by Jason Starr
“I think your client knows exactly what’s there,” Barasco said.
“She made me say those things,” I said.
“Yeah? You were forced, huh?”
“You can tell if you actually read it. She coerced me, egged me on. We got caught up, that’s all.”
He grabbed the papers and found a page. “You wrote to her, here it is—‘I can’t wait to tie you up and slap your face like you deserve’.”
“She wanted me to say that,” I said.
“She asked for it, huh?” Barasco said.
“My client will not talk about this anymore, period,” Freemont said.
Terror hit. I thought I might pass out.
“You didn’t show this to my wife, did you?” I said.
“What if I did?” Barasco said.
I stood facing Barasco. “You fucking asshole! You’re just trying to fuck up my life, you sadistic fuck!”
My saliva sprayed onto Barasco’s face, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care.
Freemont had gotten up, too, and came between us.
Grabbing my wrist, Freemont said, “Calm down. I said calm down.”
“Yeah,” Barasco said, “looks like I was way off base even suggesting the idea that you might have a problem with violence. I mean, you’re not giving me any reason to even contemplate such a thing.”
“Sit down,” Freemont said to me.
I was still livid, but I complied.
“Okay, you don’t want to talk about the transcripts, we won’t talk about the transcripts,” Barasco said. “Let’s discuss the other matter that your client has attempted to hide from us—his assault charge.”
I couldn’t hold back, said, “I didn’t hide any—”
But Freemont cut me off with, “That’s a previous incident from years ago that isn’t related to this case.”
“I think it’s related,” Barasco said.
“I’m talking about resisting arrest,” Freemont said. “I’m requesting that you drop the current charge.”
“That’s possible if your client cooperates with my murder investigation, emphasis on if.” Barasco looked at me and said, “Oh, so I had a little chat with your wife. She just got a restraining order against you.”
Was Barasco lying? Or was he just trying to rattle me? It was hard to tell.
“I just want to see my son,” I said. “He’s probably terrified right now.”
“Good luck with that,” Barasco said. “When she divorces you, she’ll get full custody and maybe you won’t even get visitation given your recent behavior. Oh, and I think after this incident, your neighbors might have a different opinion on who the crazy one in your marriage is.”
While I still suspected Barasco was bullshitting, the idea of this happening—of not being able to see my son—felt too real and horrific to ignore. I wanted to lean across the table and tackle Barasco and beat the crap out of him. I actually saw myself, tackling him, pummeling him in the face.
But I managed not to budge.
“Do you have specific questions for my client pertaining to the current resisting arrest charge?” Freemont asked.
“As a matter of fact I do.” Barasco looked at me. “What did you say to your wife to make her want to change the locks? Did you threaten her?”
“Never,” I said.
“That’s not what she said.”
Freemont cut in with, “What exactly did his wife say my client said?”
“She said he said he was going to ‘beat the living shit’ out of her.”
Had Maria actually lied to Barasco? It didn’t make sense. It made more sense that Barasco was lying, trying to goad me into incriminating myself.
“I don’t see how any of this pertains to the current charge,” Freemont said. “My client had a right to go up to his apartment. There was no existing restraining order prohibiting him from entering the apartment. He was surprised that he couldn’t get in and raised his voice to get his wife’s attention.”
“He was banging on the door, causing a disturbance,” Barasco said.
“He feared for his son’s safety,” Freemont said. “He was trying to get into his apartment, which has no relation to the resisting arrest charge. Are the police officers reporting any injuries?”
“Were you drunk today?” Barasco asked me.
“Another irrelevant question,” Freemont said.
“I disagree,” Barasco said. “There’s a pattern here. He’s gotten violent and drunk before. Maybe he was drunk the night he murdered Sophie Ward.”
“I didn’t murder her,” I said.
Freemont gave me a look that screamed, Shut up. Then he said to Barasco, “Regarding yesterday’s incident. If the arresting officers suspected he’d been drinking, why didn’t they give him a breathalyzer?”
Good question. For a Legal Aid lawyer, Freemont seemed to know his shit. I could’ve done much worse.
Barasco said to me, “Maybe you got drunk on Friday, too. Is that what happened? You drink before your date?”
Freemont said, “My client won’t answer any more questions pertaining to the Sophie Ward murder case at this time.”
“Afraid he won’t be able to keep his story straight?”
“Can we please stick to the matter at hand?” Freemont said.
After glaring at me for several seconds without saying anything, Barasco got up and left.
“Thanks,” I said to Freemont. “That was—”
“Don’t,” Freemont said.
A guard came and led me back to the holding cell.
Maybe a half hour later, the guard returned and said, “Harper.”
Ecstatic, I followed the guard to the front of the precinct where Freemont was waiting. After I filled out some paperwork and received my personal items, Freemont and I left the building. Smoggy city air had never seemed so fresh.
“Thank you so, so much,” I said.
We walked along Bayard toward Canal, passing Thai and Chinese restaurants and storefronts with neon “Bail Bonds” signage.
“You were right.” Freemont was all business. “Detective Barasco does have a hard-on for you.”
“Because he’s an asshole,” I said.
“He’s just doing his job,” he said, “which in this case is to be an asshole. Anyway, I have the feeling you haven’t heard the last from him. If you get arrested, I highly recommend you hire a good criminal attorney, somebody experienced with this sort of case.”
“But I’m one hundred percent innocent.”
“Even if the evidence is circumstantial, he might try to bring charges,” Freemont said.
“Why? Just to fuck with me?”
“Put yourself in his place,” he said. “That area, Kips Bay, doesn’t see a lot of homicides. And, let’s face it, Sophie Ward was a white woman, and white lives matter when it comes to murder cases. He’s under enormous pressure to make an arrest—fast.”
“I didn’t kill her,” I said. “I swear on my life I didn’t.”
The scent of fried food everywhere reminded me that I was starving.
“Where are you staying tonight?” Freemont asked.
“What time is it?” I hadn’t turned my phone on yet.
“Little after ten,” Freemont said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t, do not try to return to your apartment.”
“Do you think Barasco was telling the truth? My wife got a restraining order?”
“It’s likely she did, yes. But I’ll confirm that later.”
I had to speak to Maria, talk some sense into her.
As if reading my mind, Freemont said, “Whatever you do, don’t contact her. And you can’t have any contact with your son either.”
“I have to call him.”
“Don’t. If you want to stay out of jail, listen to me on this, man. Don’t call him, don’t text him, don’t show up at his school. Stay away from your family. When the dust settles, we’ll deal with
all of that, but right now my primary concern is to keep you out of jail.”
“But my son needs me.”
“I get that,” Freemont said. “I love my son, too. But if you’re in jail, he won’t have you at all, so I’m advising you to stick with the big picture. You hear what I’m saying?”
I understood why Maria was angry at me and felt betrayed, but she didn’t have to bring Jonah into it. She knew I was a great father.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “This is why I did it.” I realized how that had sounded. “Not it like that—I mean it in why I went online in the first place. I mean why I went on that website and met Sophie.”
“I understand,” Freemont said.
Like before, I got an annoying vibe that he didn’t believe me at all.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” I said. “I have no money and I need to get a MetroCard and something to eat. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
He opened his wallet and said, “Will thirty help?”
“Yes,” I said, “thank you.”
He handed me the bills and asked, “So where you headed now?”
“I’ll probably stay with a friend,” I lied.
The truth was I had nowhere to go. I didn’t have any extended family in the city. I had a lot of friends from A.A. in town, but they had families, and I didn’t want to burden them.
“Cool, well let me know where you land.” He handed me a business card. “I’ll reach out to you in the morning and we can meet up, maybe at my office downtown, maybe around midday.”
“I have to work tomorrow,” I said. “I’m not sure of my schedule.”
“Okay, well, reach out when you know, and we’ll figure out a time.”
We shook hands—my grip firmer than his.
“Thanks again,” I said, “for everything.”
“Good luck,” he said.
He got a cab on Canal Street and headed away.
I went into the first restaurant I saw and ordered pork dumplings and shrimp lo mein to go. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, I wolfed down the food, barely chewing. As the grease and sodium hit my gut, I remembered my vow to eat healthier and to get my body in shape for a wild affair with Sophie. All of that felt like a dream. Or a dream that had turned into a nightmare.
I finished the food and discarded the containers. Heading along the no-man’s-land, between Chinatown and Little Italy and SoHo, panic hit. I had no place to go—I was, for all intents and purposes, homeless. My pulse was pounding; I couldn’t get a full breath. I told myself I wasn’t having a heart attack, it was just panic, but this didn’t make me any calmer. I had to talk to Jonah—hear his voice one last time, tell him I loved him. I had my cell out, typed in: HOME. But, right as the call connected, I ended it.
I wasn’t dying. Well, I tried to reassure myself anyway. I knelt in in the vestibule of a closed jewelry store, taking steady, even breaths until the panic attack subsided.
I agreed with Freemont that it would be a bad idea to go uptown tonight, but what else was I supposed to do? Sleep on the street? Ride the subway back and forth all night?
I craved a drink, and I thought, Why not just do it? I couldn’t think of a single argument against it. After all, at this point, what did I have to lose? I remembered passing a dive bar on the previous block and headed back there.
The bar was small—three stools. A scraggly, depressed-looking guy sat in one of them, nursing a pint, staring at the small TV propped up in the corner, showing a hockey game. The young bartender, a thin guy with a long, dark hipster beard, came over to me and said, “What can I get ya?”
“Rum and Diet Coke.”
My old favorite drink. I hadn’t ordered one in years, but saying those words felt natural, like I’d never stopped.
As I watched the bartender prepare the drink, I felt like I could smell the rum. We alcoholics have a natural way of picking up on the scent of booze, but from about ten feet away? And I could already taste the first sip, the alcohol seemingly going from my tongue to my brain in an instant. Then that rush of relaxation and relief would hit. Ahhh. Drinking was such an escape that just thinking about drinking felt like an instant vacation from reality. Why had I quit anyway? To save my marriage? Yeah, like that had helped. Marriage—in quotes. Maybe if I’d kept drinking, I wouldn’t have had as much conflict with Maria the past several years. I would’ve had an outlet for my anxiety and could’ve stayed pleasantly drunk.
The bartender put the drink down in front of me, then said, “Nine dollars. Start a tab?”
Jonah was the first one I’d apologized to when I went into A.A. Although he’d only been two years old at the time, I’d knelt by his crib and told him how sorry I was, and that I hoped he’d forgive me someday.
Now I was about to have another reason to apologize.
“Sir? Did you want a tab or not?”
I’d been staring at the drink, mesmerized.
“I’ll pay it out,” I said.
I put a ten down and left the drink on the bar, untouched.
I rushed out of the bar, like I was trying to get away from a grenade. I didn’t feel like I was safe until I was about three or four blocks away.
On the podium at A.A. meetings, I’ve told people that sometimes in order to change your life, you have to bet on yourself. That’s what I had to do now. I’d had a moment of weakness, but I’d been smart enough to see the devil in disguise. Now the ridiculousness of Barasco harassing me had to end, and Lawrence Ward had to be arrested. Why was it taking so long? Was Freemont right? Did Barasco have some evidence he was planning to use against me?
I wanted to see Jonah; that’s all I cared about. I wanted to hug him, and laugh with him, and play our leaf-catching game, and teach him how to play guitar.
To hell with waiting for the cops to find the killer.
It was time to get my life back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A FEW YEARS ago, in an A.A. meeting at St. Monica’s Church on the Upper East Side, I’d sponsored an ex-cop named Anthony Sorrentino. A narcotics addiction had gotten Anthony kicked off the force and his life spiraled. He started dealing, got busted, did six years at Sing Sing. In jail, he found God and got clean, but unlike a lot of addicts, he stayed clean when he got out. In A.A. we hit it off—well, at first. He asked me to be his sponsor and I helped him through a couple of crises, but he had a complicated personality. Our fallings-out always happened suddenly, for seemingly no reason. We’d be buddy-buddy one day, meeting for coffee and talking about life, and then the next time I saw him, he wouldn’t talk to me or even make eye contact. When I probed to find out what was wrong, he’d either snap, cursing me out, or ignore me—depending on his mood. Then, after some time went by, he’d come up to me at a meeting and give me a hug, like I was his best friend in the world. We all have our demons, I guess, but Anthony’s were worse than most.
I wasn’t sponsoring Anthony anymore and hadn’t seen him in several months. I had no idea how he felt about me lately—if he considered me a friend or foe, but I’d heard, through the A.A. grapevine, that he was working as a P.I. While it was unusual to ask an ex-sponsoree for help, I couldn’t think of a better option.
I walked along Hester Street, where it was a little quieter, and called Anthony from my cell. I got a busy signal. I remembered that he had a landline with no call waiting. I tried a few more times, and finally got through.
“Hey, Anthony,” I said. “It’s Jack. Jack Harper.”
Either by his experience as a cop or as a recovering addict, he must’ve recognized the desperation in my tone.
“I know who it is, you’re on my caller ID. What’s wrong, Jack?”
“I need your help,” I said.
Must’ve caught him on a good day because he said, “So what’re you waiting for? Get your fuckin’ ass over here.”
* * *
Anthony lived in Long Island City in Queens, just one subway stop out of Manhattan, about a half hour ride from
Chinatown. I’d been to his place several times before, usually when he was in the midst of a crisis and needed my help. Now the roles had reversed. I didn’t feel shame, knowing that, as a fellow addict, he’d understand how quickly fortunes could change.
Over the past several years, a lot of construction had taken place in Long Island City. I barely recognized some streets, and it seemed as if at least a few new buildings had gone up on every block. Years ago, when Maria was pregnant with Jonah and we still had a decent amount of money in savings, we’d considered buying an apartment here. Would things have been different if we’d moved out here? We could have found a cheap one-bedroom apartment, fixed it up, and, as the real estate market picked up, flipped it, maybe cleared a hundred grand. We could have used the hundred K as a down payment on a bigger place, a real two-bedroom. Or maybe we could have flipped a second apartment and then gotten the bigger place. Flipping apartments sometimes isn’t easy, but with my real estate savvy we could’ve pulled it off. Maria had been against the move then—she didn’t want to move out of Manhattan, and we wound up staying. Living in a small space for years had definitely had an adverse effect on our marriage. The financial pressure had weighed on us, too. In an alternate universe, Jack and Maria may have fought less, had less resentment toward each other, stayed closer, continued having sex. One decision, like moving to Queens, may have changed everything.
Anthony lived in one of the few older buildings in the neighborhood that hadn’t been demolished, although it probably should have been. It was a narrow, semi-dilapidated five-story tenement, sandwiched between two new buildings under construction. Obviously, the owner of Anthony’s building hadn’t been willing to sell to the developers.
I rang Anthony’s apartment and, without talking to me on the intercom, he buzzed me up. The building didn’t look any better on the inside. As I headed up the stairs, I saw mouse droppings, and on a landing, a water bug scampered by.
On the fourth floor, Anthony was waiting in the hallway in front of his apartment. He was in gray sweatpants and a wifebeater. He seemed heavier than the last time I’d seen him; he must’ve put on at least fifteen or twenty pounds, mainly around the stomach.