The Diviners (18 page)
Jeanine can feel her abdomen beginning to twitch as if inside there’s one of those monster larvae about to bust out of her entrails and rocket toward the light. Looking around the table at Madison, who’s gazing critically at her fingernails, at Annabel, staring vacantly out a window, Jeanine can tell that Vanessa has finally driven the locomotive off the rails.
“I have to go to the hospital in Brooklyn right now. I mean, you guys know that my mother is back in the hospital, right? I’m trying to keep the company going without any interns. Can anyone explain to me why we keep losing the interns? And why are we in this totally awful office space? Why can’t we get an office downtown? Anyway, I’m trying to keep the company going and now I have this, this situation with my mother. So that’s what I have to show for all the hard work. I have to look to the future; I have to look to the possibility of a more dependable revenue model. Which is why I have gone to great lengths to hire Ranjeet, who comes highly recommended from the University of Delhi. He’s an important international thinker on the cinema and television from one of the largest, most successful film markets on the globe. He’s personally acquainted with Umberto Eco and Edward Said. So here he is, Ranjeet Singh, in case you haven’t met him yet, to help plot our revolution in the medium of television.”
Even though everyone is desperate to get back to their desk, desperate to pretend that Vanessa is not putting a third piece of bubble gum in her mouth, Jeanine has to ask a question. She even knows it’s awful, but she asks anyway.
“What about reality television? Reality programming? Like that show about . . . the one where everyone’s going to an island, and they just, they get rid of people? Because people, they just can’t make it on the island, like —”
“Ranjeet?”
All eyes turn to the expert.
“Reality programming,” Ranjeet starts, hands in prayer position, “is a type of programming which comes from Europe. It is the revenge of Europeans on the American dramatic series. People perform crazy actions. They might perhaps eat a rat. Persons collaborate on the eating of rats, preparations for rats, which herbs to use. You might have a program about persons doing these things. You might perhaps find persons in a house together with a lot of money, and you could see who tries to find the money first, and the house has many rats in it. Or you could put people in a house together, and one of these persons is having sexual relations with another. What these programs lack is a mythology. You simply have people and money and sexual relations, and you have no mythology. Consider in the program called
Roots
the moment when the captain of the slave ship, who is incidentally played by Mary Tyler Moore’s boss, and this captain of the slave ship is not comfortable with the duties of the slave ship. He finds that he cannot believe in the mission of the slave ship, but nonetheless he is contracted to bring the ship into port. The evil first mate brings first a
wench,
which is his word for the young African woman with exposed breasts, and he says, ‘Captain, perhaps you’ll be wanting a belly warmer,’ or something to this effect, and the captain must decide whether he is equipped to have this unclothed African woman overnight in his cabin. So the captain is morally conflicted by the endeavor of slavery, and yet when there is the beautiful woman with the exposed breasts in his cabin, when he is lord of the high seas, he cannot refuse. This is mythology. This is the story that is equal to a hundred other stories. The myth of national origins is rich in a way that the reality television camera cannot be.”
“People get stupid in front of the camera,” Vanessa says. “People begin to grovel. People begin to lie. People begin to pander. That’s the big festering paradox of reality programming.”
Madison rallies briefly. “Reality programming. I mean, I think it’s just the programming of sluts. If you met any of these girls who are on those shows, they’re all sluts. And I’m betting the guys in the creative departments at the networks, they’re just trying to find ways to meet girls who are sluts. We don’t really have any sluts here, right? So I figure we don’t really have anyone who understands the programming for sluts. So can we please not work on those shows? Because I don’t want to look at myself in the mirror and think I could have worked on getting distribution for that new Iranian film, but instead I worked on a show about the world record holder for hooking up with guys.”
“Thanks for waking up, Madison.”
Then, when everyone is filing out, looking as if they won’t be able to work another day at Means of Production, Ranjeet stops Jeanine in front of his empty office. His face glows with the look of a man who has a complicated future. “I have a son, and he is the most extraordinary boy, and I would like very much for you to meet my son. Perhaps you would come to dinner with my family?”
Preliminary reports, according to detectives, indicate that the victim is an employee of an art gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Specifically, the victim works at the gallery called 905 on West Twenty-fourth, a gallery known primarily for mixed-media work. The detectives have called the gallery and they have spoken to the owner. This owner remarked that the victim left work early on Thursday for a doctor’s appointment and was not seen in the office after
4:00
PM
. The victim, according to the employer and others, is Asian and is described as of slight build, attractive, with brown hair and chestnut highlights. The victim is described as wearing, at the time of the attack, clothes dark in color: black tights, black skirt, midthigh, black leather jacket. Age: twenty-six. The victim was educated at a private college in Pennsylvania. The victim’s employer also indicated that the victim has been embarked for some months on gathering material for an exhibition of contemporary African American mixed-media work. The victim, according to interviews, has a considerable critical reputation. She is admired both in the office and in the field generally.
The parents of the victim were notified as soon as was feasible, after contact information was located among the personal effects of the victim. These calls were placed by detectives after notification by personnel at the hospital. The parents are currently staying in a hotel in midtown and are visiting their daughter during visiting hours. They have given detectives permission to read the address book and other effects of the victim found in a shoulder bag at the crime scene. This address book contains seven numbers for local doctors. The parents have indicated that their daughter was recently under the care of a clinical social worker. Calls to the social worker were inconclusive. However, a call to the victim’s orthopedist has apparently confirmed a visit earlier in the day. The office of the orthopedist is located in the Murray Hill district of Manhattan, on Thirty-third Street between Second and Third Avenues. The victim suffers from a repetitive stress complaint and was fitted for a wrist brace.
Detectives believe that the victim was making her way to the library. Records show that she has been a frequent user of the resources of the Mid-Manhattan branch library in recent months. The victim may have been doing research relevant to the curatorial project described above. According to detectives, the point of origin for this trip was the Murray Hill office of the orthopedist. The victim was admitted to Bellevue Hospital at
6:13
PM
on Thursday evening, so the time of attack would fall between
5:00
and
5:30
, when midtown swells with pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Thus, the volume of eyewitness accounts.
The construction site where the incident took place is on the corner of Third Avenue and Fortieth Street. Under normal circumstances, a construction site is secure. Permits for construction at this address were up to date. However, there were reports that early in the construction process, the Third Avenue site was in dereliction of union agreements, such that a large rubber rodent was deposited at the site, indicating an ongoing union action. In recent weeks, disputes with unions were apparently resolved amicably. It follows that the site could not be easily burgled for the purposes of obtaining a weapon, and yet, according to eyewitnesses, this is exactly what happened.
Eyewitnesses describe the perpetrator as male, African American, riding a bicycle. Most witnesses believe that the suspect is a bicycle messenger because he was apparently wearing bicycle racing apparel, that is, nylon shorts. This clothing, according to witnesses, was dark in color, except for a red bandanna worn around the neck. The bicycle itself had few distinguishing marks. It may have been stolen. The bicycle messenger was riding quickly, perhaps thirty-five miles an hour, when he came upon the victim and used his weapon, a brick or cinder block, on the back of the head of the victim as he passed her, knocking her to the ground. The brick or cinder block was carried away from the scene. The assault is therefore described as blunt force trauma, probably with a conventionally sized brick. Witnesses report the suspect then going east on Forty-first Street, against traffic, leaving the scene. The victim rolled to one side, with her brace parallel to the curb, as shown in the drawing. She was bleeding heavily. In no account was there verbal exchange between suspect and victim. The victim, who fell into unconsciousness almost instantly, did not have time to register surprise.
Pedestrians notified 911, which dispatched the ambulance. The paramedics arrived within three minutes, from Bellevue. They do not report any recollection of passing a bicycle messenger on their way to the scene. Nor are there reports of a man on a bicycle, in that area or otherwise, carrying a brick. In all likelihood, the perpetrator fled the immediate environs of the attack, perhaps into East River Park or even onto the subway.
The victim was unconscious when paramedics arrived. As of Friday morning, the victim is stabilized. The prognosis for recovery, according to physicians at the hospital, is guarded but positive. Full recovery of memory and brain function is possible but not certain at this time. At present, the victim, when conscious, which is only occasionally, is suffering from long-term and short-term memory lapses.
There is no evidence of rape or sexual trauma at the time of the attack. Indeed, if the accounts of witnesses are credible, there could not have been time for sexual battery. Parents report that the victim was known to date young men but is not at present involved with any male romantic or sexual partner on an ongoing basis. Her last significant romantic attachment occurred with a male, aged thirty-nine, but he and the victim separated about six months prior to the attack. This particular romantic partner is described as a painter of Caucasian ethnicity, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Detectives are investigating the painter to rule out conspiracy and have made contact. This romantic partner works in galleries in Manhattan (including the 905 Gallery) as a transporter and hanger of artworks prior to openings and exhibitions in local galleries, so it is unlikely that he was in the neighborhood in question at the time of the attack. He works afternoons and evenings. Parents of the victim describe her as basically a “normal young woman” in matters of romance. She had boyfriends in college and was serially attached to men in her early twenties. In some of these cases, according to the parents, she was hoping the relationships would “go on longer” than they did. Other inquiries into the personal life of the victim are pending. The possibility of an attack by a disgruntled lover is not ruled out but at the present moment seems unlikely.
Police officers and detectives thereafter inquired of the parents whether the victim was a known frequenter of drug locations or a user of illegal drugs. The mother of the victim, to the marked discontent of her husband, indicated that the victim had occasionally smoked marijuana in college and that on at least one occasion the victim had marijuana-related anxiety, including feelings of depersonalization and alienation. Her experiments in this direction were short-lived. No other illegal drugs were known to be used by the victim. Acquaintances from the victim’s workplace also professed no knowledge whatever of any drug problems. Nor were any prescription medications—OxyContin, Vicodin—obtained illegally by the victim. It’s therefore possible to rule out an attack related to a drug deal or an assault otherwise perpetrated by a drug dealer of any kind. In fact, the general demeanor and biography of the victim do not suggest fraternizing with dealers or crime syndicates or known criminal elements.
It’s worth noting, however, that among the doctors listed in the address book of the victim is a psychopharmacologist. The detectives assigned to the case do indicate that the victim was being prescribed a “cocktail” of medications, including an antidepressant, a sleep aid, and an antianxiety medication, BuSpar. Some of these substances were found in the shoulder bag of the victim. All the prescriptions were legally obtained. Preliminary observation indicates that the victim is now and always has been “very thin,” her weight being just over a hundred pounds. Whether this information bears upon the attack is doubtful.
According to the above information, any public attack by the most likely constituencies—lovers or dealers of controlled substances or employees of organized crime syndicates, et cetera—is unlikely. The most credible theory, therefore, would suggest random attack. The perpetrator, according to this theory, was unknown to the victim at the time of the attack. Random attacks, exclusive of sexual assaults, where they have occurred in the past (as in the Eighty-eighth Street attacks or the recent Fort Greene assaults), are usually tied to the homeless population or to other persons disenfranchised from the workforce.
Detectives have also spent some time studying an important piece of evidence among the effects of the victim, namely the victim’s diary of the last few months, which is described as a book of unlined paper with a black leather binding, such as would be available in any number of high-end stationery stores downtown. Obviously, obtaining this information from a person who is likely to recover either partially or entirely is a sensitive matter. At the prompting of the father, however, who is described as extremely emotional about his desire to bring to justice the perpetrator of the crime, the diary was made available in this developing case.