Slipping Into Darkness (36 page)

 

“It’s so clean around here now. There used to be so much more garbage on the streets.”

 

“Talk to me,” she said. “I need to know the truth here.”

 

“She touched me.”

 

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds as the engine idled at the crosswalk. In one of the store’s windows, a birch-white female mannequin in leather and shades posed in front of a sign that read, I WILL OBEY THE FASHION POLICE.

 

“You’re telling me that Allison Wallis, a mature woman, almost ten years older than you, with a medical degree, initiated a sexual encounter with you? That’s what you’re giving me to work with?”

 

He felt himself being surveilled on all sides by female pedestrians watching him through the cab windows. Each of them seemed to meet his eye for a second and then hurry away, gripping her bag a little tighter.

 

“That’s what I wanted to tell the detective back in ’83, but I didn’t know how to say it.”

 

“She groped you. While she was having her period? You’re seriously expecting me to believe that?”

 

“Why not?” He crossed his arms.

 

“Jesus Christ, Julian —” She stopped, trying to get a grip. “Do you know how much time I’ve put into this case? Do you know how many nights I’ve missed being with my children?”

 

“I never lied to you.”

 

“I’d like to believe that’s true, but you are really scaring me here. My knees are shaking.”

 

He shrank down in the gray vinyl seat, feeling the loose change spilling out from between the cushions. The things people left behind by accident.

 

“All right,” he said. “It’s like I told you. I’d come up to her apartment sometimes to fix things and we’d hang out and talk.”

 

“About
what?
” she said fiercely.

 

“Just about stuff. And sometimes she’d be stressed-out about things that happened at the hospital and her back would be in knots. So I’d rub it for her sometimes.”

 

“Hmm.” She nodded and sniffed, deciding to stay calm for the moment.

 

“And so like it got to be a regular thing. We’d sit there, watching television, and I’d rub her shoulders sometimes. That’s it. Both of us acted like it wasn’t any big thing. Though now that I look back on it, I’m like,
Damn, what was up with that?
”

 

He gave her a sidelong glance, to see if she was buying it.

 

“Go on,” she said cautiously.

 

“So that one night, her toilet wouldn’t stop running and I had calls all over the building because my father was out and the regular handyman was off. So
I
was the one running around, fixing things and trying to keep all these women happy. I remember Mrs. London in 7A had a leak in her sink and Mrs. Rosensweig in 4D had a problem with the pilot light in her oven. And like by the time I was done, I was
seriously
stressing. And that’s when she offered to rub my shoulders for once.”

 

“Oo-kaay.” She made her mouth into a small tense circle.

 

“And then one thing led to another and we wound up kind of holding each other a little,” he said. “You know, just like a brother-sister thing at first. ‘Oh, you’re always there for me. You’re really my friend. I love you so much. . . .’ And then, it sort of started to go a little further.”

 

The light turned green and they began to weave through the thicket of cars blasting traffic reports and block-rocking beats.

 

“Julian, we are waaay past the euphemism stage. I need you to be really explicit with me.”

 

“All right, I got
hard.
There it is.” He sat back. “She knew what was up and so did I.” He scowled, not having meant to play with words. “You know how it is when something is happening and you pretend it isn’t? And then after a certain point you can’t pretend anymore?”

 

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “I think I’ve heard of that.”

 

He didn’t like that she was still trying to hold herself above him. Knowing damn well she must have royally screwed up a few things in her life if she’d ended up representing people like him and raising two kids on her own.

 

“So that’s what it is,” he said. “And I was just this little
espina
who’d never even had a lady close enough to breathe in his ear, so I couldn’t hold out for long. Understand?”

 

“You ejaculated on her right away.”

 

He cringed at the clinical sound of it and looked up at the smudged partition to see if the driver had heard. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

 

“I need to be completely sure what we’re talking about this time.” The groove between her nose and mouth lengthened. “There’s no margin for error here.”

 

“Yeah, that’s what happened,” he mumbled, trying to find his voice again. “But she’d been into it.
For real.
It only took me ’bout seven or eight years to figure that out. I was pretty naive then.”

 

He wondered what Zana was going to think once she heard this story.

 

“And afterward?”

 

His eyes darted past her. “She kind of started getting upset, I guess.”

 

“Oh?” She made the word drip like an icicle from her lips.

 

“I mean, at first she was okay. Like she just wanted to forget it and act as if it didn’t really happen. But then she started getting all nervous, like she was worried somebody was going to find out.”

 

“Did she say who?”

 

“No, she was just like, ‘You really have to go now. You can’t be here anymore.’”

 

He hated that she was going over everything he said with a fine-tooth comb, trying to catch him out, like the detectives.

 

“And why didn’t you tell Loughlin any of this in the first interrogation?”

 

“I was an uptight little Catholic
chico
who’d started shaving a month before that.” His voice cracked. “I didn’t even know what words to use. I could’ve said a whole Mass in Latin easier than I could’ve said ‘dick’ or ‘pussy.’”

 

“What about your lawyer from the first trial, Figueroa?”

 

“He knew the whole fucking thing. I told him
exactly
how it was. But he was like you. He wouldn’t believe me. He said, ‘That’s terrific, Julian. Now keep it to yourself. You’re never getting anywhere near a witness stand with that story.’”

 

Condescending old hack. Hoolian could still see him in his Court Street office, light mustard stain on the cuff of his suit jacket, spines peeling on the out-of-date law books on his shelf, acting all gruff and avuncular when all he really wanted to do was cash his clients’ hard-earned checks and get stewed on his private boat in the Florida Keys.

 

“If it’s all true, why the hell didn’t you tell me any of it before?”

 

“First thing you said: ‘Only answer the question that’s been asked. A good witness knows, never wise up a chump. Only focus on the issues relevant on appeal.’ Which were”—he ticked them off with his fingers—“was my lawyer incompetent?
Yes.
Did he tell me I had the right to testify?
No.
Why hasn’t the state come up with the DNA evidence we asked for? And why didn’t they chase down all the witnesses who could’ve cleared me?”

 

She nodded, conceding each point as the color drained from her face. “Yeah, but what about them finding your blood
and
her blood on the slipcover?” she asked.

 

“Like you said. I was doing a lot of work in the building that night. I guess I might’ve sliced myself cutting some tubing and some of it might’ve got on her couch when we were together. How
her
blood got on the slipcover, I don’t know. That must’ve happened after I left and someone else came in and attacked her.”

 

“Oh my God.” She rolled down her window, needing fresh air. “I’m telling you, Julian. You better not be lying to me. If you are, I’m not the one who’s going back to prison. You got twenty-five to
life,
in case you forgot.”

 

“Do I sound like I’m lying?”

 

She lapsed into sullen silence. All around them, people were starting to leave town early for the long weekend. Men and women with suit bags and attaché cases, hurrying to Grand Central, casting worried looks up at the sky, and passing the Graybar Building’s canopy, where for once even the carved rats on the suspension cables looked like they were trying to abandon ship. Going back in for another five years probably wouldn’t have scared him so much just a few days ago, before he got involved with Zana and her kid. But being on the outside tainted you. It made you forget how to live in confined spaces.

 

“What about this other thing?” she said quietly, like she was carefully tugging at a conspicuous thread hanging from his sleeve.

 

“What?”

 

“This other woman they were asking you about. The intern from Mount Sinai.”

 

“What about her?” he said evenly.

 

“Are you going to tell me why the super ID’d you hanging around outside her building?”

 

“I worked nine or ten blocks from there. I never even made a delivery in her building. If I did, there would’ve been a slip for it and they would’ve been shoving it in my face.”

 

“Then what about your hand?”

 

“Yeah, what about it?”

 

He opened and closed a fist, aware of how she was watching his every move now.

 

“What did you really do to it? I know you didn’t cut yourself in the stockroom. You didn’t even look at me when I suggested you file a claim.”

 

He thumbed his lip and thought awhile. “What happens if I tell you the truth?”

 

“Depends.” She made sure her seat belt was buckled. “I’m an officer of the court. I won’t suborn perjury. If you’re going to get on the stand and lie about something you’ve done, you’re on your own.”

 

“I think I might’ve hurt somebody.”

 

She shut her eyes and drew her knees together. It seemed for a few seconds not entirely impossible that she would try to push him from the moving cab.

 

“Okay,” she said, slowly trying to unknot herself. “Now you’re
really
going to need to make me understand this.”

 

“Attorney-client privilege still holds, right?”

 

“Julian.
Cut the shit.
”

 

He edged forward in his seat, making sure the driver had the partition closed and the radio all the way up.

 

“So I was on the subway after work, right? And homeboy starts looking at me.”

 

“Where was this?” she snapped, ready to pick his story apart.

 

“All the way from 86th Street to Grand Central on the four train. I’m like, ‘
Damn,
brother, do I know you from inside or something?’ Then at 42nd Street, he follows me off the train with his friends and starts, like, ‘Say, man, whatchoo lookin’ at?’ And I was wearing this Saint Christopher’s medal my father gave me.”

 

“You trying to tell me they jumped you for some twenty-dollar chain?”

 

“That gold meant a lot to me.” He touched his chest, where the medallion had been. “So me and homeboy got into it coming off the platform.”

 

“You started fighting?”

 

“For real. I think homeboy must’ve had a razor, because my hand got cut pretty bad. There was blood running down my arm. So I pushed him —”

 

“Onto the tracks?” She audibly caught her breath and held it.

 

“Nah, down a flight of steps, but it was a pretty long flight,” he admitted. “Down to the number seven platform. He like fell in slow motion.” He put his arms up like he was flailing. “It took him a while to hit bottom. And then all his friends went running down after him.”

 

“Was he all right?”

 

“I dunno.” He started toying with the lock on his door. “I ran upstairs and out the terminal. That’s why I was afraid to tell you about it. I was afraid I might’ve broken his goddamn neck.”

 

She watched him raising the knob up and popping it down with the flat of his palm. “So you could’ve killed him? Is that what you’re telling me?”

 

“I don’t think so. I checked the newspaper the next couple of days, and there wasn’t anything about it. But I mighta fucked him up pretty good.”

 

“Shit.”
She put her head back. “And then you lied to the police and your attorney about it?”

 

“I panicked, a-right?” The driver turned, hearing him raise his voice. “I thought they’d lock me up again for assault or reckless endangerment before I even got to go back to court,” he whispered. “And then everybody would think maybe I’d done what they said I did in the first place.”

 

“And you expect me to believe this just coincidentally happened at the same time this other girl was killed?”

 

“Nah, this was like almost a week before. You even saw me with the bandage on then. Don’t you remember?”

 

Her confidence was shaken, though. He could see it in how she turned away from him, smoothed the wrinkles from her pants and started rubbing her lips over and over, trying to reestablish the time sequence in her mind. “I have to tell you, Julian. I don’t know what to think now.”

 

“Well, I’m telling you the truth.”

 

“I see. So it was only yesterday you were lying?”

 

He looked out the window and felt the desolation of the long holiday taking over. How eerily deserted the canyons of Manhattan seemed at times like these. Even in neighborhoods where people didn’t go out of town, it was as if a neutron bomb had hit, leaving only the buildings still standing, casting long shadows. He saw the empty sidewalks, green lights for absent pedestrians, ghosts in the window displays, and up ahead, the Met Life clock tower stark against a graying sky, the hands still strangely stuck at 9:15.

 

“I guess maybe I don’t look like such a good guy now,” he said.

 

“Yeah? Where’d you get that idea?”

 

 

42

 

 

 

ALLISON’S EX-BOYFRIEND, Doug Wexler, had an old picture of himself on the credenza. It showed him as a lean, mop-haired postgrad playing Frisbee with a bunch of little kids in a Guatemalan village. Francis noticed that the photo was slightly bigger than the others in the oak-paneled office, including the portraits of his family and the shots of the buildings that were part of the real estate empire his late father had bequeathed to him.