American Appetites (45 page)

“Was it a formal engagement?”

“‘Engaged' is the word Sigrid used, yes.”

“And what was Miss Hunt's fiancé's name?”

“Fermi Sabri. But I think his real name was Sharif or something; I wasn't ever clear about it.”

“And how would you describe your friend's relationship with Mr. Sabri?”

“Dramatic.”

“Meaning—?”

“Dramatic is an understatement, actually. I happen to know that Sabri bullied her, threatened her, even beat her sometimes, though she never reported him. She might have been afraid he would have killed her, or she might have wanted to protect him because she loved him.”

“Did you ever witness his ‘bullying' of her?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. I'd see her sometimes bruised around the face and neck, maybe the wrists; once there was a large ugly purplish-yellow bruise above her knee . . . but she said she had done it to herself. And I didn't want to argue; I didn't want to get into that. Because women like that, who let themselves be hurt by men, are almost always lying to protect them; and it makes me sick. Frankly.”

“Did Miss Hunt appeal to anyone for help, to your knowledge?”

“No. Not to my knowledge.”

“How long were Miss Hunt and Mr. Sabri engaged?”

“About eighteen months. Until she had an abortion, which he didn't want her to have—which, in fact, he forbade her to have—and that was that.”

“You say that Miss Hunt had an abortion? And was Fermi Sabri the father?”

“Oh, definitely. Nobody else.”

“When did the abortion take place?”

“Maybe a year ago, about this time.”

“And where?”

“Sigrid was so worried about it, so frightened, I set it up for her myself, at a clinic called WomanSpace in Chelsea . . . staffed by women doctors, nurses. A wonderful place, and very safe. No men allowed anywhere on the premises. Sigrid didn't want Fermi to know what she was doing; this was one of the times she was hiding out from him, staying with me or other friends.”

“Did she ever, to your knowledge, stay with anyone in Hazelton?”

“In Hazelton? Not to my knowledge.”

“And you say she never, so far as you can remember, spoke of Ian McCullough?”

“Sigrid did know people up in Hazelton, connected with the Institute, I think, older people, middle-aged people; I got the impression they were intellectuals, writers and such, and fairly well-to-do. She had this side to her, an utterly conventional side, admiring, even envying, people like that, a sort of bourgeois romantic streak. There was a woman in particular she admired, a food expert I think, but I don't remember any names, and maybe she didn't mention any names. Sigrid was the kind of girl, you might think you knew her, but it would turn out eventually that you didn't; she would have another life somewhere else, an entirely different life . . . like the other side of the moon.”

“In any case, Miss Matthews, Sigrid Hunt's emotional life, during the time of which we're speaking, was focused upon her fiancé primarily, and not upon another man?”

“Oh, yes, certainly, I'd say that. No doubt about that.”

“And what was Mr. Sabri like?”

“I never actually met him, that's the strange thing. I saw him a few times, the two of them in his car. . . .”

“And what kind of car did Mr. Sabri drive?”

“A Ferrari sports car, I don't remember the name. Bright red. Blood red.”

“A distinctive car?”

“A distinctive car. He'd bring her places, or pick her up, but he wouldn't get out; evidently didn't want to be introduced to her American friends. He was jealous, possessive . . . that type.”

“Was he jealous even of Miss Hunt's women friends?”

“I think he had the idea we were all lesbians or something. Because we looked after one another. He was crazy to take her back to Cairo with him . . . he just wanted her for himself.”

“And where is Mr. Sabri now, do you know?”

“Supposedly, he went back to Egypt. Afraid of being involved in this trial. Or for being blamed for Sigrid's disappearing . . . whatever happened to her.”

“What did happen to her, do you know?”

“I have absolutely no idea, sir. I have answered that question quite a few times now.”

“Put to you by whom?”

“By the police.”

“Had Sigrid Hunt ever disappeared in the past, to your knowledge?”

“Yes she did, maybe not disappeared exactly, because someone always knew where she was, but she's the kind to slip away, go into hiding, if things get unpleasant. Like I said, she's the type to have another life, or lives, the way a dancer or an actor has roles, other modes of being. Not that Sigrid was consciously devious or anything, though I suppose, conventionally judged, she was, or is; it's really just her character, the way she was born. She had been a quite promising dancer for a while, before the life began to wear her down like it does most of us, and finally she injured her foot, and that was that. Too much pain. And she was getting old. Like me.”

“How old are you, Miss Matthews?”

“Oh, Jesus! And I'm under oath! I'm twenty-seven. Going on twenty-eight.”

AND THEN, ON
another day, came Malcolm Oliver, to tell the court, at Ottinger's invitation, about the Thiel-Edwards episode, as it had come to be called: the case of police brutality in which Ian McCullough and other Hazelton area members of the American Civil Liberties Union became involved in early 1986.

It seemed that, at approximately 2:00
A.M.
of December 26, 1985, Henry Thiel, a thirty-one-year-old high school teacher from Mount Kisco, New York, was driving a friend, Darryl Edwards, twenty-eight, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Columbia University, home from a party in Hazelton-on-Hudson, when, on Charter Street (a narrow oneway street one block from and parallel to Hazelton's main street), a vehicle that turned out to be an unmarked police car approached them head on, headlights blinding, and forced them to a sudden stop. At the same time, another unmarked car pulled up short behind them, its brakes squealing. Thinking they were going to be robbed and assaulted, if not murdered, Thiel and Edwards ducked down in their seats. Within seconds they heard three shots, and the windshield of Thiel's car was shattered. With no warning, or no warning that either Thiel or Edwards heard, a police officer in the car in front of them had fired his pistol. At once, a second officer joined him, firing three or four times. There followed then, as witnesses (residents of a nearby apartment building) described it, a “barrage” of bullets, as police officers from both cars opened fire, shooting out most of the windows of Thiel's car. Several people called police, and more units arrived at the scene. By this time Thiel and Edwards had been dragged out of their car, overpowered, beaten, kicked, and handcuffed, and forced into one of the squad cars. They were to be accused afterward of “resisting arrest” and “forcibly resisting arresting officers,” though no evidence would be offered to corroborate these charges.

Both Thiel and Edwards, after being booked at Hazelton police headquarters, were taken to the Hazelton Medical Center, Thiel with a broken nose, severe facial lacerations, and several broken ribs; Edwards with similar facial injuries, broken ribs and fingers, and a fractured skull from having been, in his words, “struck repeatedly” with a billy club. (Why was Edwards beaten more severely than Thiel? Malcolm interjected, putting his question to the court. Because Edwards is black.)

It would turn out that the Thiel-Edwards arrest was a case of mistaken identity. The plainclothes police were looking for two suspected robbers, a white man and a black man (though in fact the “black” man had been described to police as a light-skinned Hispanic, with a mustache: Edwards was clean-shaven), who had held up a liquor store on Route 9. The thieves were reported having driven away in a late-model dark sedan; Thiel's car was a 1986 metallic-blue Honda Civic. The five police officers involved in the episode insisted that there had been no brutality, nothing in excess of “necessary force.” Under oath, they testified to a grand jury that Thiel had allegedly driven his car into a police barricade and was himself responsible for his and Edwards's injuries and for the damage to his car; more minor injuries were caused by scuffling, pushing and shoving, and “resisting arresting officers.” Though the case received a good deal of publicity locally and in
The New York Times
, and was taken up immediately by the state branch of the ACLU, no public explanation or apology was ever made by the Hazelton police; nor were the officers involved disciplined, other than to be reassigned to different units. Eventually, after months of stalling, a public hearing was held, sponsored by the ACLU, and the county prosecutor, Samuel S. Lederer, was finally prodded into action. A grand jury was convened, and the officers brought before it but the hearing was undercut by Edwards's refusal to testify and Thiel's obvious reluctance to provide jurors with information. Thiel told ACLU officers afterward (among them, Malcolm Oliver) that he had been “frightened and intimidated” by telephone threats from anonymous callers. Like his friend, he intended “never to set foot in Hazelton-on-Hudson again.”

More than one hundred Hazelton residents, the majority of them active members of the ACLU, took part, for approximately an eighteen-month period beginning in April 1986, in a series of protests following the grand jury's refusal to hand down indictments against the police officers. A petition was drawn up and signed; letters and telegrams of complaint were sent to relevant agencies, including the office of the Governor of New York and the district attorney general; a number of meetings were held in private homes, including the home of Ian and Glynnis McCullough. (Ian McCullough had been a dues-paying member of the ACLU since 1963.) Though police denied the association and, again, were to advance an excuse of “mistaken identity,” three state police officers went to the McCullough home in the early morning of September 21, 1986, where, under the pretext of looking for neighborhood vandals and without identifying themselves, they pounded on the front door of the house, waking the McCulloughs and upsetting them considerably. Though the officers shone flashlights into the house, they did not shine them on their own uniforms or badges, according to the McCulloughs. Afterward, they were to claim that they had only rung the doorbell and had gone away almost at once, without any further disturbance.

Though Dr. and Mrs. McCullough were outraged by this act of harassment, and Dr. McCullough made a number of formal protests, by telephone, by letter, and in person—he insisted upon seeing, among others, the State Commissioner of Police—there was never any explanation for the officers' behavior, other than their claim of having been looking for neighborhood vandals (teenagers had set off firecrackers in some mailboxes in the neighborhood earlier that night), nor was there any apology.

Ottinger duly asked, “And do you think, Mr. Oliver, based upon your experience as an ACLU officer and your acquaintance with Dr. and Mrs. McCullough, that the Hazelton police were deliberately harassing the McCulloughs on the night of September 21, 1986?” and Malcolm said, “Yes, I certainly do,” and began to elaborate, speaking rapidly and angrily; for this was a subject about which Malcolm had long had passionate feelings, whether altogether justified or not. Ian, blinking and squinting through a headachy malaise, like a tortoise peeping out of its shell, took pride in his friend's testimony; felt a thrill of nervous elation in sensing the mood of the court and seeing, it seemed so plainly on their faces, the mood of the jurors. For everyone, or nearly everyone, was swept up in Malcolm Oliver's dramatic recital of injustice and inveigled into, as if by the back door, a tacit sympathy for Ian McCullough. Why, the man was a martyr!—a local hero!

Ian thought, But I did so little. Thiel and Edwards would not even know my name.

There followed then Samuel Lederer's crudely aggressive cross-examination—for the man was very angry—which allowed Malcolm Oliver to demonstrate his own lawyerly talents. One-on-one combat, here as on the squash court, excited him and enlivened him; he got the better (or so Ian sensed from the amused response on all sides) of the public prosecutor at every turn. “Do you have any proof that the Hazelton police, collectively or as individuals, were involved in a ‘vendetta' against Ian McCullough?”

“I am basing my judgment on my experience of nearly thirty years involvement with the—”

“Mr. Oliver, do you have any proof, I am asking do you have any proof?”

“—with the law-enforcement agencies of the state and with the alleged upholders of the law like yourself.”

“Mr. Oliver, I am asking you, what proof do you have?”

“‘Proof' could only be supplied by police testimony, and, as all the world knows, no officer will inform on his fellow officers, under pain of—”

“Mr. Oliver, for the last time, I am asking you, what proof can you—”

“—censure, harassment, maybe even brutality, who knows?” Malcolm said sharply, before Judge Harmon could cut him off. “Only
they
know, and
they
won't tell.”

THAT EVENING, SHORTLY
after Ottinger dropped Ian and Bianca at their house, the telephone rang; and it was Vaughn Cassity. With whom Ian had not spoken in weeks.

He had heard, Vaughn said, in a hearty, belligerent voice, that Nick Ottinger had had a brilliant first week, that things were looking very well for Ian at last. Why didn't they, then, all go out to celebrate tomorrow night? “You and your daughter, of course, and Nick, and Meika and me. What d'you say?”

“Celebrate?” Ian said. “Surely it's a bit premature to celebrate.”

“My party. I insist. That new seafood restaurant in the village. What d'you say?”