False Witness
Page 20
She pulled over as best she could in the not-too-heavy late Sunday afternoon traffic, set up her ever-handy blinker lights, yellow and red, managed to cajole the wounded creature into the back of her station wagon—which was fully equipped with all kinds of benign animal lures: old bones, dry feed, catnip for the kitties, cookies, smelly old dog blankets and pillows. The animal once safely installed in the nestlike arrangement, our Lucy had yet to achieve personal safety. She was sideswiped by an angry motorist who had appointments to keep and would not grant Lucy the twenty seconds or so required for her to safely collect her blinker lights and enter her vehicle.
She managed to get into the station wagon, call in the license number of her hit-and-runner, request ambulances for herself and her new dog.
When a local emergency ambulance arrived, Lucy steadfastly refused, as only our iron-and-steel little nun could, to ride in the ambulance without the injured dog, who had in fact thrown itself into her arms and growled weak but serious threats to anyone who tried to separate them. It might actually have been Lucy herself faking the growl, but it sounded real enough to cause a problem. She insisted the medical entourage first deliver the dog to the Animal Medical Center on the East Side of Manhattan at Sixty-second Street and then double back with her to the hospital in Queens that had human jurisdiction.
Lucy’s left leg and right arm had been fractured and she had two black eyes and a scraped chin, yet the first thing she extracted from me at her bedside was a promise to check on the progress of Ambrose at the animal hospital. Ambrose? The wonderful wounded starveling had been so named in honor of the ambulance attendant who had finally given in, said what the hell, let’s either take both of them to the Emergency Room at the animal hospital or the ER at the people hospital; we can’t stay here arguing forever: neither this lady nor this dog is gonna give.
The animal hospital, somewhat impressed by Ambrose’s arrival in a people ambulance, accepted him immediately but refused Lucy, who was then returned to Queens.
I was able to assure Lucy that Ambrose was not only going to survive, he was going to prevail. He had been featured on the late news and would be an early-edition front-page Daily News dog with adopters lining up. The story was receiving a great deal of play: it was a welcome change of pace from all the riot, destruction and terror stories that had been confronting us for the last few days. Some public relations back from City Hall even put out a line that his Honor, the Argumentative Mayor, was interested in adopting Ambrose. They were that desperate for a good word re City Hall.
Lucy did not have a care in the world. Her friends from the old lapsed-priests-and-nuns commune, who had been cat/dog sitting her own collection of pets while she’d been on extended duty at New York Hospital with Sanderalee, would not only continue, but would also take care of her when she returned from the hospital.
So I left Lucy warm and cozy and reassured: encased in casts, bruises and a nice resolve to get that monster who sideswiped her.
I took advantage of having a driver and, before going home, paid a quick visit to New York Hospital. Sanderalee was sitting in “Lucy’s room,” half-heartedly reading a magazine. As soon as she heard me approach, her head ducked down and she adjusted a filmy veil, which she had attached to a couple of hair clips to float over her face. Actually, it was quite attractive and almost looked like a glamorous new style—as long as you didn’t see beneath the veil. Sanderalee favored soft lights and distances. She dropped the magazine as she stood up, her right hand touching first the veil and then the heavy cast in which her left hand rested.
She had heard about Lucy’s accident.
“I didn’t know Lucy was a Miss Molly. A professional kindheart,” she said in a peculiar tone. “I suppose every now and then, one of the collectors of the ... maimed and the ugly and the ... unwanted pays a price for her charity.” She walked across the room and stood with her back to me for a moment. Somewhere, she had lost me. I couldn’t quite figure her attitude. I had thought she and Lucy were friends. “She is all right though, isn’t she?” The question was asked coldly.
I assured her that Lucy would be fine; it would be a matter of time and healing.
Sanderalee turned and raised her face toward me. Her green eyes glowing from the top of the veil seemed very deep and steady but her voice revealed her restlessness.
“When can I get out of here? I’m sick of this place, Lynne. When is something going to happen?”
“When you get out of here isn’t up to me, Sanderalee. That’s up to the doctors. You know that. They’re amazed at your progress. It’s good that you’re anxious to get out. I’m a great believer in a person’s pushing herself. The question is, where will you go? Have you given that much thought?”
“I’ve given it ‘much thought.’ I have a place. I don’t care to discuss it right now.”
“But not back to your apartment?”
She drew her shoulders up, pressed her arms close to her body to suppress a shudder and shook her head. “Never. Never.”
“That would be my reaction, too. Look. I’m preparing the case for the Grand Jury and ...”
Her body hunched forward as though she’d received a blow to the stomach. She shook her head and there was a soft moan coming from her clenched mouth. “Not me, though, Lynne. Not me ... I won’t have to ... Lucy told me that you’d go ahead without me ... that I won’t have to ...”
Of course, it would have been much better for her to appear before the Grand Jury: the living proof of the damages inflicted on her.
“No, Sanderalee. It’s okay. I’ll make the presentation myself. I have your tape. I have all the medical documents to show them. You won’t have to appear.”
She sat down and rested her heavy cast across her body. Her long fingers played with the edge of her veil and her voice was very soft, dreamy. “The plastic surgeon has told me that it won’t be too bad, fixing my face. My lip. He’s pretty sure he can do a good restoration. That’s what he called it: restoration. Like I was an old painting or something. They can do a lot of things; they’ve put together worse than ... than mine, he said. He said that with time, with healing, with ... time and healing, you wouldn’t even be able to ... Oh, Lynne, I’m very tired. Sometimes I think it’ll be all right. This will all be over with. And then, I look at this ... this ... thing.” She touched the swollen fingertips that curled inward on the edge of the cast. “My God, this was my hand. Look at it. You know, someday they’ll take the cast off and all the bandages and I don’t want to see it. It’s like a ... a horrible growth ... something that isn’t part of me ... something ... alien. Oh, God, sometimes I wish I could just turn time back. Very far back, years back. But then, I ask myself, where would I stop it? At what point would I stop time? And I try to find the perfect moment, the perfect time that I would want to start from and I get stuck. There doesn’t seem to be a ‘perfect moment.’ Maybe it’s all been one big crock. Goddamn, I’m tired.”
I wished I could think of something clever or sustaining or reassuring or wise or important or comforting to say to her. I wished I knew what Lucy would say.
“Can I get you anything, Sanderalee? Anything at all?”
She raised her head. I could see the outline of her face as the veil floated against her. The wiring on her jaws had been loosened considerably; the lower lip torn but healing. Several broken teeth had been removed and she was having dental work as part of the reconstruction process. Her eyes were still beautiful and alive; only her eyes were still Sanderalee. They regarded me with a look of anger and then the look softened, filled with pain and somehow, it seemed, with pity. For me? for herself? Who knows?
“It’s all right, Lynne. I get this way sometimes. Tell Lucy ...” She stopped speaking and her eyes glazed over. She was having some kind of battle about Lucy. I sensed an anger: that Lucy had let her down. She blinked rapidly and then said, “Tell Lucy that I am sorry this happened to her. Really sorry. Tell her that ... tell Lucy that I can feel her pain.” She spoke very
quickly and there was concern now in her voice. “You know, that’s what she said to me once and it’s very peculiar but I believed her and it helped. She shared my pain and made it easier, if that makes any sense.
“Listen, tell the nurse I want to go to sleep now,” she said abruptly. “I don’t want to talk about anything else. When it’s done and over, when you’ve gotten the indictment, come and tell me, okay?”
I promised that I would. The nurse came and Sanderalee settled in bed, her right arm extended for the injection that would free her from this moment.
I walked quickly from the room, was called back by the police officer who was established at the desk in the outer room of the suite. I had forgotten to sign out. She was young and pretty and she looked like a recruiting poster in her sharp, well-tailored navy blue uniform. She’d been assigned through Jim Barrow’s office since I had no people available for this kind of desk duty. I absently scanned the list of visitors: Sanderalee’s network friends; one or two familiar show business names.
“Is it true that all these people party it up here, Ms. Jacobi? I mean, we’ve heard all kinds of stories.”
Her fresh young face was hopeful.
“I hope you’ve got a good book to read.” It was nearly midnight. “What sort of tour have they got you on?”
“I’ve only been assigned; came on about eleven-thirty. We’re all on twelve-hour duty. Emergency overtime.” She looked around the pleasantly furnished, hotel-like room. “This beats the streets.”
I rode down in an elevator with a couple of cute, sleepy-looking young residents and couldn’t help wondering what they’d been up to: they reeked of formaldehyde. My head began to reel and I was grateful for the cold blast of air as I exited into the circular driveway at the main entrance of New York Hospital. My driver drove me down Fifth Avenue to my apartment building. He told me that the city seemed to be settling down. There were only sporadic bursts of violence, destruction and arson. The perpetrators now were being pounced on and dragged off.
It had gotten colder and started to rain and the rain was turning to sleet and the sleet was turning to snow, which was turning to ice on the streets. The sociologists and criminologists and all the other experts in mass behavior could put forth all their theories about the natural flow and movement of massive disorders and how to predict the severity and direction of mob behavior. I hold with the cop’s prayer: for a good rain storm or a good blast of cold weather. That generally winds things up in a hurry.
CHAPTER 34
FIRST, IT WAS JAMESON Whitney Hale’s voice in my ear, the very tone—low pitched, soft, overly controlled—advising me of some terrible, if unknown, dereliction.
“My God, Lynne, how could you have allowed this to happen?”
“Allowed what to happen?” It could have been anything; my mind was blank. There was nothing specific for my guilt to focus on.
“You mean you haven’t seen the New York Post?” As he asked the question, the early edition of the Post was stuck under my face by one of my Squad people. I blinked, drew back, found my reading glasses.
Exclusive!
FIRST PHOTOS OF SANDERALEE’S INJURIES
More photos pg. 3 and centerfold
The featured front-page photograph was of Sanderalee Dawson in her hospital bed not long after her initial surgery. It was a very raw, clear and cruel picture: a closeup of her as she lay semiconscious and wounded, her beaten face distorted by swelling; her jaws wired into place; her lower mouth with totally exposed gums, broken teeth and ripped flesh giving her face the appearance of a fright mask.
Inserted into the corner of this page-sized photo was a small, cleanly printed reproduction of Sanderalee at her most Vogue beautiful: an Alan Greco photo. Beneath the large photograph were the words “DO THE POLICE KNOW WHO DID THIS? Yes, says Dr. Regg Morris, friend and mentor of Sanderalee. They know exactly who did this. He charges that the D.A.’s office is sitting on the case for political and/or racial/religious reasons. Pg. 3.”
There were indeed more pictures on page three and in the centerfold. Directly from the camera of good friend and mentor Regg Morris.
As soon as the D.A. rang off, Jim Barrow’s telephone voice was booming with self-righteousness and accusation. “Lynne, how the hell did you let this happen? How the hell did you slip up like that?”
Thank you, Chief of Detectives Jim Barrow, but as long as you’re on the line: “Jim, who have you got over there with Sanderalee right now? Any chance we can keep her from seeing this paper?”
Which was why he was calling in the first place. There was trouble at the hospital. There had been a disturbance of rather serious proportions.
No one had instructed the police personnel on duty, specifically the young officer subbing for injured St. Lucy of Assisi, that Regg Morris was to be judiciously and diplomatically discouraged from visiting with Ms. Dawson.
“He arrived at about nine-thirty, I guess to prepare her for the pictures in the newspaper. The girl, I mean the policewoman, police officer on duty says Regg just signed in, same as any other visitor is required. She heard them arguing, she thought. She checked it out and Sanderalee herself said everything was okay, they were just having a ‘discussion.’ Morris stayed for about an hour all told and then some twenty minutes after he left, a nurse went to check on Sanderalee routinely, and ...”
And apparently her good friend, Regg Morris, had prepared Sanderalee for the newspaper photographs. Maybe he even thoughtfully brought along an early edition for her to see. Maybe he even explained to her why he had done such an awful thing to the lady he alleged to love so dearly.
The nurse found Sanderalee lying on the floor, in a coma, which was the natural result of her having ingested a collection of Demerols, Valiums, Tuinals, Quaaludes, aspirins and—for good measure—cold tablets. Belted down with a swig of Scotch, which had been stored in a large-sized My Sin bottle.
It was no great mystery as to how Sanderalee had come by all these goodies. Her steady stream of “cleared visitors,” good-wishers all, in lieu of candy, which is fattening and we all know that sugar-is-poison, provided the lady with whatever she might like to have on hand in case needed to face a long and scary night. In addition to the lightweight stuff that the hospital people dispensed with such measured caution.
“What’s her condition as of right now?”
“Well, thanks to the timing, she was caught almost before any of that junk was effective. There is one serious complication, however. When she fell from the bed, she injured her reattached hand. Might have to go back into surgery. And her state of mind is not exactly what you’d like it to be. That Chinee-shrink was being paged, last I heard. Jeez, Lynne, she should have been placed in protective custody as a material witness long before this.”
Jeez, Lynne, why did you allow this to happen?
“Just hold it, Jimbo. This was the first fucking night that Lucy Capella wasn’t around. Why the hell did your people allow that fucking-a bastard Regg Morris in to see her?”
“There’s no need to curse, Lynne.”
He meant it. Goddamn it, he meant it. Ole Jim Barrow going soppy on me.
“As a matter of fact, Chief Barrow, I am waiting for a signed court order to the effect that Sanderalee is to be held in just such custody. Probably within an hour it will take effect. It is just unfortunate that your people weren’t properly briefed.”
“I would have assumed there were standing instructions.”
“Blast off, will you, Jim. I have some problems of my own. I really can’t get involved with your lax and problematic chain of command. You find the weak spot yourself.”
I cursed softly after I hung up. I wasn’t looking for trouble. I had enough as it was.
Lucy Capella had suggested the protective custody some time ago; with Lucy on the job, it hadn’t been necessary. The first time she’s out: bingo. Fiasco.
“Ms. Jacobi there?” Interesting lilt; Dr. Chan.
“I have just visited with San
deralee Dawson. She is in a very bad way. She really blew her mind with all that garbage. However, I’m not too sure how much of her behavior at this point is for real, how much is to get what she wants.”
“Which is?”
“Lucy Capella. She’s insisting that Lucy come and see her. She refuses to sign the required consent papers for the surgery that seems indicated on her hand.”
I tried. No reason why Lucy couldn’t convalesce and work at the same time. We could set her up in a bed in the adjoining sitting room and Sanderalee could stagger in and give Lucy her troubles and Lucy could yank on her various pulleys and give a kind and sympathetic ear. Why not? Because Lucy Capella was undergoing surgery on her broken leg and was not in very good condition to listen to anyone else’s problems just now.
I had assigned one of our young law-student interns to field telephone calls: several from very angry and irate reporters who thought “we had some sort of understanding with Lynne. Then she lets some jerk of a photographer in right after the beating and now still wants to keep Sanderalee under wraps. What the hell’s going on?” The intern, Jeffrey Perfect or something, was a speedwriting expert and not only took down complaints verbatim, he swiftly typed them up and delivered them to me in record time.
Bobby Jones appeared and had two things to tell me.
“First, the protective custody order is signed, sealed and delivered. I’ve sent Carlson and Kennedy to the hospital to set it up quietly and confidentially with the hospital administrator. The plan is to move Sanderalee out of her room late tonight, when we won’t attract any attention. There are so many wings and sections in that hospital that a person could totally disappear without a trace. Until then, Kennedy will stand by: no visitors, except authorized medical people, unless cleared by either you or me.”
Bobby delivered his information smoothly, professionally, and impersonally: good soldier reporting in. We both avoided direct, prolonged eye contact but in a fleeting glance, I could see the tight control, the contained anger and calculation shining from his blue eyes.