Rape

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Double-Edged Knife

  IN TIME YOU WOULD fall in love with other men. More appropriate men. Men your own age, or nearly. You would marry a man older than you by eleven years, when you were twenty-one. But you would never love any of these men the way in your desperation and yearning you had loved John Dromoor in your adolescence.

  Not until years afterward would you realize I loved him for Momma’s sake, too. Because she could not.

  So it had been a double love. Dangerously sharp, like a double-edged knife.

  Vanished!

  MARVIN PICK, LLOYD PICK. One day in late October 1996, the two prime defendants in the Rocky Point rape case simply vanished.

  One day word was out in Niagara County Courthouse circles that their lawyer, Jay Kirkpatrick, was negotiating a remarkable plea bargain with prosecutors for his clients in which charges of rape were to be dropped and “aggravated assault” would be lowered to the much lesser “assault”—and the next day the brothers had vanished.

  It was assumed the Picks had jumped bail. They would not be seen again in Niagara Falls. Their family and relatives would not hear from them. After their initial arrest in the rape case the brothers had spoken recklessly of crossing the border into Canada, not at Niagara Falls but at some low-security crossing like Youngstown or Fort Niagara, make their way to the west or better yet the Northwest Territory where it was said able-bodied young guys like them could find jobs in lumbering, fishery canning, salmon fishing. And good wages, too.

  Since before the trouble Marv had been laid off from Niagara Natural Gas for eight months anyway. Lloyd was having trouble keeping a job and these were shithead jobs anyway: busboy at Luigo’s Pizzeria, lawn crew for County Parks and Recreation. In the Northwest Territory of Canada it was said to be raw frontier like one hundred years ago in the northwestern United States. Employers did not scrutinize employees closely. Nobody gave a damn about education, past record, background. If the brothers weren’t Canadian citizens, hell, they could be “issued work visas,” Marv had heard.

  Marvin Pick, Lloyd Pick. After the arrests the brothers carried themselves with a certain public swagger. In their neighborhood it wasn’t said of the Picks they’d raped, almost killed a woman and terrorized the woman’s daughter, it was said Those two! Their old man has hired a hot-shit Buffalo lawyer.

  The father Walt Pick was fifty-seven years old. A veteran welder at Tyler Pipe. A heavy-set coarser-skinned replica of the sons lacking their tufted sand-colored hair. His eyes were recessed in the ridges of his face with the slow-smoldering look of a welding iron. Where Marv and Lloyd had lifted weights, body-built their torsos into armor and their necks thick as hams, Walt Pick was naturally big, beefy. He stood only five feet nine but weighed two hundred forty pounds. When informed that his out-on-bail sons had disappeared, left Marv’s car behind at Fort Niagara State Park, Walt had had to sit down, he’d been so shocked.

  “Those fuckers! Sons of bitches! Jumping bail! All I done for them! All I done for them!” Hot tears sprang into Walt’s eyes. He was not a man susceptible to emotions of much subtlety. In the course of a day he swerved between irascibility and phlegmatic affability. He could be good-natured. He was given to say that he lived for summers, his outboard boat. Fishing on Lake Ontario off his brother’s place at Olcott. He was a family man, too. He’d been married to Irma for thirty-three years. Six kids, most of them okay. The girls were the ones he’d most worried over. Marv and Lloyd, they’d always been trouble. Marv especially. And now this.

  For each of the Pick brothers, as for the other defendants in the case, bail had been set at $75,000. The actual sum paid out by Walt Pick, to a bail bondsman, had been $7,500 each. It was the goddamned lawyer whose fee was astronomical: Kirkpatrick demanded a retainer of $30,000 for each brother. His hourly fee was $250 out of court, $350 in court. There would be other fees, Walt Pick didn’t doubt. The Pick family, like the families of the other defendants, had had to take out a second mortgage on their home. Walt Pick had been humbled, forced to borrow from relatives. He’d had to sell, at a heartbreaking loss, his twenty-foot motorboat on whose scummy white prow was hand-painted in red letters Condor II.

  Irma Pick believed fiercely that her sons were innocent, but Walt guessed they were guilty as hell. They’d been in trouble with the law before. And some of it female trouble. The other girls had not dared to press charges with the police but the others had not been hurt as badly as the Maguire woman. Walt was informed this was serious, rape and aggravated assault were serious felonies, his sons could be sent to Attica for thirty years. Thirty years! They’d be old men when they got out. Old as their old man now. If they got out at all.

  Walt was advised by Father Muldoon, the pastor of St. Timothy’s Parish: hire the best damn criminal lawyer you can afford, he will plea-bargain the charges down to less than ten years, and for Lloyd, being younger, maybe less. If the boys behaved themselves in prison they could be out in as few as four or five years.

  Jay Kirkpatrick was the man. Kirkpatrick will cost you an arm and a leg and your left testicle but Kirkpatrick is the man.

  Others had spoken of Kirkpatrick, too. The Haabers had the idea the defendants should hire a “legal team.” Like O. J. Simpson, that kind of strategy. They could pool their resources. Kirkpatrick would be Marv’s and Lloyd’s lawyer but provide advice to the other lawyers. A team of lawyers, not individuals. A team made you think of sports, a game. A good rough game, that if you had Kirkpatrick as head coach, you might win.

  Walt said shit, far as he was concerned it was no-win. It was lose-lose. His hard-earned money and Condor II down the drain. Goddamn those sons of his!

  He’d hired Kirkpatrick, though. Like a gambler risking all his cash on a toss of the dice.

  You had to be impressed with Kirkpatrick. An hour’s interview with the boys and already he’d allowed them and their father to see how “rape” could be reinterpreted as “consensual sex”—“sex-for-hire.”The Maguire woman had been drinking, her testimony was shaky. A good cross-examination and she’d be discredited. And the daughter allegedly hiding in a corner of the boathouse had not actually seen anyone rape anyone by her own account. She could not testify that other young men had not entered the boathouse and raped her mother after the departure of the Picks and their companions.

  Kirkpatrick said, “There are two sides to every story, in a trial. The winning side, and the other.”

  Walt whistled through his teeth. Here was genius!

  Even so, Walt tried to reason with Jay Kirkpatrick. It was unfair, Walt argued, that, because he had two sons on trial, he had to pay double. For two clients charged with exactly the same crimes would not require nearly so much legal effort as two separate clients charged with two separate crimes, would they? How could they?

  “It’s like twins, right? A woman has two babies, they ain’t actually twice as much work as two would be, another time. Everybody knows that. That’s why a woman has two breasts. Ask any woman.”

  Walt had hoped for a discount of maybe 10 percent. Kirkpatrick smiled and said Walt would make a damn good lawyer, arguing so precisely. Except a discount was not possible.

  “I am an attorney, Mr. Pick. I am not a remnant carpet store.”

  Marvin Pick, Lloyd Pick. They’d been high school wrestlers. On the East Side Marv was admired if not much liked. Lloyd was his lieutenant. Always he’d been the emotional brother, hobbled by the rudiments of conscience like a horse with a pebble in its hoof. Now he was blaming Marv for the trouble he’d gotten them into.

  “Fuck you, asshole. You were the one said, ‘Let’s jump those two cunts.’ ”

  “I did not! Fuck I never said that! Marv, I did not.”

  Lloyd was excitable these days, tears springing into his eyes. Marv just laughed. Now that Jay Kirkpatrick was their legal counsel he was feeling almost laid back. “Don’t worry, Lloyd. I ain’t going to in-form. I ain’t going to turn state’s witness.” Since the intrusion of the Niagara County criminal justi
ce machine into the Picks’ lives, Marv’s vocabulary had expanded.

  Marvin Pick, Lloyd Pick. Before the boathouse incident they’d been picked up for local break-ins, lifting merchandise at Home Depot and Kmart, an attempted carjacking. They’d been arrested, pleaded guilty on the advice of their legal defense lawyer, served minimal juvie time. Marv saw that the criminal justice system was crowded with black guys, some of them really scary gangsta types, stone-cold killers at fifteen, him and Lloyd didn’t look so threatening, somehow.

  Their cousin Nate Baumdollar, whose father, part owner of a tavern and bowling alley in Lackawanna, was believed to be “mobbed up,” told the brothers they were assholes, the bunch of them, not to finish the job and dump the females in the lagoon. Both of them. “See, now you wouldn’t be up shit crick. ‘Eyewitnesses.’ Bet you never thought of it, none of you, huh? Shit-for-brains.” Nate brayed with laughter. He was Marv’s age. All their lives the two had been hateful of each other but thrown together to “play” at family outings.

  Marv protested, “We wasn’t gonna kill her, come on. It was never anything like that. Only just, we got out of there and left her. Joe said she was bleeding like a damn pig, if nobody found her and called the cops that was it.”

  “Dumping her,” Lloyd said, nerved up, picking at his nose, “would be something you could prove. For sure, they’d get you then.”

  “Get who, asshole? I wasn’t there.”

  Marv said with sudden vehemence, “That’s right, fuckface. You weren’t there. So shut up.”

  Nate laughed. He liked it that Walt Pick had approached his old man for a loan, having to humble himself to his brother-in-law, and Nate’s shrewd old man had said sure, Walt, but there’s 12 percent interest. And we get the document notarized.

  Marv said, aggrieved, “She asked for it. Fucking Teena. I seen her around, I know her. She knows me, too! She was showing her ass and her damn boobs. She was plenty hot. She said, ‘What you guys got in your pants? Are you hot, or what?’ ”

  Lloyd looked at him, incredulous. This was all fanciful stuff, like what came out of Kirkpatrick’s mouth was contagious.

  Marv continued, inspired, addressing Nate like Nate was the Jew judge Schpiro, “She said she’d suck us off for ten bucks each. If there was ten of us, we’d get a discount: nine bucks each. She did! You can laugh but she did! She’s a hooker junkie. Anybody in the neighborhood will tell you. Some people, they came to Father Muldoon to tell him what they knew about Teena Maguire, if it was needed to be known for our sake. Our attorney Mr. Kirkpatrick he’s gonna get witnesses from like her high school, guys who knew her way back, establish a pattern of ‘promiscuous and reckless sexual behavior’ to present to the jury. He’s already got witnesses testifying she was falling-down drunk and high on coke before we ever saw her. Before she ever got to the fucking park. And the daughter, see it was some kind of mother-daughter deal. Like, two-for-one. The little cunt was half price.”

  Lloyd said, squirming with sudden excitement, “That girl! She saw my face, I guess. Must’ve picked out my picture. And in the damn lineup she collared me. And there’s bloodstains, and other stuff. Wish to hell I’d known what was coming, this girl, this kid, putting the finger on me.” He shook his head, mute in anguish.

  Nate crowed, “See? You assholes? What I told you, I’d of been there, you needed to finish the job and dump ’em both. Tied down with rocks. Save your old man having to sell his boat.”

  Marv Pick, Lloyd Pick. Marv had a dagger/flaming heart tattoo on his left forearm, Lloyd had a greasy black coiled cobra on his. When they’d wrestled as kids, thumping and thudding on the floor of their room or downstairs in the living room, Irma screamed at them the entire house was shaking. Of course Marv, always heavier than Lloyd by ten–fifteen pounds, and meaner, always won.

  The night before the brothers vanished, leaving Marv’s 1989 bronze Taurus in a parking lot at Fort Niagara State Park, they were observed driving in this vehicle slow along Baltic Avenue. Slow to the corner of Baltic and Chautauqua. Slow past the Kevecki house at 2861 Baltic. They were drinking beer. Hell, they’d put away most of a case of Coors, fast. They were excited but also aggrieved. They were in a brooding mood but also edgy. They were not exactly sorry for what they’d done because they could not clearly recall any single moment in which they had made a conscious decision to “do” anything to anyone whether sexual, violent, rough-play, or whatever, and so they did not consider themselves responsible, somehow. Their dad was the one taking this hardest. He was sure looking sorry. Their mom was an excitable loyal mom who refused to believe any of this could be serious, that felony crap the prosecutors were threatening. Her word against theirs their mom said. And that woman a drunk and a whore. Their mom wasn’t wanting to think about how much this was costing. Maybe couldn’t face thinking about it like: What if they lost their house? Where’d they live? That cocksucker Nate was right: their dad’s boat. Christ, Marv and Lloyd loved that boat, too! It was fucking boring out there on fucking Lake Ontario where it was always windy and clouding up to rain fishing with the old man but made you sick at heart to think Condor II was gone, you would not ever go fishing with Dad again. Not ever.

  Kirkpatrick who was their legal counsel had instructed them: no talking about the case, and no approaching the Maguire woman and her daughter.

  How many times they’d been told, the gang of them: stay away from Baltic Avenue.

  No cruising west of the park to intimidate the Maguires or any other witnesses who’d seen them in the park that night. (There were a lot of these witnesses. Fucking cops had really tossed out a net.) No trying to contact the Maguires. Not Martine, not the daughter, and not the grandmother. Or any other relative. The judge had okayed something called an injunction. Meaning stay away.

  Certain of the cops in the Eighth Precinct who’d roughed them up that night bringing them in, had been more explicit. Warning the guys they’d bust their balls if they were caught even west of the park, in the Maguires’ neighborhood.

  Marv and Lloyd weren’t thinking of that now. They’d become kind of buddies now. Bonded it was called. Like soldiers. At war. This was a war, like. These people trying to destroy them. Not just them, their parents. And Jimmy DeLucca, he’d been shot down dead the other night by a NFPD cop off-duty! So there’s cops on the street you can’t identify. Cops with concealed weapons. Mostly Marv and Lloyd were pissed at DeLucca lately so they weren’t wasting many tears on him, it was the principle of the thing. DeLucca was the one said We could toss a firebomb into the old lady’s house, show the cunt she better back off and Marv had told DeLucca he was an asshole everybody’d know who did it, they’d be back in Niagara Men’s Detention and their bail revoked. Like Joe Rickert, parole revoked and he’s back in Olean sweating his ass he won’t get transferred to Attica.

  Somehow, the good Coors buzz and resentment commingled and there was Marv leaning out his rolled-down window as for the third or maybe fourth time the Taurus cruised past the frumpy-looking red-brick house at 2861 Baltic Avenue where the windows were lighted downstairs and blinds drawn tight and Marv was bawling, “Teeeeena!” and when Lloyd poked him in the ribs he laughed, gunned the motor, and burned rubber making his escape.

  Marv Pick, Lloyd Pick. The call came for Marv. Late afternoon of October 27. There was this man’s voice, unfamiliar. And the name he identified himself by, that Marv didn’t catch. The caller spoke with an air of authority that put Marv in mind of Mr. Kirkpatrick and so it was no surprise that the caller explained he was a “legal investigator” for Jay Kirkpatrick and that he had some “photographic evidence” for Marvin Pick and Lloyd Pick that had to be delivered to them as Mr. Kirkpatrick’s clients by a third party, an intermediary. There were complicated legal reasons requiring secrecy. Mr. Kirkpatrick could not be actively involved. “As a lawyer, he is an ‘officer of the court.’ He is required to turn over to the court any and all evidence pertaining to a crime that comes into his hands. These photographs, which incrimina
te the witnesses against you, will come to you from another party.” Marv tried to follow this. It sounded urgent. He gestured for Lloyd to be quiet.

  Marv was dry-mouthed listening to instructions. Evidence! Incriminate witnesses! Mr. Kirkpatrick’s legal investigator was telling him that he and his brother Lloyd would have to leave the city for the transfer of materials. For legal reasons, the transaction could not take place inside the city limits of Niagara Falls. They were to drive to Fort Niagara State Park off Route 18. They were to exit west into the park, and a quarter mile inside the park on the right there’s a turnoff where the caller would be waiting in his vehicle, which would be parked facing him, roll down his window, and the caller would hand over the Wendy’s box and both vehicles would then be driven away. No conversation. No witnesses.

  Marv pleaded with the caller would he please repeat the instructions. Christ! He didn’t want to make any mistake.

  Marv Pick, Lloyd Pick. Told their mom who was always anxious now where they were going and who with like they were grade school kids not adults in their twenties not to wait supper for them they’d be out for a while. In Marv’s car north on Route 18 to Fort Niagara at the windy-roughened edge of Lake Ontario, where the Niagara River rushes into the lake. Just across the bridge is Ontario, Canada. In summer the park was swarming with people, in late October, on a cold day, sky above the lake riddled with bruises and pitholes like rotted spots in fruit, and a mean wind rolling off the water, the place was deserted.

  Marv said, “ ‘Legal investigator.’ That’s some guy like a private detective, he’s on your side. Not the cops’. ”