He photographed her, fingerprinted her, then set up his tape recorder.
There then followed a brief discussion about whether she could be deposed under oath.
Since they were outside the United States, they agreed that after the interview Janek would prepare a statement in English based on what she told him, Luis would translate the statement into Spanish, then Tania would sign both versions and swear to their truthfulness before a Cuban judge. When all that was settled and Tania assured him she was ready, Janek turned on his tape recorder. Then he hit her with his first question, designed to set a no-nonsense tone and catch her off guard.
"Did you have anything to do with the murder of Edith Mendoza?"
Tania laughed. "Are you serious?"
"Please answer the question."
"Of course not! I know what they did. I can tell you that what they said Her black eyes flashed.
"You ran away the night of the murder. Why?"
"I was scared! As you would have been if you'd been in my position.
Mrs. Mendoza told me she was meeting a friend that afternoon at the studio. She asked me to come by afterwards and clean up. Nothing special about that. That was a normal part of my duties. I remember exactly what happened, almost as if it were yesterday. I got there just after seven.
I saw her as soon as I walked in, hanging there in front of me, body battered, deep purple most of it. I screamed. I believe I screamed a lot. I had never seen anything like that before.
Then I ran out, flagged down a said. I read all about about me was lies." cab, rushed back to Central Park West, packed my stuff and left. I hid out that night with a friend in Harlem, then, next morning, caught a bus to Montreal. I spent my second night at the YWCA, bought a plane ticket in the morning and flew down here. I've been living here ever since."
"The Metaxas letter-"
"I know all about it," she snapped. "What he wrote about me was a lie."
"Pefia backed him up."
"Pefia lied!"
"Everyone lied-is that what you're claiming?"
"Sure, and why not? I wasn't there to refute them, so they said whatever came into their heads." She smiled bitterly. "You police lied, too, because I never met Metaxas, I never arranged anything with him, I never even knew what he looked like. Why are we talking about this anyway?"
Her tone showed impatience. "I read that that letter was a forgery.
Wasn't it? Isn't that what they said?"
Uh-oh, here we go. Janek shook his head. Tania sat beside him, glaring, breathing in short, tight, angry gasps. She was smoldering and his only thought was that it was always this way with Mendoza-it made people crazy, everyone who touched it, every single person, including himself.
"If what you say is true-"
"It's true," she added scornfully.
"Then, why didn't you come forward?"
"Why should I? What did it have to do with me?"
"You say you knew about the Metaxas letter. Then, you must have known it was that letter, along with Rudolfo Pefia's testimony, that got Mendoza convicted."
"So what?"
Oh, the lady's tough! "You didn't care if an innocent man was convicted of murder?" "Who said he was innocent?"
"You think he-?"
"Who cares what I think? You don't understand." Janek shook his head. "I guess not."
"It didn't matter to me that Metaxas never wrote that letter. Or, if he did, that he lied in it. Your great American judicial system!
You're so puffed up about it, you don't see how most of the time it doesn't work. Poor, innocent dark-skinned people are sent to prison while rich, white, guilty old men walk free." She made a vulgar gesture.
"I shit on your judicial system! Do you understand, Lieutenant Janek? I puke upon it! And anyway"-she worked to control her breathing-"I am sure Mendoza killed her." Tania shrugged. "Not that it mattered. They were both pieces of crap. What did I care?
And who would have believed me anyway? When I came down here I went to see a friend of my father's, a lawyer. He told me I did the right thing, that the way things work up in gringoland, I could have been convicted with Mendoza as an accessory." She laughed. "You make people's beds, pick up their dirty underwear, scrub shit crust off their toilet seats, and you're supposed to care! They were rich, foul, vulgar people. Far as I'm concerned, they got what they deserved!"
Tirade finished, Tania sat back, then stiffly crossed her arms. The message was clear: That's how Ifeel and to hell with what you or anybody thinks.
Janek called a break. Tania-passionate, educated and articulate-was not what he had expected. He turned off the tape recorder, Luis cracked a little joke, the three of them laughed, then Tania went into the kitchen to prepare tea. While they waited, Luis asked Janek about the Metaxas letter.
"What is it, Frank? Why is it so important?" Janek explained that Gus Metaxas was a failed Greek- American boxer, nicknamed "the Animal," who had allegedly been one of several boxers from Pinelli's Gym who engaged in paid sexual encounters with the Mendozas.
Three weeks into the investigation, Metaxas, who lived in a cheap hotel room near Penn Station, was found dead in his bloody bath water of self-inflicted cuts across his wrists. On his bedroom dresser was a suicide note, written in what police experts testified was his hand. In his note Metaxas wrote that he had been hired by Tania Figueras to have a sexual assignation with Edith Mendoza the day of her murder, and that the night before, at a private meeting, Jake Mendoza had paid him twenty-five hundred dollars to beat his wife to death. Twenty-five hundred more was to be paid after the deed was done. Metaxas had killed himself, he wrote, out of remorse for his awful crime.
"Was there supporting evidence?" "Plenty," Janek said. "Metaxas's mother, who lived in Chicago, received a money order for five thousand dollars mailed the day of Gus's suicide. Since everyone knew Gus was broke, his possession of that much cash supported his story. Then there was the testimony of his best friend and sparring partner, a Cuban-American fighter named Rudolfo Peiia. Peha testified Gus had confessed the whole thing several days before he took his final bath."
"Sounds convincing," Luis said.
"It was, although the defense tried to laugh it off. They had their own theory-that we, the cops, forced Metaxas to write the note and kill himself, that we provided the five thousand dollars for the money order and pressured Pefia to give false testimony. The jury didn't believe that, so Mendoza got convicted."
"And then-?"
"Then what, Luis?" "Tania said something about a forgery."
Janek exhaled. "That came up a couple years later. A high-ranking officer named Dakin, chief of our Department of Internal Affairs, brought in some evidence he claimed snowea that the defense theory of a police conspiracy might have been correct after all. There was a departmental hearing. In effect, my old partner, who'd headed the Mendoza investigation, went on trial. I acted as his defense counsel under a special provision whereby one officer may call upon another, rather than an attorney, to manage his defense. We successfully rebutted Dakin's so-called evidence.
After that Dakin resigned. But from then on the case was tainted.
Worse, it split our department. There're still people, including many cops, who think we fabricated the evidence against Mendoza because we couldn't make a legitimate case."
"You don't believe that?"
"I try to keep an open mind."
"That's why you came to Cuba?"
Janek nodded. "Trouble is, if Tania's telling the truth, then something was very wrong."
After they drank their tea and the examination resumed, Tania dropped her second bombshell of the morning: Edith Mendoza, she said, had not been blackmailed by the murdered cop, Clury; rather, Edith had hired Clury to gather evidence against Jake.
"She hated her husband. She told me many times. She found him disgusting and wanted a divorce. But she wanted a big financial settlement, too. So she hired this detective, Clury, who had done investigative work for Mr.