False Allegations (15 page)

It didn’t take us long to say goodbye. Sharing secrets doesn’t always make you close.

I took a quick shower, changed my clothes, checked with Mama to make sure Max got the message. Almost six by then. Time to start my walk.

B
attery Park is a pocket of green at the very southern tip of Manhattan, on the far side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The bench we always use faces out toward the Hudson River. There’s a couple of ways to get to it, but no cover for the approach. And watching is real easy down here. At seven in the morning, you still got joggers and bikers and lurkers and drunks and wrongly discharged mental patients and drug dealers and the occasional tourist killing time until they open the ferry to the Statue of Liberty— no way to tell who’s who no matter how suspicious you might be.

I was in place by six forty–five. Had the bench to myself, so I didn’t have to pull any of the various disgusting moves in my considerable repertoire to clear the space. I thought Clarence and the Prof would be working their shoeshine routine, but I couldn’t spot either of them. Even if someone else could, they wouldn’t see hardware. Clarence isn’t just fast; he’s magic. One second you see his hand, the next, it’s full of nine–millimeter heat— like the pistol just materialized.

Max was easier. He was standing right by the water’s edge, performing a slow–motion kata, a lengthy one that looked like t’ai chi if you didn’t know much about it. Passersby watched him with mild curiosity— the routine wasn’t interesting enough to make them stop and didn’t look threatening enough to make them hurry past.

On the back of one of the other benches, graffiti–splattered in bright yellow: SCHIZOPHRENICS ARE NEVER ALONE!

She came up the path a couple of minutes before seven, gimping along slow but steady, a black walking stick in her left hand and a white leather purse that looked like a horse’s feedbag slung over the opposite shoulder. She was wearing a hot–pink sweatsuit, her body back in harness underneath. Her breasts jutted like heavy weapons, not a trace of jiggle anywhere. She halted a few feet from me, tentative, making sure she caught my eye. I nodded, not greeting her, just acknowledging her presence. She came over to the bench, raised her pencil–line black eyebrows. I took a deliberate glance at a spot next to me, still not talking.

She turned her back to me and sat down butt–first, the way you get into a low–riding sports car. Then she unslung the purse, put it gently on the wood bench between us.

“That’s yours,” she said.

“For what?”

“For nothing. I mean, not for
doing
anything. It’s an apology, that’s all. Go ahead, take a look.”

“I don’t have X–ray eyes,” I said. “And I don’t open strange packages myself.”

She nodded as if that made sense. Reached down and pulled the zipper on the bag, using two hands to hold it wide open, like she was spreading the jaws of a giant clam. I looked inside. Banded cash. A lot of it.

“Twenty–five thousand dollars,” she said, looking at her hands in her lap. A big diamond glittered on her left hand. An engagement ring? “Hundred–dollar bills,” she said. “
Used
bills, no consecutive serial numbers.”

“That’s a big apology.”

“I fucked up big time. Twenty of it’s for you, five for the whore.”

“The whore?”

“You know who I mean. Bondi, whatever her name is.”

“And she’s a whore?”

Her orange eyes caught the early morning light. “I did a stupid thing, but I’m not stupid,” she said. “The research wasn’t wrong, I was.”

“So…?”

“So I know what she does. For money.”

“I do things for money too.”

“Would you let somebody fuck you for money?”

“Meaning you wouldn’t?”

“No. I wouldn’t. I would never do that. It’s wrong.”

“So you don’t just punch people out, you’re a goddamned judge too?”

“If you like.”

“No, I don’t like. I don’t like you. A woman takes money for sex, she’s no good according to you, right? But you, you want to do some bodywork on me, bang me around, scare me into doing something you want…that’s okay?”

“I
said
I was wrong.”

“No, bitch. You said you
guessed
wrong, that’s all. It worked for you before, didn’t it?”

“What?”

“Slapping people around.”

“You chipped a bone in my ankle,” she said, a little–girl undertone to her voice. “It
hurt
, what you did.”

“You hurt yourself,” I told her. Thinking of an ancient aikido master standing in a dojo years before, talking to a student who was moaning and holding his broken hand, telling him it was the student’s desire to hurt another that caused him so much pain.

“I cop to it, okay?” she said flatly. “When you do something wrong, all you can do is apologize and take what’s coming to you.”

“And what’s coming to you is paying me off?”

“I asked you if you wanted something else.”

“When?”

“I said you could kick my ass if you wanted to. You still can, if it would make things right. Or…”

“What?”

“Or you can…have me. Any way you want.”

“Instead of the money?”

“Yes.”

“But
you’re
not a whore, huh?”

Her face flamed. “You can keep the money too, all right?”

“I don’t want you.”

“You would if I was…nice,” she said softly. “I know you would— it’s in your eyes.”

“You need a translator,” I told her.

“Am I too fat for you? Or maybe you just like whores.”

“Maybe I just don’t like liars.”

She took a deep breath, squeezing her hands together in her lap. Max was still into his kata, never breaking the flow. If she’d brought friends with her, they weren’t close enough to do much. Not with their hands, anyway. I’ve seen Max move— he was a hell of a lot closer than he looked. And whatever she planned to do, she couldn’t run away.

“I’ll give you one more thing, then,” she said. “The truth. How’s that?”

“Say it. Then I’ll tell you what it’s worth.”

She turned to face me, quickly ran her tongue over her lips. It wasn’t a come–on— she was getting ready to talk. “When I was thirteen years old I was already…built like this. I looked like I was twenty at least. And I dressed like it too. I met a man. A famous man. He was a writer. A serious writer. He wrote books about economics. And social theory and politics and stuff like that. We were…friends. He thought I was older, but he never tried anything with me. Just…holding hands and stuff. I told him I was a salesgirl. In a record store. I knew a lot about that— I used to spend all my time in one. We were together a lot. Mostly in this coffeehouse in the Village. An old–style one. Little tables, checkered tablecloths, you could sit there for hours and nobody’d bother you….

“But sometimes we went to his place. He had an apartment, the first floor of a brownstone on Bank Street. It was mostly books. Real quiet and peaceful. He’d give me books to read, and we’d talk about them. I wanted him to love me. And I think he did, maybe…”

Her voice trailed off. I closed my eyes so I could hear her better. Waited.

“I had a key to his place. I got there before him one night. I wanted to surprise him. I took my clothes off and took a bath. A bubble bath. In his tub. Then I put on this negligee I bought. I thought it was real sexy, but now I know it was just cheap and tacky. I was going to be a surprise package for him when he got home. So he could unwrap it, you understand?”

“Sure.”

“But when he walked in the door and saw me, his face got all red, like he was real mad. I asked him what was wrong. And then he asked me how old I was.”

“I lied. Like I did before. But he wasn’t going for it. I showed him my fake ID and everything, but it was like he…knew something. I took off the negligee. I stood right in front of him. Naked. But he didn’t budge, just stood there with his arms folded. And then I told him the truth. His face went white. He was scared, I could tell.”

She went quiet for a minute, her face bowed. A tear tracked her cheek, cutting a soft river through the heavy makeup. I turned my detector on full, but the signals were still scrambled. I swept the field with my eyes without turning my head but the ground all around me was bland. Max was still in place.

Maybe a minute passed. If she was waiting for me to say something, she was out of luck. Finally, she looked up. “That’s when I…did it. I told him he had to make love to me. He
had
to. Or I’d tell everyone he did.”

I made some neutral sound, encouraging her to talk, not judging.

“He just stood there with his arms folded. I got dressed and I left. I called him after that. A lot of times. After a while, he just used his answering machine to screen the calls. It made me so mad…knowing he was right there and he wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“What could he have said?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t
know
,” she answered. “Something…But he didn’t. Nothing. Nothing at all. So that’s when I did it.”

“Did what, Heather?”

“I told on him. I told my mother. But she said that’s what I deserved, dressing like a slut, not listening to her and all. She called me a fat fucking cow. She always called me that. My father…they’re divorced, he lives in L.A., I never see him. So I told a teacher. A guidance counselor. And then
she
went to my mother.”

“What did you tell the counselor?”

“That we were lovers. That we had sex. Not…real sex. I was too smart for that. I mean, I was a virgin. And I knew there were ways they could tell. I knew what to tell them. I told them we did…other things. My mother was real mad. Not for what happened— what I
said
happened— but because I embarrassed her. She went and got the strap. But I told her if she ever raised that thing to me again, I’d break her fucking arm for her. She knew I could do it then— I was almost as big as I am now. Strong too.”

“So what happened?”

“She didn’t do anything. Just left me alone. But she told her boyfriend. A lawyer. And he told her she could make money if I sued him. So that’s what we did.”

“Did you go to the police too?”

“No. At least, not at first. Her boyfriend, he told us we should ask for money first. In a letter. But he wouldn’t pay. He wrote and said I was a liar. And I was.”

“How did the case…?”

“It made the papers. They even took my picture. My mother’s boyfriend had me dress up like a little girl. No makeup, a big loose dress and everything. We sued him for five million dollars. I looked just like I really was— a fat, ugly, sad little girl.”

“He ever pay it?”

“No,” she said, her voice strangling on grief. “He never paid it. He killed himself. With a gun. In his apartment. In that same room.”

“Ah…”

“He left a note. Not for the papers, for me. He mailed it to me— I got it after he was gone. It said: ‘Your lies took my life.’ That’s all.”

“What happened then?”

“I went…nuts. My mother put me in a hospital. I was there almost five years. I wanted to kill myself too. So I could apologize. So I could be with him and apologize. It took me a long time before…”

“Before…?”

“Before they let me out. Then I went to college. I went to high school in the hospital, so I was ready. When I got out, I just drifted. Waiting for something, I didn’t know what. And then I met him.”

“Kite?”

“He gave a lecture. It only cost ten dollars. He talked about the climate. The American climate. How we have witch hunts all over again, only this time, about child sexual abuse. After the lecture, I went up to him. And I told him the truth, like I just told you.”

She clasped her hands under her breasts, lifting them up like the offering she’d made to the man she killed so many years before , her voice rapt with true–believer lust. “He didn’t shun me. He listened. He explained to me why I did it. He said if the climate was right in America, I wouldn’t really have caused that much damage. Nobody would have been hurt. The right people would have asked the right questions, and the truth would have come out. That’s what he does. That’s his work.

“He told me something else too,” she said softly. “How I could make up for what I did. Helping him in his work. That’s what I’ve done ever since. Almost ten years now. And when he told me about you, I was scared. I read your file. You’re a criminal. You went to prison. I think you even killed people— it says you did in your file. But he was sure you were the right man for this. It’s so important to him.”

“What?”

“The
truth
— don’t you understand? He always says the people who say it
never
happens are just as crazy as the ones who say it
always
happens. He believes this wom— In this case, I mean. I do too. And he says you’re the man to prove it for him…If
you
can’t break a story, it can’t
be
broken, that’s what he says.”