had spread to his liver. He died in 1989, about two weeks later. I didn’t even tell him.”
The operator came on, asked for more money. I pumped in two quarters.
“Hello?”
“Sorry,” I said. “You said your father—”
“He was dying. Nice way to go, you know? I almost wish he’d never known about any of it. I mean, it just killed him to think this happened to me. You can’t imagine what that does—”
“No, I can’t imagine,” I said. “So was he too weak to complain?”
“He was,” Kim Albert Bromberg said, with a hint of pride creeping into her voice. “But I wasn’t.”
There was a noise away from the phone.
“Oh, they’re calling for my meeting. Listen, I really have to—”
“So what did you do?”
“I told them I was going to go public. Put my name in the paper and everything. God, looking back at it now, I can’t believe I did it. I mean, I was twenty-three years old. Fiore was the mayor and he was already like God. But this animal was loose, he was back in the Bronx or wherever he came from and I was still going to a counselor, still couldn’t—well, I had p
hysical problems from the head injury and from the . . . the rest of it. And he was probably just out there laughing.”
I scribbled, the pad pressed against the phone.
“I’ll be right there,” she said, to someone else.
“So what happened?”
“You’re not going to use my name?”
“No.”
“Well, we had this meeting. He took me out to lunch, believe it or not. This steak house below Times Square. Very nice.”
“The mayor?”
“No. His aide or whatever. Conway. Conroy. Little guy, kept talking about history and the mayor’s accomplishments and all this. I felt like saying, ‘Listen, you little twerp, I’m not here to listen to a testimonial.’ But he said I could do more damage to women’s causes than good. I could scare women so they wouldn’t come forward. I said maybe they shouldn’t come forward, if this was the way the system was going to treat them. I didn’t back down. I was through backing down.”
“But you didn’t do it? I don’t remember anything like that in the Times.”
“Well, we went around and around. I was ready to walk out and call the Times. I mean, I was about to call them right from the restaurant. Say, ‘This is my story. Come take my picture.’”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, I was about to leave when he said he had a proposal. I suppose it’s okay to say this, now that Fiore’s gone.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“He said—the Conroy guy, I mean—he said the mayor understood what I’d been through, and he regretted the way it had turned out. And so because of that he would make a donation to this organization for rape victims and battered women in the city. He’d donate a hundred thousand dollars to increase awareness of these kinds of issues.”
“If you went away quietly?”
I waited for the answer. She was thinking, but then she spoke.
“He said if my story went public, and then the mayor made the donation, it would look like he was trying to buy his way out of it or something. I can’t remember how he put it. But he said it would spoil the whole thing, and politically they might not even be able to do it. But I could do all this good for women, for other rape victims. Maybe the money would be used to toughen the laws, lobbying and whatever. I might save somebody else.”
“So you agreed?”
“Yeah. What else could I do? And about a month later, there was this story about this group of Fiore’s backers giving a hundred thousand to this rape awareness group. I got a copy of it in the mail. Nothing else. Just a clipping. So he came through. I’ll give him that.”