Date Rape New York

by Janet McGiffin

  She took a sip of her wine, not answering Cargill’s question, deliberately holding on to this lovely moment at this kitchen table in this warm apartment, guarded by a tough old lady and this sweet police detective.

  “I need to go over to the Hotel Fiorella and pack,” she said. “It shouldn’t take long. Sophia keeps my room so tidy.”

  “Who was this friend who borrowed your handkerchief?” Cargill had stopped sprinkling grated Parmesan on his spaghetti and was watching her. So was Mrs. Springer.

  “Why?” Grazia asked, playing for time. She didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Because the DNA on that handkerchief matches the sperm DNA Janine got from inside you. It also matches the sperm DNA the medical examiner’s team got off the table in your hotel room.”

  The table went funny; it moved. Black spots floated before her eyes. She felt Cargill catch her as she fell, then pick her up and carry her to the sofa. She put her hands over her face and turned her face into the sofa cushion. From far away, she could hear Mrs. Springer berating Cargill.

  “Have you no tact at all, young man?” she scolded. “She’s tied up in knots, poor girl, hanging on to her sanity by her fingernails. You should have persuaded her gently to tell you who used that hankie. Then you break the news. Gently. After she ate, not before.”

  “There is no ‘gently’ with this news,” Cargill replied harshly. “I know who used the handkerchief. There’s only one betrayal that could make a strong woman black out like that.”

  Grazia spoke without moving her face from the pillow. Her tongue was thick and her voice sounded like someone else’s. “Who was the second man?”

  “Manuel. His DNA off his toothbrush matched the hairs that were under the table and on your pillow. And he left sweat DNA on your arms.”

  “There were two male DNAs inside her body,” said Mrs. Springer, cutting in. “One was the guy with the handkerchief. Was Manuel the second DNA?”

  “No, the medical examiner says they had no match to the second DNA inside her; it must have been from a previous liaison. Can you believe they used that word? Apparently sperm hangs around a while.

  “She didn’t have any previous liaisons,” said Mrs. Springer. “We had a long chat last night.”

  But Grazia’s brain had shut down; she didn’t want to remember anymore. She had done enough remembering. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  Chapter 41

  Mrs. Springer was sitting in the big armchair, knitting, when Grazia opened her eyes. The clock on the TV read just after midnight. The old lady was wearing headphones and watching a movie on the silently flickering TV. Jacky lay in his basket at her feet. When the little dog saw Grazia’s eyes open, he thumped his tail. Mrs. Springer took off her headphones and turned off the movie with the remote. She picked up her knitting again.

  “Detective Cargill was very worried about you when he left. He said that you are a tough, resourceful woman, but there’s a limit to what anyone can take. He also told me the name of the man who belongs to the DNA on your handkerchief.”

  Grazia’s eyes watched the lights of the passing cars move shadows across the ceiling.

  “Detective Cargill asked me once if I was strong enough to face the truth if I found it. I told him that I had to be. I thought that meant that I would be. But I was wrong. I couldn’t. I started suspecting Francisco after I talked to Miranda. I realized there was something wrong with the time sequence. He hadn’t read what I sent him as quickly as he normally would have. But I told myself it couldn’t be. I couldn’t accept the truth when it stared me in the face. Sunday morning I had a dark hole in my memory, and now I have a dark hole in my heart.”

  “Is he a jealous man?” inquired Mrs. Springer. “Jealousy turns men into monsters.”

  Grazia nodded. “Yes. Controlling, selfish, and domineering. My lover. How could he have forced sex on me when I was unconscious? I’ve been sleeping with him for years. I would have slept with him. All he had to do was say he wanted to.”

  Mrs. Springer raised an eyebrow. “You called off your affair with him, you said last night. He cried on the way to the airport, you said. You took away the man’s power to have you whenever he wanted. So he took you by force. Not a new story.”

  Grazia thought that over. Then she realized, “It was more than that. It was revenge. He raped me because, in his eyes, it made me damaged goods. He wanted to devalue me as a woman, make me into a whore, unclean, immoral. He thinks of all women as possessions and once I was raped, he wanted to make sure I would never be any man’s prize.”

  Images swept Grazia of history. During all wars, women were routinely raped. In the Middle Ages in Europe, lords of the manor took whatever woman they wanted. But then Grazia remembered Cindy telling her of the many women who come to her crisis clinic and went on to build strong lives. You can’t be a victim if you don’t think of yourself as a victim, she declared to herself.

  “Are you going to tell Francisco that you know what he did?” inquired Mrs. Springer.

  “I have to think about it.” Grazia pushed her face into the pillow.

  “Keep your chin up, child,” said Mrs. Springer, folding her knitting. “I came over here as a little girl after the war. I remember what it was like over there. When they make you afraid, that means they’ve won.”

  “Manuel didn’t do it.” Grazia said, sure of this. “Valentino raped me. I know, although I don’t know how I know.”

  * * *

  Grazia awoke to the smell of bacon and coffee. For a long minute, she thought it was the morning before, that Cargill would arrive soon and they would make a video call to Miranda. Then she saw her luggage sitting by the kitchen door. She stared at it, bewildered, waiting for her memory to reconstruct the day before. In no part of her memory had she packed her bags. She could hear Mrs. Springer in the kitchen, talking to someone.

  Grazia pushed off the blankets, discovered she had slept in her clothes, and staggered into the kitchen. Cargill was at the table digging into bacon, eggs, and a pile of toast. Grazia dropped into a chair.

  “I overslept,” she mumbled.

  Mrs. Springer poured her a cup of coffee and pushed over the sugar. She placed a bowl of blueberries in front of her. Cargill was spreading marmalade thickly on toast. He bit off half of the piece and spoke with his mouth full.

  “I went to the Hotel Fiorella this morning. Sophia had packed your bags. She’s back at work. She’s clear. Her DNA matches the DNA in her file, and her US visa is in order because she does attend eighteen hours of English lessons a week. The staffing manager is pretending she’s a foreign business consultant and showed me a contract to prove it.”

  “Where was she all this time?” demanded Grazia.

  “Hiding at a friend’s house. She didn’t put your pajamas under your pillow as a signal to you that something was wrong. She was afraid of Edmondo. He knew she was helping you search for Francisco and Valentino and she was afraid he would come after her to punish her. She knew he used to be Francisco’s bodyguard and she thought he was still working for Francisco—and she probably is right. Her friend finally phoned Stanley and discovered Sophia was in no danger of deportation and that the police are looking for Edmondo. He can’t reach her without coming out of hiding—at least while she’s at the hotel.

  “Stanley is pissed off about this whole mess,” continued Cargill, pouring himself more coffee. “He says his job as chief of security was to stop criminal activity in his hotel, but upper management was stopping him. That’s why he couldn’t watch the CCTV tape or trace the phone call. Now the place is crawling with Immigrations officials who are combing through all employee records and comparing the DNA on record with cheek swabs. They’re finding mismatches. A number of staff haven’t shown up for work. It looks like the hotel was a first step into a new life for criminals who needed to get out of Italy. Stanley told me he was being used to make the operation look respectable. He’s angry.”

  Cargill looked at Grazia. �
�Mrs. Springer told me about your midnight chat. You know who the DNA on the handkerchief belongs to, don’t you?”

  Grazia stared into her coffee. There was a bitter taste in her mouth that the coffee didn’t touch. “Francisco. My lover. My boss.”

  “The monk identified him last night when I showed him your photo of Francisco and his two bodyguards. After Jacky bit him, Francisco let you wander in front of a taxi. He stood under a streetlight to look at the dog bite on his leg. When he leaned over to pull up his pant leg, his hat fell off. The monk got a good look at him under the lamplight and in the headlights of the taxi. Gray hair. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “I knew it as soon as I saw the CCTV videotape. The camera caught part of his shoulder and head. He was behind Valentino, bundled up, but I know him so well, his body movements were enough to confirm it. I had suspected him before, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”

  Cargill watched her nibble on a blueberry. “When did you suspect Francisco?”

  “It was the time discrepancy. Miranda said her courier delivered my draft of the Kourtis contract to Francisco’s Naples home Sunday morning. Celestina told the courier that Francisco had left Naples early Saturday morning for his beach house. The courier delivered it to the beach house early Sunday afternoon and handed it to Francisco’s bodyguard. He didn’t actually see Francisco in person. When Francisco called me Sunday night, he had just read the document. I know Francisco. As soon as something crosses his desk, he takes care of it immediately. So he would have read the document early Sunday afternoon.

  “This means Francisco wasn’t at the beach house,” Mrs. Springer said.

  Grazia nodded. “Francisco flew to New York Saturday noon, arriving here in the early afternoon on the same day because of the backward time change. He had plenty of time to talk to Valentino and hear Valentino’s lies. He came to the Brazilian Bar Saturday night with Valentino. They both hid in the crowd. Valentino didn’t make his presence really known until I had swallowed the Rohypnol. Then he started with the toasts, getting me to drink more champagne. He didn’t get close to me, ever. Francisco stayed hidden in the crowd. But it was Francisco who pulled me out of the taxi. That’s when I first saw him. That was why I said, ‘Why are you here?’ His face is what I couldn’t remember later. Francisco walked me to the hotel, then after he had. . .”

  Grazia choked, still unable to accept what Francisco had done. She collected herself. “Then he went to the airport and got a midnight or one o’clock in the morning flight, probably to Milan. He would have reached Milan at Italy about one o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, Italy time, and changed planes for Naples. One of his bodyguards would have picked him up at the airport and driven him to his beach house, arriving in the late afternoon on Sunday. Francisco called me at nine o’clock at night, Naples time, on Sunday after he had read my draft of the contract negotiations. Only Belinda and his two bodyguards would know where he had gone, and they will never talk.

  She continued, thinking aloud, “Then there was the information concerning his connection with Manuel, Edmondo, and Luigi. Miranda told me they all had worked for Francisco as bodyguards. Thursday night, my mother emailed me the names of the consortium that owns the Hotel Fiorella. Francisco is one. Francisco probably got Edmondo, and maybe Manuel, their new identities at the Hotel Fiorella. Manuel and Edmondo must have seen Francisco come into the hotel. They must have given him the key-card for my room. They told Luigi.”

  “Jacky didn’t bite Valentino, so Valentino didn’t walk you home. It was Francisco,” concluded Mrs. Springer.

  “And the glint of gold that you have been talking about since I first interviewed you?” asked Cargill.

  “Francisco’s gold cross, probably. Valentino wore gold too, a gold chain on his neck and wrist. But Francisco’s was a big one. Nick must have noticed it—that’s why he said the photo of Francisco felt familiar. But it was so crowded that night, Nick only caught a glimpse of it and didn’t see Francisco’s face. I must have seen saw the cross flash in the hotel room when Francisco was . . . was . . . I’d seen it before, many times. Janine said that many women have flashes of memory, even when they are heavily drugged. Maybe because I had seen the cross so many times before, the emotional recognition somehow broke through the drug, if only for an instant.”

  She changed the subject. “Has Manuel appeared?”

  “Not yet,” said Cargill.

  “Manuel didn’t do it. The sperm DNA from inside me was not Manuel.”

  “But the DNA off the hair clippings was. The DNA from his hairbrush and toothbrush matched what was found in your room. And on your arm.”

  “That’s because Manuel had just had a haircut—I’ve remembered that we were joking about it when he gave me directions to the Brazilian Bar. He must have helped me take off my coat in the lobby, so his hair clippings fell on my coat and on my shirt. The hair clippings then fell on the floor in my room when my shirt was pulled off. Or Valentino planted them there.”

  “But Manuel’s sweat DNA was on your arm.”

  “If he helped me off with my coat, he would have touched my arm. I couldn’t even stand; he would have held me upright.” Then she remembered. “What about the paper napkin that Valentino handed you at the Alhambra? Has the medical examiner found a match with that DNA?”

  “There was no match.”

  Grazia choked on her blueberries. “What do you mean, no match? Valentino raped me, I’m sure. Who else could it be? He was with Francisco at the Brazilian Bar. He followed Laura outside. Francisco walked me to my hotel, but Valentino would have followed him there. Francisco is his boss; Valentino couldn’t leave him.” Her voice rose.

  Cargill’s voice was patient. “This is all conjecture, and it doesn’t hold up. The medical examiner ran a DNA identity on Valentino’s DNA from his napkin from the Alhambra. The DNA did not match any of the samples the medical examiner took from your room, that Janine got off you, or the DNA identities you had done in New Jersey—the pen and the paper napkin and handkerchief from your pocket.”

  Grazia stared at her own paper napkin, now blue-streaked with blueberry stains. A thought kept tugging at her. “His DNA has to match something!” she burst out. “It will match the DNA on the paper napkin that I took to the private lab—the one that was in my pocket.”

  “No, Grazia. I just told you. The DNA on the paper napkin that came from your pocket that you wrapped around the pen does match the DNA that Janine found inside you. But it doesn’t match the Alhambra napkin. It doesn’t match anything.”

  “It’s Raoul—I mean Valentino!” she shouted. “The napkin was in my pocket because I used it at breakfast on Monday. Valentino was eating my blueberries. I saw him wipe his mouth on it. It has his DNA!”

  She hurried to the living room and rummaged through her suitcase until she found the lab envelope containing the pen, paper napkin, and handkerchief. “Blueberries!” she said triumphantly, holding up the paper napkin from the lab envelope next to her own breakfast paper napkin that was stained with blueberries. “I gave Valentino my blueberries, and he wiped his mouth with this paper napkin. Then I started to cry. I hadn’t put a handkerchief into my handbag, so I reached for anything to dry my tears, and it was Valentino’s breakfast napkin. It was beside his plate. He hadn’t put it in his lap. I smeared my mascara and lipstick on it, and I was embarrassed that I had used his napkin to wipe my mouth so I shoved it into my pocket. This paper napkin has Valentino’s DNA on it!”

  Cargill shook his head. “No, Grazia. We have Valentino’s DNA from the napkin he spit on at the Alhambra and that DNA doesn’t match the breakfast napkin. He gave us his napkin last night at the Alhambra. You saw him spit into the napkin, yourself.”

  Mrs. Springer shrugged. “Did you really see him spit? Easy enough to switch a napkin,” she commented, pouring Cargill more coffee. “Valentino had on him another paper napkin that somebody else wiped their mouth on, maybe some friend he was having lunch with. We know V
alentino is a devious, careful planner. He knew that if you agreed to have dinner with him, that Detective Cargill wouldn’t be far behind. So when he saw Detective Cargill coming to the table, he swapped his table napkin for another one that he had in his pocket, making sure he didn’t actually touch it. I’ve been at the Alhambra for dinner. It’s dark and noisy. Easy enough to switch a napkin and then fake a spit. Did he hand it to you? Or did you pick it up?”

  “I picked it up.” Cargill was gaping at Mrs. Springer in awe. “You’re either crazy or you should be on the force.”

  “You got to read the newspapers, Detective, they’re full of stuff like this. For example, did you know how drug addicts who are on parole and have to submit a urine specimen to prove they’re clean, submit another person’s urine? They tape a small urine collection bag full of someone else’s fresh urine to their leg, they go into the bathroom at the parole office and they come out carrying a jar of the other person’s urine.”

  “Yes! Valentino must have switched the napkin!” Grazia exclaimed, triumphantly. “Valentino said something to me like, ‘Isn’t that the detective coming over?’ and I looked toward Cargill. That’s when Valentino could easily have switched his napkin for one in his pocket. I wouldn’t have seen him make the switch.”

  She sat back and thought aloud, speaking slowly as if she were explaining it to herself. “Francisco and Valentino—they did it together. Francisco walked me home. Valentino was right behind us. Francisco made Manuel give him my room key-card. He went up to my room first, while I was in the lobby. Manuel probably was brushing the snow off me and helping me off with my coat. Then Valentino took me upstairs. Francisco was waiting in my room.” She sat in silence. “Then Francisco left for the airport, leaving Valentino to cover his tracks. It was Valentino who poisoned Jacky and grabbed my handbag and my sack of clothes.”