False Witness

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  Wonderful.

  “You keeping notes for your book, Fred: my three most wonderful cases as a police commissioner? You signed up with anyone yet? This will be one hell of a case. It’s got all the elements: beautiful victim, a racial angle, sex-sex-blood-and-gore. Just one thing, Fred. You put a lid on. Right now. A very tight, not-another-single-word lid. Not one single leak. Nothing, without my approval. Got that, Fred?”

  “You’re a very uptight lady, Lynne, you know that?”

  “Fred. Commissioner Mandell. Your fun is over for the night. Don’t make me get an injunction. Smile a lot and wink at your pals out there, but open your mouth once more, say one more word about my case without my permission, and I’ll take away your pearl-handled revolver.”

  His handsome face tightened and then relaxed. He reverted to the anxious-to-please former television executive he had been before the Mayor, for God knows what reason, made him a police commissioner.

  “How could I refuse such a charming request from such a charming lady?”

  “You can’t. Now tell that little patrolman to get his butt in here.”

  That cop would have broken Mr. Timothy Doyle’s kind heart, the little jerk. He had had his moment. He had behaved properly and selflessly. But now he had reverted to his more basic self. I could see him twenty years from now; the smug lines had begun in the corners of his young mouth. His eyes narrowed and measured me with a cool and distant wariness: who the hell was I?

  “Sit down, officer. I’m Assistant District Attorney Lynne Jacobi, Bureau Chief of the Violent Sex Crimes Division.”

  “Oh? I’m Police Officer Peter Delaney. Me and my partner were the first on the scene with that woman ...”

  “Tell you how we’re going to do this, officer. I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to give me an answer. Clear?”

  His brows climbed slowly up his forehead and a grin played around his lips and he shrugged. He still didn’t have the vaguest idea who I was; he was the hero of the moment.

  “Where did that blood come from, officer? That blood that’s smeared on your mouth?”

  His hand reached up and his fingertips delicately traced the evidence of his glory. “From that Sanderalee-whatever’s mouth, lady. Didn’t no one tell you about what happened?”

  I leaned against a desk and folded my arms and regarded this kid from the distance of nearly twenty years; measured him; let him enjoy a few more seconds of his glory.

  “Officer Delaney, don’t mess around with me, because if you do I’ll wreck you so totally, so completely that you’ll spend the next eighteen or nineteen years plucking drunks from public toilets from one end of this city to the other. And no one, sonny, no one at all, will want to see your face smeared with vomit on their front pages. You got that? You ready to sit up straight and start behaving like a professional police officer?”

  He had gone a little pale; a little tighter; a lot more resentful. His fingers touched the corners of his mouth again.

  “Look, lady, I ...”

  “Chief. You call me Chief, because that’s my title. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. Uh-uh-Chief. I’m ... well, you see, me and my partner were the first on the scene and ...”

  “No, we’ll get to all that when I ask you. You tell me where that blood came from that’s on your mouth right now. Or you want me to tell you how it happened? Did someone out there say ‘Hey, officer, show us how it was’? Did someone suggest you dip your eager little fingers into the blood on your tunic and smear it on your mouth so it would look more dramatic for the cameras?”

  Right on target. The kid started to fall apart. I let him because he had it coming, even though it wasn’t totally his fault.

  “All right. Now we’re being honest with each other, Police Officer Delaney. You will speak to no one without the permission of someone from my office, whether it be me or one of my subordinates. Got it? Good. Now, I spotted a washbasin over there behind the screen. Go over and wash your face, then come back here and show me your memo book.”

  “My memo book?”

  “You haven’t filled in your memo book? You were too busy giving press conferences? Where’s your partner?”

  “He stayed with the chick. He went in the ambulance up to New York Hospital.”

  “He went with the ‘victim.’ He went with Ms. Sanderalee Dawson. She is not a ‘chick.’ You got a way to go, officer. For God’s sake, close your mouth and wash your face.”

  It took another five minutes to discover that at no time, from the moment he and his partner had entered that blood-awful kitchen until she had been taken on a stretcher out of his sight, had Sanderalee said one single word. She had only made groaning, cackling sounds.

  “Why do you suppose your partner stayed with her in the ambulance on the way here? And in the ambulance when she was being transferred? Why do you think he did that, officer?”

  He blinked, then nodded. “In case she says something? In case she comes to and says something of value?”

  “You got it. Officer, you stay in here all by yourself and you write up your memo book. I want you to put down the exact times involved; the exact moves you made; what you saw. Everything. Put it in your memo book, not on the front page of the New York Post or the Daily News. You took very commendable action tonight. You very likely saved Ms. Dawson’s life, if she survives all this. You don’t mean zilch to those people out there. You’re good for a picture, that’s it. They really don’t give a damn if you put your career in jeopardy by giving out information you should not give out. You are tomorrow’s front page to them. Period.”

  His face lit up. “Jeez. You think I might have my picture on the front page of the News tomorrow? Jeez.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE CHAOS AND EXCITEMENT at New York Hospital was far more controlled and institutionalized. They were accustomed, at this huge uptown East Side installation, which was associated with Cornell University Medical School, to the unusual: to caring for the rich, the famous, the infamous, the exotic.

  There was a Briefing Room and all the control of a Presidential Press Conference as a spokesman for the hospital fielded questions from media people and “interested parties.”

  The medical bulletin was brief and nonexplicit. Surgery was in progress at this very moment. Microsurgery of the most delicate kind. Involving the attempted reattachment of Ms. Dawson’s severed left hand.

  “It looks good as of right now,” the bland hospital spokesman said. “The severed hand was kept under optimal conditions. Surgery commenced approximately ten minutes ago; the three-man surgical team of Doctors David Cohen, Adam Waverly and Frank Esposito is in service.” How long would the surgery take? “That depends. However long is necessary.” What about Ms. Dawson’s other injuries? “I cannot comment in any detail at this time.”

  Chief of Detectives Jim Barrow stood head and shoulders over the milling crowd. He extricated himself from several worried-looking television types and signaled me to a corner in the back of the room.

  “I got your note about Timothy Doyle’s handling of the cold water faucet, Lynne. Thanks. We’ve printed him and checked it out. That’ll save us something, anyway.” He turned and faced into the room. “Behold the glamorous people. That little clique around the doctor are network executives. One of them actually asked if it would be advisable to cancel Sanderalee’s live show tonight.”

  “God, she’s really wiped out,” we overheard. “I mean, there goes the whole bloody sweeps week right down the old toilet.”

  Jim Barrow winked at me. “Nice, huh? That bitch up there has really let them all down.”

  “And in a rating sweeps week,” I added. “Terrible. Listen, Jim, I’m going to assign a full staff to this assault. And either Bobby Jones or Lucy Capella—you know my investigator, Lucy Capella?”

  “Little dark-haired girl, used to be a nun?”

  “That’s Lucy. Either or both of them will be my liaisons. Where are we at right now?”

  D
etectives were tracking down and interviewing all of the guests on Sanderalee Dawson’s talk show of last night; members of her crew; her chauffeur; her neighbors; street people who might have seen her assailant.

  “And we’re starting at scratch with a big fat Rolodex of names of her contacts: friend and foe. The lady has collected a lot of both over the last few years. Especially over the last six months, when she’s gone slightly wacko politically. Listen, kiddo, I have my guys doing floor plans and sketches and the usual up at her apartment. We’re gonna seal it for the present, but if you want access just let me know and I’ll leave word.”

  Barrow knew me; I always found it valuable to return to the scene of the crime—if it was an indoor setting—long after everyone had gone. I found it valuable to wander around, to get the feel of the place: to absorb it totally, so that months later, maybe even years later, I could reconstruct it accurately in a courtroom, presenting the jury with more than technically correct perfect-to-scale floor plans.

  “Good, Jim. Thanks, yes, I’ll want to do that. What the hell is all that commotion?”

  There was a soft, heavy purring sound emanating from groups of white-uniformed hospital personnel: nurses and doctors, suddenly transformed into movie fans. All were focused on the smaller-than-life-sized but terribly intense figure of Eric Roe, seethingly inarticulate movie star of the moment. He swept majestically into the crowded room with his entourage of flacks who chanted, “C’mon now, girls, don’t crowd Eric. Give him a break, kids. Eric’s a friend of Sanderalee, so no autographs, have a heart, can’t you see Mr. Roe is very distressed.”

  Mr. Roe stayed around long enough to be photographed being very distressed and then he and his drumbeaters were gone. There was an excitement in the room: who’s going to be next? Paul Newman? Naw, he don’t know Sanderalee. Does he? Hey, look, there’s what’s-his-name, the singer.

  The cameramen flashed on anybody who might be somebody. After all, this was salable stuff all over the world.

  “C’mon Lynne,” Barrow said, “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. Let’s get the hell out of here before we both get arrested.”

  CHAPTER 5

  JIM BARROW GAVE ME a lift back to my apartment. He couldn’t resist commenting on the beauty of the rising sun, the unique cloud formations over the East River, and the anticipated number of winter-murdered bodies that would start bobbing up once the thaw was definitely over.

  “I like the sunrise in the cloud-swept skies part, Jim. Thanks for the lift. I’ll be at my office in an hour or so or I’ll leave a number where I can be reached.”

  “Sure you don’t want me to come upstairs with you and warm you up a little, babe?” he asked good-naturedly.

  “Jim, here’s exactly what I’d like you to do.” I leaned over and whispered terrible and dirty things in his ear. He pulled back startled, then laughed.

  “You young women of today. My God!”

  Hot shower–cold shower, towel wrapped around my head as I rushed to answer the expected, excited tapping at my door. Sometimes I cannot quite believe what has happened to my living room: years ago, I literally “bought a room” right off the floor of Bloomingdale’s and had it installed in this nice large main room of my four-room apartment overlooking Washington Square Park. Somehow, through the years, Bloomie’s had disappeared, been swallowed up and lost beneath the clutter of my books and periodicals and clippings and case files.

  My next-door neighbor, Jhavi, was standing there, as expected. He reached up and took the towel off my head.

  “Blow dry, Lynne. It’s cut for blow dry.” He looked around in his usual lost way at my chaos. “Want me to fetch you a dryer?”

  “No, no. Mine’s in the bedroom. I’ll get it. Turn off the coffee. The cups are set out.”

  I heard him fiddling at the television set, then the controlled-excited voice of the newsman telling about Sanderalee. Jhavi turned to me.

  “Were you out early this morning? On this? My God, you were out on this?”

  As we watched the Today show, Jhavi fussed and fingered my hair into place, turning the blow dryer on and off during commercials.

  My next-door neighbors and closest friends in the building are what my old Aunt Belle would call “very strange people” and what are now called “gay people.” Harley Alton is a powerhouse of a black man who was once a famous linebacker in New York. He now owns and operates a very successful midtown restaurant and his various other flourishing businesses, which he discusses with me periodically. While I am not his attorney—I do not moonlight—I do help him out a little. I check up on his attorney, whom he does not trust completely and at times with good reason.

  His lover is an exotic named Jhavi. I have been tempted at times to check him out and feel somewhat certain he could be located in some little corner of Brooklyn, but I prefer his own history: a Far Eastern childhood in a tiny, hardly known but strategic border kingdom, threatened by all the major powers, which forced his father—an important member of the royal family—to send Jhavi and his sister to America for education and asylum.

  Jhavi is one of the top set designers on Broadway and my apartment is one of his major despairs. He has done many sketches, but so far, everything he suggests seems to me like a Persian whorehouse, complete with tented fabrics coming from the ceiling, or else an exact duplicate of the set he is currently working on, most recently a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

  He is a rare and physically lovely man, small and perfectly proportioned, graceful as a dancer, with flashing black eyes in his mysteriously dusky face.

  He often studies me with the despair of an artist facing a not very promising subject. But he has taught me the high art of makeup: I can literally put on my entire face, start to finish, blank eyes and thin lips brought to life and prominence, high cheekbones accented, switcheroo, presto, change-o—dull, dopey-looking Lynne to bright, intelligent and attractive woman-attorney on her way. All in ten minutes flat.

  As we watched and listened, he flipped and fluffed and smoothed my straight black hair into a sort of Japanese schoolgirl’s casualness; snapped his fingers for a clip. Then, implacably, he rolled out my exercise mat.

  “On the floor, love, on the floor. No indolence. Once that starts it ends here; look. There you are, my dear Lynne. That’s you.” He held the photograph of my roly-poly parents, who in their plump middle age, in the faded picture, looked like stuffed merry twins.

  I exercised, which I hate. I also diet, which I doubly hate. There are times—many times—when I think, What the hell. It might be fun to become rounded and fat along the edges. And then I would look like my parents, and maybe even begin to talk like them—the way I remember them sounding—a soft, excited mixture of Hungarian-English-Yiddish. I would enjoy life and eat rich foods and deprive myself of nothing delicious. It was how they lived and they didn’t die of heart trouble or high cholesterol or fat-based diseases. They died together in an exploding TWA jet en route to Florida: their first flight ever, in celebration of their twenty-fifth anniversary. Some lunatic of a boy had packed explosives into his parents’ luggage so that he could collect enough money to live in California for the rest of his life because he could see no other way out of Brooklyn. He was nineteen: just my age. He didn’t get to go to California, but the flight insurance enabled my brother to go to dental college and me to go to law school.

  I arrived at my office at 10:15. At 10:30, as expected, I was summoned to the office of the District Attorney. He had been at his desk for nearly an hour—my intelligence system was excellent. He had had his first briefings of the day: been regaled with the crime horrors of the last twelve hours. What damage had been inflicted on innocent people, on guilty people, on family members by other family members; what police officer had been accused of what illegal deed; what accused crime lord had attempted to fly out of the country; what case was court-ready; what citizens’ group was meeting and hoping for his presence; what out-of-town jurisdiction was requesting the assistance of his peo
ple; what law-school symposium was asking his cooperation.

  Who in the world was this Sanderalee Dawson and, aside from the dreadful injuries inflicted on the young woman, why was there such a public outcry and why was his office being swamped with phone calls from as far away as the State Department in Washington, D.C.? In fact, why was this being treated as an international incident? Who, indeed, was this Sanderalee Dawson?

  “Lynne?”

  If you were to stop one hundred fifty people at random on the streets of New York, one hundred forty of them would know at least some passing gossip about Sanderalee Dawson; some would know—or think they knew—a great deal about her personal/sex life as revealed in publications from TV Guide to People to the National Enquirer. Among the other ten would be one congenital idiot; a deaf-blind man; two people who spoke no English; four people who claimed they never watched television; one who swore allegiance only to NET; and then there would be Jameson Whitney Hale, District Attorney of New York County, who would look a little vague and shake his head.

  He had appeared as a guest on both the Cavett and Susskind shows, yet could distinguish between them only by the clues he’d picked up: Cavett is the little fellow who tap-dances for a hobby and Susskind is the little fellow with white hair who pretends he knows everything. Right? Ah, yes, and Sanderalee Dawson is that pretty young black woman who used to turn up on the Carson show every now and then. And she has her own talk show now? Amazing. The world of television personalities is a vague reality to him; he deals with so much raw flesh and blood, so many real lives and deaths, he must be excused his ignorance of the make-believe world.

  Jameson Whitney Hale settled comfortably into the depths of his leather wing chair and motioned me to his comfortable leather couch, which meant he was prepared to give me enough time to bring him up to date.