House Secrets (38 page)

“Yeah, I know what you want,” Morelli said and after that neither of them spoke for a couple of seconds until Brenda said, “Senator! What are you doing?”

DeMarco checked to see where Arnie and Gary were. Arnie was still filming; the cop was still standing on the sidewalk.

DeMarco heard Brenda say, “Senator, stop,” the words muffled, and the next thing he heard was a crash, as if a lamp had been knocked over, and then Brenda screamed, “Stop it, you bastard!” There was a
panicky edge to her voice and DeMarco didn’t think she was acting any longer.

DeMarco yelled to the cop, “Go, Gary, go.”

As instructed, Gary yelled out to Arnie, “Hey! You with the camera! What the hell are you doing?”

And on cue, Arnie responded, “There’s a girl being raped in there.”

Gary ran down the walkway to Brenda’s apartment and flung open the door. Brenda had been told not to lock it. Arnie followed Gary inside, his camera still recording.

Ten minutes later, Arnie and Gary reappeared with Morelli. DeMarco could hear sirens in the distance, coming in his direction. Gary had Morelli by the arm and Morelli’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Arnie no longer had the video camera; Gary had confiscated it as evidence. Arnie was now holding a still camera with a flash and he was taking pictures as fast as the camera would take them.

Paul Morelli appeared to be in shock, his eyes glazed, his mouth slack-jawed. His hair was in disarray, a shirttail hung over his belt, and his belt was partially undone. The picture that would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country—a picture copyrighted to Arnie Berg—would be a classic. DeMarco watched the flash exploding on the camera like a strobe light, repeatedly freezing Morelli’s dazed features.

At that moment a patrol car pulled up outside the apartment building and two uniformed cops got out. Gary escorted Morelli to the patrol car and placed him in the back seat. He then asked the two cops who had just arrived if they could go inside the apartment building, secure the scene, and get the victim. As the two cops walked into the apartment building, Gary walked over to the surveillance van and handed DeMarco the video camera that Arnie had been using.

Five minutes later, one of the cops emerged from the apartment with Brenda. She was clutching the lapels of a raincoat, holding the coat closed, presumably covering her torn clothing. Arnie’s still camera captured the tears on her face. Brenda also managed a few words for her small audience: “It was terrible. He was like an animal.”

And the Oscar goes to . . .

Brenda and the officer stood outside the building for a few minutes, the officer comforting Brenda, until a second patrol car pulled up to the curb. Brenda was placed in the second car. Ten minutes later both police cars left the scene, Morelli in one, Brenda in the other. The blue and red lights on the cop cars were flashing but the sirens were muted.

Emma exited the car in which she’d been sitting and walked up to Brenda’s apartment. She unlocked the door and ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and entered the apartment. Ten minutes later she exited the apartment with the four cameras that Bobby Prentis had hidden and joined DeMarco in the surveillance van.

They studied the video recorded by Arnie and compared it to the videos recorded by the other cameras. The reason they’d placed the hidden cameras in the apartment was that they needed to make sure that they had at least one clear video of Morelli attacking Brenda. This was a one-take operation—they couldn’t just hope that Arnie would be able to get an unobstructed view.

Emma and DeMarco watched together as Morelli backed Brenda against a wall. This happened just after he had said, “Yeah, I know what you want.” Brenda responded by placing her hands against Morelli’s chest and attempting to push him away, the camera a stark witness to her resistance. DeMarco winced when Morelli clamped his hands like a vice on both sides of Brenda’s face and covered her lips with his mouth as she strained against him. She managed to say, “Senator, stop,” but Morelli ignored her, continuing to kiss her while at the same time tearing clumsily at her blouse. He eventually pushed a struggling Brenda to the floor, knocking over a lamp as he did so, and the scene recorded by one of the cameras was perfect: it not only showed Morelli pawing at Brenda like some sort of deranged, out-of-control satyr, but it also showed the look of revulsion on her face.

Since DeMarco had told her what to expect, Brenda shouldn’t have been surprised by Morelli’s actions, but he was sure she was. She was like DeMarco had been in the beginning: incapable of believing, no matter what anyone said, that Paul Morelli could be anything other than a bright, shining knight.

After he had pushed Brenda to the floor, Morelli straddled her and she grimaced in pain as his knees pinned her arms to the carpet. With her arms immobilized, he began pulling up her skirt with one hand while he struggled to undo his belt with his other hand. It was while he was pulling up her skirt that Brenda had screamed “Stop it, you bastard!”

Brenda may have been acting up until that moment. She’d played the shy secretary in Morelli’s office for two weeks, and when she invited him in for coffee, she was still in character. But when Morelli had her on the floor, tugging at her underwear, DeMarco could see the fear in her eyes and knew it was real. Just before Gary reached Morelli to pull him off Brenda, Morelli was recorded saying: “Come on, you little bitch. I know this is what you want.”

Emma and DeMarco finally selected the camera that had the best view of the assault and Emma took the video cartridge from that camera and put it into Arnie’s camera. Now all they had to do was get the camera back to Gary so it could be entered into evidence.

Forty minutes had elapsed since the cops had hauled Paul Morelli to the police station. Gary had been instructed to take his time processing Morelli and not to mention the video camera he’d taken from Arnie. Emma went to the police station, posing as an attorney waiting for a client. Gary had been instructed to go to the station’s reception area periodically and when he saw Emma, she passed him Arnie’s camera, the camera now containing the recording that DeMarco and Emma had selected. Gary then admitted the video camera into evidence.

While all this was occurring, DeMarco called his friend Reggie Harmon. He woke Reggie from his normal alcoholic stupor and told him to get down to the cop shop for the story of his career.

Per Reggie’s story, which appeared on the front page of the
Post
the following morning, a tabloid photographer, Arnie Berg, just happened to see Senator Paul Morelli leaving the Russell Building with a good-looking blond. So, being the paparazzo sleaze that he was, Arnie followed the couple. No one was surprised by this. When the senator and the blond entered an apartment building, Arnie followed with his little camera and peered through the apartment windows, hoping to catch them doing something naughty. When Morelli assaulted Brenda, Arnie naturally kept filming but fortunately for Brenda, a young police officer, Gary Parker—who just happened to live in her building—was getting home from work. Officer Parker saw Arnie peeping through Brenda’s window, at which point Arnie informed the cop of what was occurring inside the apartment.

And then Gary Parker just did his job.

A week after his arrest, Paul Morelli met the old man at a card room, a windowless, concrete block structure near Newark, New Jersey. It was early, only nine a.m., and the card room wasn’t open for business.

Morelli parked behind the building, near the rear exit. Another car, a big Lincoln, was already there when he arrived. He opened an unlocked door, walked down an unlit hallway, past the restrooms, and entered the main area of the card room. There was a small bar off to one side and eight green felt-covered tables filled the rest of the space. The tables had enough chairs for six players per table and on the tables were unopened decks of cards and stacks of poker chips locked up in Plexiglas cases.

The room was dark except for a single overhead light, a fake Tiffany-style stained glass lamp. The lamp hung over the card table at which the old man sat. Eddie was standing off to one side, almost invisible in the shadows, his huge, scarred hands just hanging at his sides.

The old man didn’t rise to shake Morelli’s hand as he usually did when they met. He just sat there, his black eyes boring into Morelli’s as Morelli walked toward him. The old man, at that moment, in that lighting, with his seamed face and long, bony nose and his unblinking black eyes, reminded Morelli of some cruel, ancient bird of prey. Ancient, but still capable of ripping flesh from bone. He’d
heard stories of how merciless the old man could be but until that moment it had never been so apparent in his features.

Morelli sat down and placed his hands on the table as if waiting for the cards to be dealt. In one night, Morelli had destroyed everything that they had worked for for fifteen years. Or that’s the way the old man would see it. Morelli knew differently. Morelli knew that he’d just suffered a setback, but the game—his game—was far from over. But for him to succeed he needed the old man’s help, and to get his help, he was going to have to tell him more lies. It was appropriate, he thought, that they were sitting at a poker table. Morelli was about to play for the highest stakes imaginable—his future, his life.

“How did it happen?” the old man said. His voice, as always, was low and calm. None of the emotions that he must be feeling showed.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Morelli said. “It was a setup.”

“I know
that
,” the old man snapped, “but who set you up?

“Sam Murphy and that investigator we were watching for a while.”

“You said the investigator was a nobody.”

“He is, but Murphy helped him.”

“But how did it happen? How did they get you alone with that girl?”

“I met with Murphy at my office the night it happened. He called and said he wanted to talk to me, about how we should both run clean campaigns. Anyway, we had a drink. You know I’m not a drinker, and I only had one drink. But after that drink, I started to feel odd, light-headed, woozy.”

“Murphy spiked your drink?”

“Either him or the girl. She was in the office when Murphy came to see me. She’s the one that poured the drinks for us. Anyway, right after the meeting, I agreed to give the girl a ride home. My mind wasn’t . . . it just wasn’t clear. It was like I was susceptible to suggestion. Anyway, she asked me to give her a ride and like a fool, I agreed. When we got to her place, she asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. Again I agreed. In fact, I thought the coffee might help clear my head.” Morelli
stopped and shook his head, as if astounded by how easily he’d been duped.

“Go on,” the old man said.

“She gave me the coffee—or maybe it was tea—I can’t remember. And the next thing I know she’s up against me, her blouse is torn, and she’s tearing at my clothes, at my belt. I tried to push her away, and I either fell or she tripped me. I don’t know which. My mind was mush at this point and I was as weak as a kitten. The next thing I know, I’m on the floor, on top of her, and then this cop’s in the apartment.”

“So you didn’t attack this girl?”

Morelli stared at the old man for a moment, pretending to bristle with resentment. “How long have you known me?” he said. “Have you ever seen me chase women?”

“But there’s a tape of you attacking her.”

“Have you been to a movie lately?”

“A movie?” The old man said, puzzled by the question.

“Yes. Have you seen what they can do these days with special effects? They can make people fly. They can put an animal’s head on a man’s body.”

“So you think somebody doctored the tape?”

“Nobody saw that video for almost eight hours after my arrest, and the cop who arrested me, he didn’t enter it into evidence until almost an hour after we arrived at the station. There was plenty of time to do something with that video.” Before the old man could ask another question, Morelli said, “That tape isn’t a tape of
what
happened. It’s a tape of what they
say
happened. But the tape doesn’t really matter.”