The truth? That didn’t matter—not to a defense attorney. It was someone else’s problem. When you were hired as a defense lawyer, the goal was acquittal, not truth. Ask a defense attorney how he slept at night and you always got the same answer. If the state did its job, then the guilty would be deservingly punished. There wouldn’t be any reasonable doubt. Jurors would know instantly who was guilty and who wasn’t. It wasn’t up to the defense to determine who had committed a murder. That was the state’s job. The defense was responsible for making certain the innocent were not railroaded.
It all sounded noble. But it rarely was. Most defense attorneys knew their clients were guilty as hell. But that didn’t stop them from cooking up stories and blaming others for crimes that they knew their clients had committed.
I wanted to corroborate Carmen’s story, so while O’Brien and Anne Marie began interviewing neighbors, relatives, and the other Gonzales children, I hopped on a train into Manhattan. Normally, I would have had a police officer drive me, but I didn’t want to call attention to myself because of where I was going.
Carmen had said her father had taken her to a women’s clinic on East 60th Street for an abortion. Obviously, I could subpoena the doctor who worked there, but I thought he might talk more freely to me if I showed up in person. I also had Carmen sign a legal release authorizing me to read her medical charts.
It was a three-block walk from the subway station to the concrete high-rise that housed the women’s clinic. As I neared the address, I spotted a couple accosting a teenage girl and an older woman. They appeared to be a mother and daughter.
“Don’t kill your baby!” a middle-aged man in a worn dark suit hollered at the teen. The equally middle-aged woman with him tried to force pamphlets into their hands. The antiabortion activists kept maneuvering themselves in front of the pair, momentarily blocking their path.
“Leave us alone!” the mother finally yelled. “This is none of your business.” Grabbing her daughter’s hand, she pulled the terrified teen into the building.
The activists noticed me and pounced, like hawks swooping down on an unsuspecting prey.
“Give up your baby for adoption,” the man pleaded. “Don’t murder your child.”
The woman thrust a pamphlet toward me. The cover had a color photograph of a fetus discarded in a trash can under the words: “HUMAN GARBAGE.”
“We can take you to a safe place where people can help you with your baby,” the woman said. “They can find someone to adopt your child. You don’t have to commit murder.”
“Sorry,” I said, “but I’m not pregnant. I’m an assistant district attorney and I’m curious. How long have you been outside this clinic doing this?”
I wondered if Carmen and Carlos had encountered this pair three months earlier.
Both took a step away from me. “We have a legal right to do this,” the man declared. “It’s our constitutional right. We have lawyers, too, you know.”
“I simply asked you a question.”
“We’re not talking to you!” the woman exclaimed. “We’re not breaking any laws. We’re good, churchgoing, God-fearing people. Instead of bothering us, you should be arresting those doctors in there.” They retreated.
The waiting room on the eighth floor was depressing. Abortion Can Be Lonely was written on a wall poster. The Eagles hit “Hotel California” was playing over a loudspeaker in the ceiling. There were about a dozen molded red plastic chairs with chrome legs along with two worn sofas. A dusty plastic fern was sitting in a corner and a warning sign that said No Smoking was posted nearby. A chipped wood veneer coffee table in the center of the room was covered with thumbed-through magazines and brochures about sexually transmitted diseases and birth control. I counted four women, in addition to the mother and daughter whom I’d seen outside. All were young, age twenty-two or under, I guessed. Two had boyfriends with them. The other two had girlfriends. A black trash can in the corner was filled with the antiabortion pamphlets that the activists outside had been distributing. At the far end of the oblong room was a metal door that could be opened only by a receptionist who was perched behind a thick window, much like a bank teller. I slipped a business card through a slot in the Plexiglas. The receptionist, a tired-looking woman in her fifties, eyeballed me. Standing, she walked to the right, disappearing from my sight. About a minute later, a thirty-something woman wearing a medical gown with a tie-dyed surgical cap came into view. I heard a loud thunk coming from inside the metal door, and the woman in the surgical outfit stuck her head out of the door and said, “C’mon in.”
I followed her to an office that was barely big enough for a metal desk, office chair, and two uncomfortable-looking metal folding chairs.
“I’m Doctor Joyce Cox,” she said, immediately firing up a cigarette. “What’s this about, Ms. Fox?”
I’d expected a male doctor. Dr. Cox was thin with closely cropped black hair. Her fingernails were cut short and not painted. Even though she was not wearing makeup, there was a natural rose tint in her cheeks.
“I’m investigating a rape,” I explained. “I believe the girl’s father brought her here for an abortion.”
“Let’s be clear,” Dr. Cox said. “I don’t do ‘abortions.’ I do ‘procedures.’ And I don’t kill babies no matter what those screwballs outside claim. I remove unwanted ‘tissues.’”
“I’m not here to judge you or debate you. I’m fully aware of the Supreme Court’s nineteen seventy-three decision in Roe v. Wade that confirmed a woman’s right to self-determination.” I took the medical release that Carmen had signed and handed it to her. “I’ve been authorized by Carmen to discuss any medical procedures that she may have undergone here.”
Dr. Cox scanned the sheet. “Confidentiality is important to us,” she said. “As you can imagine, our clients want to keep their records private. I need to make a call.”
She dialed a number that was taped to her desk phone and asked for someone named Sandra. Dr. Cox explained over the phone who I was and read Sandra the medical release word for word. I could tell from Dr. Cox’s end of the conversation that Sandra was a lawyer who apparently wasn’t too happy with any of this, but after she asked if the release had been signed by a witness (it had) and was notarized (it was), she instructed Dr. Cox to ask me a question.
“If I don’t comply, are you going to subpoena these records?” Dr. Cox asked.
I was getting tired of this rigmarole, so I reached over and took the phone out of Dr. Cox’s hand and said, “Sandra, I’m an assistant district attorney dealing with a rape case. Of course, I can subpoena your records and also make Doctor Cox testify, but at this juncture, I’m mostly fact seeking, so if you want to do this the easy way, then you’ll inform the doctor to cooperate.”
Without waiting for Sandra to respond, I handed the phone back to Dr. Cox, who spent the next several moments answering questions with one-word grunts such as “huh,” “yep,” “okay,” and “sure.”
When she finally hung up, she said, “I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”
I asked, “Do you remember Carmen Gonzales?”
“We see about sixty women a day here. I don’t remember names. The women who come here don’t come to make friends and chitchat. But I think I remember the woman who you’re speaking about. Did she have black hair, young, Latino, and rather striking—could be a model?”
“That’s her. How come you remember her?”
Dr. Cox took a very long drag on her cigarette, which she then smashed in a black ceramic ash tray.
“Great question. We do have lots of women come in, but in the two years I’ve worked at this clinic, there has been only one girl who came in with her father—that’s the girl you’re asking about. That’s why I remember her. Girls come in with their girlfriends or boyfriends—if the guy is decent enough to show up—and we get lots of mothers who bring in daughters. But no girl—no one—ever comes with a father. Except her.”
She walked from her desk
to the door and called down to the receptionist in the booth. When the aide came to see what she wanted, Dr. Cox gave her the medical release. “Make a copy of this for our file and bring this girl’s records to me.”
Returning to her desk chair, Dr. Cox said, “You’re going to be disappointed if you think our records are going to help you. All that’s in them is a photo, basic information provided by the client, and my medical notes about the procedure. We simply do our job and send them home.”
“There are no follow-up calls, no visits by social workers, no detailed interviews?”
“Ms. Fox,” Dr. Cox replied, “most of our patients never want to see or hear from us again. We explain the procedure, they sign the paperwork, and that’s it. Four to five hours tops and they’re gone. If we knocked on their doors later, some of these women would be mortified. Maybe they’re married and don’t want another mouth to feed. Maybe they’re cheating. Maybe they’re single. Maybe they’re unmarried teens. I’m not their therapist.”
“Was there anything about Carmen Gonzales that was different—besides her father being with her?”
Dr. Cox paused and then said, “I remember the father insisted on staying with his daughter during the entire procedure. He wouldn’t leave her alone, not for a second. Sometimes we have mothers do that, but I thought it was odd that a father would want to be in the room when we did the actual procedure.”
It was coming together just as I had suspected. Carlos had not been worried about Carmen’s health. He had been exercising total control to keep her from revealing the multiple rapes and scars.
“Did she appear frightened of her father?” I asked.
With an exasperated look, Dr. Cox said, “How would I know? Most of the teenage girls who come here are emotional wrecks. All I can tell you is that he didn’t hold her hand or try to comfort her. He seemed angry, suspicious, but I didn’t find that out of character given that he was the father. My first impression was that her boyfriend had gotten her pregnant. He mentioned that his wife had died. Suicide, he said. But then I did get a little bit suspicious.”
“Why?”
“He did all the talking for her. It’s not my job to speculate but it just seemed odd to me.”
I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easy. “Did you suspect incest?”
“Like I said, I just thought it was odd behavior for a father.”
“But not odd enough to call anyone?”
Dr. Cox gave me an icy stare as her assistant walked in with a thin file folder. Dr. Cox opened it, withdrew a Polaroid picture, and handed it to me.
Carmen Gonzales seemed distraught. Her eyes looked frightened. Yet even without makeup and with uncombed hair, she remained striking.
Dr. Cox said, “She’s the one I remember.”
I quickly read the five pages in her file. She’d been given blood and urine tests at 9:45 a.m. to confirm she was pregnant and had met with a counselor who questioned her about why she wanted an abortion. According to the counselor’s notes, Carlos Gonzales had been present during questioning. Two hours later, after Dr. Cox had been satisfied that Carmen was in her first trimester, she authorized the procedure. With her father at her side, Carmen had been taken into a room and asked if she wanted to be asleep or awake. She’d chosen to be knocked out. Even then, Carlos refused to leave. The sixteen-year-old had been given an intravenous injection of Brevital and her legs had been put in stirrups, just as if she were about to give birth. The actual abortion had taken only two minutes. Her body had discharged the fetus without complication. The clinic had charged her father $150, which he’d paid in cash. Father and daughter had departed before four p.m. That was it.
“Is there any way to tell who the father of the fetus was?” I asked.
“No, we don’t keep removed tissues,” Dr. Cox replied. “Are you going to subpoena me if you file a rape charge?”
I was truthful. “Probably.” The medical records should have been enough, but sometimes testimony has more impact, especially if I asked Dr. Cox about Carlos Gonzales’s dominating presence.
“Look, if you call me, can you at least not ask me to reveal my home address? These zealots outside are always trying to discover where I live. I’ve had to move four times since I took this job. They follow me almost every night. They put out flyers with my picture on them calling me a Baby Killer. Neighbors always like living next to a doctor, but not one who does procedures.”
“Why do you do this then?”
“Ms. Fox,” she replied, “do you think Carmen Gonzales was raped by her father?”
“Absolutely. Multiple times.”
“And if I had not removed that tissue from her, and a baby had been born, a baby of incest, a baby of rape, with a brutalized teenage mother and an incestuous father, what sort of life would that baby have?”
Not waiting for my reply, she said, “I don’t think every piece of tissue needs to become an unwanted and unloved baby. Now let me ask you a question.”
“That’s fair,” I said.
“You a Catholic?”
“Actually, I am.”
“A third of the women who come here are Catholic. They’re going against their church’s adamant position by coming here. That same church forbids contraception. Those antiabortionists outside claim the Bible is against abortion. But sometimes I wonder how many of them actually have read the Bible or understand it.”
She lit another cigarette and said, “You familiar with Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-three, verse one, Ms. Fox?”
“No, I think the nuns skipped over that one when I was in school.”
“It says a man with smashed testicles and a cut-off penis shouldn’t be allowed inside a church.” She blew out a puff of smoke. “I’d like to see priests standing at the front doors checking that out. My point is there’s lots of stuff in the Bible that doesn’t make sense. No one should judge me or what I do.”
Standing, she said, “Don’t call me as a witness unless you really need me. The receptionist will let you out. I have a procedure to do.”
29
The New York field office of the FBI is located on the twenty-third floor at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan and is one of three field offices overseen by an assistant FBI director rather than a Special Agent in Charge. That’s because New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., are the largest of the bureau’s fifty-six field operations.
O’Brien had arranged a meeting for us with Jack Longhorn, the Special Agent in Charge of the Carlos Gonzales case.
I’d not had many dealings with the FBI. But I knew the bureau was in flux. The FBI’s director in Washington, D.C., was on the verge of being canned. A new president had been elected and he wanted to appoint his own director. O’Brien had told me that rumors were rampant inside law enforcement that the New York FBI office was going to be gutted. That meant Agent Longhorn was in a tenuous position. “You’re only as good as your last big arrest,” O’Brien explained. “That means Longhorn might be under pressure to make the Gonzales case into something bigger than it actually is so he can impress his bosses in Washington, D.C., and get a promotion rather than a transfer. Word is that he’s gunning for the top job, running the office.”
We’d asked for the meeting to exchange information since the FBI already had Gonzales locked up at Metropolitan Correctional Center. I felt obligated to tell Agent Longhorn that I was about to indict Carlos Gonzales on abuse charges. I didn’t want to get into a jurisdictional dispute with the bureau.
During our ride, O’Brien offered me a tip. When it came to sharing information—the FBI was all for it—at least when it came to the bureau getting information. But the FBI was never forthcoming in its dealings with local cops. It always kept its cards close to its vest. It was the biggest nonsecret in law enforcement—the FBI felt superior.
O’Brien had me convinced that our encounter with Longhorn was going to be adversarial. But when we entered his office, he welcomed us as if we were long-lost relatives. Lanky and in
his late thirties, Longhorn had a thick southern drawl that he’d acquired in his native Ardmore, Oklahoma. He also prided himself on his folksy chatter.
“I’m having a cup of joe,” he said. “Would you like one? It’s fresh.” He brought a glass coffeepot from a sideboard over to his desk, where he filled two Styrofoam cups. Smiling, he said, “Now, Detective O’Brien and Miss Fox, how can the bureau be of service to you today?”
“We’ve come to talk about Carlos Gonzales,” I explained. “I plan to have a Westchester grand jury indict him on twenty-two counts of rape, sodomy, incest, and physical abuse of his teenage daughter.”
“Whew,” Longhorn responded, blowing air through his lips. “Little lady, did you just say twenty-two counts?”
“Yes, all involving his teenage daughter.”
“Well, I’ll be danged,” Longhorn said. “Crimes, like chickens, always come home to roost.”
What, exactly, any of this had to do with chickens was beyond me, but I smiled and said, “I wanted to coordinate our efforts. I know you have first shot at him and I don’t want our prosecution to get in your way on the drug charges.”
Agent Longhorn thought about that for a few moments and then said, “You’re right. Our case does take priority, but we’re still putting it together.” He paused, as if he were in deep thought, and then said, “You know what, Miss Fox, I’ve got an idea. Let’s say you indict him on those charges. Then he’s got us to worry about and you, too. He’s going to feel even more pressure. You know what they say about pressure?” He smiled, revealing a row of perfectly formed teeth. “It makes eggs crack.”
I was not a fan of Longhorn’s folksy wit. The moment he mentioned putting pressure on Gonzales, I suspected he was thinking about offering the accused a plea bargain. “Mr. Longhorn, you’re not thinking about cutting a deal with Carlos Gonzales, are you?”
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