“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?” I replied, my voice rising. “I don’t believe it’s safe for Mary Margaret or her mother to go anywhere near Rudy Hitchins. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to insist on the police doing this.”
“You’re going to insist, huh? Hold on, Counselor. The reason why her mother won’t have to go through the apartment is because when I talked to Rebecca Finn in the hospital, I found out that Hitchins don’t own the apartment. That bastard don’t even pay rent. The mother owns it. Mrs. Finn inherited the whole apartment building after her old man kicked off. It’s four units. Mary Margaret lives in a second-floor unit next to an old lady named Sarah Latham. There’s another tenant, an old man who lives on the bottom floor in a unit, and then Rebecca Finn lives in the other ground-floor apartment. The building is over on Canfield Avenue. Now, here’s the kick in the ass. You’re going to love this. Rudy Hitchins is still living there, but he’s got a new girlfriend, a broad named Gloria Lucinda, and she’s staying there with him. He’s with this blond bimbo while Mary Margaret’s still in the hospital.”
I thought about telling O’Brien that I’d already discovered that Hitchins had a girlfriend, having seen them at the hospital. But I certainly hadn’t known the two of them were now sharing Mary Margaret’s apartment—and bed.
“How do you know they’re living there?”
“Hitchins told the old lady next door that the blonde was his sister visiting from Chicago, but old lady Latham heard moans at nighttime coming through the walls—not the kind that a brother and sister should be making. She called Mary Margaret’s mother at the hospital to tattle. Them walls must be thin.”
“Or,” I joked, “Gloria Lucinda is quite a moaner.”
“Why, Miss Fox, I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”
I ignored him.
O’Brien said, “Either way, Rudy Hitchins’s not scared about nothing if he’s moved his girlfriend into an apartment he don’t even own with Rebecca Finn living downstairs.”
I thought, You’re right.
Actually, I was pleased that Rebecca Finn owned the apartment building. O’Brien had warned me that most battered women were afraid of complaining about how they were being beaten because they had no place to go. Mary Margaret was going to be an exception. She’d be able to move home after O’Brien arrested Hitchins and tossed Gloria Lucinda out onto the street. This was working out perfectly.
“I need to speak to Mary Margaret one more time at the hospital before you arrest Hitchins,” I said. “I’m going over there as soon as I hang up the phone.”
Sounding enthused, O’Brien said, “Okay, Counselor, you did your part, I’ll do mine. I’ll arrest that prick.”
But our conversation wasn’t finished. “I have a favor to ask, Detective. I want to be there when you arrest him. I want to slap that protective order in his hands and watch his face. I want him to know that a woman is going to prosecute him in court for what he did to another woman.”
Once again, O’Brien was quiet for a moment. This time, I suspected he was smiling on the other end of the phone line. “You know what, Counselor? I’m beginning to think you clang when you walk.”
“What?”
“It means you got balls, little sister. Big brass ones!”
7
As I drove to white plains hospital, I asked myself: Why would a woman stay with someone who beat her? Rebecca Finn had told me this was not the first time that Rudy Hitchins had brutalized Mary Margaret. If her own mother owned the apartment where the couple lived, then why hadn’t Mary Margaret kicked him out the first time that he’d struck her? I didn’t get it.
Mrs. Finn looked exhausted when I walked into hospital room 505. She was seated in a chair, standing guard at Mary Margaret’s bedside, but as I entered the room, she didn’t look up. I noticed both of them had their eyes closed. I touched Mrs. Finn gently on her arm.
“Mrs. Finn, you look like you could use a break.”
Rubbing her eyes, she said, “I would like to go home and clean up a bit. I need some cigarettes, too. Damn hospital gift shop refuses to sell them.”
“I need to talk to Mary Margaret if she is up to it, and I’d be happy to stay here until you get back.”
Rising from her chair, Mrs. Finn said, “That would be great, honey. Actually, Mary Margaret was doing much better this morning. Her mouth is wired shut so she’s hard to understand, but once you get used to it, you can make out most of the words. I’ll wake her.” She reached over and touched her daughter’s hand. Leaning down, she said, “Mary Margaret, that lady from the D.A.’s office is here. She needs to talk to you.”
I watched as Mary Margaret’s eyes popped open. With a grimace, she pushed herself upward on her pillows. I heard her whisper through clenched teeth. “Okay, Ma. You going to be here?”
“Naw,” Mrs. Finn replied. “You don’t need me. I’m going for smokes. But I’ll be back in an hour. You two have a nice talk.”
With that, she left the room. I sat down in the chair that Mrs. Finn had been using and told Mary Margaret about the D.A.’s decision to have Rudy Hitchins arrested on a first-degree assault charge. Next, I explained the process and how I would get a protective order to keep him away from her. I felt she might be more comfortable talking if she knew a bit about me. After all, I was about to ask her to share intimate details about her relationship with Hitchins, so I decided to build some rapport with her by telling her a bit about myself.
I took a few minutes to cover such basic information as where I grew up and went to college. She listened and asked questions, which was good because I used those moments to get accustomed to her clenched-teeth responses. I’d just finished telling her about how I’d grown up in Elmira, New York, with one sister and had moved to White Plains immediately after I’d finished law school, when she asked, “Miss Fox, do you have a boyfriend?”
“Yes, his name is Bob and he’s in medical school in Albany.”
“Do you see him often?”
“We try to get together every other weekend. It’s been tough lately. But we’re committed.”
“Is he cute?”
“He’s a hunk. Brown hair, long legs, great build. It was magic from the start.”
“I’m glad. I thought Rudy was one of the sexiest men I’d ever met.”
“Tell me about him and your relationship.”
“Okay, but first, I want to hear just a little bit more about Bob. How’d you meet?”
“I was still in high school, working weekends at a combination dairy and café that was attached to a creamery where they made ice cream and other milk products.”
“Like an ice-cream shop?”
“Yes, but we also sold sandwiches, and because it was on a main highway outside Elmira, a lot of truckers used to stop in.”
“You were a waitress, like me at O’Toole’s? Truckers, they come on to you, right?”
“I was pretty young and naive. I didn’t really know sometimes what they were saying. Anyway, Bob’s parents owned a farm and he used to bring milk into the creamery and I thought he was adorable, so one day, when he was unloading his truck, I made sure to walk by and he said hello. We’ve been a couple ever since. He was my first and is my only love.”
“You going to marry him?”
“If he asks after he finishes medical school. He hasn’t given me a ring, but he gave me a pig.”
“A pig?” She tried to laugh but it came out more as a giggle through her wired jaw.
“Yes, from his farm. I loved the book Charlotte’s Web and he gave me a piglet named Wilbur.”
“I don’t read much. But I’m glad you are in love. I thought Rudy loved me when we first met. He made me feel so special.”
In her guttural monotone, she described how they had met four years earlier in a Manhattan nightclub. They’d bumped into each other at the bar.
“He came on strong, but I liked that.”
“When did you become a
couple?”
“We clicked from that first night. But we kept seeing other people for about a month. That’s when I first saw his temper.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“We were in the same nightclub and a guy I used to date came over to talk to me. Rudy totally ignored him but I gave him a hug when he left. When we went outside to leave, Rudy accused me of disrespecting him. We were walking next to each other when he suddenly grabbed me and started choking me. He choked me to the point he lifted me off the ground, and I was trying to scramble with my feet to get some type of footing because I started seeing stars. I felt like I was about to lose my breath and pass out. I started to fight at him to break him off of me. I swung at him but missed. That’s when he released me and slapped me across the face. That was the first time he ever hit me. He said, ‘You’re my girl now. You don’t talk to and hug other men.’” She paused and then whispered, “That’s how I found out we were only dating each other from that point on.”
“Why didn’t you run away from him at that point?” I knew that would be a question that jurors would wonder and I did, too.
“’Cause I felt it was my fault. I mean, I’d hugged that guy and that’s what made Rudy angry. The next day after he choked me, he apologized. He was really, really sorry. He told me he was afraid that I was going to leave him and he even broke down and cried. It was so, so sweet. He went right out that same morning and he brought me flowers—not just a dozen, neither, he bought me sixteen red roses and a big box of chocolate-covered cherries. The next day, he done the same thing. He did it every day for a week and I said, ‘Rudy, you’re spoiling me. I’m going to get fat if I eat all this candy.’ He swore he would never lay a hand on me again, never. We’d been drinking that night, too, and, I thought, ‘I shouldn’t have hugged that guy. I was wrong to do that. And Rudy is just a very passionate guy.’ The truth was that I liked that he was jealous. It meant he cared about me. I was his girl, no one else’s.”
“Were there other times when he hit you?”
Mary Margaret’s already quiet voice grew even quieter. “Not in the beginning. I mean for weeks—maybe two—everything was great. But then he got mad at me again and it would happen. But by then, it was too late ’cause I was in love with him. And every time he did it, he would apologize and be really sweet and I’d forgive him. I told myself, ‘I got to stop making him angry,’ and I was sure it wouldn’t happen again.”
She seemed to be growing tired so I decided to focus on the sort of questions that I might ask her during a trial rather than questioning her more about why she’d put up with him for four years.
“Can you describe a typical incident?”
“Rudy liked to drink, especially on weekends, and he’d come home drunk and he always wanted sex. If I was drunk maybe I would’ve been okay with it, you know. But when he was drunk, he got rough, and if I tried to stop him, he’d get mean. He’d slap me around and hold me down. One time he tied me to our bed and left me there naked for an entire day. He’d rip my blouse off, too, if he were drunk. He liked that—getting all tough with me. One night I decided to fight back, well, not really fight back, but just tell him to stop when he grabbed me. I dug a fingernail into him.”
“That was brave of you.”
“And stupid. He went crazy. He slapped me and then he said he was going to teach me a lesson. He’s really strong and he grabbed my arms and held them above my head with his left hand. Then with his right hand, he pulled down my panties and that’s when he—”
She hesitated. I said, “That’s when he forced you to have sex?”
“Yes. I started crying because it wasn’t love, it was rape, but that only seemed to make him more turned on. That was the first time he did that to me, and the next day, he laughed about it and said, ‘You liked it, baby, and you know it. You just don’t want to admit it. Deep down, you’re a dirty little whore.’”
“How often did that happen—forced sex?”
“Too many times.”
I gently squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry.” Putting my prosecutor’s hat back on, I asked, “Did he ever tell you what he thought of women in general?”
“Oh yeah, he said a woman was good for two things, having sex and cooking, and I didn’t know how to cook very well. Then he said I wasn’t very good in bed, either, because I didn’t like to do things he wanted me to do. He told me no one else would want to be with someone like me because I was frigid and stupid. I never finished high school. He brought that up a lot. And he told me I was getting fat and that I smelled bad when we had sex.”
In a gentle voice, I said, “Mary Margaret, jurors are going to wonder why you stayed with him for four years when he treated you like that.”
Tears began to form in her eyes and she whispered, “I loved him and I thought he loved me. Once he came into O’Toole’s when I was working and he heard this customer tell me I had a really nice ass. Rudy went outside and waited for him to leave. When the guy came out into the parking lot, Rudy hit him with a tire iron and beat the crap out of him. I’d never had anyone do something like that for me. He told me I was special and he’d always take care of me. I knew he had a nice, sweet side. And I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t I get that Rudy back? What am I doing wrong?’ When I got pregnant the first time, he was so happy. I thought, ‘This is great. We’ll be a family.’ Then I had the miscarriage and he told me that I couldn’t even do that right—have a baby. I was too stupid for even that. I thought he was right. I keep thinking if I could only do things right, then the old Rudy would love me.”
“Did you ever consider leaving him?”
“Yes, after the miscarriage, things got so bad, I thought we should break up.”
“But you didn’t leave.”
“I was too scared.”
“Of him?”
“Yes, I was scared of him but that wasn’t the only reason. I hadn’t been able to make him happy. I kept doing everything wrong so I didn’t think anyone else would want me. Then I got pregnant again and I thought, ‘He was happy the first time. A baby will make him happy again.’”
Mary Margaret gingerly moved her right hand to her belly.
“Did it make him happy?”
“No. He seemed to lose interest in me and I learned he was cheating on me with that other woman.”
Ah, I thought, she knows about Gloria Lucinda.
She looked emotionally spent, so I said, “You’ve done great. You’ll make a fantastic witness. When we get into court, I probably won’t be able to ask you much about those other times he raped and beat you.”
“Why?”
“It’s not allowed generally, but I can ask you about the Friday night when he put you in the hospital. That should be enough.”
“I talked to Detective O’Brien about that night. He has it all in his report now.”
I nodded. “We can talk more about that later, but for now, we’ve done enough.” I gave her a tissue and she wiped her eyes with her right hand.
“You’re going to put him in jail, right?”
“I’m going to do my best.”
She looked scared. “You got to do it,” she said, squeezing my hand hard. “If you don’t, he’ll kill me.”
8
An hour later, O’Brien and I were sitting on the front seat of an unmarked Ford police cruiser parked less than a hundred feet from the entrance to O’Toole’s bar. We were waiting for Rudy Hitchins to surface. I’d assumed we’d simply drive over to the apartment house on Canfield Avenue that Rebecca Finn owned and arrest him, but O’Brien had insisted on waiting here. In my hand was a temporary order of protection signed by a judge that prohibited Hitchins from coming within five hundred feet of Mary Margaret and the apartment that they’d once shared. I checked my watch and it was 4:45 p.m. The evening traffic was beginning to back up as weary workers made their trek home through downtown White Plains.
“Why do you think Hitchins is going to show up here? Isn’t this the last place he�
�d want to show his face?” I asked.
Detective O’Brien, with his ever-present toothpick held firmly on the right side of his mouth, said, “Oh, he’ll come here.”
I noticed a sudden glint in his eyes. “You a betting girl?” he asked. “I’ll bet you a ten-spot Hitchins shows up here.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.” He seemed too confident for me to bite.
“C’mon,” he prodded. “I thought you had balls. Look, I’ll make it even sweeter. If he don’t show up in the next fifteen minutes, I’ll give you fifty bucks. If he does, then you owe me only ten. He shows in fifteen minutes or you win.”
I could hear my father’s voice screaming in my head—“Watch out! You’re being suckered!”—but I said, “Okay, I’ll take those odds.”
O’Brien grinned and part of me was glad. Even if I lost the bet, he seemed to be warming up to me. Or so I thought. His smile could also be part of a con.
I checked my wristwatch again and as I was raising my head, O’Brien said, “There he is and he’s got that blond broad with him.”
I glanced out the sedan’s front windshield at O’Toole’s, but didn’t see Hitchins or Gloria Lucinda. I looked at O’Brien and saw that he was looking into the car’s rearview mirror. As I swung my neck to check behind us, Rudy Hitchins and his girlfriend strutted by my car door on the sidewalk next to where we were parked. I reached for the door handle, but O’Brien gently took my left arm and said, “Not yet! Wait for him to actually go into the bar.”
I didn’t understand, but figured O’Brien had a reason. As soon as the couple stepped into O’Toole’s, O’Brien barked, “C’mon, Counselor.” He shot out the driver’s door and I scrambled from the passenger side. We walked briskly toward the bar’s solid wooden door. Like many drinking establishments in White Plains, the bar’s front windows were tinted so you couldn’t see the patrons inside. It was a throwback to the times when drinking alcohol was taboo and barflies didn’t want their neighbors spotting them knocking down shots of Jack Daniel’s.
Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel Page 5
