Slipping Into Darkness (41 page)

 

The old man froze, his hands hesitating over the keys, the unresolved melody left hanging in the air. Then he turned, peered out, and slowly smiled with crooked brown teeth, as if he’d been sitting in this very cage since 1983, waiting for Hoolian to find him.

 

 

51

 

 

 

ORIGINALLY, THEY WERE all supposed to meet again in court today, to decide whether to go forward with Hoolian’s indictment. Instead, they were back up in the sixth-floor conference room at 100 Centre Street, Paul Raedo sitting under the portrait of Custer, a young homicide prosecutor named Margaret Eng under an Ansel Adams nature print, and Francis within easy reach of Paul’s harpoon. Hoolian sat brooding across the table, sandwiched between Debbie A. and the brand-new witness.

 

“I have to say, I’m very skeptical,” Paul began brusquely. “I spoke to this witness back in ’83 and he had nothing relevant to say. Why is he coming forward with a different story after all this time?”

 

“Mr. Vega asked him to.” Debbie swiveled in her seat. “Mr. Arroyo has known the defendant since he was a child.”

 

The porter was on her right, a shrunken courtly-looking old man in a threadbare checked jacket. Francis reckoned he’d probably retrieved it from a wealthy tenant’s Goodwill pile back in 1962. A white straw Panama hat sat on the table before him, with what looked like a bite taken out of the brim. When he smiled, he revealed a state of civil unrest in his mouth, little brown teeth turning against one another. In fact, everything about him seemed a little like battered bamboo, except for his hands, which were wide long-fingered spans with tendons like suspension cables.

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but why only now?” Paul asked. “You’re telling me he’s been sitting on this twenty years?”

 

“Mr. Arroyo had concerns about his immigration status.” Debbie glanced back and forth between the new witness and Hoolian, both on her left. “He was worried that if he testified, he could get deported back to the Dominican Republic.”

 

“Am I hearing an element of coercion here?” Paul leaned back under Custer, a thumb under his red suspenders as he gave Margaret Eng a sidelong glance. “Is this guy suddenly changing his tune because your client showed up and intimidated him at his workplace?”

 

“Just let him tell the story,” Francis snapped.

 

The rest of them looked at him like he’d fired a gun at the ceiling.

 

“Well, come on,” he said. “He’s not a sworn witness yet. Let’s hear what he has to say. Give him a Queen for a Day.”

 

He felt Hoolian’s eyes boring into him from across the table. Francis had deliberately chosen a seat just a little to the right so that they wouldn’t have to face each other directly yet. He, at least, needed a chance to work up to it.

 

Paul grimaced and then quietly conferred with Margaret Eng. She tossed her black mane, adjusted her horn-rims, and gave a curt nod.

 

“All right, Queen for a Day,” said Margaret. “He gets a pass for the time being as long as he tells us the truth.”

 

Debbie started to translate, but the old porter put his hand up.

 

“Is okay,” he said, a slight lisp whistling through gaps in his teeth. “I unnerstand, a little.”

 

The porter looked across Debbie A. and flashed a smile at Hoolian. From the corner of his eye, Francis noted that Hoolian didn’t smile back, preferring to concentrate on the task of folding and unfolding the corner of a press release left lying on the table.

 

“You can bring in the office translator once we’re done here so you can ask your own questions and get a full written statement, without Mr. Vega or myself in the room,” Debbie said. “Mr. Arroyo already told me the whole narrative when he came to my office with Mr. Vega this morning.”

 

A knot of tension was forming in the middle of the room, the six of them staring at the same whorl in the lacquered wood as if it were drawing them all together.

 

“Long and short of it is, Mr. Arroyo was working in the basement that night,” Deb explained. “He saw someone come down the fire stairs and go out the entrance to the alley behind the building well within the time frame of Allison Wallis’s murder.”

 

“Bull
shit.
” Paul’s suspenders stretched like slingshots.

 

“Do you want to hear what happened or do you want to show off your vocabulary?” Debbie asked.

 

“Keep going.” Francis made a rolling motion with his hand. “What time would this have been?”

 

“About two-thirty, quarter to three in the morning.” Deb looked at the porter, confirming. “It fits right in with the frame that’s been established.”

 

“How you figure that?” asked Francis, making her work for it.

 

“Nine-thirty, Julian comes to Allison’s apartment to fix her toilet. Ten o’clock, they start to watch television. Channel Five, MTV. They start to get comfortable, and that’s when this little encounter between them takes place.”

 

“You mean it’s when he tried to rape her.” Paul leaned forward on his elbows.

 

“When they tried to have
consensual
contact.” Debbie wagged a finger. “There’s no testimony to contradict it.”

 

“Course not.” Paul smirked. “He’s alive and she’s dead.”

 

“In any event, there’s no question that it didn’t work out,” Deb said quickly.

 

Francis smiled, recognizing the Moment of Acceleration, that familiar way defense lawyers and their clients raced over shaky parts of their story, as if no one would notice them.

 

“She pulled back,” Deb said, slowing down slightly. “He wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready. Whatever. They both got scared. It’s a disaster. There’s blood and semen on the slipcover. She freaks out, asks him to leave.”

 

Francis snuck a glance at Hoolian, to gauge his reaction. But Hoolian was biting his lip and looking down, not daring to meet the eye of either of the women in the room.

 

“After that, there’s a series of phone calls to her mother in Sag Harbor and her brother in the city,” Debbie said. “Obviously, she’s got something on her mind.”

 

“Yeah, the fact that the super’s son just tried to jump her,” Paul said.

 

“Neither of them mentioned that,” Deb countered. “Tom thinks they talked about where they were going to go for their mother’s birthday dinner, which was coming up. Eileen didn’t remember anything specific about her conversation, except that Allison seemed ‘agitated.’”

 

“Come on, Deb, you know that happens in sex assaults,” Paul interrupted again. “Sometimes people wait until the next day to report it. Except this time, he had a key to her apartment so he could let himself back in later the same night.”

 

“Welll . . . not quite . . .” Deb rounded on him. “We’re thinking someone else could’ve had a key.”

 

“How? It was only tenants and the super who had keys.”

 

“She could’ve had a copy made and given it to somebody, who could’ve let themselves in the front.”

 

“What about the doorman? Don’t you think he’d notice?”

 

Hoolian and the porter looked at each other and laughed.

 

“What’s so funny?” asked Francis.

 

Hoolian stopped smiling abruptly and looked over, reminding Francis of the very first time they’d laid eyes on each other. The deer hearing the hunter in the woods. They both froze a little, still not quite ready to acknowledge each other.

 

“Everybody knows Boodha was so deep in the bag by midnight, you could stick a cherry bomb up his ass and he wouldn’t wake up.” Hoolian turned back to Nestor, trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered. “Ain’t that right?”

 

“Ay . . .”
The old man threw his head back, with a hacking bark.
“El borracho bufón.”

 

“Yeah, fine, but this is all just total speculation.” Paul waved them off. “I expected more from you, Deb. I thought you came here to talk about something real.”

 

“I did. Mr. Arroyo saw your murderer leave the building just before three in the morning.”

 

“Who’s this supposed to be, and why didn’t he tell me about it when I interviewed him twenty years ago?”

 

“I do,” the porter spoke up. “But you no listen.”

 

“
What?
” said Paul. “Look, I went through the case file. You think I’d deliberately ignore something like that?”

 

Francis noticed Margaret Eng putting her head down and starting to take copious notes. No fool, this one. She knew potentially exculpatory evidence for a civil suit when she heard it.

 

“I say, ‘
Pelirrojo! Pelirrojo!’
” The porter pounded his fist on the table. “But you still no listen.”

 

“What is this, Debbie?” Paul motioned like he was shoving garbage over toward her side of the table. “What’s
‘pelirrojo’?
We talked to this guy once and then he disappeared on us.”

 

“Because you scared him away, telling him he had to come to court and answer questions. He had a family here and no green card. Now he’s got one.”

 

Francis stared at the old man, thinking he must be a pretty hard-bitten character. Letting his boss’s son do twenty years for a crime he didn’t commit, just because he was worried about deportation.

 

On the other hand, who was he to talk? Up until his last conversation with Dr. Dave, he’d done a pretty good job of ducking and weaving himself, to avoid what was right in front of him.

 

He angled his chair and tried to make himself look Hoolian straight in the eye. He wanted to see if anything remained of that boy who’d been in the interrogation room twenty years ago.

 

Where was the weasely little shifting of the pupils? The fluttery eyelashes. The drumming fingertips. All the little telltale signs of guilt. How did this bearded, justifiably pissed-off, old-before-his-time
man
take his place?

 

It was too much. Both of them turned away at the same time. Neither of them ready for full-on confrontation just yet.

 

“What does that mean anyway?
Pelirrojo?
” Paul glanced at Margaret Eng, who was busy taking notes. “Remind me.”

 

“It means redhead,” Hoolian said softly, staring down into his own lap.

 

“Yes, I know.” Paul threw his pen down. “The victim had red hair. So what?”

 

This time, Francis set him straight. “Paulie,” he said quietly, looking away. “I don’t think this guy is talking about the victim.”

 

 

52

 

 

 

HOOLIAN CAME DOWN in the elevator forty minutes later with his lawyer and Nestor, still trying to absorb and integrate everything that had just happened.

 

The dim marble lobby was full of grim-faced family members moving slowly through the metal detectors, white-shirted court officers barking orders, and, of course, all the young men in trouble, on their way to court. Strutting around in their FUBU shirts and fresh-from-the-box Nikes, all chesty attitude with no idea of what a bid in state prison was actually going to do to them.

 

“Way out’s over there.” Ms. Aaron pointed to daylight beyond the revolving doors. “We’re done for the moment.”

 

Hoolian followed her out onto the sidewalk, with Nestor close behind.

 

“So, what happens now?” He shielded his eyes from the sparkling mica.

 

“We file a motion to get the indictment dismissed.” Ms. A. put on her sunglasses. “The police and prosecutors do whatever it is they do. And eventually we’ll try to mount our civil suit, provided Mr. Arroyo here doesn’t disappear on us for another twenty years.”

 

Nestor smiled at her with his crooked teeth.

 

“Claro,”
he said with a slight bow. Of course.

 

She pursed her lips, clearly not charmed by his courtly older gentleman act. “Sir, I want to ask you something.”

 

He tipped back the brim of his battered Panama.
“Cualquier cosa.”
Anything at all.

 

“You claim to be very fond of Mr. Vega.”

 

“Sí.”

 

“And you mentioned to me earlier that you thought his father was a great man for hiring you and keeping you on the payroll, even when you didn’t have your green card.”

 

“ĄAi!”
He nodded at Hoolian.
“Yo dar las gracias.”

 

“Then why on earth would you let his only son spend twenty years rotting in prison?”

 

The old man kept smiling and nodding, as if he hadn’t understood a word she’d said.

 

“Hey, Ms. A.?” Hoolian piped up. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

 

“Julian, this man could’ve come forward with this evidence at any time.”

 

“Yeah, I was mad at first too,” he sighed. “But people have circumstances, you know.”

 

“Circumstances?”
Her eyebrows jumped over her tinted frames. “What kind of circumstances justify letting a seventeen-year-old boy go to jail from 1983 until now?”

 

“Look, when I found him down in the basement last night, I was mad too. I was like, ‘I’m a kill you, old man. You ruined my life.’” Hoolian popped a fist into his palm. “But then . . . I don’t know. It’s different when it’s somebody you grew up around. Tell me, how am I gonna hate someone who used to let me run the service elevator when I was six?”

 

“He certainly didn’t do much to look out for you after that.”

 

“I know.” Hoolian gritted his teeth. “But what am I gonna do? He was scared. He got all spooked by Mr. Raedo and left the city. He didn’t know what was going to happen to me.”

 

“I’m sure he heard once you got locked up,” Ms. A. said, still indignant on his behalf.

 

“He had his own shit to deal with. He thought he was dying of liver cancer. His son died of a drug overdose. His wife left him. People have their own lives, I guess. I stopped expecting anyone to look out for me a long time ago.”

 

The old man’s eyes glimmered in silent appreciation.

 

“You’re a forgiving soul, Julian.” Ms. A. shook her head.

 

“No, I’m not,” he corrected her. “I’m still
all
fucked up about it, but I’m no fool. When I found that old man, I knew I had a choice. I could either break his neck, or I could try and get him to help me.”