by Mike Lupica
“DiMaggio,” he said, making no move to shake hands.
“Sorry about Richie, Donnie.”
Fuchs said, “I was just upstairs with some of the Knicks PR people making funeral arrangements. We’d do it faster, but with a homicide and all …” He shrugged. It seemed to take so much out of him. DiMaggio was waiting for Fuchs to sit down on the sidewalk until he got his strength back.
DiMaggio said, “Where’s the funeral going to be? Over in Jersey City someplace?”
“Saint Patrick’s,” Donnie Fuchs said, and managed a grin. “No disrespect intended, but do you believe that shit? Richie Collins in Saint Patrick’s? There goes the neighborhood.”
“Where’s Ellis, Donnie?”
“I told Salter, I told the cops, I’ll tell you.” He sounded whiny now. “I swear, I haven’t heard from the guy.”
“Not even since—”
“Not even since his buddy got himself stabbed to death up in Fulton, though for the life of me I don’t know what he was doing up in Fulton.” There was no one around them. Fuchs lowered his voice anyway. “It true you found him?”
“No comment.”
“I’m not the press.”
“You’re also not my friend, Donnie. No disrespect intended.”
Fuchs started to go. DiMaggio put both hands on his shoulders. “Where’s Ellis, Donnie?”
“Let me ask you something, DiMaggio. Whether we’re friends or not. You think I want this? You think I want him away so that they can start to turn him into a fucking suspect here? I may not be one of nature’s noblemen, but I did not get to where I am by being stupid. If I knew where he was, I would go get him with the army.”
“You’re his agent.”
Donnie Fuchs casually reached up, took DiMaggio’s hands off him.
“No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m like everybody except Richie, and I wasn’t always so sure about Richie.” Fuchs shook his head. “I’m just another butt boy,” he said.
29
She had just hung up on Brian Hyland when Jimmy came into the living room. Hyland had said he wanted to take a ride over and have another chat with her.
Hyland had been in to see her that afternoon, acting very nice the whole time, but wanting to know if she had an alibi for Monday night, when Richie Collins had been murdered. Hannah told him then and told him again on the phone, she had been at her mother’s house in Litchfield, with her mother’s housekeeper, who house-sat when the house was empty. Sheila Carey was in Palm Beach for a couple of weeks, visiting friends. Hannah just wanted to get away from New York for a day. The tabloid shows were in a bidding war, trying to get her to do an exclusive interview. A Current Affair and Inside Edition had gone to $500,000, according to Harvey Kuhn; Hard Copy had decided to bypass Harvey, they just kept leaving messages on Jimmy’s machine, saying they would top any bid by any other show.
It was like The Price Is Right a little bit, Hannah thought. Or maybe that old show—which one was it? with Door Number One and Door Number Two and Door Number Three?—where you guessed where the big prize was.
It was one of those times when she started thinking about A.J., what he’d done to her. She loved him, of course. She was sure that he still loved her, but if he hadn’t treated her that way, hadn’t left her …
She didn’t tell Brian Hyland about A.J. because she didn’t talk about him anymore, even with Beth. She just told him that she watched the news shows up in Litchfield, watched Entertainment Tonight, said good night to Imparo, the housekeeper, a sweet woman from Colombia, slept fourteen hours, then drove back to New York the next morning and found out about Richie Collins watching television.
“Hey, I believe you, I believe you,” Hyland had said just now on the phone. “I just want to ask you a few more questions on the other.”
He meant the rape.
“Nothing big, nothing to worry about,” Hyland said. “Could I come back in tomorrow morning? Say ten o’clock?”
Hannah knew he wasn’t asking her, he was telling her.
“Whatever you say,” she said.
Thinking: Even the good guys bullshitted you when they wanted something.
“Okay then,” Hyland said. “I’m writing it down. Thursday at ten, Hannah Carey. And if you see your brother, tell him I’d like to ask him a few questions, too. Like I said, no big deal.”
“We’ll be expecting you then,” Hannah said, and hung up as Jimmy came walking into the living room, fresh out of the shower, a red towel in his hand, a white one wrapped around his perfect waist. Hannah noticed he didn’t just have his usual perfect bod, but a perfect tan, too. He had been out in Hollywood with Bob and Ken and the two writers they had put on her movie, standing in for Hannah. “The first half of the movie is back story, Sis,” Jimmy had told her before he left. “They tell your life story, they tell the story of the players. Setting up, you know, that night at the end of the first two hours.”
Hannah knew her life was going to be condensed to four whole hours now, instead of two.
Jimmy had jumped at the chance to go out there for a couple of weeks, round-trip first-class fare, what he said was a junior suite at the Four Seasons Hotel. “On Doheny,” Jimmy’d said one night on the phone, as if that meant something to her.
Now he was back, back on Monday morning after taking the red-eye, on his way out at ten o’clock at night, meeting some friends at some new hot place on Second Avenue. Hannah didn’t get the name when Jimmy told her. She wondered if it ever got confusing for Jimmy, knowing all the hot new places all the time.
Maybe there was some hot button you could press on the phone to get up-to-the-minute information on hot new places.
Hot button. Hot places. That was a good one, Hannah thought. For me. She thought about running it past Jimmy, but he’d probably just give her that look like she was hopelessly square. Or hopeless.
Or just dumb.
“Hey,” Jimmy said. He’d said something, Hannah hadn’t heard him. “We’ll be expecting who?”
“Detective Hyland.”
“You talked to him already.”
Hannah shrugged. “He wants to talk to me again.”
“Maybe he doesn’t buy your alibi.”
“I don’t like that word. Alibi.”
“Why not? You think he came in today ’cause he missed you?”
“He doesn’t think I’m a suspect for God’s sake. He’s just doing his job.”
“Right.”
“What does that mean?” she said, starting to wonder where he was going with this. “Right?”
Jimmy grinned, playing with her.
“Where’d Imparo sleep?”
“In the guest room where she always sleeps. You know Mom. If she thought she slept in her bed, she’d have to call those people that deliver mattresses right to the house, get a new one.”
“The guest room in the back? You could have lit firecrackers in the front of the house, you wouldn’t wake Imparo up. Remember the party we threw that time a few years ago when Mom was in West Palm? If she slept through that, she could sleep through anything.”
“What’s ‘anything’ supposed to mean?”
“You could have gone out.”
Hannah got up, went into the kitchen for a Snapple. From in there she said, “If you think you’re being funny, you’re not.”
Jimmy waited until she came back. “Sorry,” he said.
“Mean it,” she said, just like when they were kids.
“Mean it,” he said, holding his hand up, like taking a Scout’s oath. “Cross my heart and hope to have looks to die for.” He started for his bedroom and Hannah said to him, “And what about you, Jim?”
He turned around, hair shiny and mussed, looking more like a teenager than ever. Grinning his cocky grin, what he liked to tell Hannah was his babe grin.
“What about me?”
“What about an alibi for you? Brian Hyland said he’d like to ask you a few questions tomorrow, too. After he talks to me. What kind of
alibi do you have for Monday night?”
His face held the grin, but he stopped with his eyes. “Why would I need an alibi?” Jimmy said, “Which I have, by the way. It’s one of the benefits of knowing every single bartender in town. What’d they used to say on Cheers? Everybody knows my name, they’re always glad I came.”
“You’re the one who tried to beat him up on national TV practically,” she said. “Defending your sister’s honor. Maybe you’d take it one step farther.”
“Now who’s not funny?” Jimmy Carey said.
“Me,” Hannah said. “But then, I haven’t been funny in a long time.”
Jimmy stared at her. “Let me do the jokes around here,” he said, and went to get dressed for the new hot place.
Hannah slept late, until about nine-thirty, and went to knock on Jimmy’s door. But there was no need, it was still open, the red towel on the bed, the other one on the floor, the way he’d left them. Maybe he’d gotten lucky. Or maybe he’d just crashed at a friend’s apartment. He’d been doing that the last month if he was out too late, not wanting to scare Hannah in the middle of the night; knowing how easy it was to give her the jumps now.
He probably had forgotten already that Brian Hyland wanted to talk to him, too.
The doormen were the same way about not giving her the jumps, even buzzing her to tell her if Jimmy was on his way up. So when the buzzer went off now, she figured it was either Jimmy coming home or Brian Hyland showing up early.
Hannah went over to the speaker near the front door and imagined Ernesto, the tiny guy from Ecuador, not much bigger than a midget, down there with Brian Hyland, if it was Brian. She wondered if Brian had to show him a badge. It would probably give Ernesto a real thrill, make him feel like he was in a movie or something.
Did everybody think of things that way?
How everything that was happening would look up on the screen?
Did everybody step back sometimes and imagine the whole thing was a movie?
Ernesto’s voice, crackling over the cheap intercom system, said, “I got two women to see you here.”
He stopped and she could hear him talking to them.
“One’s name is Kelly.”
He started to say something else, but Hannah pressed her own talk button now, cutting him off.
“I don’t know anybody named Kelly.”
She released her finger just as Ernesto was saying, “—Teresa Delgado.”
Hannah Carey thought: Her I know.
“Send them up,” she said.
“I got this address from Mr. Perez,” Teresa Delgado said, giving Hannah a firm handshake, like she was practicing to be a guy. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Hannah said, “Come in. Please.”
She was starting to feel like some kind of professional hostess. Come in. Please. To my life.
Teresa Delgado wore a white linen dress, and her hands, no rings, held a small white leather purse. The girl Kelly, that’s how Teresa Delgado introduced her, without giving a last name, not that Hannah really cared, sat next to Teresa on the couch. The girl wore a denim skirt that showed off a lot of leg and a black tank top. Hannah didn’t meet a lot of girls her size, but this one sure was.
She reminded Hannah a little bit of herself at that age, which had to be seventeen or eighteen, tops.
“I apologize again for just showing up,” Teresa Delgado said, “but I felt it was time we all met. So I just came. I have a habit of doing this lately. First with Mr. Marty Perez, now with you.”
“You could have called,” Hannah said, not in a mean way, just telling her it would have been all right. “After reading the papers the other day, I almost called you.”
The girl didn’t say anything.
Hannah said, “I wouldn’t have turned you away is what I’m saying.”
“I am not a very confident person, even if some people think I am,” Teresa said. “I am better than I used to be. But still not so much, really, in the confidence department. I come from a culture where men are treated as gods by the women. These are tough habits to break. So I try to reduce my chances of rejection wherever possible.”
“Even with another woman who was—”
“Yes,” Teresa said, smiling at her, the smile making her pretty. “Even with such a woman as that.”
Hannah looked at the Seth Thomas wall clock behind the couch. If Brian Hyland was on time, and Hannah figured he’d be the type, whenever he said he was going to call at a certain time, he called on the dot, she had about half an hour for somebody to get to the point.
Hannah said, “You said we should talk.”
Teresa turned to the girl on the couch, the girl’s blond hair parted in the middle in that sixties style they all were starting to wear again. “Kelly is sixteen years old,” she said. “Just sixteen. She is a junior at Fulton High School.” She put a hand on the girl’s arm and said, “Why don’t you tell Hannah the rest.”
Sometimes you had to draw Hannah Carey a picture, but not now. Even Hannah, who was always a little slow on the uptake, knew what was coming next. She said to the girl, Kelly, “He raped you, too, didn’t he?”
Without making a sound, without moving or changing expression, the girl started to cry, the tears just coming. Like it was a movie. What did they call them? Some kind of fake tears? Like somebody just applied them to Kelly’s cheeks.
“Yes,” the girl said.
Teresa said, “She read about me in the newspaper. It did not make as big an impression as when I was with Oprah the other day. She went back to the newspaper.” Teresa Delgado smiled. “They had not been recycled yet. She read the story again to find out that I am from Jersey City and got my number from information. I almost changed it, all the other television shows calling me up and offering me money.”
Teresa Delgado brought her small right hand up, made a fake slapping motion against her cheek. “Why am I telling you about television people? And these vulgar people from the movies?”
Vulgar? Hannah thought.
Kelly said, “I watch Oprah every day. You can find out some very cool things. I heard her start talking, and it was so awesome, and a little weird. She was talking about exactly what I wanted someone to be talking about. It’s like when you turn on QVC, you know? The shopping network? And you’ve been thinking about buying this one necklace or whatever, and there it is!”
“Anyway,” Teresa said, continuing, “I decided we should come here this morning. I thought it would be appropriate to form our own support group.”
“Support group,” Hannah echoed.
“It will be explained when you hear,” Teresa said.
“Why not the police?” Hannah said, and felt stupid as soon as she did.
“She is a girl,” Teresa Delgado said, taking a Kleenex from out of her purse and handing it to Kelly. “You are a woman. I am a woman. It took you a year to come forward, and it took me all these years.”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said, comfortable with that one, as always.
“Don’t be,” Teresa said. “Don’t be sorry. They always want us to be sorry. For something. For everything.” Softly she said, “Don’t they?”
Hannah said, “Yes.”
Teresa said, “When they don’t want us to be afraid anymore and they don’t want us to be guilty, they want us to be sorry. Are you a Catholic, Hannah?”
“No.”
“But you know of the Holy Trinity?”
“Father, Son, Holy Ghost,” Hannah said quickly. Was it still the Holy Ghost? Or was it the Holy Spirit? Hannah seemed to remember there had been some kind of change, she noticed it at a wedding one time.
“Well, there is a different Trinity for women like us, maybe all women,” Teresa said. “When we bless ourselves, genuflecting before men, it should be in the name of fear and then in the name of the guilt and finally in the name of being sorry. I was raped and you were raped and she was raped.”
Teresa Delgado was small, but she was a tough little bird.
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br /> “We are the ones violated,” Teresa said, picking up a little steam, “but as soon as that is over, we begin to violate ourselves. Violate our confidence. Our dignity. Our self-worth.”
Hannah couldn’t help thinking she should have had Teresa Delgado around when it was time to write her little speech at the Plaza. It was crazy, getting a thought like that. But there it was, once again like it was up on the screen. Hannah could see herself really bowling them over with words like Teresa’s.
Maybe when this was all over, she could have Teresa sit down with the screenwriter. Or meet Bob and Ken. Especially Bob. Just to show her they weren’t all vulgar …
She heard Teresa saying, “Hannah? I feel like I lost you there. Maybe it sounded like I was making a speech?”
“No,” Hannah said, “no, that’s not it at all. I was just thinking that you were saying things that are inside me, I just can’t ever find the right words for.”
“So you understand why Kelly did not go to her mother or her father or the police?”
Hannah said, “I don’t want to rush you, but there’s a Fulton policeman coming here in a few minutes to talk about Richie Collins.”
Kelly turned to Teresa, eyes wide.
“No!” she said, a gasp, really. “My father knows every policeman in that town. They’ll tell!”
Teresa Delgado said, “We will be gone before he comes, do not worry. But since I think we are going to be friends here, maybe you should tell Hannah who your father is.”
The girl said, “Frank Crittendon. You know who he is, right?”
Hannah, trying not to act floored, said, “The general manager of the Knicks.”
“As you can see, it is a problem,” Teresa Delgado said. “But not as big as the other.”
Now Hannah felt like someone had to draw her a picture.
Kelly Crittendon sighed. “Teresa says I can tell. So here goes.” She looked at Teresa, who smiled and nodded, like, go ahead. “Richie raped me Monday afternoon.”
Hannah said, “This Monday—?”
