Date Rape New York

by Janet McGiffin

  “That’s only the bedroom series, culminating in you coming out of her room witnessed by Detective Cargill and the head of security of the Hotel Fiorella,” she said pleasantly. “Here’s another series: you and Celestina at the Brazilian Bar. Nick, the bartender, took this one and emailed it to me. This is you and Celestina going out the door of the bar. You will note the date and time marked on the photo. This is you getting out of the taxi and walking her into the Hotel Fiorella, taken by the doorman, who is the nephew of one of those fur-clad old ladies. And there is the CCTV footage from the Hotel Fiorella. Of course, Francisco will block anyone from seeing that footage, like he blocked Stanley from watching the footage that showed me with you.”

  “She consented,” Valentino said hoarsely. “She’s an adult. She’s responsible for herself. It’s her word against mine.” He snatched the phone and tapped on it. “Deleted. Gone.” He dropped it in her lap.

  “Like you deleted my photos of you at the Brazilian Bar. Francisco was in the background. If I had those, I would have known you were there. But unlike those photos, these photos of you and Celestina are stored on my hard drive, accessible from the cloud.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Stop drugging and raping women. Don’t ever do it again.”

  He smiled, relaxed again. “How will you enforce that? You can’t know what I’m doing every night. You can’t stop me.”

  “I will send your photo to every woman I know telling them to pass it on as a drug-facilitator rapist. It will go viral. Soon you won’t go to the corner drugstore without some woman posting it online.”

  “Maybe in Naples. But there’s Milan. And New York.”

  “Oh, you’ll never see New York again. Detective Cargill is discussing your visa with US immigration. As for Italy, I can stop you permanently. I can show Francisco those photos of you assaulting his precious daughter. Maybe he won’t kill you. But probably he will. And you raped me, Francisco’s girlfriend. Francisco doesn’t like other men poaching his territory.”

  “You naïve little female,” smirked Valentino. “Francisco knows what I did to you. He handed you over to me that night. He told me to have fun.”

  Grazia felt her whole body turn cold. How could she not have figured that out? How could she be so naive? Anger rose within her.

  “Holding these photos over your head as a threat obviously won’t work. So I will email them to Francisco now. Then I won’t have to worry about you out raping other women. You will be dead.” She lifted her hand over her phone.

  Valentino grabbed her phone but Grazia hung on. His hand was shaking. “You would never send a man to his death, with your so-high morals, Miss Women’s Shelter,” he hissed. “You could never cause the torture and death even of someone you hate.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Francisco came hurrying back in then, his face lined and thin. “I leave for New York after this conference. Now I will turn off my phones, and we can get down to business.” He snapped his fingers at the buffet attendant and pointed to the pastry tray.

  Valentino tried to wrench Grazia’s phone out of her hand. “People like you disappear all the time in this city,” he hissed. “I have contacts. One call from me and you’re kidnapped.”

  “Detective Cargill has these photos,” Grazia murmured. “If something happens to me, he will email them to Francisco. He wanted to do that before I left New York. He’s sick of scum like you polluting his city.”

  Valentino sneered, “Everyone has a price, especially poorly paid cops.”

  They were struggling over the phone with the screen facing them, so both Valentino and Grazia saw the text message that appeared on the screen. It was from Sophia.

  “I just emailed Francisco the photos,” Sophia texted. “I thought about this all night. Francisco will rape women again. So will Valentino. We can’t stop them. But we can punish them.”

  Valentino’s face went white.

  “You better get out of here,” Grazia whispered. “Keep running until you reach a place in the world where you can’t be found.”

  Valentino pushed his chair back and stood up. At that moment, Francisco’s secretary came into the room. She slid a note in front of Francisco, who glanced at it and frowned. He reached over and turned on his personal smartphone. He tapped on it, then picked it up and held it closer to his eyes. He swiped slowly, over and over, moving from one photo to the next. Then he looked up, his face white. His eyes slid around the conference table. They stopped at the empty chair next to Grazia. Then they moved to Grazia.

  Grazia held his gaze.

  For a long minute, Francisco stared at her. Then he slumped back in his chair. Slowly, he swiveled his chair and looked out the huge windows at the city and the sea. Then, with the tired motions of the defeated, he tapped his smartphone and put it to his ear. He pushed himself out of his chair slump-shouldered, and went into the hall.

  Grazia went over to the floor-to-ceiling window by the buffet and looked down at the sidewalk many floors below. After a few minutes, Valentino came out the doors. He crossed quickly, his long legs scissoring below her. He waved at a taxi. It eased toward the curb. Valentino stepped into the street to meet it, reaching for the door before the taxi had stopped.

  But he was too late. A security guard had followed him to the curb. He waved the taxi on with a flick of his fingers. Another security guard appeared on Valentino’s other side.

  A black limo pulled out from the underground parking and eased smoothly to the curb. The security guard opened the back door. Hands reached out and pulled Valentino inside. The limo moved away from the curb. In a few seconds, it had slid into the flow of Naples traffic, as smoothly as the waves had slid back into the Mediterranean Sea those nights on the sand in front of Francisco’s beach house.