Date Rape New York

by Janet McGiffin

  Grazia threw down her pen in frustration. Were Valentino and Laura comparing notes after Grazia spoke to either of them? If so, why? Why would Laura help Valentino conceal his identity? Anger surged into her throat. Laura knew so much! But how to make her talk?

  Luigi had given Detective Cargill Valentino’s number, saying it belonged to the Sunday caller. Again Grazia threw down her pen. So many “saids”! And so many liars!

  Her phone rang. It was Cargill. He passed his phone over to Edmondo. Grazia gave him instructions to let Cargill into her room and went back to her lists.

  What she didn’t know for sure: Who took her to her room? Who raped her? Who informed the press and the Naples Building Safety Department about Kourtis and his substandard cement? Where had Manuel got $1,000? Who in Italy was telling the hotel manager not to allow Cargill to see the CCTV video or have the phone call traced? What did Laura know? Who poisoned Jacky?

  The final list concerned what she had to do Thursday: Go to Jersey City to pick up the DNA identity from Edmondo’s pen. Ask Cargill if the police can bypass Hotel Fiorella management and have the phone company trace the call made to Grazia Sunday night. Ask Nick if he recognized Francisco’s bodyguards in the photo. Ask Miranda the locations of the two IP addresses the technician got off Grazia’s laptop. Remind her mother to get the names in the consortium that owned the Hotel Fiorella. Find out why Luigi is afraid of Edmondo.

  Again, Grazia threw down her pen, frustrated. Her watch read nearly midnight. Where was Cargill? He was taking a long time. Was he interrogating Edmondo under hot lights? She reread her lists. All this information should lead somewhere, but where? She let her mind drift. Something important floated just out of reach. Would her brain ever function normally!

  The doorbell buzzed, and Cargill’s Brooklyn accent floated through the intercom. She peered through the peephole before unbolting the locks. He handed over her laptop and plunked down two paper bags that smelled like Chinese food.

  “I figured you’d be hungry since you stormed out without your dinner. Your pajamas weren’t under your pillow, and I wasn’t going hunting for them, so you’ll have to borrow from Mrs. Springer.”

  He sat down at the table and lifted out cartons and chopsticks while he continued talking. “Edmondo is sticking to his story that Manuel took you to your room. This, even after I told him that Valentino claimed it was him who took you upstairs.” Cargill dug his chopsticks into a carton of noodles and chicken and levered a mass expertly into his mouth. “Personally, I think both of them are lying.”

  Grazia found herself imagining the scene—Manuel or Edmondo opening her door, two men following her inside. She shuddered; then a thought dropped into her head. “The light was on when I went into my room that night. Someone was there. I’m having flashes of memory. Janine said that some women do.” She waited for another image to drop, but nothing came. She dipped her chopsticks into what looked like sweet and sour pork. “I’ve entered everything from my journal into my laptop. I’ve made lists of what we know, what we don’t know, and what we can do tomorrow. Our last full day.” She pushed over her computer. She had translated the pages into English.

  Cargill read the lists without comment. He pushed her laptop back towards her. “Make another list. Everyone involved. Start with the men.”

  She typed as she spoke: “Valentino, Manuel, Edmondo, Luigi, Stanley, Nick, Raoul, and the three other Italians.”

  “Add your boss and the guy who poured the bad cement. And the recruiter who emailed you.”

  She wrote.

  “Now the women: Sophia, Laura, Janine, Cindy. Add Miranda Laterza. And your boss’s wife, Belinda.”

  “Speaking of Belinda, Miranda told me that Belinda recommended Sophia for the job at the Hotel Fiorella and got her a student visa to the US.”

  Cargill levered another mass of noodles into his mouth. “Odd connection, that. I wonder what was behind it. Any other females?”

  “Francisco’s daughter, Celestina. She was at the Naples apartment Sunday morning when the courier delivered the document I sent to Francisco. She told the courier to deliver it to the beach house. Oh, there are more people for the list: the housekeeper at the beach house, the gardener, the butler. But they don’t count because they were all hired through Miranda Security. Francisco’s two bodyguards he hired privately. At the office it’s rumored that they double as hit men.”

  “Lots of people, and all connected personally or through business.”

  They ate in thoughtful silence. Grazia put on the kettle and made Jasmine tea in Mrs. Springer’s Chinese pot. She poured it into two small Chinese cups.

  “How did you get the stitches?” she inquired. “I heard you were in a fight.”

  “Full of questions, aren’t you?”

  “Then you got suspended. Why?”

  “I beat someone up.”

  “A criminal?”

  “My brother-in-law. Also a cop. In the police station lobby. In front of a lot of people, including the mayor, who was presenting a peacekeeping award to the cops on the beat for defusing situations before they get violent. The thirteenth precinct is by the East Village, which is a nightlife area. Cops have to know what they’re doing.”

  “Your brother-in-law hit you back?”

  Cargill put down his chopsticks, then picked them up again and dug into the beef and snow peas. “What happened was that I happened to have had a few drinks for lunch that day, and my brother-in-law happened to take it upon himself to tell me to go home sick since he said I didn’t happen to look presentable.”

  “Don’t get upset. I’m trying to have a regular conversation, and my English isn’t perfect.”

  “Your English is perfect enough to say exactly what you want, and you know it. So I told my brother-in-law to shove it, and he started in on how my wife wouldn’t approve of my behavior. So I hit him. A couple of other cops got into it, and we ended up in the ER with stitches. Made the newspapers. The mayor made a joke about how we have a peaceful precinct because we keep the rough stuff inside the station. Witty guy. Later I guess the captain clued him in about it being a family affair because when I got home from the ER, there were some flowers and a card from the mayor saying he was sorry about my wife. He sent a card to my brother-in-law too. He put his on the fireplace mantel.”

  “And yours?”

  “I threw it out. It didn’t have anything to do with anything.”

  “You mean your wife’s death?”

  “Yes. My wife’s . . . that.”

  “Cindy said she died of kidney disease.”

  Cargill put down his chopsticks and faced her. “My wife needed a kidney transplant. I gave her one of my kidneys, and it was doing OK—well, maybe not so OK, but it was limping along. Then a year later, her other kidney went south, and she needed another transplant. My brother-in-law the cop—her brother—had two perfectly good kidneys, one of which would have suited her just fine, the nephrologist said. But her brother wouldn’t donate his only sister one of his kidneys. And we all know how long the line is for a compatible kidney.” Cargill picked up his chopsticks and dug into the sweet and sour pork.

  Grazia poured herself more tea. “Why wouldn’t he donate a kidney?”

  “He said she was doomed anyway and donating his kidney would only have bought her a couple of months, given how the other kidney was going downhill. And he had a wife and four kids in school who, he said, needed his body in good working order, and that included both kidneys.”

  “What did your wife say about that?”

  “She said he was right and that I needed to accept that death happens to everyone. She said the fact that we didn’t have children and that soon I wouldn’t have a wife either was part of a script we were both handed when we were born, and I couldn’t rewrite her lines just because I didn’t like the play.”

  “She said that about the script?” Grazia leaned her elbows on the table, watching him.

  “She liked theater. She was a fourth-g
rade teacher, and she always directed the school plays. I went to every damn one, and let me tell you, there were some real bombs. But she told me that all of us in the audience had to clap like crazy because we were in the play too, even though we weren’t on stage, and clapping was our lines.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful person.”

  “She was.” Cargill leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth. “We didn’t have children because the doctors said that she had kidney disease and getting pregnant would completely total her kidneys and the baby wouldn’t survive either. I told her we could adopt. But she said that her script was to be a teacher in a tough New York City public school and that God didn’t need her to adopt a child when there were plenty of kids with rotten mothers who already looked at her like she was their real one.”

  He picked up his chopsticks and put them down again. “At the end, we were down at the dialysis center three times a week, and they told us we would have to come every day. She said to me, ‘Russell, I’m not spending my time like God wanted me to, with children, so I’m going home now. Please tell the principal that I want to see my children before I die.’”

  He opened another carton and peered into it. “So my captain and I put on our dress uniforms, and the school principal took us room by room to where there were kids who she had taught at some time, and we told them that she was real sick and would appreciate seeing them. So they all came in big groups with their parents and cards they had made in class and songs they had been practicing, and they filled up the house with their cards and their singing. Which was nice at the time but made the house real empty when they left. We had a police escort for the funeral, it was that big.”

  “And then your brother-in-law told you that your wife wouldn’t want you to drink alcohol at lunch when the mayor was there to present a peacekeeping award.”

  “So I hit him. But later I worked out that he was right. It wasn’t my script. So I quit drinking except for beer, which doesn’t count.”

  She looked into her tea. “Do you think your wife would say that my getting raped by two men I can’t remember and being lied to by my boss and set up for something I didn’t do—would she say that’s my script?”

  “She might say something like that. But she also would say that you’re the one holding your script in your hands, and you’re the one turning the pages.”

  Grazia thought about that. “Would she say that your helping me find these guys is in your script?”

  “She definitely would. And we’re running out of time. We have Thursday and half of Friday. And I don’t want to let you down. It’s not just because I’m trying to keep my job and get my full retirement, in case you’re wondering. You’re a nice, smart lady, and you have a real future ahead of you once you get past this rocky part. I don’t want your life to blow off course because of a couple of bastards.”

  He stood up and reached for his coat. “I’m going home now. I’ll be back here at nine in the morning. Open the door only to me. We’ll sit down over some of Mrs. Springer’s awful tea, read over your lists, and figure out how to spend our last full day together.”

  His sweet smile brought a lump to Grazia’s throat. She tried to smile back and say good-bye, but she couldn’t, and then she was sobbing into her Chinese paper napkin that was dissolving between her fingers. She felt his hands pull her up against him, and his arms came around her and held her tight.

  “You’re going to be all right, Grazia,” Cargill murmured into her hair. “You’re tough and you’re smart and you’re a lawyer. Wherever happens here, you’ll go on and make yourself a good life somewhere, and you’ll find somebody who will love you, and you’ll know how to help women who find themselves in trouble like this. Now lock the door; I’m going to stand outside until I hear every one of those deadbolts go where they need to be. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He pushed a paper towel between her hands and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 37

  Grazia woke up to a flash of gold mixed with the aroma of bacon and coffee. She was only wearing underwear! Where was she? Panic seared her body. She couldn’t breathe. She yanked the blankets tight around her and swung her legs over the edge of the sofa, grabbing blindly for a weapon of any kind. Her flailing hand landed on her handbag. Then her eyes fell on Mrs. Springer, who was smiling from the doorway.

  “Jacky moved his back foot! It’s eight o’clock. Detective Cargill just called. He’ll be here in an hour. He wanted to make sure we don’t go out. Tea or coffee? I don’t believe in decaf. If you want coffee, drink coffee.”

  “Coffee.” Grazia flopped back on the sofa and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. She thought about the night before. After she had bolted the doors behind Cargill, she had taken her laptop to the sofa and analyzed her lists. She re-ordered them according to time, then activity, then individual. That last didn’t help the overall picture, but it did bring the people into clearer focus.

  She then emailed all of it to Miranda, with an explanation about how she got Raoul to admit he was Valentino and a note that she was not staying at her hotel but would return there Friday morning to pack and leave for the airport. She added that Detective Cargill knew where she was. She requested a video conference at nine-thirty New York time, Thursday morning. She then texted her mother to remind her to get the names in the consortium that owned the Hotel Fiorella. It was early morning in Naples and her mother was up. She video called Grazia, read them off and emailed them to her. Spotting the unfamiliar surroundings behind Grazia, she demanded to know why Grazia wasn’t at her hotel. Grazia fended off her concern and her advice to hire a bodyguard. She read over the list of names and dropped off to sleep.

  At four in the morning, she had opened her eyes, wide-awake. Sophia had not put her pajamas under her pillow. Why not? Grazia pulled over her laptop and added that to the “Sophia” list, which included still not knowing why Sophia had found her so early on Sunday morning. She also added that Sophia had been trying to tell Grazia something Wednesday morning, but Grazia had been rushing to take her laptop to the computer geek and had not stopped to listen. “Call Sophia in the morning,” Grazia wrote on the to-do list.

  She had emailed all that to Miranda and gone back to sleep. Now she lay smelling the bacon and coffee and thinking about that flash of gold that had been behind her eyes when she woke up. She tried to visualize it, but as always it eluded her. Was she attaching too much significance to this image? Was her obsessing about it while awake causing it to invade her dreams? She checked her email. Miranda had replied she would be available for a video conference at nine-thirty in the morning, New York time. Grazia grabbed the pink bath towel that Mrs. Springer had laid out and headed for the shower.

  Detective Cargill arrived at nine o’clock on the dot. “I bet you were awake all night lining up more for us to do today,” he said, sitting down to a plate of Mrs. Springer’s bacon and eggs.

  Grazia mentioned her concern about Sophia. “I phoned her this morning, but no answer. The hotel said she called in sick.” She then handed him the first page of their schedule for the day. Mrs. Springer had printed it out on her ancient printer. “We’re making a video call to Miranda in half an hour. That’s first on the agenda.”

  Cargill stirred sugar into his coffee while he read over the pages.

  Grazia added milk to her coffee. “I called the lab in Jersey City. The DNA identities are ready. The secretary told me that if a police officer calls the medical examiner to accept the email, the police lab might run the match faster. Has your captain approved?”

  “Yes. What’s this ‘Computer technician, photos of men’?” He pointed to the paper.

  “I’m trying to think of everyone who might have seen the men involved. The technician told me that someone tried to pick up my laptop. I want to show him the photos of the men who were staying at hotels near the Brazilian Bar, plus the photo of Francisco’s bodyguards and the one I took of Valentino at the restaurant.”
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br />   Cargill pointed at the photo. “That’s Francisco? He’s old!”

  Mrs. Springer was looking over his shoulder. She frowned. “He looks familiar. But when would I have seen him?”

  “You wouldn’t have,” Grazia replied.

  Cargill was reading Grazia’s to-do list. He pointed to one item. “I ran down the driver of the airport van. He says Laura didn’t speak to any of the other passengers. When they were almost to her terminal, she got a call. She spoke in a language he didn’t understand. Not a big tipper, the driver said.”

  “What about the driver of the taxi he called for me? Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes. He said the man you were with told him the cab wasn’t needed.”

  “He said that because I was vomiting into the gutter,” said Grazia bitterly. “None of this would have happened to me if the taxi driver had been less concerned about his car.”

  “Vomiting? No. He only said that you didn’t look good and you tried to get in the cab, but the man pulled you out.”

  Grazia frowned. “Why would Valentino say I was vomiting when I wasn’t?”

  Cargill refilled his cup from the coffeemaker. “Because he was lying. I don’t believe a word that man says. We can call the taxi driver again today and ask about the vomiting.”

  “And find him and show him my photos. The monk too.” She pulled over the paper and added those to the to-do list.

  “Don’t expect recognition, Grazia,” cautioned Cargill. “In both cases, it was dark and the man was bundled up.”

  At exactly nine-thirty, the video call came through from Miranda Laterza. Detective Cargill, Grazia, and Mrs. Springer crowded at the kitchen table so Miranda could see them all. Miranda gave them her usual calm smile.

  “Nice to meet you, Detective Cargill. That is you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. And this is Mrs. Springer. She owns the dog that bit the man Grazia was walking home with the night she was assaulted. We are operating under the assumption that this man is the drug-facilitated offender although we aren’t certain yet of his identity. Unfortunately, the dog was poisoned a few days ago. We think the offender poisoned him. I believe the man is known to Grazia and is finding out what she is doing either from her directly or from other people.”