Bad to the Bone, page 16
Vinnie Vaseline
When Moodrow looked up, Betty was standing in the middle of the kitchen, a quart of ice cream in her hand. She stared at him for a moment, then down at her wet hand. “I want a divorce,” she announced calmly.
“You can’t have a divorce,” Moodrow reminded her, “because we’re not married. In fact, we’re not even cohabiting together.”
“In that case, I want a psychiatrist.”
“You could try Davis Craddock. I hear he’s getting an award.”
Betty smiled in triumph. “That’s just what I did. This afternoon I went to my first Hanoverian conference.” She noted Moodrow’s astonished look, then continued. “I begin therapy two days from now.”
Moodrow took a deep breath. “Listen, Betty, Davis Craddock is no joke. This guy would kill you in a minute if he thought you were a threat to him.”
“I suppose your letter isn’t a threat. I suppose your letter is an example of classical drama.”
“The letter’s going out to him because he’s crazy. I’m trying to reach a crazy man, to make him paranoid enough to take me personally.”
“How will he know who it’s from?”
“He’ll know. And he’ll know that I’m coming for him. I wish I could show you the expression on his face when I called his bluff with the .45. Craddock is nuts, but he’s in control. I want him to lose control, to panic. Fear isn’t going to make him less dangerous, just stupid and careless.”
Betty began to sort the groceries, taking them from the bag and arranging them on the table. She was trying to phrase her answer in a way that truly represented her feelings. The problem was that she didn’t even like to think about the story she would have to tell. She shuffled cans of peas and corn and tomatoes for a minute, then took a deep breath. “This happened to me a long time ago, sixteen, seventeen years. I can’t remember anymore. I never told you about it, because I could never make it good in my own mind. I tried for years, then I stopped thinking about it.
“One day, I picked up a client named David Teitelbaum. He was charged with abusing his two daughters, Anna and Toby. Anna was the oldest. She was eight. Toby was six. The evidence against Teitelbaum was persuasive, but not conclusive. That’s usually the way it is in sexual abuse cases. There were the children’s statements, of course, but the mother hadn’t actually witnessed the abuse and would not be a witness. A medical examination showed some evidence of vaginal and anal scarring, but the doctor who conducted the examination wasn’t willing to swear that it was absolutely due to sexual abuse. The trial, if there was to be trial, would hinge on the testimony of the children.
“Teitelbaum swore he didn’t do it. He told me he was a nice Jewish boy with a wife who happened to hate him. Why did she hate him? He didn’t know. Their marriage had been arranged, and he hadn’t gotten to know her before the wedding. True, marriages weren’t really arranged anymore, but in the tight, Orthodox community where he grew up, boys and girls were kept apart. One day you came home to find a girl sitting at the dinner table and all the relatives, yours and hers, grinning like idiots.
“ ‘Mona hates everybody. Ask her what she thinks of her parents. Ask her what she thinks of the rabbi. Ask her anything. You’ll see she’s crazy. Goyim get a divorce from women like this. Jews shoulder the burden. I tried to be a good husband and this is my reward.’
“I didn’t believe him. I believed the children. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get him off. The children’s statements were full of hesitations and contradictions. That’s normal. Kids can’t appreciate the importance of clean, emphatic testimony. If you want to get them to talk about something they don’t want to talk about, you have to coax it out of them. But juries don’t necessarily understand children and the hesitations bring doubt. If I put Teitelbaum on the stand and he repeated his accusations against his wife, the doubt could easily blossom into reasonable doubt. I wasn’t afraid of the prosecutor’s cross-examination because there were no witnesses to the abuse and Teitelbaum didn’t have a criminal record.
“The ADA who handled the prosecution, a veteran named Max Bauer, had no illusions about the case. He offered me a plea bargain three days after Teitelbaum was arrested. One count of abuse and five years Upstate. I took it back to Teitelbaum, but I advised him to turn it down. If we waited, we’d do better.
“Teitelbaum was a tailor, a working man struggling to move up into the middle class. The community had already convicted him, and his wife had control of his meager assets. Bail had been set at $50,000 and he had no hope of making it, so if he wanted to sit it out, he would have to survive in the Brooklyn House of Detention. I don’t have to tell you what the other prisoners think of child abusers. In order to make his wait a little easier, I notified the court that my client’s life had been threatened and that the Department of Corrections wasn’t taking adequate measures to protect turn. If he’d been black or Latino, I doubt if I would have gotten a response. But David Teitelbaum was a skinny Jewish man who walked with a stoop. His glasses were so thick that looking into his eyes was like peering into the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. If he was assaulted in prison, no matter what he did, the Jewish community would have been up in arms, so Corrections moved him into protective custody and set up a twenty-four-hour guard in front of his cell. It was like a suicide watch, but it went on for three months.
“I ran into Max Bauer in one of the courtrooms the day before Teitelbaum’s trial was supposed to start. He asked me to meet him in his office after court recessed for the day. I wasn’t surprised when he upped the ante. The kids, he told me, were reluctant to testify with their father present. Not reluctant, I take that back. They were afraid to testify. He’d filled their heads with tales of dybbuks and imps and devils, all the horrible creatures who’d attack them if they told their mother what he was doing. (I already knew this from their statements; that was one of the advantages of waiting it out.) In order to avoid a trial, Max would allow Teitelbaum to plead to a single count of neglect. He’d get six months and do three. On the other hand, if we insisted on a trial and Teitelbaum was found guilty on all counts, the DA’s office would push for the max on every count, sentences to run consecutively.
“The trial judge was a tough old bird named O’Brien. He was usually fair to both sides during a trial, but, upon conviction, he gave away time like Santa Claus gives away Christmas candy. I took the plea and the threat back to my client. Teitelbaum accepted the deal without hesitation and did the time, as they say, standing on his head. Three months in the same secure cell and he was back out on the street. A year later, he was arrested for the rape-murder of an eight-year-old Dominican girl.
“I know it was just my job, Stanley. I know all the bullshit rationalizations. The truth is that Teitelbaum was evil in just the way Davis Craddock is evil. He had no conscience, no sense of what he did to those girls. They were objects to be used for his pleasure, like an air conditioner or a toilet bowl. And I helped him get off. Instead of doing five years, he did three months…”
Moodrow got up and took two bowls off the shelf. “I don’t see where this is getting us. Does Teitelbaum make Craddock less dangerous?”
“After Teitelbaum committed the murder, I refused to handle any more child-abuse cases. Technically, Legal Aid lawyers are supposed to take whatever comes along, but the turnover at Legal Aid is so great, the administration tends to compromise, especially with experienced trial attorneys. But that didn’t make it right for me. I carried it around for years. Until I realized that nothing could make it right. The system would go on and on and on. Teitelbaums would continue to get off with light sentences, then go out and commit murder. I happen to think, on balance, our system is the best. It’s not perfect, mind you, just better than anything else I know about. But that belief doesn’t make it better. Teitelbaum was a tailor. He didn’t know a damn thing about trials or rules of evidence. If I’d told him there was no chance that a jury would find him innocent, he would have accepted the five years like any good psychopath. There are a number of prisons with specialized programs for sexual offenders. Maybe he would have gotten into a program. Maybe some psychiatrist would have reached him. One thing’s for sure, that particular little girl, Inez Escobedo, would be alive today. She’d be twenty-two years old.”
“I still don’t see how that makes it safe for you to go into Hanover House,” Moodrow insisted.
“Look, I don’t see how there could be any danger to me. I’m not going to walk up to the nearest Hanoverian and ask if I can speak to Michael Alamare. Davis Craddock doesn’t know anything about me. And I’ve also got the perfect background: a burnt-out Legal Aid lawyer searching for ‘something to believe in.’ ”
Moodrow pulled up short. “That’s pretty good. ‘A burnt-out Legal Aid lawyer…’ What happened at the conference?”
“It took place in the third building. The one farthest away from Houston Street. There were about a dozen Hanoverians in the room. One of them was wearing a jacket and a tie. He told us about the family and how destructive it was. He said that Hanover House is a greater threat to the culture than Communism, because it offers an alternative to the nuclear family. That’s why the media and the government constantly attack Hanoverian ideas. Then he went into the therapy itself. He said it was confrontational, designed to produce quick results for people who were strong enough to take it. There are rules that we’re supposed to follow from the first day. Like no drugs, ever. And no fighting with the other Hanoverians. ‘Minimum responsibility for our manifestations’ was the way he put it.”
“How many other candidates were there?”
“Four.”
“Did you see how many others signed up for therapy?”
“I was the only one who signed on the spot. The others said they wanted to think it over.”
“That’s because the cult’s reputation is so bad.” Moodrow began to spoon ice cream into two bowls. “That’ll also make Craddock suspicious about strangers coming in.” He shook his head firmly. “It’s not worth it, Betty. Not for the slight chance of coming upon Michael Alamare.”
“You know what’s bothering me, Stanley? It looks to me like everyone’s in it for the wrong reasons. Connie Alamare’s obsessed with her anger. You’re playing games with a maniac and cashing a paycheck. What about the child? How do you know the child hasn’t been killed? Or isn’t about to be killed? If you were responsible for the mother’s death, would you keep the child around?”
Moodrow, to Betty’s surprise, replied evenly. “Craddock’s gotta keep the child handy in case one of Flo Alamare’s pals decides to drop a dime about the kid. That’s assuming Flo was living in the commune before they found her in the Bronx. Which is not entirely clear.” Quickly, he outlined the information given to him by Tilley a few hours before. “I’m beginning to think Flo Alamare was part of whatever crew was handling this new drug, PURE. I remember a case in California about five or six years ago. Someone was making a drug in a lab and calling it China White. It killed a number of people before it disappeared. That was a lab mistake that caused that. Maybe it’s coming up the same way here. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if every half-assed chemist in the country was dreaming of some new drug to replace crack cocaine in the hearts of America’s drug consumers. Why not? Every time you turn the TV on, they show an eight-foot pile of money the cops took off some dealer. You know how that affects the creative criminal mind? They don’t see the bust or the skells in their handcuffs. All they see is the money.”
Betty poured herself a mug of coffee from the pot on the burner. She’d been after Moodrow to get himself a Mr. Coffee, but he preferred to make a pot in his old percolator, then reheat it on the stove. Betty poured milk into the mug, but it seemed to have no effect on the inky liquid.
“I screwed it up yesterday,” Moodrow said. “When I had the bodyguard alone in the office, I should have rolled up his sleeves. I should have checked his arms for tracks. But after I left Jim, I was walking toward Broadway, when I saw one of the Hanover Housecleaning trucks parked outside an office building. I went into the lobby and the Hanoverians were waxing the floors. Except for one guy in a blazer, they were wearing identical white short-sleeved shirts. I didn’t see any sign of tracks.”
Betty drank from the cup, then shivered. It was as bad as she’d expected. “I think you’re telling me that you don’t think Davis Craddock is holding Michael Alamare.”
“Yesterday, I was sure the kid was there. Now, I don’t know. I gotta go back up to the Bronx and talk to the doctors who treated Flo Alamare. Maybe she really did have a stroke. I mean Jim says PURE was being sold by a terminal street junkie named Deeny Washington. How could Deeny Washington get near Hanover House?” He stopped, then put his hand on Betty’s shoulder. “The thing of it is that Craddock’s dangerous. I know I can’t stop you from going in there. Maybe I don’t want to stop you. It’s what I’d do, if I were in your place. But if you’re gonna do it, I want you to take it seriously.”
Moodrow went to a closet in the hallway outside the kitchen and unlocked a small toolbox. The object he took out of it looked like a thick fountain pen.
“This is a one-shot, .38 caliber gun. We’ll go down to the range tomorrow and I’ll show you how to cock it and fire. I want you to carry it into Hanover House whenever you go there.”
“Stanley,” Betty said softly, “I really don’t think I could kill anyone.”
Moodrow’s face turned to stone. He smacked his palm down on the kitchen table. “In that case,” he said, his voice dripping sarcasm, “you oughta think about dropping the Mata Hari impression and just accept the guilt for Teitelbaum. Because, sure as shit, Davis Craddock wouldn’t have any trouble killing you.”
The call came in at ten-thirty and Moodrow, despite not having thought of Connie Alamare all evening, knew who it was before he picked up the phone.
“Hey, paisan, I just phoned to let you know that somebody’s doing something.”
Moodrow was tempted to hang up without replying, but that would only bring another, probably longer, call. “Like what?” he asked.
“My attorney dropped a subpoena on the big gumbah, himself. Davis Craddock has gotta come into court and testify about exactly when Flo and Michael left Hanover House.”
“When is this supposed to happen?”
Connie Alamare’s voice was more subdued when she replied. “Next month. It was the earliest date on the judge’s calendar.”
“What do you wanna bet Davis Craddock is gonna be out of town on the particular day? I got a fifty says he gets two postponements and then he lies. You want the bet?”
“So what are you doing? Eh, capotesta? Such a tough guy, but all you do is cash the checks. Maybe you were in it with that detective, Goobe. You and him—imbroglioni. Maledizione…”
“Stop working yourself up, Connie. What I’m doing is what I’m doing. You want a report, you’ll get one in writing. At the end of the month.”
“I don’t wanna wait to the end of the month to get my grandson.” She was shouting into the phone.
“For what?” Moodrow asked quietly.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Why do you want the kid, Connie? You bored? You need a toy to play with? A little kid, maybe? So you can make him into another Florence?”
“You bastard,” the old lady yelled. “You dirty bastard. You’re gonna hear from my lawyer.”
The phone went dead in Moodrow’s ear and he managed to find the receiver without turning his head. He wondered, for a moment, just what he’d do if he was taken off the case. Would he simply walk away, a mercenary without a paycheck? Or would he settle down and enjoy the game he was playing with Davis Craddock?”
“Was that Connie Alamare?” Betty’s voice drifted in from the bedroom.
“Yeah, that was the good widow herself.”
“She still crazy?”
“Actually, she’s gettin’ better. She’s cursing me in English, now.”
EIGHTEEN
KICKIN’ ON THE BOULEVARD is how the brothers put it. Drivin’ a big, black van with big, black windows. Scratchin’ out beats with the point of a knife against the dashboard. Rip this one up today, buy another one tomorrow. Singin’ about the heavy bread and all the sweet, sweet bitches that came with it. Singin’ about the “Pusher Man.”
“Song gotta be at least fifteen years old,” Wendell explained to his companion, Davis Craddock. “Back before nobody never heard about crack. Same shit, though, between them old days and right now. Nigger ain’t seven feet tall and can’t jump over the roof got only one way to get out. And it ain’t by steady beggin’ the white man for no bullshit job.”
They were driving north on FDR Drive, heading for the Bronx and a short conversation with a pure fool by the name of Billy Williams. Gonna pull the motherfucker’s card was what they was gonna do, but the crazy white man was actin’ like it wasn’t no more than a walk in the park.
“See here, Davis. Nothin’ make a brother feel better than pushin’ it back in the white man’s face. When a white man see me cruisin’ through his neighborhood, he thinkin’ one word: ‘nigger.’ When he see that my wheels costin’ twice more than his, he say that word out loud. When he see the gold hangin’ down my chest, he scream it: ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger’ till his tongue fall out his head.”
Craddock turned off the radio (he was taking it serious and Wendell appreciated that) and began tellin’ about how crazy his momma was and how his daddy hit the road and how he lived his life without no family and without no street either. How there was nothin’ in his life at all and how he made his life inside himself.
“That’s the only place to live it,” Craddock finished. “Inside yourself, so you know just who you are. I’m a nigger, too, but I’m invisible. Citizens who see me on the street don’t know what’s inside. I can’t change that…”
“Yeah, baby,” Wendell said playfully, “you can show the world your true intentions. Be like them jailhouse white boys. Get yo’ face tattooed. Little spider webs comin’ out from the corner of yo eyes. The pig see you cruisin’ down his street, he right away throw yo ass up against the car. Jus’ like they do for a brother.”
