Ordinarily by this time Dromoor would have slipped from the courtroom. His partner Zwaaf had departed. But something held Dromoor there, a morbid curiosity and dread as of one about to witness a train derailment.
“Mrs. Maguire. It is not bright sunshine here, you might remove your dark glasses.”
Schpiro spoke politely yet with an air of impatience. He was a judge keenly alert to frivolity in his courtroom. The dark glasses with their pathos of glamour, the floral print scarf tied about the woman’s head to disguise her sparse tufted hair, annoyed him.
Teena Maguire fumbled to remove the glasses, and dropped them. Diebenkorn, breathing through her mouth, stooped to retrieve them as they clattered to the floor. She explained to Schpiro that since her injuries, Mrs. Maguire’s eyes were unusually sensitive to light. Schpiro expressed some measured sympathy, saying that Mrs. Maguire might partially close her eyes. Teena spoke slowly and haltingly and not very coherently as Diebenkorn led her through an abbreviated testimony. It was clear that Teena had suffered neurological damage; often she paused for several seconds to search for the correct word. She had recovered only partial memory of the rape/assault. She had been able to positively identify only three of the rapists. When Diebenkorn asked if these individuals were present in the courtroom, Teena could not at first reply. She hid her face in her hands. She wiped at her eyes. Almost inaudibly she murmured yes. But asked to point them out, she hesitated for a long moment before concurring with the request.
With a shaking hand Teena pointed out Marvin Pick, Lloyd Pick, and Jimmy DeLucca, who were sitting immobile at the defense table staring frozen-faced at her. At the precinct, she had picked out Haaber instead of DeLucca. Partly the confusion had to do with the young men’s similar haircuts and clothing. Their lawyers had instructed them to look as much like one another as possible. Haaber had had a small mustache at the time of the rape, his hair had been much longer. Teena seemed to realize her mistake, there was an immediate buzz of indignation from the spectators, but she could not stammer out the words to rectify it.
The daughter, Bethel, spoke more clearly. But she was visibly trembling. Staring at Diebenkorn as if terrified of looking elsewhere. From time to time Schpiro interrupted to ask Bethel to speak louder, but the judge was not sarcastic with her. He would not wish to appear unsympathetic with a child victim of a violent sexual attack, at least at the preliminary hearing.
Kirkpatrick addressed Judge Schpiro.
The defense’s rebuttal of the charges against the defendants was a simple one: there had been no rape.
No rape! None.
Admittedly there had been sex. Multiple acts of sex. But the sex had been entirely consensual. Martine Maguire had known each of the defendants and was “well known” by them. The sex had been for money and the deal had gone wrong (Maguire had wanted more money than she’d been promised, or the young men had less to give her, this part of the disagreement was unclear), and the alleged victim, who had been drinking at the time, became verbally and then physically aggressive against her young clients. The young men, admittedly under the influence of alcohol and controlled substances, had fought back when she attacked them, but had not hurt her seriously; they had left the boathouse, and other, unidentified young men had entered, drawn by the commotion. The severe beating and instances of rape must have happened at that time.
“Those assailants, the NFPD has yet to identify and arrest.” As for Maguire’s daughter who had allegedly hidden in a corner of the boathouse at the time of her mother’s sexual encounters—“My clients and their companions were entirely unaware of her presence. They certainly had no knowledge of a twelve-year-old girl! Apparently the girl hurt herself crawling in the storage area. In her testimony she admits that she did not ‘actively see’ any acts of rape, only just heard them, or believed that she heard them. This was a confused, frightened child whose mother was so derelict as a parent she’d brought the child to a wild, drunken orgy of a Fourth of July party, and afterward led her into Rocky Point Park at midnight, to meet up with young men from the neighborhood whom she knew well, and whom she boldly propositioned for sex. The girl is a victim, yes: a victim of her mother’s outrageous negligence. She was confused at the time of the alleged rape and may have been purposefully misled by Maguire at a later time. Her testimony, like her mother’s, is entirely fabricated and misleading. As the evidence and my clients’ testimonies will show—”
There was an air of shock in the courtroom. Delayed shock, as in the aftermath of a sonic boom.
Then, from the rows of spectators, exclamations and scattered applause. Schpiro was as much taken by surprise as anyone and did not strike his gavel for several seconds, when it appeared that things might swerve out of control. “Quiet! Or I will clear the courtroom!”
Teena Maguire was protesting, incredulous. Diebenkorn tried to quiet her. There were raised voices from the spectators in the first several rows. Some of these were sympathetic with Teena Maguire, and furious on her account; others were hostile to her, and gloating. Individuals were on their feet. Diebenkorn and another deputy prosecutor were helping Teena Maguire as if she’d begun to fall, or to struggle. Bailiffs and guards charged forward. Schpiro was obliged to clear his courtroom after all: flush-faced, indignant, striking his gavel even as his words—“Enough! Enough!”—went unheard. On the evening news it would be reported The atmosphere quickly became too unruly for the judge to control.
Dromoor had seen the derailment. Sick in the gut, had to escape.
Part II
Wind Drives Us Crazy
AT THE FALLS SHE leaned over the railing. The wind blew cold spray into her face, clothes. Within seconds her clothes were soaked and clung to her thin body. Tourists perceived her as a drunk or drugged or deranged woman and kept their distance from her. On her head she wore a silk scarf that loosened in the wind, slipped from her head, and was blown out above the thunderous water; without the scarf, her hair was revealed as sparse, tufted, without color. Now she was perceived as possibly a sick woman, one who has lost her hair to chemotherapy.
Her face was a chalky-white face that looked as if, mask-like, it might be torn from her too, to be blown away into the frothy water.
Genius!
The woman’s word against theirs. Anybody can cry rape. Reasonable doubt is all a jury needs. Who can prove, disprove? Kirkpatrick is a genius, isn’t he? Best damn criminal lawyer in upstate New York. Of course you’ll have to refinance your home, sell your second car. Beg borrow steal, the guy isn’t cheap. But just the man to call when you’re in deep deep shit.
The Broken Woman
IT WAS THE END for Teena Maguire in Niagara Falls, she could not bear it. Never would she testify now. Never would she reenter any courtroom. No faith in any fucking courtroom! No faith in any fucking prosecutors, judges. Serve her a subpoena, threaten her with contempt of court she would not.
After the hearing that day she’d collapsed and had had to be hospitalized again for shock, exhaustion. She was diagnosed as anemic. She was diagnosed as severely depressed. She was diagnosed as suicidal. She was put on a regimen of antidepressant medication, which after a few weeks, she refused to take. She began seeing psychotherapists, rape counselors, but soon ceased. She was too tired to get out of bed in the morning. She was too tired to shower, shampoo her hair. She would not see women friends she’d known since high school. She’d ceased even to speak with Ray Casey on the phone. Often she refused to see her own mother in whose house on Baltic Avenue she was living.
Often she refused to see you.
* * *
Leave me alone can’t you for Christ’s sake. I’m sick. I’m so tired. I can’t give a damn about you or anybody else.
Teena Maguire claimed she could not remember what had happened to her in Rocky Point Park in July, or in the Niagara County Courthouse in September. She’d been pretty much beat up each time. Could not remember faces, couldn’t identify. Could not remember names. It hurt her head to try to think. She was giving it al
l up, she made no effort to remember. Teena’s pathetic. Worthless. Piece of shit. Who gives a damn about Teena she’s a fucking joke huh?
Sometimes she took the damn medication, more often not. Make her sick. Constipated. Head-not-right. Better to drop by the package store around the corner and buy a six-pack of beer, a bottle of cheap Italian red wine. Couldn’t afford good whiskey, not Teena! The dentist-brothers had hired another receptionist. They’d given her three months’ salary, she’d be eligible for unemployment. If she could force herself to go downtown and apply. Of course, she’d given up the row house on Ninth Street. She’d moved back with her mother. If she tried, she might get men to buy drinks for her, in which case she could drink reasonably good whiskey, bourbon, vodka, but it was not worth it for her to listen to the men, to smell the men, and to see their faces in whatever haze of drunkenness their faces floated in at the periphery of her wavering vision. Nor could she bear to be touched by any man. No, no! God, no. Panicked, screamed, scratched at them, disturbed other patrons and so she was not welcome in these bars in which in any case she had no desire to go. Better for Teena Maguire to buy her own provisions. Keep to herself. Walk the windy bluff at the edge of the Falls where it was always damp with spray. In fair weather the area swarmed with tourists like ants but in bad weather she was likely to be alone. Leaning against the railing above the American Falls. Staring into the crazed churning water far below.
At the Whirlpool just below the Falls, sixty-foot vertical walls of water rushed in a giant circle fasterfasterfaster as if about to disappear into a giant drain.
God help me. God give me peace. God?
“Ma’am! You don’t want to do that, ma’am.”
Whoever it was interrupting her reverie, sometimes daring to take her arm, Teena was indifferent. She shrugged, she made no reply. Often she was driven home by park officials/NFPD officers soaked through, shivering convulsively and her teeth chattering yet with a curious passivity, as if by being taking into custody in such a way she’d become again merely a body, an inert and soulless weight.
Her hair had grown back grudgingly, lank and curiously without color. When she saw her reflection in a mirror, taken unawares she did not think alarmed I must do something about my appearance, Jesus! but That pathetic woman, they should have finished the job.
* * *
One evening in early October it was Dromoor who brought Teena home.
You saw from your window upstairs at the front of your grandmother’s house. Saw the unfamiliar vehicle, a Ford station wagon, low-slung and not new, the kind you’d expect to see littered with kids’ toys in the backseat, pull up to the curb. And out of the driver’s seat a tall man in a dark canvas jacket, bareheaded, with a shaved-looking steely-glinting head, going around to help your mother out of the passenger’s seat. Teena lurched to her feet, leaning against the man’s arm even as she made an effort to stand on her own.
At first you didn’t recognize John Dromoor, out of uniform. Then you did.
You ran downstairs breathless. “Momma?”—you called out. Pretending not to know who was with you, bringing Teena home.
She’d been drinking again. And she was sick. She refused to take medication, see her therapist. Didn’t seem to give a damn what happened to her any longer.
You halted at the foot of the stairs. Saw them just inside the front door, in the outer vestibule. Through the frosted-glass doors you could not hear what they were saying. Mostly Dromoor spoke. But what was he saying? How well did they know each other? They were not touching. You could hear Dromoor’s voice—low, urgent, almost eager—but not his words.
Your mother laughed suddenly, without mirth. A shrill sound like glass breaking.
Pushing then through the swinging doors into the inner vestibule, not seeming to see you; or, seeing you, paying no heed. Behind her Dromoor hesitated, as if wanting to follow her. But better not.
He saw you then. He wasn’t smiling. He knew you of course—since the roadway in Rocky Point Park, he knew you—but had never yet called you by name.
Awkwardly you pushed through the frosted-glass doors. You were a shy girl made bold, brazen. Your heart rang like a deranged bell in your chest. You were breathless stammering, “M-Mister Dromoor?—thank you for bringing Momma home.”
Dromoor must have known, at that moment. The look in your face. The heat in your face. Yearning, desperation.
I love you. You are all to me.
You would remember: Dromoor telling you this was a hard time for your mother, you would have to take care of her. And you said, too quickly, in a voice of childish hurt, “I don’t think my mother wants anybody to take care of her.”
Alone with Dromoor in the vestibule of your grandmother’s house. A roaring in your ears, as if you were leaning over a railing at the Falls: the visceral wallop of infatuation, the most powerful emotion you’d ever experienced in your life.
Dromoor frowned at your words. He’d chosen his own with such care.
Dromoor left his cell phone number neatly written on a piece of paper. To pass on to Teena. Beneath the number these words:
The Female Prosecutor
GODDAMN HE’D ENTERED HER dreams. So shameful.
She could not control it! Could not control the case! The most highly publicized criminal trial in years in Niagara Falls and Harriet Diebenkorn’s opportunity at long-delayed last to prove herself to her skeptical male elders and she was publicly humiliated at the hearing, bushwacked. Never saw it coming. No more than the rape victim had seen it coming.
Kirkpatrick, Jay. He was Diebenkorn’s new nemesis. She was a woman who swerved from obsession to obsession and most of them male but none of them quite like Jay Kirkpatrick that bastard. Obsessed with Kirkpatrick. No wonder the man’s reputation! She’d been only vaguely aware now she was well aware. Rising to his feet and with an air of courteous and even gentlemanly regret riddling the state’s case with reasonable doubt as the most finished-appearing wood might be riddled from within by termites. Bastard never raised his voice. He was one to provoke others to raise their voices. He was not a handsome man, his skin was actually rather coarse and his pitiless eyes close-set on either side of his beak of a nose, and yet he exuded the air of a handsome man, suave and self-assured. Kirkpatrick had a cowboy swagger, though he wore custom-made pinstripe suits and muted Italian ties. His vanity was highly polished black leather shoe boots with pointed toes and inch-high heels. You expected Kirkpatrick, scoring another of his devastating points in court, to execute a staccato dance step with those heels.
“Jay Kirkpatrick.” You had to smile, shake your head over him.
Kirkpatrick had made his reputation in the Buffalo area in 1989. Brilliantly defended the twenty-one-year-old druggie son of a wealthy Buffalo manufacturer who had shot and killed his father. The plea was not guilty for reason of self-defense. Though the father had been unarmed, near-naked, climbing up dripping wet from his swimming pool in the leafy affluent suburb of Amherst, and the son had fired six bullets into his body from a distance of eight feet. Yet Kirkpatrick had convinced a credulous jury that the son had been in “immediate, overwhelming” fear of his life.
Yes. You had to smile. Kirkpatrick was a sly one.
Diebenkorn hated it, Kirkpatrick had entered her dreams. Probably as powerfully, Diebenkorn was prone to think, as that dog-pack of loser punks had entered the dreams of pathetic broken Martine Maguire.
The first time Diebenkorn came to the house on Baltic Avenue to speak with the gang-rape victim, Teena Maguire would not see her. Sick with a headache, Teena had been in bed all the previous day. Too exhausted to lift her head from the pillow. Teena’s grim-faced mother, Agnes Kevecki, grudgingly allowed Diebenkorn to enter her house, asking her to wipe her feet on the doormat first. As Diebenkorn uttered her prepared breathy speech I must see her. I am a deputy prosecutor with the county district attorney’s office and I insist upon seeing Martine Maguire the older woman said bluntly it was so, her daughter Martine was not a well
woman any longer. “Not in her body, and not in her mind. Not just those animals but you people at the courthouse have destroyed her.”
The Diebenkorn woman, as your grandmother would refer to her afterward, leaned forward breathing through her mouth so humid you could almost see it in the air like steam: “Mrs. Kevecki! What a thing to say! The county attorney’s office is committed to seeking justice for your daughter and granddaughter, we intend through the law to make restitution to them for the suffering they have experienced! But we must have their cooperation as witnesses. Martine has said she is dropping charges. And will not allow her daughter to testify. But they can’t refuse to help us now. If—”
Your grandmother stood with her arms tightly folded across her sloping shelf of a bust. Her steely-ivory hair fitted her skull like a sleek cap and her skin looked as if it had been squeezed in a powerful hand, and released in a pattern of fine wrinkles. She said, with an air of infinite contempt, “You! ‘Prosecutors.’ You promised to protect my daughter. And you did not.”
“Mrs. Kevecki, we could not anticipate—”
“You must be ignorant, then. You must be inexperienced. We can’t trust you.”
“But Mrs. Kevecki—”
“That man, calling my daughter a whore! A hooker! My poor daughter who was almost killed! Exposing her to such shame! You allowed it, you did not prevent it. A trial would kill her. A trial would kill all of us. Every day in the newspapers, on TV—it would kill our family. And you dare to suggest that my granddaughter be exposed, too!”
Diebenkorn protested, “The defense counsel is unscrupulous! Kirkpatrick is a—a notorious distorter of truths. The man turns truth upside down. Inside out. He’s a black magician. He should be disbarred. He resorts to such vicious tactics because he knows that the case against his clients is overwhelming. And a jury will know, I promise! I will see to it, Mrs. Kevecki, I promise. But your daughter and granddaughter, Mrs. Kevecki, must—”
Rape: A Love Story Page 6