Date Rape New York

by Janet McGiffin

  “He must be on the lists I emailed you,” added Grazia.

  “My staff is researching the names to find any connections with you or Francisco.” Miranda ran her finger down a paper in front of her. “You’ve left your hotel. Any particular reason?”

  “I don’t trust the staff, even Stanley. I’m afraid to open my door,” she confessed.

  “Instincts count.” Miranda consulted her paper. “We found out more about Sophia. Francisco’s housekeeper in Naples told our operatives that Sophia is in New York because she got pregnant while working as a maid at Francisco’s beach house. She is presently living with a cousin in Flushing. Belinda persuaded the US consulate to grant Sophia the student visa by signing an affidavit that Sophia needed English-immersion classes for promotion to a higher position with Belinda. Belinda is paying for the classes, which are hefty—three thousand dollars a month. She also paid for the pregnancy and birth expenses. The baby was born two months ago and was adopted in New York. The housekeeper says Sophia’s hotel salary goes into Belinda’s account, although that sounds like malicious gossip to me. Belinda is not a favorite among the household staff. Sophia will return to Italy in a month, although the housekeeper didn’t know if she still has a job with Belinda. She thinks not.”

  Grazia felt a chill as she flashed to Sophia’s comments about a “friend” who’d been raped and got pregnant.

  “Sophia didn’t put my pajamas under my pillow yesterday when she cleaned my room. I was just leaving when she came in and said she had something to tell me. Stupidly, I cut her off and said we could talk later.” Grazia winced. “I keep calling her cell phone but she doesn’t answer. The hotel says she’s not working today.”

  “We’ll try to find her.” Cargill added a note to the to-do page. “Any background on Manuel, Luigi, and Edmondo? I emailed you what we have. They were born in the US and have American citizenship and up-to-date American passports.”

  “We found out that they all were living in Italy as children and grew up here. And they all worked for Francisco Pamplona in various security capacities before moving to the US.”

  “Bodyguards?” inquired Grazia.

  “Among other positions. What’s their current situation in the US?” Miranda asked.

  Cargill answered. “Manuel and Luigi married American women of Italian descent. They have children. Edmondo is single. They all live in Flushing. It’s a one-hour subway ride into Manhattan but has reasonable housing and clean air.”

  Miranda made a note. “I received the IP addresses of the two emails that Grazia gave to the technician—the anonymous one and the one that Manuel emailed to Stanley, who forwarded it to Grazia. The first was from a New York public library and the other from a Starbucks in Flushing.” She read off the street addresses. “And,” she added, “the money courier service that transferred the thousand dollars from Manuel to his mother was also located in Flushing.” She gave that address.

  “We’ll check them out today.” Cargill was scribbling addresses on the to-do list. He turned to Grazia. “You got any photos of Manuel, Luigi, and Edmondo? You seem to take pictures of everyone.”

  She pulled out her smartphone and started searching her photos.

  “What do you know about this Valentino Agresta?” Cargill asked Miranda.

  “We checked him out this morning when we got Grazia’s email. He was hired by Francisco Pamplona Law Offices in Milan seven years ago, a month before Grazia. According to his secretary, who doesn’t like him much, he was all set to move to Naples for the negotiating job, but Grazia got it instead. He’s now on the Milan contract-negotiating team. It’s not as big a job as the Naples position but still excellent money.”

  “Why doesn’t his secretary like him?”

  “She says he’s too smooth. Nothing sticks to him. He has a huge ego and never forgets a slight.”

  “Have you found who leaked the Kourtis information to the press or to the Building Safety Department?” Grazia dared to ask.

  “The press won’t reveal their sources and neither will Building Safety. They say if they did, they would never get any tips. All I’m sure of is that it wasn’t an electronic leak from our system.”

  “I’m beginning to think that I didn’t talk about the Kourtis contract at all,” said Grazia. “Nick, the bartender, says it was a football night and everyone was yelling. The three Italians said the music was so loud that it was hard to hear names, much less conversations. And Raoul—the real Raoul Cataneo in Boston—said that I got sick very quickly after they opened the second bottle. The only person who says I talked about my work was Laura.”

  “What more do you know about Laura?” asked Cargill.

  Miranda checked her notes. “She’s been at her present law firm since she graduated. One of her clients is the contractor who subcontracts cement work to Kourtis.”

  “And she hates me,” added Grazia. “She wanted the job at Francisco Pamplona Law Offices, and I got it. She didn’t get into Law Review at law school, and she blames me. And she didn’t get the job interview that I have scheduled for Monday. Do you think she met Valentino Agresta at the hotel or knew him from before?”

  “I’ll try to find out,” said Miranda. “What do you have on your schedule for today?”

  Grazia answered. “A private lab will do the DNA identity on the dinner napkin that Valentino Agresta gave us last night. We’ll take it out there this morning. Yesterday I took them something that carried the DNA of a man I think is one of the men who assaulted me. It’s ready. They will email the results to the medical examiner to run a match. I’m paying for it,” she added.

  “I talked to my captain,” Cargill said. “He’ll approve the medical examiner running a match on both the samples. After the lab, we’ll go to Sophia’s home to find out why she isn’t at work. We’ll take the photos of the various possible offenders to the Starbucks and the money-transfer company and see if the employees recognize anyone in the photos. And we’ll do the same for the guy who retrieved Grazia’s sack for her when she was mugged.”

  They closed the call. Detective Cargill hunkered down next to Jacky and scratched the dog’s head. “I wish I could get you near Valentino Agresta,” he said. “I’m sure your nose will tell us what we need to know.”

  Chapter 38

  Grazia followed Cargill down the snowy sidewalk to his car parked in a loading zone. She was feeling energetic and upbeat. Sun sparkled on the latest new snowfall. Cargill had been right about contacting Miranda Security. Already they had acquired vital information. “We’re getting closer!” she smiled.

  “Don’t look too far ahead, or you’ll miss a detail right at your feet.” Cargill removed the police sticker on the dash and spun his wheels over the crust the snowplow had left behind. He turned right on First Avenue and called in his location and destination into his dispatcher.

  Grazia was on her phone, trying again to reach Sophia. She got no answer from her home or cell phone. Cargill veered off at a photo shop, where Grazia printed off two photos, one that she had taken of Valentino the evening before at the Alhambra restaurant, and a group photo she had found on her camera that Stanley had taken of her, Manuel, Edmondo, and Luigi. When she emerged, Cargill was closing his phone.

  “That was the taxi driver. You were not vomiting on the sidewalk, he says. You were standing on your own two feet but not looking well. You started to get into the taxi but the man you were with said he would take you to your hotel. He pulled you out and closed the door. The taxi driver said you were shouting in another language, but he did hear in English, “That’s my taxi.” He didn’t pay much attention because he thought you were drunk.”

  “Did the man I was with have an accent?” inquired Grazia.

  He handed over his phone. “Go to ‘Sent Calls’ and talk to him yourself.”

  The answer was quick. “He says everyone in New York has an accent,” she smiled, closing the phone.

  At the Jersey City lab, the desk clerk had the results re
ady at the counter. “The tech just now emailed these to the medical examiner,” she reported, reading a note on the envelope as she rang up the bill.

  Grazia blinked at the sum, which was more than double what she had expected. “Dio! I thought it would be around six hundred and fifty dollars,” she quavered.

  “Hang on, let me check.” She returned with an energetic man wearing a lab coat.

  “We weren’t sure which DNA you wanted us to identify,” he explained cheerfully. “Given your story, we decided to identify them all.”

  “What do you mean ‘all’?” demanded Cargill.

  “All on the pen, the paper napkin, and the handkerchief. We found one set of female DNA on all three so we assumed it was yours. We were instructed to look for male DNA so we didn’t do an identity. But the others,” and he reached for the envelope and drew out the receipt, “you can see that we got four separate male DNA samples. One was on the pen, two were on the paper napkin, and one was on the handkerchief. The paper napkin looks like a restaurant napkin, so one is likely the waiter’s DNA. In any event, we ran four DNA identities, so the total bill is higher than expected.”

  Grazia numbly handed over her credit card, struggling to understand. Cargill passed the tech the police envelope with the napkin that Valentino had spit on. The lab tech peered into the envelope. “Do you want the same? We identify all DNA on the sample, no matter how many? You’ve got a paper napkin in here, so one DNA will be a waiter’s.”

  “Identify them all,” answered Grazia grimly.

  The tech was reading the invoice the receptionist handed him. “A rush job? Call back at five o’clock. I’ll call you if we’re done before.”

  Back in the car, Cargill looked at Grazia. “Whose pen did you swipe?” he demanded.

  “If I tell you, will you promise to still have the medical examiner run the match?”

  “The captain has already approved.”

  “That’s not a promise.”

  He held up his hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Edmondo. I know you said that the medical examiner already ran a match using his DNA from his employee files. But Nick says it’s easy for cops to switch DNA information if you have access to the files. So maybe somebody switched a file somewhere.” She explained how she had obtained the pen.

  Cargill shook his head in disbelief. “Is there anyone in the world that you trust?”

  “No.”

  “Try trusting me,” he said. He pulled out his phone, called the medical examiner, and asked the team to expedite running the match on the DNA identities that the New Jersey lab had just emailed. He informed them that the DNA on the pen belonged to Edmondo Potenza, security officer at the Hotel Fiorella.

  “Flushing is next,” he said to Grazia, hanging up and revving the Plymouth. “We’ll show your photos to the staff at the money-transfer company and Starbucks. They may recognize Manuel. Oddly, though, the money-transfer agent told me on the phone that whoever brought in the one thousand dollars didn’t look at all like his photo ID. It’s possible that if Manuel did actually go to Italy, he left his New York ID with someone else to use as ID when they send the money.” He put the car in gear, then glanced over at her. “The pen belongs to Edmondo. So whose are the other two DNAs—the paper napkin and the handkerchief?”

  Grazia had opened the envelope and was turning the pen, paper napkin, and handkerchief over in her hands. The paper napkin was the heavy kind found in restaurants. It was smeared with her lipstick, along with food stains. The handkerchief had been a gift from her grandmother who gave her a stack each birthday. Grazia always kept one in her handbag. They were useful for tidying up mascara or blotting perspiration, and they looked classier than a tissue.

  She mentally reconstructed how the pen had got wrapped in the napkin and her handkerchief. She had swiped Edmondo’s pen and slid it into her coat pocket. When she was in the taxi going to New Jersey, she had reached into her pocket and pulled out the pen along with the paper napkin and the handkerchief. They had already been there. She had wrapped the pen loosely in the paper napkin because Cargill had said that paper must be used when transporting DNA samples. Then she had wrapped the paper napkin in the handkerchief as added protection. She looked out the window, letting her mind drift, hoping for a revelation.

  They were making good time. Cargill had put his portable siren on top of the car and was driving in the bus lane. His phone rang. He put it to his ear.

  “You’re absolutely positive?” he demanded in disbelief after some moments. “Call the captain and tell him all that. I’m on my way to Flushing now.”

  Cargill hung up. “Detour,” he announced. “Pay attention. I want you to do two things right now. First, call Sophia again. If she answers, find out where she is and ask her who she’s hiding from.” He waited while Grazia rang both Sophia’s phones.

  “No answer.”

  “Now call Stanley. If he doesn’t answer, call the reception desk and have him paged. Then hand me your phone. I want to keep my own phone open. I’ll be getting calls any minute now.” He told her Stanley’s cell phone number.

  Stanley answered on the first ring.

  “We’ve got a situation here,” said Cargill, taking the phone from Grazia. “The medical examiner just ran a match on a DNA identity obtained by a private Jersey City lab. They got the DNA off a pen that Grazia swiped off Edmondo yesterday morning. Maybe you remember? Grazia dropped in on you and Edmondo in your office. She told you about a computer tech and borrowed Edmondo’s pen, which she then swiped and took to a New Jersey lab.”

  He paused. “Yes, one independent lady. OK, the lab just emailed their results to the medical examiner. They ran a match with the DNA they got from Grazia’s room and the rape kit and the Hotel Fiorella employee files. You paying attention? Here’s the deal: The DNA off Edmondo’s pen does not match the DNA in Edmondo’s employee background file.”

  There was a long silence. “Stanley, you know I trust you absolutely or I wouldn’t be telling you this; I would be down there with the Immigration officials impounding your employee files. There’s more. Edmondo, Manuel, and Luigi all have US passports because they were born in the US. However, I learned this morning from a private security agency in Naples that all three grew up in Italy and have worked in security positions for Grazia’s employer before they came here. The employer’s name is Francisco Pamplona. He’s got a big law firm in Naples.”

  Cargill’s own cell phone rang. He handed Grazia her phone. “Tell Stanley to give you the home addresses and personal phone numbers of Edmondo, Luigi, Manuel, and Sophia. I already know where Manuel lives. Tell him we’re going there now.” Cargill answered his own phone.

  Grazia relayed the message and was busy writing down the addresses in her journal, so she didn’t hear Cargill’s conversation, but as she closed her phone, he handed her his phone. “A police officer is on the line,” he said. “Read off the addresses of Manuel, Luigi, and Edmondo. We need to get objects that have their DNA on them. I will get Manuel’s. Other detectives will get Luigi’s and Edmondo’s. We don’t need Sophia’s because the medical examiner’s crew already identified her DNA in your room.” He activated the portable alarm on the roof and accelerated past a line of buses.

  Chapter 39

  Manuel’s home in Flushing was a small, two-story, single-family bungalow on a quiet, tree-lined street of similar dwellings. The front walk had been shoveled and two sleds lay turned over in the snowy yard. A uniformed police officer stood on the stoop, his back to the door. Two squad cars blocked the street.

  “She’s the only one home,” said the cop on the stoop. “Kids are in school. The neighbor stuck his head out. I asked if he had seen Manuel recently; he said no and went back inside.”

  “Put somebody on his back door,” said Cargill.

  “Already there.”

  Manuel’s wife was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands twisting a dishtowel. She looked terrified. Two burly policemen were leaning agains
t the counter. Cargill held up his badge to the cops and to Manuel’s wife. He pulled a chair around to face her. “Do you speak English?”

  She nodded.

  “Where is Manuel?”

  “Italy. His mother is in the hospital.”

  Cargill leaned back in his chair. “Our associates in Italy talked to his mother. She’s perfectly healthy and she says Manuel is in Flushing. Manuel wired a thousand dollars to her from a money-transfer place in Flushing at a time when he told Edmondo he would be on a plane. And he emailed Stanley yesterday, probably from a Starbucks in Flushing. So I’m going to ask you again. Where is Manuel?”

  “I don’t know.” Tears filled her frightened eyes.

  Cargill pointed to Grazia. “This woman visited a bar Saturday night where your husband told her to go. She returned to the Hotel Fiorella so drugged that she couldn’t remember anything the next day. Including that somebody took her up to her room and raped her. Edmondo says that Manuel took her up. What do you know about this?”

  The woman’s wide eyes turned on Grazia. She shook her head and crossed herself.

  Cargill sighed. “OK if we take a look around your house? Or do I need a search warrant?” When the woman didn’t answer, he turned to Grazia. “Translate, will you?”

  Grazia translated. “She says you can look around, that she thought Manuel was in Italy. I think she’s telling the truth.”

  “Stay with her. If she talks, shout.” He jerked his head at a police officer, and they went upstairs.

  Grazia sat watching Manuel’s wife. A tear rolled down the woman’s cheek. Grazia reached into her handbag and pulled out a clean handkerchief she had put in the day before. She held it out. As she did so, she remembered with a rush of dizziness where she had done this before. She had been in Francisco’s limo going to the airport. Francisco had cried when he begged her to come back to him. She had given him her handkerchief, and when he had handed it back, she had shoved it into her pocket. What a relief to know where that came from and that the DNA was Francisco’s DNA.