Havoc-on-Hudson

by Bernice Gottlieb

  “I know I promised you,” I began, “that I’d stay away from the investigation into the attacks on the real-estate brokers …”

  Andrew was suddenly very still. Very attentive. “Why do I fear there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

  “But,” I said, and the story poured out of me. “I was only seventeen when it happened,” I began.

  I was just leaving our brick rowhouse in Brooklyn the first time Josh drove past in his white convertible. It was a beautiful summer morning and the top was down. When he saw me he stopped and offered me a ride. I’d been brought up to be a proper young woman, so I ignored him. A few days later, he passed my house again, stopped, and smiled at me. I asked him to please leave me alone.

  Somehow he got my name and started phoning me. He was funny, charming and persuasive and eventually wore me down. I was only seventeen, after all. What did I know? I told him I would go out with him if I could bring my friend Gloria with me. He agreed and brought one of his own pals along. The four of us had a nice dinner at a local restaurant, then went to the movies.

  My parents had made it clear that, since I knew very little about this fellow, I was to be home no later than 10:30 p.m. All Josh had told me was that he’d graduated from Hofstra and the convertible was a gift from his parents. I liked his looks; he was tall, with straight black hair that fell over his forehead. It was charming, the way he kept brushing it away from his eyes.

  We left the theater at 10 p.m. Josh ignored my request to drive me home first because of my curfew—which I mentioned again. Instead, he dropped Gloria off at her house, where his friend’s car was. Then he pulled out of their driveway and turned his car in the opposite direction from my house.

  “Josh, you’re going the wrong way!”

  But he didn’t say anything, just kept going.

  “What are you doing? This will take us onto the highway!”

  He grinned at me with all his teeth showing and gunned the motor.

  I knew then I was in deep trouble. Should I jump out of the car? At the next red light! But there were no red lights. There were no stop signs. We turned onto the highway. He started speeding. The convertible top was up, and he’d turned on loud music. I wanted to scream. I wanted to wave my arms at the passing cars. I started to roll down my window, but he backhanded me across the face. Hard. Stunned, I lost track of time.

  We exited Oriental Boulevard at Manhattan Beach, a neighborhood of beach homes and condos. I cried and pled with him to take me home. But, no. He pulled up to a secluded parking area on the beach where there were no other cars, no people, no houses, only a high-rise apartment building looming in the distance.

  While we’d been on the highway, I’d considered my options. I checked out the button that unlocked the car door; it was up. That meant unlocked. I kicked off my shoes, so I could run if I got the chance. The high, narrow heels had metal shanks, I knew—perfect weapons. I reached down in the dark and grabbed one, held it tight. A strange calm came over me. Suddenly I was in possession of my wits.

  I envisioned headlines in the Daily News—School Girl Raped on Manhattan Beach. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Josh shrieked the car to a halt, rammed it into Park, and swiveled toward me. The look on his face was monstrous. Grabbing my neck with both hands, he started to choke me.

  I fought him, biting his wrists, scratching him, kicking.

  “Motherfucking bitch!” He grabbed my ponytail, pulled me towards him, punched me in the side of my head. The pain of the blow was stunning. My ears rang. My vision blurred. He pulled my sundress from my shoulders, reached down and ripped off my underpants.

  With all the strength I could muster, I lifted the shoe with the stiletto heel and struck him right in the eye. He dropped the underpants, raised both hands to his bloody eye. I grabbed the chrome door handle, pushed open the car door, rolled out, jumped to my bare feet, slammed the door on his grasping hand, and started running. It was dark and all I could see was sand. I didn’t know which way to go. Bare feet thumping on the hard sand, I just kept running. In straight lines. In circles. Anywhere, just to get away from him.

  Behind me, the car motor roared to a start. Then the brights came on, picked me out, the only human creature on the beach. The roar and the lights came after me. “I’m gonna get you, you crazy bitch!” I ran in ever-tighter circles to make it harder for him to hit me. I didn’t feel the broken shells cutting into the soles of my bare feet. It was days before I could walk again.

  I was never a praying person, but, God help me, I prayed that night. I prayed as I ran, as I stumbled, as I staggered.

  From nowhere a police car appeared in front of me, shrieked to a stop, and two cops jumped out. One, a young redhead, caught me, held me by the shoulders, steadied me.

  “He’s trying to kill me … he’s trying to kill me!”

  The other cop, bald and burly, jumped in front of the now-slowing convertible, slammed his fist on the hood, brought Josh to a halt.

  I heard it all. The creep told them that I was some slut he’d picked up, some whore who’d led him on, that going to Manhattan Beach had been my idea. That, then, for no reason, I’d turned on him, brutally attacked him. They looked at him, up and down. He was six feet tall, a muscular young man in the prime of his life. Yes, his face was pocked and bleeding from stiletto-heel wounds, one eye was swollen shut, blood dripping down his cheek. They looked at me. I was seventeen, looked younger, slender and underdeveloped, five feet four. My dress was ripped in half. My panties were gone.

  The younger officer rummaged through the car’s front seat, came out with the torn panties dangling between his thumb and forefinger. The big cop reached behind his belt, pulled out his handcuffs, slapped them on Josh, shoved him in the backseat of the squad car. Shoved him hard. Josh screamed, his voice high and hysterical, “You won’t get away with this! My uncle …” The cop mumbled something I couldn’t hear, slammed the car door, and that was that.

  Then the redhead sat me down on a bench and bandaged my feet tightly to stem the bleeding. While we waited for the paddy wagon to come and get Josh, he told me that someone in the apartment building had seen me running away from the car and notified them. The officers drove to the precinct station, took down my story. I could hardly talk. I was in shock.

  It was 2 a.m. when the squad car pulled up in front of my house, and my parents were waiting for me, frantic with worry. They’d called Gloria when I missed my curfew. She said she’d been dropped off at 10 p.m. Then they’d called the police.

  No charges ever stuck against my would-be rapist. His uncle was a well-known attorney on Long Island. Hotshot uncle got the case dismissed. I saw Josh Gagliardi’s name in the newspaper awhile back; he was running for Congress.

  It’s been decades. He’d gotten off scot-free. That was what haunted me. I was certain that he’d intended to kill me.

  “Anger broods and blisters,” I said to Andrew, as the lights came on across the Hudson. “I try to keep mine under control, but I’ve never really been able to let it go.” I sighed. “If I could play even a small role in getting this rapist off the streets, in bringing him to justice, I might find some sense of closure.”

  Andrew took my hand, kissed it, then placed it on his heart. I loved that gesture. It spoke of love and concern. It helped begin to absolve those traumatic memories.

  “Just to be safe, Maggie,” he said, “let’s work together on this, and keep a low profile. Armchair sleuths can sometimes impede an investigation and do more harm than good, but maybe together we can help.”

  19

  I slowed my brisk walk down Manhattan’s Madison Avenue to a stroll and peered into the ornate entrance of the Carlyle Hotel. During my earlier career, as a model for the iconic fashion maven, Eleanor Lambert, I’d frequently lunched here with one of the designers who hired me either for their print ads or as a runway model. But that had been a
lifetime ago, and I didn’t miss it. Café Carlyle now seemed stuffy and over-decorated to me, its fawning waiters obtrusive.

  It was always restorative to get away from my hectic work schedule in Westchester, and so I tried to take a day for myself in the city whenever possible. A little window-shopping and perhaps a haircut at Vidal’s with Karin and then lunch at one of the charming restaurants on this fabulous Avenue. Urban life was so different from my everyday world, and just the break I needed.

  Today, I’d chosen to take advantage of the beautiful weather to enjoy a meal at a sidewalk café. I settled in at a corner table at Le Paris Bistrot, where I could observe the passing crowd of chic women with designer handbags and five-inch stiletto heels. It was fun to pretend I was still one of them, living in that worldly fantasy, and then I jolted back to reality as I remembered my Ferragamos in the police lab with Amy Honeywell’s blood on them.

  Oh, you’ve come a long way baby, I thought. Sometimes I thought that was a good thing. Sometimes I wondered.

  “May I help you, Madame,” asked the young French waiter. I ordered a Bellini and studied the menu. Soupe a L’oignon? La Salade Alsacienne? Les Escargot?

  A long, black limo pulled up at an empty spot in front of the restaurant, and a stunning Latina woman emerged wearing a fox collar on a pale linen suit. Heading for the empty table directly in front of me, she told the waiter there would be two. Moments later the limo driver joined her, tall, well-built, silky black hair pulled tightly back into a man bun, looking as if he had just walked off the page of a Vogue advertisement. I wasn’t the only woman at Paris Bistrot who couldn’t help staring at this gorgeous man. Grrrr.

  Then the onion soup was delivered, and I turned my attention from the fabulous man to the fabulous meal. I was just finishing the last of my espresso when the neighboring couple got their check. I called for mine as well. The waiter’s attention, however, was on the woman as she climbed into the back of the limo. Her companion donned a cap and stepped into the driver’s seat. My curiosity got the best of me, and I asked the waiter if this unusual couple frequented the bistro.

  “Oui,” He smiled broadly, as he wrote out my check. “Ze lady told me she was once Miss Caracas, and had been married to a famous racing car driver who crashed and died during a famous race in Monte Carlo. Mon oncle was there, and I heard all about it. Tres triste.”

  I added an extravagant tip to my check and scrawled my signature. “What about the gentleman she’s with?”

  “Oh, he’s her driver and body guard, the lucky bastard!” he answered. Then he apologized for his language. “I think, if you ask me, he is also her lover; he can’t keep his hands off her.”

  20

  On a balmy blue morning in early September my desk phone rang. The readout, HH Town Police, surprised me. Chief Betsy had been keeping her distance.

  I picked up the receiver. “Ye-e-e-s?”

  “Hey, Maggie,” she greeted me, and then, never one to waste words, “may I buy you lunch?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me, Chief? I thought you made that pretty clear—that I wasn’t to go anywhere near your case.”

  A moment’s silence, then, “The Station Café. One o’clock. Yes? Or No?”

  I covered the mouthpiece with the palm of my left hand. “Claire,” I called, “am I free for lunch?”

  Claire clicked on her computer screen, brought up the master schedule for all things Mitty Realty. “You’ve got a showing on the Blake place at 2:30. Nothing till then.”

  “Yes,” I said, and I hung up. Two could play the game.

  The Station Café is a chic place on Water Street, just off of Main, a two-shift little restaurant near the Train Station, open from 6 a.m. (for the commuters’ coffees and croissants) to 10 p.m. for the Lobster Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Bourgone Blanc crowd. For Hudson Hills, The Station Café is the center of the universe; I don’t think I’ve ever walked into the place without meeting someone I know.

  The Chief was sitting at a back table in the chair that faced the door, a cup of steaming black coffee at her place, a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio at mine. I slid into the chair. “Wine?” I commented. “And at lunch? I can’t wait to hear what you want from me.”

  She sat tall and straight in her chair, curly dark hair pinned back at the sides with tortoise-shell barrettes, and fixed me with her blue gaze. “I won’t beat about the bush, Maggie. I need your help. Again.”

  “Is that so?” I crossed my arms across my chest and leaned back in the chair. “What about all your concern for my safety?”

  Her resonant voice was pitched low, but the words came across bell-clear to me. “We have an I.D. on the killer and his DNA matches several rapes in the New York City area.” The shapely lips twisted. “Interested now?” She turned to the young waitress who’d just approached the table, order pad at the ready. “I’ll have the Caesar Salad with salmon, please. And …” she gestured toward me, “whatever Ms. Mitty’s having, put it on my bill.”

  “Are there anchovies in the salad?” I smiled at the girl. I knew Kelley Emerson and her family; as a matter of fact, I’d sold them their house when Kelly was still in diapers. She’d just this past May graduated from Mount Holyoke with a major in Art History. Looked like the job hunt wasn’t going well—September and she was still waiting tables.

  “If you want there to be, Mrs. Mitty.” Kelley returned my smile. “Most people don’t.”

  “Great. Caesar Salad then, anchovies, no salmon.” I’d been trying to look cool, uninterested, but now turned immediately back to the Chief. “Yes? Do tell.”

  “Have some wine first.” She gestured toward the stemmed glass.

  “I never drink at lunch,” I said. Which wasn’t really true, but I didn’t want her to think I was bribable.

  “Okay. Your loss.” She shrugged. “The suspect’s name is Daniel Joseph Farrell. He’s known as Danny Joe,” She said it in that peculiar low-toned voice that carried only as far as she wanted it to. As far as my ears, that is. No nosy diners were going to learn one damn thing she didn’t want them to know.

  The name meant nothing to me, but I shuddered anyhow. This was the name of a rapist and murderer. The killer of someone I’d known.

  She lifted the white coffee mug, took a sip, replaced it precisely in the coffee stain ring on the lunchtime paper placemat. “Most of what I’m going to tell you is strictly for your ears alone. But I do need your help once again as liaison with the realty community, so I have to tell you more than I want you to tell them. You understand?” The blue gaze was straight and serious.

  “Yes. I do.” I was over my snit.

  “The authorities are not yet ready to release the name, so don’t tell anyone. But we have a photo. Here’s what I want you to do—show your colleagues the picture. Make it as low-key as possible. Then start talking about something else. Anything else. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  Daniel Joseph Farrell was an ex-con who’d fallen off the supervisory grid. After release from Juvenile Detention eight years earlier, he’d shown up at his parole board only once and had then seemingly vanished into thin air. But DNA from the murder scene had matched his juvvie records. Then it had matched the evidence from the rape across the river at Spring Valley and from the Hudson Hill’s rape and murder of Amy Honeywell. He was still out there, somewhere, clearly not too far away.

  Still out there. Still a menace, I thought. First I felt fear, and then the wave of anger washed over me again. Anger won out. Another Josh Gagliardi. Oh! I’d been such a young girl. So defenseless. He’d seen me as easy prey.

  This guy’s victims, this Farrell creep’s prey, were different. They were mature, professional women, but their victimhood was nonetheless tragic, nonetheless infuriating. I was angry now for their sake, was still committed to doing whatever the Chief needed me to do in order to bring him to justice. />
  But really, what she wanted me to do wasn’t much. I was to do NO investigation, she said. I was simply to liaise, to take the photograph of Danny Joe Farrell around from one real-estate agent to the next, inform them that a man approximating this description was a person of interest in the attacks on brokers. That they should be on the lookout for such a man. That they should take precautions, and that any such individual should be reported immediately to the authorities.

  “I’m asking you to do it this way,” she said, peering at me over the rim of her coffee mug, “because I don’t want anything to end up on paper or on the Internet. This guy is one smart cookie, and I don’t want to risk the possibility that he’s gonna stumble across it online. But, on the other hand, our little Danny Joe’s a loner. He’s not about to go around talking to people, so word of mouth won’t be a problem. Will you do this for us?”

  And that was all she wanted me to do. Just show the picture around. No names. No pack drill. Whatever that means.

  “So, you do have a picture of the suspect?” My eyes were wide. I half expected him to look exactly like Josh Gagliardi.

  She reached for her briefcase on the seat beside her, pulled out a nine-by-twelve manila envelope, removed a large photograph from the envelope and slid it across the table to me. It was a mug shot, but it looked like a picture from a high-school yearbook. A dark-haired young man still in his teens stared out at me, his eyes challenging. He was a good-looking boy of about eighteen, but his face was hard, his gaze challenging.

  “But he’s just a child,” I protested to Betsy.

  “Not any longer.” She slid a second photo from the envelope. “We had our artist age him according to the earlier picture and plus the descriptions from rape victims. This is what he’d look like now.”

  I gasped when I saw the artist’s rendition of that boy all grown up now, strikingly handsome, the curves of the younger face now matured into hard, flat planes. The eyes savvy under thick eyebrows. The lips full and sensual. The dark hair, on the long side now and stylishly cut.