My relationship with Mike Chapman was more complicated, both professionally and personally, in style and in substance. Mike’s father, Brian, had been one of the most decorated officers on the force throughout the twenty-six years he’d served. He raised his family-Mike had three older sisters-in the then working-class section of Yorkville in Manhattan. His great pride was his only son’s success as a student whose knowledge of military history ranked him near the top of his class at Fordham University, guaranteeing the father that his son wouldn’t be risking his life every day on the city streets.
But Brian suffered a massive coronary two days after turning in his gun and shield, and although Mike Chapman stayed on course to get his degree, he enrolled in the police academy immediately after graduation because he admired his father so deeply. Even in his rookie year he distinguished himself with arrests made in the drug-related Christmas Day massacre of a Colombian family in Washington Heights. His only interest was in working homicide, and he fast won a place in the Manhattan North squad, which was responsible for every murder case on the island above 59th Street.
I met Mike my first year as a prosecutor. All the men and women who’d taught me the ropes-evaluating case merits and witness credibility, giving the job every ounce of one’s intellect and intuition, learning when it was essential to visit the scene of a crime and how to interrogate the vilest of criminal types-all of them required of us the most professional responses.
Then I was introduced to the Chapman modus operandi. Mike trusted no one except the closest of his colleagues, had a sixth sense about people that was rarely off target, was able to keep an emotional distance from his victims and their families, and without ever breaking the law he had a keen ability to go a bit rogue, a bit wild cowboy, and constantly tried to push me to take that ride with him.
Somewhere along the line, Mike Chapman had become my closest friend. Maybe it was because even though I had fiercely loyal bonds to Nina, Joan, and the girlfriends who kept me grounded, there was no one else with whom I’d spent so many days and nights who understood the pressures of the job and what it meant to live with such extraordinary responsibility-the fate of victims and perps alike-while going about the ordinary business of daily life.
Mike’s intelligence was often unexpected by adversaries or upper-crust witnesses who figured the blue-collar background limited him in some fashion. His dark humor, whether appropriate or not, undercut almost every situation in which we’d found ourselves. His courage was a constant reminder to me of my own irrational phobias. And then there were his good looks-at about six-two, he was three or four inches taller than me, with a thick head of jet-black hair, strong features, and a ready smile.
It was an attraction that confused me as much as it delighted me. There were times I had felt the pull of a romantic entanglement, but I knew that it wouldn’t work because of the jobs we had. If I gave any thought to dating Mike-even though he’d never suggested as much-I knew that Battaglia would relieve me of my position. He wouldn’t allow the impression that a top detective was closing cases or eliciting confessions because he was sleeping with a supervising prosecutor.
Mike’s one great love-an architect named Valerie Jacobson-died in a skiing accident two years back, and he had slipped into one of his darkest moods as a result of her death. I thought he was beginning to come out of that depression, but there was so much of himself that he kept encased in an impenetrable shell that there were times I was the last to know what went on inside his head.
I ate a bit of the snack that was offered and read a few news articles. In the feature section of the paper was a photograph of a woman, strikingly pretty and dressed to the nines as she exited a restaurant near the Champs Élysées after dinner on Saturday. The subject looked vaguely familiar to me-a light-skinned black woman, tall and too thin to be anything but a model. It wasn’t Iman, but I looked down for the caption because I thought I recognized her from similar single-name runway fame. Kali. Of course, Kali. Her magnificent face had graced scores of magazine covers. KALI BLESSÉE! the headline read.
The French word blessé seemed oxymoronic to me. It caught my eye because the Anglo-Saxon meaning was so benevolent-to sanctify or make holy-so I scanned the piece to see what good luck had befallen the glamorous woman. It took me a second to recall that the translation here was “wounded.” I read on.
The supermodel Kali, also Ivorian, was the wife of Mohammed Gil-Darsin, as this article made clear. I was dumbfounded to learn that. The piece quoted her closest friends who had been with her Sunday morning when she got the call about her husband’s arrest. “Her screams pierced the air like a wounded animal,” the reporter claimed, when Baby Mo’s lawyers told her the story.
The wounded wife. I had spent countless hours in the presence of women who sat in the front row of a courtroom behind husbands charged with rape, murder, child abuse, and every other brutal act. Some obviously believed in the men they stood by, others were advised by counsel to suck it up through trial because jurors would be impressed that the women loved their spouses enough to disbelieve the charges, and yet a few more had been known to stick close first, then lash out later at the offenders, after the verdict was delivered.
I had heard those shrieks of wounded wives, had seen them scratch and kick at Mercer Wallace as their husbands were handcuffed and taken away. I’d been cursed by them in just about every dialect under the sun, on my way out of station houses or into the courtroom, even stalking me through the streets when I left the office at night.
My seatmate saw me staring at the photo of Kali. “You know her in the States?”
“She’s very famous, actually. Very beautiful.”
“Show that to your police, will you? They think a man who gets into bed with a woman like that any night he chooses wants to get it on with a peasant who takes out the trash? An illegal immigrant, I heard today, from Central America. Gil-Darsin’s got filet mignon at home, but he’s forcing down a helping of rice and beans on his way to the plane? It’s too ridiculous to believe.”
For some, it always comes down to the physical appearance of the accuser. If she’s too good-looking, then she must have asked for it. If she’s homely or overweight, then what sane man would bother with raping her?
“It happens every day.” Not just with the rich and famous, the prominent and powerful, but in every variable of human interaction one might imagine.
“What did you say?” he asked.
I didn’t have the energy to take him on. I turned my head away, pulled the blanket up to my chin, and slept for most of the rest of the flight because I expected long hours of work ahead.
The descent into JFK was smooth. We taxied to the gate as everyone turned on cell phones and waited impatiently for the plane to dock and doors to open.
I stayed in my seat while those with connecting flights crowded the aisles to make their exit. I hefted my small tote onto my shoulder and started the long walk to retrieve my luggage from the carousel and get to Customs. I knew Rose had dispatched one of Battaglia’s security team to meet me, so it was likely that I would be whisked through the process.
As I approached the queues separating citizens from foreigners, I had my passport in hand and looked on the far side of the customs agents for familiar faces but saw none.
Off to the left, in the last line marked U.S. PASSPORTS ONLY, I saw the striking figure of Kali-all six feet of her-with oversized dark glasses, dressed entirely in black, arguing with a government official. Two men behind him, probably private investigators from the defense team, looked like they were trying to pull strings to get her through.