False Witness

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “Hurts.” The word was whispered through her wired jaws.

  “Yes. We know it hurts. It will get better from here on. This is the worst it will be; it can only get better from now on.”

  That was what my mother used to tell me when I had strep throat.

  “Help me. Please.”

  “Yes. That’s why we’re here. Lucy and I. No one will hurt you anymore. Can you talk to us a little, Sanderalee? Can you tell us what happened to you?”

  Her hand pulled from mine; her eyes closed tightly. We could see her withdraw into herself. Deep into herself. Locking us out.

  But again, the thin voice said, “Help me.”

  Lucy’s fingers gently stroked Sanderalee’s forehead; soothingly, hypnotically tapping and brushing.

  “She’s asleep again. That’s how it’s been since a few minutes before I called you. It’s going to take time, Lynne. There is no way we’ll be able to question her for days. We don’t want to bring her back into the attack yet; not until she’s stronger, and has a more definite idea of where she is, and that she’s safe. God, we don’t want to shove her back to the attack yet.”

  We heard a sound from between the locked jaws. I leaned my head down, my face close to hers. The odor of medication was powerful and sickening, mixed as it was with the remnants of fear and horror. If I were Sanderalee, I wouldn’t be in any hurry to wake up and face this awful reality either.

  “Regg Morris,” she said in a thin, wavering voice.

  Regg Morris.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE BUREAU OFFICE, AT seven of a Saturday morning, had that standard municipal-building gray feeling. All the black rubber-topped grayish green metal desks were deserted; all the standard five-drawer file cabinets were locked. The large room had been swept and dusted by the middle-of-the-night crew of cleaning women who were apparently required as part of their union contract to remain invisible at all times.

  My office was no different from the rest of my people’s: it was just larger, with a window behind my desk that fronted on a slash of Foley Square. Just enough view to tell if it was raining, snowing or doing something wet: no sunshine could ever be detected because of the permanent arrangement of shadows. My desk had been dusted, my floor vacuumed, my wastebasket emptied, my memos neatly aligned along the edge of my desk blotter.

  Call Glori Nichols. I had forgotten. To call, not the name. I had checked with Jhavi, since he knew everyone.

  “Be very careful, Lynne.” Jhavi had warned. “She’s made of steel nails and she has her own reasons for doing things. Don’t come on too cooperative with her. Let her work for whatever it is she wants and make sure your interests are protected.”

  Wonderful. I was about to get myself involved in a situation that required alert self-protection at all times.

  I dug through the thick standup file in my bottom drawer and pulled out Lucy Capella’s report headed Regg Morris, Ph.D. and subtitled Ongoing Report. Lucy, who seemed to have broken through the exhaustion barrier, was wide-awake, alert and very definite about her decision to continue on duty at Sanderalee’s bedside. I felt pretty good about that. I count very heavily on Lucy. She would monitor and record the slightest sound, gesture, word or reaction from Sanderalee. She would catch what most others would miss.

  Bobby Jones was on his way down to Regg Morris’s home: a very large, expensive brownstone located on—check out Lucy’s report: 44th Street between Third and Second avenues. I backtracked and read her report straight through:

  Regg Morris, born July 12, 1935, in Doctor’s Hospital, NYC. Mother: Eleanor Wesley Morris, age 30, occupation high school English teacher; Father: Alexander Sedgewick Morris, age 34, occupation lawyer/owner-operator of Morris Funeral Homes, Inc., 120th Street and Lexington Avenue.

  No previous births; no subsequent births.

  Education: First Baptist Church nursery school, 1939–40; Horace Mann 1940–52; Columbia University Teachers College—graduated with B.S. in Education, 1956; Emory University—Master’s Degree in Education, 1958. President and Founder: Educational Research Center, Inc., established 1960; funded privately; specialized in studies re educational methods for minority children; 1961–62 Peace Corps volunteer (not specified); 1964: Ph.D. in Education, Berkeley, Calif. (thesis re: special educational needs of Third World children—wherever found); 1965–70: Educational Research Center, Inc., operating on grants from the UN; U.S. Federal Government; internships provided by both State and City of New York—graduate students from Columbia, CCNY, Brooklyn College on work-study grants; supervised by Dr. Regg Morris.

  1974: Dr. Regg Morris founded and incorporated and is chief owner of the “Wider World School”; located at 344 East 44th Street: the first three floors of Dr. Morris’s brownstone, which is also his legal residence.

  School is staffed by young, energetic, well-educated, political-activist graduate students, who are—more or less—working under U.S. government grants and internships. This is an elite private school whose student body, by and large, is made up of the children of UN personnel from so-called Third World countries. Although provision is made for these children at the UN’s own international school, more and more interest is being aroused by Dr. Morris’s school. Some parents have withdrawn their children complaining that they did not send them for “indoctrination of a political nature”; but each vacancy is immediately filled from a long waiting list of potential students. This is a very expensive secondary school. Admittance rate to Ivy League colleges is high; however, it should be noted that such admittance is not based largely on the academic achievements of UN children; they are admitted through a special quota system, which is not publicly admitted. Although many of the graduates do score very high on the SATs, one bursar from Ivy League (who will not be quoted by name) stated to undersigned that “these kids are more prepared to engage in empty, repetitive political rhetoric than in historical fact. They are being indoctrinated rather than educated.” (Note: same complaint of parents who withdrew kids.)

  For last several years, Dr. Regg Morris has been a regular on the “college lecture tour” scene. He earns somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 on the lecture tour—exact figures not readily available.

  He is unmarried; inherited his father’s funeral business, of which he is a silent partner; net worth somewhere over one million dollars. Exact financial standing not known.

  For last two years, it has been an open-secret fact that Dr. Regg Morris and Sanderalee Dawson are not only romantically involved but are in a kind of student/teacher relationship. He is identified with Third World, PLO causes. They have traveled and vacationed together although they maintain separate living quarters in NYC. He is scrupulous about not bringing women to his brownstone, because of the school’s being located there.

  Investigation re background continuing.

  Lucy Capella, Investigator

  Besides Lucy’s report, I had read about him in the newspapers; read articles he had written in various magazines; had seen him on the television talk shows, had listened to him on late-night, all-night radio shows; but still, I was not really prepared for the face-to-face presence of Regg Morris.

  He towered over me and was a few inches taller than Bobby Jones. His handshake was firm, enveloping, a warm, two-handed, friendly, sincere greeting, which took enough time for him to get oriented to his surroundings.

  He stood graciously beside the chair in front of my desk until I was seated behind my desk; waited until he saw I was settled, glanced at Bobby Jones, who was already slumped in one of my two visitor’s chairs. He allowed himself a slow, sliding, taking-it-all-in glance around my office: there was nothing special to take his attention, although he did seem to note my framed law degree. He played with his Phi Beta Kappa key with long, slender fingers until he was sure both Bobby and I knew he had it. He sat straight and tall, his full attention now focused on me. The force of his stare was physical; it eliminated our surroundings; it created an intimacy that was at once startling a
nd inappropriate and yet somehow comfortable and familiar. His black eyes were lover’s eyes; they were one source of the tremendous power that emanated from him. His body, long and lean and covered by beautifully tailored clothing, was in the center of a highly magnetized field of tension and energy: he was the most totally sexual person I had ever encountered. A little more time went by than I had intended: I was supposed to be establishing the ground rules for this meeting, not him.

  “Dr. Morris, I want to thank you for agreeing to come to our office this morning. I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for you?”

  He smiled slowly and spread his hands. There was something mocking, cynical just beneath his soft-spoken words. “In the interests of justice, my convenience is secondary.”

  “Do you have any idea at all who might have assaulted Sanderalee Dawson? Do you have any suggestions or information that might aid us?”

  He folded his fingers, stiffened the two index fingers straight out, and tapped them against his mouth for a moment. “I want to ask you a question first.” I waited. “How many people are working on the crime against Ms. Dawson?”

  Bobby Jones, on signal from me, answered, “I don’t think that’s relevant to anything you might be able to offer.”

  “I think it’s relevant or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Make your point, Dr. Morris.”

  The atmosphere, the almost game-playing atmosphere, abruptly changed: hardened, tightened. Morris dropped his hands and slid them on the arms of the wooden chair. He turned his face and glared at Bobby Jones, then turned back to me.

  “My point, Ms. Jacobi: Sanderalee Dawson is a black woman who has been brutalized by a white man. Now, in the history of our great nation, there is nothing whatever unique about this. Black people have always been victimized and brutalized by white people. What I want to know is ...”

  “Are you here to make speeches or to assist us in our investigation?”

  He took a slow breath and smiled; his eyes shot into mine again, but that particular connection had been broken and we both knew it.

  “All right. Let’s skip the obvious. Let’s skip right over what we all three of us know of the history of race relations in our country. You are prosecutors: you know as much as anyone else. I am interested, as a very close friend of Sanderalee’s, in the progress of the investigation. Is that allowable?”

  “More than half of my entire staff is working on this case along with the PD personnel assigned. We are working around the clock and under a good deal of pressure. It is a high priority case. We are handling this case exactly—exactly—as we would any similarly vicious assault. We haven’t gotten into the racial—or the sexual—politics involved.”

  “Oh yes, that’s a new political field, isn’t it? Sexual politics. Well, yes, I can see where that might take you, Ms. Jacobi. But you see, black women have not yet had the luxury to be involved in sexual politics. They’re still involved in the injustices of racial politics.”

  “Dr. Morris,” Bobby Jones said in his bell-clear accusatory voice, “where were you on Tuesday night, March sixth, from midnight until five A.M.?”

  Regg Morris shook his head in an exaggerated motion, as though he were a swimmer trying to clear the water from his ear.

  “Am I being asked for an alibi?” The laugh was incredulous. “Well, I’ve been accused of many things in my lifetime. Passing for a white man has never been one of them.”

  “No one is accusing you of anything, Dr. Morris. We’re just asking you a very standard question. You don’t have to answer, if you’d rather not. You can come back with an attorney, if you’d prefer. We can set up such an appointment for you at your convenience.”

  “I was with my attorney Tuesday night. We were in Atlanta, Georgia, attending a seminar at Emory University, between eight and ten P.M. We returned to New York via Delta Airlines—first class—always first class when it’s business-deductible. We arrived at LaGuardia well after midnight, maybe twelve-thirty, twelve forty-five A.M. Shared a cab into Manhattan. Dropped him off first—he lives in Kips Bay. Then I was driven home by the cabdriver. I would guess I arrived home—you know my address: I have an apartment on the top floor of my brownstone—I would guess at around one forty-five or two A.M. I’m not really sure. I took a shower and had a late-night snack. I put on my radio and went to bed. I listened to ... I’m not too sure what talk show it was, but I heard my name mentioned in connection with educational testing methods. I’m sure you would be able to check out what show it was; what time my name was mentioned; my radio is set on WOR. At that point, after they discussed my views, I turned off the radio and went to sleep.

  “My clock radio woke me up at seven on Wednesday morning. I heard the news then. About Sanderalee. I dressed and rushed to Roosevelt Hospital and learned she’d been taken to New York Hospital. I’ve spent as much time as possible at the hospital for the last week.

  “That is my statement. Now suppose you tell me exactly why you asked me for a statement. By what stretch of the imagination are you probing the possibility of putting a black man into the picture?”

  “This case is still wide open, Dr. Morris,” Bobby Jones explained. “And will be until we can get some information from Ms. Dawson. The doorman has stated he took her up to her floor in the company of a white man, dressed in running clothes. We have no way of knowing whether or not there was another man waiting inside her apartment, in the apartment next door, or anywhere in the hallway, just waiting for her to return home. We don’t know if this man was someone she knew; was afraid of; had a relationship with.”

  “Or in fact if he existed,” I added.

  “And if he existed, of course he’d be a black man?” Regg Morris smiled bitterly. “And I would be black man number one to question. My God, you people are marvelous. If she doesn’t come around soon, you’ll be dragging in every ...”

  “She has come around, Dr. Morris.”

  “What?”

  He rose from his chair and leaned across the desk. “When? How is she? What did she say?”

  “She said your name. She said ‘Regg Morris.’ And that’s all she said.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE HOSPITAL HAD MADE provision for the numbers of people involved in the waiting, guarding process. An intern cot had been set up in the tiny lounge room connecting with the private ICU where Sanderalee Dawson lay. Lucy Capella and I arranged a rotating on/off schedule between us and we informed the Police Department personnel that under no circumstances was a male officer to enter either room. We delegated their women officers to the outer, larger waiting room. That annoyed Chief of Detectives Jim Barrow and we had a few not too friendly phone conversations, but since I was already in residence, he reluctantly agreed to the arrangement. His people were stationed in the very pleasant, sunny “family waiting room” where VIP visitors of VIP patients did not have to observe any visiting hour regulations. It was beginning to look like a branch of Chicken Delight or Carvel. Each new shift came loaded with paper bags of fast food.

  Also firmly established and sharing space with the police personnel were studio representatives; a few of Sanderalee’s crewmen who dropped by with flowers and a kind word to be relayed; some surly looking, but nicely dressed, gentlemen who let it be known that they were PLO. They tried to tape poster-sized pictures of Sanderalee, dancing around their campfires, rifle overhead, to the wall, but were forbidden by hospital officials.

  Outside the hospital, there were pickets from various Zionist organizations protesting the presence of PLO people inside the hospital; some PLO pickets protesting the Zionist pickets; and, of course, NYC cops keeping the two groups apart.

  By late Saturday afternoon, Sanderalee had not come fully awake again, although she had stirred from time to time. The visitors cleaned up after themselves, although the greasy food smells lingered, and I remembered I was hungry. I’d have eaten anything anyone offered me, but no one offered. The visitors had left behind enough flowers to start a shop. The police person
nel gathered up the cards from the various offerings and gave the flowers to a terminal-children’s ward a few floors down.

  During this time, Regg Morris and Bobby Jones moved around to other areas of the hospital where no one would recognize Regg: no interviews, no photographs, no assumptions, no guesses. He agreed fully with our suggestion. He stated he would wait “forever, or however long it took” to speak with Sanderalee. He would be present the next time she mentioned his name. Bobby contacted me on the hospital phone at regular intervals. At about eight o’clock that night, when all the sounds around the ICU had settled into a quiet, soothing, rhythmic humming of medical equipment, Lucy and I stood on one side of the bed watching the nurse perform the regularly prescribed rites upon Sanderalee: temperature, pulse; professional, competent fingertips touching along the swollen jaws, applying some clear semi-liquid medication to the torn lip area; testing the shapeless, curled fingers for warmth. Then the nurse smiled and said. “Well. Hello. Are you with us again?”

  Sanderalee’s voice seemed to come from a deep, dark, measureless place, the words rising heavily, laboriously.

  “Please. Help. Me.”

  “You bet, sweetie. You are doing fine, just fine.” The nurse dipped the edge of a washcloth into the pitcher of water, then carefully dabbed at Sanderalee’s mouth. “Just suck on it a little bit. After a while, I’ll give you a nice piece of ice and it will feel so good.”

  There was a loud sucking sound, then a moan and the nurse took the cloth away.

  “Hand?” the far-off voice said.

  “Well, I’ve got some good news for you,” the nurse answered in a friendly, loud voice as though what she was saying was the most normal, natural thing in the world. “That hand of yours is doing just fine. Now, how about that? It’s right back where it belongs.”

  “What? Where ... it ... belongs?”

  “You bet, honey. You’ve got circulation going in those fingers, and a nice warmth and we’re well past the danger point. Now, isn’t that good news?”