Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  Underhill made that tiny head shake again.

  Galloway stepped closer. “April fourteenth is more than just the day your son died, isn’t it?”

  “His birthday.”

  “ His birthday?” asked Galloway.

  No answer, just a small nod.

  “Speak up, Ms. Underhill.”

  Another nod, and Teddy’s mother lifted her hands to the sides of her swollen belly.

  Galloway zeroed in. “Tell us whose birthday fell on April the fourteenth.”

  Angela slid her arms up over the top of her belly and hugged them to herself—balled-up hands crossed, protecting her collarbone. “Teddy’s.”

  There was a rustle of movement from the jury box, muttered exhalations and creaking seats. They were looking at Galloway now, eyes averted from Underhill.

  “Your son, Teddy, turned three years old that day, didn’t he?”

  Underhill’s chin dropped into the vee of her wrists. “Yeah.”

  “That’s why Teddy was wearing the new clothes your grandmother bought him, isn’t it?” asked Galloway.

  The barest of nods and a whisper, “I dressed him all up.”

  “So that’s why Teddy was wearing his new clothes when you put his body in the refrigerator?”

  “Objection!” said Hetzler.

  “Move on, Ms. Galloway,” said the judge.

  Galloway nodded, turning back toward Underhill. “So Teddy died on the fourteenth of April, but you don’t remember how long it took you to file the report that he was missing?”

  “A while. Because I was upset.”

  “Can you take a look at this?” asked Galloway, walking up to hand her a sheet of paper. “It’s the first page of the report you filed. Can you read the date on the top?”

  “It’s blurry,” said Underhill.

  “Just the month, then.”

  “May.”

  “So at least two weeks, then, would that be correct?”

  “I guess.”

  “Your grandmother, she loved Teddy?”

  “She do.”

  “ ‘She did,’ ” corrected Galloway.

  Underhill closed her eyes.

  “In fact,” continued Galloway, “your grandmother wanted Teddy to have more than just a new set of clothes that day, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t—”

  “What else did she give you, for your son’s birthday?”

  Hetzler stood up. “Your Honor, I don’t see how this—”

  Galloway gave a fine impersonation of not having heard him. “She gave you money, didn’t she, Ms. Underhill?”

  Hetzler threw up his hands. “Your Honor.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Hetzler,” said the judge.

  Hetzler sank to his chair, telegraphing his great injury from the weight of the world’s oppression.

  The judge turned toward the witness box. “Answer the question please, Ms. Underhill.”

  “Yeah.”

  Galloway clarified with “ Yes, your grandmother gave you money for your son’s birthday?”

  “Yes,” Underhill repeated.

  “What was the money for?”

  “To buy him things. You know.”

  “But you didn’t use that money to buy anything for your son, did you?” asked Galloway.

  “He didn’t know.”

  “What did you buy with the money?”

  “Wasn’t that much,” said Underhill. “There was things we needed.”

  “How much money did your grandmother give you?”

  “Fifty,” she said.

  “Your grandmother testified that she gave you a thousand dollars that day.”

  “No,” said Angela.

  “What did you spend it on?” asked Galloway.

  Angela gave her a shoulder-twitch, guiltier this time. “You know.”

  “I don’t know, Ms. Underhill,” said Galloway. “That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “We get high, but not right away.”

  “Not right away?”

  “Wasn’t like, soon as we leave Grandma’s house, you know?”

  “Did you spend any of the money on your son?”

  “It was for Albert. He told me.”

  “And what did he tell you to buy?”

  “Some rock, you know.”

  “I see, so you spent all that money on crack cocaine because Albert Williams told you to?” asked Galloway.

  “I was afraid. What he do. Hurt Teddy, if I don’t do like he says.”

  “Did you go to purchase the drugs yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With Teddy?”

  “No.”

  “You left your son with a man you were that afraid of?”

  “Albert made me,” she said, then added, “I don’t know, maybe Teddy with me. That whole day, it’s not like I remember. I was so afraid.”

  “In fact, if you were so afraid of Albert Williams, there was no reason you had to be in that motel room at all. Your grandmother had asked you and Teddy to move in with her many times. Even the previous day, hadn’t she?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t like what, Ms. Underhill? Wasn’t like you were actually afraid that Albert Williams might harm your son?”

  Angela dropped her head.

  “Or it wasn’t like you wanted to have your benefits cut if you left the motel and moved in with a family member?”

  Angela mumbled something.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Galloway.

  “Albert say he kill me if I left.”

  “But you told him where the motel was, didn’t you, after you moved out of his apartment in Brooklyn?”

  Underhill shrugged.

  “The caseworker couldn’t find you there, but Albert could?”

  No answer.

  “Tell us the truth,” said Galloway. “You didn’t care what happened to your son, as long as it meant you could stay high, isn’t that right, Ms. Underhill?”

  Hetzler sang out with “Objection!”

  Galloway held up her hand before the judge could speak. “Let me rephrase that question, Ms. Underhill. You could have moved in with your grandmother, or let Teddy stay with her by himself—she asked you to do at least that, the day before his death—but instead you kept your son with you in that motel room, and you allowed Albert Williams to stay there too, isn’t that correct?”

  The judge had to tell Angela to speak, once again.

  “Only because I was afraid,” she said.

  “Of what?” asked Galloway.

  “I told you. Albert say he kill me.”

  “If you left him?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Did Albert Williams ever hurt you, Ms. Underhill, or did he just hurt your son?”

  “Albert cut me,” she said. “I told you.”

  “On the arm, wasn’t it?”

  “Like I told before.”

  “Was it a bad cut?”

  “It hurt real bad, yeah. Lot of blood and everything.”

  “But you didn’t need stitches?”

  Silence.

  “And was that the only time?” asked Galloway.

  “I said already.”

  Galloway nodded. “Just the once, then. And could you tell us again why Albert cut you?”

  “ Because. I try and stop him from beatin’ on Teddy.”

  “Just the once, then,” repeated Galloway.

  “I was too afraid.”

  “So as long as you kept Teddy with you, though, you had it pretty good, didn’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You told us all earlier that Albert had a good job, right?”

  “Security guard.”

  “Decent paycheck, since you called it a ‘good’ job?”

  “I guess.”

  “See, now that’s what I’d call a pretty sweet deal, Ms. Underhill: Let your boyfriend use your son for a punching bag, and you get more money for drugs.”

  “Objection!” Hetzler popped up, livid
.

  “I’ll withdraw it,” said Galloway.

  The judge nodded.

  “Ms. Underhill, let’s just run through the timeline, here,” said Galloway, looking again at the papers in her hand.

  “Okay.”

  “You took money from your grandmother, but you didn’t let her have your son because you wanted more?”

  “Objection, leading the witness,” said Hetzler.

  “I’ll rephrase,” said Galloway. “Did your grandmother offer you money in exchange for Teddy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you kept your son and bought crack with that money because you were afraid your boyfriend would kill you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But when—according to you—he did kill your son, you stayed with him in a motel room for another two weeks instead of reporting him to the police?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Even when he went to his job and you were alone, you didn’t report him?”

  Hetzler looked ready to get back to his feet.

  “Oh, that’s right, you were high, weren’t you, Ms. Underhill, smoking away with your son’s body jammed into the fridge right next to your bed, right?”

  “Your Honor,” said Hetzler, not even getting all the way upright.

  “Fine,” said Galloway. “Let’s say you just waited for two weeks so we can move on, okay?”

  Hetzler sat again.

  Galloway continued, “So it was after that two weeks, when you went to your grandmother for more drug money? And when she wouldn’t give it to you, you lied to her and to the police about your son’s death, isn’t that right?”

  “Because—”

  “Because what, Ms. Underhill?”

  “Albert. I told you.”

  “And was Albert with you at your grandmother’s house, two weeks after Teddy died?”

  “He wasn’t, because of work.”

  “And was Albert there with you and your grandmother when you went to the precinct house and lied to the police?”

  Angela just shook her head, and Galloway let it pass.

  “You lie an awful lot, Ms. Underhill, don’t you?”

  “If I’m afraid. Only then.”

  “Tell us, Ms. Underhill,” said Galloway, “you’re sitting in the witness box, facing a charge of murder. And your son’s bones can’t tell us anything about who killed him—or even who beat him, over and over again, while he was still alive. It’s your word against Albert Williams’s, about what happened on April fourteenth. Are you afraid right now?”

  Underhill stood her ground. “It was Albert killed Teddy. That’s the truth.”

  Galloway let Underhill’s assertion hang in the air while she walked back to the prosecution table, squaring up her sheaf of papers so she could set them down neatly on its surface.

  She turned to face the box again. “I see you’re expecting, Ms. Underhill. And you mentioned that Albert Williams is the father?”

  “Yes,” she said, hands to belly again.

  “When’s the baby due?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “So you conceived, when, around July?”

  “I guess.”

  “You and Mr. Williams were still living together at the motel when you were arrested last September, weren’t you?”

  “You know I was.”

  “It’s funny, though, Ms. Underhill.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you were getting a family voucher from the borough, but you didn’t have a child anymore, once Teddy was dead.”

  “They give vouchers for when you pregnant,” said Underhill.

  “So you lied and lied and lied because you were so afraid of Mr. Williams, but he sure turned out to be handy when you needed to keep your free housing, didn’t he?”

  Hetzler’s “Objection!” was his loudest yet.

  “Nothing further,” said Galloway, turning to walk back to the prosecution table.

  She stepped behind her client, tucking the back of her skirt primly smooth before taking her seat.

  It was after seven and I was stuck alone at the Catalog, staring at the non-ringing phone on my desk, too tired and disgusted after Angela Underhill’s testimony to have my heart in much of anything.

  After another five minutes of staring at the wall, I picked up the phone and dialed Kyle at home.

  “How’s everything going?” I asked.

  “Marty’s yakking it up to the press,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I guess he figures his argument isn’t going to stick. The whole Hedda Nussbaum thing.”

  “ What whole Hedda Nussbaum thing?”

  “I keep forgetting you didn’t hear his opening,” he said.

  “I hadn’t testified yet. You were supposed to be my spy, remember?”

  “I’m a terrible spy. That’s why I went to law school.”

  “If I’d known they accept carbon-based life-forms, I would’ve taken the LSATs myself. What about Hedda Nussbaum?”

  “You know who she is, don’t you?”

  “Her psycho-crackhead-lawyer boyfriend Joel Steinberg beat their illegally adopted daughter Lisa into an ultimately fatal coma,” I said, “and even though Nussbaum didn’t do a thing about it until they took the poor kid to the hospital twelve hours later, she got off anyway because her face looked like Steinberg’d smashed it flat with a veal mallet and/or because she’s a white chick who used to work at Random House,” I said. “That the one you mean?”

  “I take it you’ve done some recent cramming?” he asked.

  “Dude. I was merely Upstate, not living under an assumed name in Algeria.”

  “Did you know that Steinberg left Lisa lying on the bathroom floor?”

  “And what did he do after that, just piss directly on the child because it was too much trouble to lift his feet?”

  “He went out to dinner with friends.”

  “I think that might actually be worse,” I said, “if such a thing is possible.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So Nussbaum was alone, and she still didn’t call nine-one-one? I thought they just sat around smoking rock until he’d get high enough to attempt a resurrection.”

  “That was later,” said Kyle. “Hedda was by herself for eight hours or something.”

  “So, like, what’d she do that whole time? Just sit in the living room reading old New Yorkers?”

  Kyle sighed. “She said she used the time to organize Joel’s files.”

  “For eight hours.”

  We were quiet for a minute.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Right?”

  “And she fucking got off?”

  “Well, she testified against him,” said Kyle. “Plus there was the whole veal-mallet makeover thing. She got all the movie-of-the-week Burning Bed sympathy, you know?”

  “I don’t care. That shit ain’t right.”

  “ Talk to me,” he said.

  “I mean, do you buy that? She was too pummeled to know right from wrong, anymore?”

  “Are you asking me to respond in my capacity as a prosecutor or as a carbon-based life-form?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Not when it comes to that.”

  “And?”

  “And I thought the bitch should fry. With every fiber of my entire being.”

  “Attaboy, Kyle.”

  “We aim to please,” he said.

  I looked at my wan reflection in the air-shaft window. “Is that bullshit going to work this time, too?”

  “For Marty and his client?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s got some guy from the Times sitting in.”

  “In the gallery?”

  “That’s what I hear. Marty knows from PR, you’ve gotta give him that.”

  “So what did he actually say in his opening?” I asked.

  “That given Nussbaum’s deal, it’s obvious the only reasons Angela Underhill was charged in her son’s death are that she�
��s poor and she’s black.”

  “The boyfriend never even hit her, Kyle. She says he cut her in the arm once, but otherwise she just sat there and watched.”

  “And they finished up with her today?” he asked.

  “I guess. At least Bost’s go-round. The defense might bring her back for more, right?”

  “Batting cleanup.”

  “So does it make me a racist, that I hate this woman so much?” I asked.

  “Maddie,” he said, “I come from a nice liberal Jewish family. When I told them I was giving up my white-shoe corporate gig to become a prosecutor, my father gave me a ton of shit about how it meant I was going to be busting poor black and Hispanic people, ‘for the man.’ ”

  “What’d you say?”

  “That he had it totally backwards: I was going to speak out on behalf of poor black and Hispanic victims—mostly women and children. And take a seventy-thousand-dollar pay cut.”

  I tried digesting that.

  “Look, sweetie,” Kyle continued, “you’re angry on behalf of a three-year-old boy. How can that be racist?”

  “Because I was born racked with guilt?”

  “How is that even possible? You’re a goddamn Episcopalian.”

  “Fuck if I know. Some sort of genetic mutation.”

  “So go home, get some sleep. And pick up a copy of the Times tomorrow morning. You’ll probably know the outlines of Marty’s closing before you get on the subway.”

  “Hey, Bunny,” said Dean’s welcome voice two hours later.

  I was curled up on the sofa with the phone. Pagan and Sue were out for the evening.

  “It’s so great to hear your voice,” I said. “I thought it was going to be Astrid again.”

  I’d given him the new home number for the happy newlyweds out in New Jersey.

  “Nutty Buddy getting you down?”

  “I just wish she’d make up her mind. I mean, stay married or don’t, just stop whining about it, you know?”

  “I can’t understand what her problem with Christoph is. He seems like a helluva guy to me.”

  “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” I asked.

  “Could she be happy with anybody?”

  “Probably not. Not even you.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  “Oh come on, you wouldn’t want to be married to a gorgeous titled Euro-chick? Imagine the possibilities.”

  “Imagine Thanksgiving dinner at the farm,” he said. “Especially when my mother brought out the Jell-O salad.”

  “I love your mom. Jell-O and all.”