“You ran out of ”got to’s“ with me when you started sneaking around behind my back. Don’t push me on this, Jed. It’s Chapman you have to talk to, not me.”
“I need your help with all this. I never meant to hurt you or do anything to destroy what we were building. I love you too much for that.”
I placed the receiver back in its cradle without saying another word. I swiveled around in my chair and stared out the window at the roof of the building across the narrow street, which was at eye level with my view. The gallery of gargoyles that decorated the edge of the facade seemed sinister today as they gawked back at me, panther-like creatures with their tongues extended and their eyes rolled upward, mocking me in disbelief.
Most mornings I welcomed their company as I sat at my desk alone, before the office swarmed with colleagues. But today they had turned on me and sneered their disapproval, so I braced my foot against the radiator and kicked the chair back around into place at the desk.
I called Battaglia’s assistant, Rose Malone, and told her it was critical that I see him as soon as he arrived. He had gone to Washington the night before, she explained, to testify at Senate subcommittee hearings on gun control and would not be back until tomorrow. Damn. It was the rare occasion that I didn’t even want to tell Rose the information about Jed, and so I simply asked her to connect me to him as soon as he checked in.
Joan Stafford was my next call, and I was doubly appreciative as I dialed her number that my loyal friend was a novelist and therefore easy to reach at home most of the time.
“You’re a grave, right?” I asked as she answered on the first ring. It was one of Joan’s expressions, meaning that the questioner was confirming that the information about to be given was sworn to deepest secrecy. “Of course. You got something good?”
“I wouldn’t call it good. I’m in the middle of a dreadful mess. No one else but Nina knows this yet and I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but Mike Chapman thinks Jed had something to do with Isabella’s death. Mike thinks he may have killed her.”
“Oh my God.” Her tone changed rapidly from her goodhumored response to one of appropriate concern.
“Tell me-”
“I can’t tell you anything else right now. Can you meet me for dinner tonight?“
“Sure.”
“Don’t you have that fund-raiser for-”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They have my check, they don’t need me. Tell me where and when.“
“I’ve got to be in court this morning. Would you call Primola when it opens? Ask Giuliano for that table in the corner near the bar the one – he kind of pulls the palm tree in front of for privacy. I’m going to try to take amp; ballet class right after work – I’m really in knots. Meet you at the restaurant at eight.”
Laura arrived moments later. I couldn’t bring myself to explain the situation to her, so I sheepishly gave her a set of instructions before packing up my Redweld the rust-colored accordion file – that held my case papers to go to court.
“I’ve got my beeper on if the D.A. calls in from Washington. And you can also beep me if anyone needs me on the murder investigation. Sarah can cover the new cases that come in. If Jed calls, tell him I’m not interested in any messages. I don’t mean to put you in the middle of this, Laura, but my relationship with Jed is over and it’s a bit awkward right now. You’d also better call the switchboard and tell them to disconnect my private line for the time being. I want all calls coming through you, okay?”
She was as discreet as always – no questions, no comments, just an understanding nod.
I left my office and began the circuitous route to the other courthouse up the street originally built for civil cases, but usurped by the criminal justice system when we outgrew our old quarters more than a decade ago. Down and out through the turnstiles of the District Attorney’s Office, around the corner and across Center Street; up the block and into the ugly modern building; through the security check again; and on to another line for an even slower series of elevators. Not bad without a trail of witnesses and the shopping carts we push around for major case trials. This was just a scheduled sentence on the last case I had tried, so no witnesses or police officers were present.
I was lost in thought, somewhere in the events of my life in the last four months, smiling in acknowledgment and responding to greetings as I passed other assistants on their way to courtrooms for hearings and trials.
“Did this case keep you up all night?” I snapped out of my reverie at the sound of Ellen Goldman’s voice when she approached me at the elevator bank.
“No, no not this. Sorry, I just didn’t see you there. I’m a bit preoccupied.” I tried to force a smile, but I had forgotten that she would be back today and the last thing I needed to deal with was a reporter.
“Forgive me for saying this, but you look so pale. Do you feel okay?”
“Oh yes, thanks. I’m, well, it’s just personal. It hasn’t been a very good week.”
I pressed the button for the seventh floor, and the crush of other litigants filled the car completely, so we were able to ride up in the crowd without my having to make small talk with Ellen.
“Judge Hadleigh’s courtroom is around this way to the left,” I said as I led her to the small setting in which the trial of the People of the State of New York against Ernesto Cerone had been conducted.
“Was anything reported about this case, anything in the press?”
“No, actually, not a word fortunately for the victim.”
“Can you tell me something about it, so I know what’s going to happen today?”
I took Ellen through the facts of the case as we entered the room and sat on the front bench to await the arrival of both the judge and my adversary. The victim was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who lived in an apartment building in Harlem. She was mentally handicapped and had the developmental level of a seven-year-old child. A carpenter who was doing construction work in a unit in the building lured her into the empty room one afternoon last spring, trapped her in the bathroom, and sodomized her and raped her. Her screams were heard by a neighbor who rushed into the apartment and actually pulled the rapist off the body of the terrified woman.
Since the identity of the attacker Ernesto Cerone was not an issue, the defense turned the matter around and claimed that there had been no forced assault, but instead, that the victim had consented to the intercourse.
Then, she started to scream only when Cerone refused to pay her for the pleasure of her company. The severe mental handicap of the woman made her a scapegoat for a vicious cross-examination at the trial, and the conviction was possible only because of the compelling testimony of the neighbor who had intervened to save her.
“This shouldn’t be very complicated. I’m going to ask for the max, the defense attorney’ll jump up and down about it, and this judge is likely to end up somewhere in the middle.”
“Doesn’t sound like there’s much of a middle to me. Oh, by the way, I was talking to my editor last night, Alex, and he’d really like me to flesh out some more detail, if you understand me. He thinks the story will be too dry if we don’t get sort of a ”behind-the-scenes“ view of what makes you do this. He’d like some more personal information about you.”
I let out a very soft groan.
“Like what?”
“Like how do you spend your free time, what do you do on weekends, who do you see when you go out?”
“Look, Ellen, I don’t mind talking to you about my work when the press office directs me to, but I’ve just got to separate my private life from this business.”
“That’s just the point. Most people can’t understand how you do that. Don’t you take this work home with you every night? I don’t mean the papers and documents, I mean the emotional baggage. Doesn’t this job just make you hate men?”
I laughed at that one. Maybe Goldman wasn’t as smart as I had initially thought, to ask such a hackneyed question.
“No, of course not
. The people who commit these crimes are deviants, Ellen. This is really extreme, aberrant behavior. Most of the men I’ve ever met in my life are incapable of this kind of conduct. I am not one of the women who believes that all men are potential rapists. That’s one of the main reasons I can deal with these cases. And it really doesn’t carry over into my relationships with men not for a moment.”
But if you want to know what makes me hate men, I thought to myself, this is the right day to ask me.
“Are you seriously involved with someone now, Alex? This investment banker you were out with last night?“
“Did I tell you who I was going out with yesterday?” I shot back at her. “I wasn’t aware I mentioned-‘
”I told you I’ve done my homework. I’ve already interviewed a lot of your colleagues.“
“What branch of the Israeli military did you serve in Intelligence?”
“Not so lucky. I was in a special patrol force on the West Bank. Actually an elite antiterrorist unit. Not a cushy desk job doing background checks.”
I was impressed.
“Listen, Ellen. Can we go off the record for a few minutes?”
“Sure. Off the record.”
“Whatever you heard about the investment banker and whoever’s been talking about it, you need to know it’s over. I’ll give you other stuff – personal stuff if you have to have it but I beg you to leave the romance angle out of it. He’s not a part of my life anymore and I don’t want to see anything about us in print. Please.“
“Yeah, sure, I’m really sorry. People had been telling me you were very happy together. Picture-perfect couple and all that kind of thing. Of course I won’t write about it if it’s not true. Is this all very recent?”
It was a Catch-22. I couldn’t get her off the subject without going on to explain why it didn’t make sense for her to stay on the subject.
“Recent? Let’s just say if you had asked me the same question before you left me in my office yesterday afternoon, you would have had a different answer. History, Ellen, it’s over.”
I was relieved to see Cerone’s court-appointed attorney come out of the door which led from the holding pen behind the courtroom. The clerk stepped back and knocked on the judge’s robing room and I couldn’t hear what Ellen murmured to me as the court officer announced “All rise.” when Hadleigh mounted the three steps to his seat at the bench.
The clerk called the case from the calendar, directed both counsel to state our appearances for the record, and arraigned the defendant for sentence. He went on to ask, “Does the assistant district attorney wish to be heard?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” I recalled for the judge the facts of the case, referring to actual pieces of testimony about the victim’s ordeal which I had pulled from the transcript. In greater detail, I described her mental condition and the vulnerability that handicap also endowed her with. Her legal guardian had called to tell me that, even to this day, the young woman awakened with nightmares, screaming the name of the defendant and pleading for help. I closed by urging the Court to impose the maximum sentence, a range of eight and one-third to twenty-five years in state prison.
Cerone’s lawyer spoke next. He still disputed the verdict of the jury, arguing that his client would be vindicated by an appellate review of the facts. He assailed the descriptions that had been given about the woman’s mental capacity, saying that there really wasn’t anything wrong with her at all: she was just slow.
“There is nothing in the trial record to indicate that this was a violent, brutal attack, like the People claim.
“Your Honor,” he continued, “I must also call your attention to the history of this complaining witness. Ms. Cooper mentioned the victim’s guardian, who reports her nightmares to the district attorney. May I remind you that the reason she lives with a guardian is that she had to be removed from her natural home because she had been the victim of years of sexual abuse by her father and her brothers. All of those events, Judge Hadleigh, have had some kind of impact on this witness and all of those abuses occurred before the events she testified about in this court.
“They don’t excuse my client, Your Honor, but surely the impact of Mr. Cerone’s actions on her is lessened by her past experience.”
Did I hear this guy right? Is he about to tell the judge that it’s okay to victimize someone who has been abused before?
Now Hadleigh was awake, too.
“Well, certainly, the impact of this crime is less severe because of her incest experience. She’s not inured to it, I’m sure, but it had to be less serious than the first or second time she’d been through this, I have to agree with you.”
I was on my feet in a flash.
“I’m going to object-“
“Just a minute, Miss Cooper. You’ve had your chance. Sit down. I’ll hear counsel out on this, he’s entitled to his position.”
“My client still denies his guilt, Your Honor. And I just want to close by asking you to take all these things into consideration in sentencing my client, who has no prior criminal history, and by-”
“Objection. Judge Hadleigh, Mr. Cerone has no felony convictions but he certainly has a criminal history…”
“Miss Cooper, that’s all before me, as you know, in the pre-sentence report. Let’s keep some order here, please. There’s no jury to perform for I know the record, too.”
“So on my client’s behalf, Judge, I’d ask for the minimum in this case – two to six years.”
The Honorable Horace Hadleigh we all called him Horrid, on the prosecution side, which was either the result of or the causal factor in why, for the more than thirty-eight years he had been on the bench, he generally handed members of the defense bar exactly what they wanted – was about to deliver his view of the Cerone case.
He hadn’t bothered to write out any comments about the case in advance – that would have taken both time and intelligence, two factors of which he was in limited supply. So he began by rambling on a bit about the trial and the pathetic young woman who had testified in his courtroom.
By the end of five minutes it was clear that he had bought the defense position lock, stock, and barrel.
“And quite frankly, I don’t see what the People gain by describing this rape as brutal and violent.”
There was no point in my sitting down at the table. If I could manage to get a word in edgewise, this was going to be lively.
“Your Honor, the Penal Law of this state defines rape as a “violent felony.” Of course this situation was violent it was a forced physical assault by a man who overpowered an unwilling participant.”
“Miss Cooper, don’t stand here and lecture me on the Penal Law. There are rapes and there are rapes. He didn’t chop her up in little pieces, did he? He didn’t cause any other injuries, did he?”
“Thank God he didn’t, Your Honor. The law doesn’t require that either. That’s a separate crime, as you know. Rape occurs without any external physical injury in the overwhelming percentage of cases. She didn’t have to sustain any injury. She was raped and sodomized that’s trauma enough.“
“You’re losing your sense of discretion, young lady, as well as your temper. You can’t differentiate between one case and another, and that’s fatal for a prosecutor.” I took a deep breath and modulated my tone.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I must disagree with you. I see three, four hundred rape cases a year supervise several hundred others – that’s more than any other prosecutor in the country, Judge Hadleigh. I am very well aware of the factual distinctions, the n- uances, the differences in kinds of threats – all of the minuscule features that make each of these cases so distinct to each victim – woman, man, or child despite the fact that several Penal Law definitions cover the entire spectrum. I think I know, as well as anyone in the world, how to differentiate among every single one of the cases that cross my desk.”
“Well, then, you’ll have to agree, Miss Cooper, that this girl is so retarded that she really can’t und
erstand what happened to her, isn’t that so? It’s not like if it happened to you or to my daughter? You’d know what it was all about now, wouldn’t you? She can’t absorb what happened to her, she can’t even explain it to us.”
I was thunderstruck. This was a triple-header: Cerone’s attack was forcible but not violent; other people had abused this victim in her past, so she was fair game for Ernesto Cerone this time; and because she was handicapped – the very reason she had been preyed upon, in all likelihood it didn’t matter as much as it would to a fully abled woman.
“Judge Hadleigh,” I began, unable to let his comments stand unaddressed on the record.
“Most respectfully, sir, you complete fucking moron, I must take exception to the views you have expressed here today. I think it’s fair to say that not since the case opinions generated by the medieval English courts have I heard observations like these about rape victims.“
“What did you say?”
“The three statements you made about this trial, Judge, they really reflect antiquated attitudes.”
“Did you say something to me about the Dark Ages, Miss Cooper? Are you making fun of me, young lady?”
“Not at all, sir. But surely you remember the legislative history of these statutes when the laws changed, just two decades ago?” Give him a hand; he hasn’t cracked a law book since he was in knee-pants.
“Sir Matthew Hale, 1671 all those archaic writings about women being the property of their husbands and rape not being a crime unless the victim had been virginal before the assault. Those views went out-”
”Miss Cooper. I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to put off this sentence today and let you walk out of my courtroom without holding you in contempt. I’m going to let you reflect upon this for a bit and come back next week with an apology for me and a more reasonable view of the facts of this case.“ Ernesto Cerone was grinning as if he had just been paid a million dollars to do a commercial for Fixodent. He wasn’t going to get out of jail free, but every time I opened my mouth, his sentence time came down a notch.
“Thank you for that opportunity, Judge, but I am ready to go ahead with Mr. Cerone’s sentence today.” I’d like nothing better than to see this whole thing written up in Ellen Goldman’s article and expose this ignorant throwback for what he is.
Final Jeopardy Page 20
