“Bill, she’s a minor. We’re not supposed to interview her without her parent or guardian present. We did that once with that stripper kid, and it made me really uncomfortable.”
“That’s ’cause he stripped you.” I just kept staring at him. “Are you a cop, or her fucking lawyer?”
I stood my ground. “I’m trying to be an honest cop.”
Bill came out of the chair and this time I did step back. “Franny, you are really pissing me off. Take her a goddamn Coke.”
“All right, but I’m going to formally register my protest.”
The vending machine ate my dollar and burped out a can of Coke. I continued on to the interrogation rooms. The walls were a particular shade of puke green, and they seemed to hold the scent of flop sweat, alcohol, vomit, and blood. The girl was seated at the table, hands cuffed behind her back. I sat down the cold can of Coke and unlocked the handcuffs.
“Oh, you must be the good cop,” she said sarcastically, but her voice quavered on the final word.
I didn’t answer. Just pulled out the chair, swung it around, and straddled it, resting my arms on the back. “Officer Chen is calling your folks.”
“Just my mom. Dad took off four years ago.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, it was because of me,” she said, in answer to a question I hadn’t asked. Her tone was casual, but I watched the bottom lip of that vulnerable mouth quiver slightly.
Cop Frank saw the opening. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer?”
Cop Frank knew what he was supposed to say. It’s not necessary. We’re just having a friendly talk until your mom arrives. It’ll go better for you if you cooperate. But Lawyer Francis answered, “Yes, you should have a lawyer. Are you requesting one?”
She shook her head. “No, we can’t afford it.”
“There are public defenders,” I said. I figured Captain Mendelberg and a D.A. were behind the one-way glass cussing me out.
The joker girl said, “Yeah, and they suck.”
I couldn’t argue with that. There were always exceptions, but most P.D.s were young, overworked, and underpaid. Or angry attorneys from white-shoe law firms forced to do pro bono work. Then I remembered I knew one of the exceptions. He’d been a year ahead of me at Columbia and he was a joker; Charles Santiago Herriman. He was smart and had been inculcated by our Con Law professor Dr. Pretorius with a strong sense of outrage.
I wrote out Herriman’s name on my notepad and ripped off the page. “Here, this guy is good. Have your mom ask for him when she calls the P.D.’s office.”
“Okay, thanks.” The girl took a sip of Coke and glanced at the wall. Her upper teeth sketched her lower lip. “I was at a party. At Barrington Prep.”
I knew the school. It was a place where wealthy families sent their sons to prepare them for their future positions as legacies at Ivy League universities. “Sort of a long way from home, weren’t you?” Barrington was up the Upper West Side near Central Park.
She nodded. “I’m on the debate team at school. We debated Barrington last month. I met this boy…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “We’d been tweeting a lot, and we liked a lot of the same things—books, music—and I beat him in the debate so he knew I was smart. He invited me to a party.… Todd picked me up.” Her eyes filled with tears and her snout nose was a vivid red. She rubbed a hand across her nostrils, and snot gleamed on her skin. “I’ve never been in a Ferrari before. I felt so special…” Her voice trailed away, and her eyes filled with real tears that alternated with the red gunk. “But it was a Pig Party.”
My spine stiffened. It had begun at colleges where frat boys invited the ugliest girls they could find, and gave prizes to the boy who brought the worst. It was a nasty game and apparently it had filtered down to the high school level.
“I wanted to leave, but they said I was the Pig Queen, and I had to stay.” False imprisonment, my mind supplied. “They let the other girls leave, then they got in a circle around me and started pushing me back and forth between them. They made the freshmen kiss me.” I made a comforting noise, and she continued. “It was getting rougher and rougher. I think the punch was spiked. They sure seemed drunk. Then they got this long pin and a fake tail, and they started playing pin the tail on the piggy. They jabbed me a bunch of times.” Assault and battery, my mind supplied. She stood up and started to pull up her skirt. “I can show you.”
“Uh, I’d need a female officer,” I rushed to say, really not wanting to see her bootie. “We should get a medical examiner and a camera to document your claim.”
“It’s the truth!” she said, stung by the word “claim.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t, but we need evidence. But go on.”
She found the thread of the story again. “Todd and some of the older boys started yelling about how I had to give them blow jobs. They grabbed me and forced me onto my knees. Some of the boys already had their pants unzipped, and they were … hanging out.” She held up her second set of hands with those long claws and studied the tips. “I got scared. Real scared. So I dug my claws into a couple of their … things.” I winced. “They were all shouting and screaming. I ripped Todd’s pocket and got the car key. Then I ran.”
“Why bring the car to the Demon Princes?” I asked.
“As I was driving away I heard Todd shouting. I guess his dad didn’t know he’d taken the car. I wanted to make him pay.” She hung her head.
“Okay. So, I assume there’ll be a mark on their … penises.”
She nodded. “This gunk is like ink. I’ve done tattoos for some of my friends.” She reacted to my expression. “Flowers and things. They’re pretty.”
“I’m sure they are. Look, uh—”
The door opened and a plump woman who looked like she’d thrown on her clothes rushed into the room. “Joanie, honey. What’s happened? Are you okay?”
“Oh, Mommy!” Sobs and hugs ensued.
The young D.A. who was on duty came in and indicated for me to leave. “You’re daughter’s in some trouble, ma’am,” I heard him say as I left.
♠
Work consumed my waking hours and even invaded my dreams. For some reason I couldn’t get the ugly joker girl out of my head. Maybe it was that beautiful mouth. Maybe because the entire neighborhood was discussing the case.
I was discovering that Jokertown was a tight-knit community. People knew of Joan, her accomplishments and goals. I went in to buy tomatoes only to hear Mr. Flannigan the greengrocer talking with Mrs. Synderman about how this might cost Joan her scholarship to Princeton. They both clammed up at my entrance, and I didn’t think it was just because I was a nat. I was the man who’d arrested Joan. The old joker men playing endless games of speed chess discussed Joan. Even in the precinct the joker officers occasionally murmured about the case.
I decided to call over to the D.A.’s office and inquire about the case, and I was shocked to discover they were throwing the book, the kitchen sink, and everything else at her. I raised the fact that she had been held against her will and assaulted. It’s strange how sometimes you can “hear” a shrug across phone lines. “It’s her word against theirs.”
“And her daddy isn’t a state legislator.”
“That isn’t why—”
I cut him off. “Yeah, right.”
“You’re not going to be trouble, are you?”
“Let’s just say you better be ready to treat me like a hostile witness.” I slammed down the phone. Bill looked up from where he was shoveling Shanghai spicy noodles into his mouth.
“You gotta learn to let things go, Franny. We arrest ’em. You don’t look back, and you don’t second-guess the learned counselors.”
“Even if I’m one of them?”
“You do that and then everyone will hate you,” he said.