by Annie Jocoby
James made a temple out of his hands and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“I punched him twice. Not that hard, either. I wasn’t trying to rough him up or anything. I was just trying to send him a message. I’m not that stupid that I would do all of this to him.”
“Were you in a blind rage?”
“Hardly. I was, several days earlier, but at that time, I was angry, but not blinded by rage.”
“Several days earlier,” James said, interested in this. “Why were you so angry several days before this incident?”
I squeezed Dalilah’s hand, and she nodded. “I have to leave the room,” she said. “What Luke says to you must be confidential, and I know that, if I’m here, it wouldn’t be.” Dalilah knew something about attorney-client confidentiality, and knew that the presence of a third-party meant that the confidentiality would be broken.
At that, she squeezed my hand again and left the room, but she nodded at me meaningfully before going out the door.
Once she left, I told him. “Nottingham is the one who needs to be going to prison for felony assault, not me. He beat up Dalilah and really did cause her injury. How much injury, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she had internal bleeding from it, not to mention a concussion. She refused to let me take her to the hospital, though.”
“I see,” he said “Well, that is certainly a mitigating circumstance, at least in my eyes. Of course, whether or not that would be evidence that could be introduced in a court of law is suspect at best. It doesn’t qualify as a legal justification for what you did, and you certainly cannot claim defense of others, as you went over there to see Mr. Nottingham long after he did what he did to your...girlfriend? Am I correct that she’s your girlfriend?”
I nodded, and I thought I saw jealousy in his eyes as I did so. But James was too professional to say anything like “lucky guy,” although I was quite sure he was thinking it.
“What qualifies as a legal justification?”
“Not much anymore. The only real justifications are self-defense, defense of others or consent – such as if the two of you were engaged in some kind of professional fight. Sometimes assault might be justified if the victim had first attempted to commit some kind of felony against the person, although even those justifications are suspect if the felony being attempted didn’t involve bodily injury. But, what you did – just go into the man’s office and punch him – wouldn’t be justifiable under any definition, so introducing evidence that he roughed up your girlfriend probably won’t be allowed. But, I can always try.”
I sighed and hung my head. “Let me get Dalilah. I don’t think that anything else I’m about to say to you is going to be that big of deal, so no need for confidentiality.”
James nodded. “That’s fine. But I’m curious why it was so important for what you just told me to be confidential?”
“Dalilah doesn’t want what happened to her to get out under any circumstances. She’s adamant about that, too. So, if there ever would be any occasion when you would have to testify about what I just told you, then we have to make sure that the confidentiality is secure. She doesn’t want to take chances with that.”
I got up and got Dalilah, and she came back in, and the two of us sat down. “Okay, then, give it to me straight. What am I facing here?”
James kinda grimaced. “Well, it’s a first offense, but I’ll be honest with you, that burglary charge is going to be difficult to fight. The prosecutors aren’t usually willing to give you probation on a burglary charge, even if I could possibly get probation on the assault charges. You might be looking at a couple of years in prison for that, worse-case scenario.”
My heart started racing. Prison? For getting into a little fight? “I see,” I said, trying hard not to break down in front of him. “I mean, worst-case I go to prison, but I won’t serve that much time, right? I mean, I heard that people who go to prison don’t serve much of their sentences. Right?”
“Well, in this worst-case scenario, you’re convicted of a violent offense. The non-violent offenders - your petty drug dealers, drug abusers, persistent shop-lifters, people like that – they don’t serve much of their sentence. Your violent offenders do.”
I squeezed Dalilah’s hand, but didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see how she was reacting to this news.
“Okay,” I said. “Best-case scenario.”
“Well,” he said. “Best case is that you somehow prove that you didn’t injure Mr. Nottingham to the extent that these medical records show, and I’m able to plead you to a misdemeanor. The burglary charge goes away in this instance as well, as that charge, along with the felony assault charges, are contingent upon Mr. Nottingham actually sustaining considerable injury. But, I’m not at all sure how you’re going to do that. These medical records speak for themselves.”
There had to be a way...Dalilah and I were just going to have to figure that out after we left this office.
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you very much. How much do I owe you for today?”
“$500,” he said. “And, in cases like this, if it ends up going to trial, you’re probably looking at $50,000 in fees or more.”
Okay. Bye bye all the money from the show.
At that, Dalilah and I left the office, after the receptionist ran my debit card for James’ fee, and we got the subway. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour, as I wished that there was someway to turn back time so that my stupid act of punching Nottingham never happened.
As I sat there, I thought about all that I wanted to do with that money from my show. I wanted to move to the city, so that I could be in the middle of the action. I wanted to quit my job so that I could spend all my time trying to make it again. I wanted to do all of that so that I could marry Dalilah and make her happy and proud of me. So that I could be proud of me as well.
Now, it was all slipping through my fingers. Even if, by some miracle, this James person was able to plead me down to a misdemeanor, he was going to take most of my money to do it. Forget about having a trial, though. It was going to have to be a plea bargain. $50,000? I’d end up with nothing but a barrel around my ass at that point.
“Luke,” Dalilah said tentatively. “We have to talk about this. We have to strategize. He can’t get away with this.”
“What is he getting away with?”
“Nottingham. I don’t know how he did it, but he must have paid off a doctor to fake those medical records. Or something must have happened.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I can’t think about this right now.”
“You have to think about it,” Dalilah said. “You can’t go to prison. You just can’t.”
“I said that I don’t want to think about it. Now, let’s drop this for now until I can process it all. Right now, I just want to order in a pizza with you and get some movies on Netflix. Don’t push me. I’ll deal with it in my own time, but, right now, I’m pretty raw and I need to decompress. I hope that you can understand that.”
So, that was what happened that night. Dalilah said nothing more about it, and we lined up some movies to watch. My vacation from my job was almost through, and I would have to go back to work the next day. It would have to be an early night.
We sat on the couch and watched a couple of movies and ate pizza from the pizzeria down the street. On tap was a new movie, Dead of Night, which was a slasher pic, which I was in the mood for, because I wanted to indulge my dark fantasies about doing to Nottingham what was being done on screen. I also wanted to watch one of my favorite old movies, Fight Club. I happened to love the director David Fincher, and this movie, in particular, was one of my top movies of all time, even though it came out well before I was born.
Dalilah and I sat there and watched the movie, and there was something about this movie in particular that I wanted to see. I wasn’t sure...it had been years since I had seen the film. But when it came upon the scene when the narrator beat himself up in his boss’ office, s
o that the narrator could get the company to keep him on the payroll for doing nothing at all, therefore he wanted to blackmail the boss, I paused it excitedly and looked at Dalilah.
We looked at each other. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
Dalilah nodded. “Nottingham is just psycho enough to do that to himself.” Dalilah got up and started to pace the floor nervously. She started talking. “He would do that to himself. Of course he would. Anything to make sure that he gets revenge upon you. But, what if he didn’t do that to himself? What if he got somebody else to do it to him?”
“Go on...” I said.
“He goes to a fetish club, right? Right? So, he goes down there, and asks somebody to rough him up, and then checks himself into the emergency room and says that you did all of that. He would do that. I know that he would do something like that. It sounds just like him and his fucked-up mental state. Anything to make sure that you pay for being with me. It’s not enough that he destroys your career. He apparently wants you completely destroyed as well.”
“Okay,” I said. “That gives us something to go on, at least. Does he go to just one club, or many? Who can we talk to about that, and how can we prove that I didn’t do that to him?”
“We could get James to subpoena the cops. They can say that Nottingham looked fine when they arrested you. But, then again, Nottingham might come back with saying that the injuries showed up later. The bruises and the internal bleeding and all of that. It’s going to be more complicated than we might realize.”
“So, Nottingham goes to his fetish club...”
“Yes. And those people are pros. So is Nottingham. He probably knows just how much beating he could take that would put him in the hospital, without causing too much long-term damage. You know that Nottingham would never risk having the person going overboard and really hurting him so that he has some kind of permanent injury.”
“Okay. So what do we need to do?”
“We need to figure out which fetish club Nottingham goes to, and ask around. Talk to the people around that club who might have seen Nottingham come in on the same day that you punched him, and ask them what kind of treatment he got that night.” At that, Dalilah got out a copy of the medical record that James gave to us. “Yes, see, it says that Nottingham presented to the ER at 2 AM. He said that he sustained those injuries around 12 hours earlier in the fight with you, but that he didn’t come to the hospital until his symptoms got worse,” she said, paraphrasing the medical records. “That’s it! We find the person at that club who might have done this to him, and see if we can get that person to agree to testify or something.”
I started to feel hopeful and excited about this, but then immediately started feeling discouraged again. “But Dalilah,” I said, “those places are confidential. They aren’t going to just talk to us schmos, especially since we aren’t cops or anything. They’ll tell us to hit the road.”
At that, Dalilah got quiet. “You’re right about that. We aren’t exactly regulars, and neither of us know anything about that world. It would be very difficult to just go on in there and try to get information. But there is somebody who might be able to help us.”
“Who?”
“Your sister Serena.”
Chapter 44
“Serena? Serena? You’re out of your fucking mind, Dalilah. That girl wouldn’t lift one finger to help me. If I was lying on the street, bleeding, she’d be dialing her nail salon as she stepped over me. That is, if she didn’t decide to put her foot on me, just to add further insult to injury. Nice try, though.”
“Oh?” Dalilah said. “Really? Well, for whatever reason, that girl is captivated by me. I don’t know what it is, but she and I really bonded while I was there. She told me things that she said that she hasn’t told anyone. She said something about feeling that she and I were old souls and she understood me, and felt that I understood her. Again, I can’t explain it much, either, but Serena was quite taken with me. And why didn’t you ever tell me that she lives in town? She lives in the Village.”
“Oh, she does? News to me. I guess because she never told me that she lived in town, and I never asked. No offense, but I have always tried to say as little to that girl as possible.”
“Well, she lives in the Village. She’s lived there for like 10 years. Really, Luke, it’s shameful...”
“Oh, no. You’re not going to guilt-trip me. You spent a few days with her. I spent a lifetime. A lifetime of putting up with her crap. I will never forgive her, either, for blowing off my mom’s funeral. Never, never, never.”
“Luke, she told me about that. She was grieving, too, but she covered it up. She covered it up by acting like she didn’t care, but she did. She did care. It devastated her greatly. Listen, Luke, she reminds me a great deal of Nick, my father’s best friend.”
“Oh? You mean, Nick is also a no-good two-timing cheat who...”
“Yes. He was. He was all of those things until he met the woman who finally tamed him. Man-whore, arrogant, you name it. Had a hard shell. At least that’s what my dad told me about him. But Nick was hurting, so he put up this enormous wall around him. If you didn’t know him, you probably would have thought he was the biggest asshole in the world. But underneath it all, he was really a big pussy-cat. He endured tragedies, and that was just how he dealt with it. By having a hard shell.”
“Well, guess what. Maybe Nick came off like that to strangers and showed his loved-ones a different side. In this case, I’m supposed to be Serena’s loved-one. I’m family. So, I should be the one that she’s nice to, and you should be the one who she treats like shit. But it’s apparently the other way around.”
“Well, the analogy isn’t perfect, but I’m telling you, Serena is a good person underneath all her bluster. She carries around a great deal of guilt about how she has treated everybody, and an enormous burden about how she treated your mother before your mother died. I mean, I know that she stole from your mom, but she was just a kid. A fucked-up kid. And she’s dealing with an awful lot of heartache.”
I looked at Dalilah, trying to decide if I should believe her about my sister. How could she get to this soft inner core of my crazy sister, when I never could, nor could anyone else in my family? I mean, Dalilah just knew Serena for a matter of days, and suddenly she’s her best friend? Or only friend, for that matter - I never knew Serena to have a friend, period.
I shook my head. “I don’t get it...”
“You don’t have to. All you need to know is that she can help us. I hate to betray her confidence, but I feel that it’s necessary here - Serena is into that lifestyle like Nottingham. Who knows? She probably has been with Nottingham a time or two. But she knows about the East Village clubs, and I hear those are the ones that Nottingham frequents as well. She knows people there. She can be like our Virgil, guiding us through hell.”
Dalilah was referring to Dante’s guide in Inferno. It seemed an apt enough allegory, really. Dalilah and I were complete virgins when it came to the underground world that we were going to be seeing. We were going to need somebody to guide us around and try to find out what it was that we were going to need to know. To help us find the right person who might be able to give us information about Nottingham.
“So, what, we find somebody who can tell us that he beat up Nottingham on the night that he went into the ER. And then what? I don’t know how that information would even help out at all, except for if we had a trial, and James could use the information to show some alternative reason for Nottingham’s injury. That still would mean that I would have this case hanging over my head, and I would be out a minimum of $50,000.”
“It’s better than going to prison, I would think.”
“Sure it is. But it’s not a magic bullet. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s a start. Besides, maybe we could use the information we get to go straight to the prosecutor’s office and get them to drop the charges. Or maybe the information can be used to get James to b
e able to negotiate a plea to a misdemeanor.”
Dalilah took a deep breath and started looking pale.
“You okay, Dalilah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I just felt a little woozy, that’s all. I’m so sorry, I have to lie down for a little bit. But when I get up, I’m calling Serena, and I’m not taking no for an answer here.”
I sighed. When Dalilah got something in her head, god love her, she went with it. Far be it for me to stand in her way.
Serena. Who would have thought I would be doing anything with that woman? I shook my head as I realized, anew, that fate was a crazy thing.
Chapter 45
Dalilah
Luke is a man. He doesn’t necessarily know the signs of early pregnancy. Which was a good thing, because I had a feeling that I was preggers. It was exceedingly early, of course – I had surreptitiously taken several pregnancy tests, and they all were negative. Still, after I started feeling woozy, tired and especially after the wine started to taste bitter, I knew. I looked on the Internet to see if pregnancy signs occurred so early, and, sure enough, there were reports of women having symptoms within days of conception, as crazy as that sounded.
I did some calculations in my head – Luke and I had sex a matter of days before we went to see his family, and that was when the symptoms started. I could only assume, and hope, that Luke would be the father. Not that I could possibly keep the baby, which was why Luke probably couldn’t know about it. I knew enough about New York divorce law to know that if I conceived while I was married to Nottingham, that there not only couldn’t be a divorce until the child was born, but that Nottingham would be the presumptive father. This would mean, automatically, that he would have custody of the child, and, knowing him, he would do everything in his power to wrest sole custody from me. I didn’t trust him, at all, and I couldn’t let that happen. Even if he got split custody, I couldn’t let it happen. No way. I would never have any child of mine subjected to his depravity and cruelty.
