“Just to be clear, Ms. Cooper, this is the same matter on which your office requested a remand of this defendant just twenty-four hours ago?”
“It is, Your Honor.”
“Would you mind detailing some of the changed circumstances?”
“Of course,” I said, picking up my list of Blanca’s lies to read into the record.
I could barely hear myself speak over the rumble of the reporters behind me.
“Thank you, Ms. Cooper. Three weeks? Do you think you can resolve some of these issues in that time, Mr. Howell?”
“I am most certain, Judge Donnelly, that we can figure out the misunderstanding between the two parties by then.”
I wanted to scream out loud at Lem’s choice of the word “misunderstanding.” Buried in Blanca Robles’s twisted telling of the short encounter I was pretty sure there was a crime.
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Three weeks is fine.”
“May 20,” she said. “Are you able to arrange the surrender of your client’s passport, Mr. Howell?”
“If Detective Wallace would be so kind,” Lem said, reaching out his hand to me. “I believe the police, in their haste to detain my distinguished client, seized both his personal and his diplomatic passports.”
Lem underscored his point about MGD’s international prominence. Mercer passed both documents to Lem, who gave them to the clerk.
“Mr. Gil-Darsin, you’ll be taken in the back by the officers and processed for immediate discharge,” the judge said, with one more bang of her gavel after she announced that court was adjourned.
The defendant wrapped his arms around Lem Howell and gave one emphatic fist pump to the audience.
Reporters scrambled over one another to dash out of their seats and phone in their headlines.
I called Pat McKinney to urge him to move Battaglia to the front steps of 100 Centre Street as quickly as he could, before the unruly crowd assembled. I wanted him to make his remarks with as much dignity as possible, before Gil-Darsin played to the cameras.
I was the last one to leave the darkened courtroom, thinking that this had been the worst week of my entire life.
FORTY-FOUR
“Every accuser,” Paul Battaglia said, speaking into the bank of microphones that covered the entire podium, “every victim of a sexual assault who comes forward and reports these heinous crimes, is entitled to be met with the utmost respect by the men and women of the NYPD and my great office.”
Pat McKinney and I flanked the district attorney. The rest of the team lined up behind us, with Mercer over my shoulder, while the district attorney went on to describe the background of Blanca Robles and her odyssey through the week’s interviews.
“Tens of thousands of witnesses come to our office every year, from diverse and frequently difficult circumstances, many with imperfect pasts. If we are convinced they are truthful about the crimes committed against them, and will tell the truth at trial, we will ask a jury to consider their testimony to prove a crime.”
He had added an important riff about the proud history and high priority of his long tenure in seeking justice for sex crimes victims and protecting the vulnerable immigrant population of the city.
“…In this particular instance, the nature and number of the accuser’s falsehoods,” Battaglia said, reading the words I had written, having edited them to fit his personal style, “the shifting and inconsistent version of events she gave surrounding her encounter in room number twenty-eight-oh-six of the Eurotel…”
The sea of reporters packed the entire roadway. Police had blocked off Centre Street from Hogan Place to White Street with the interlocking gray aluminum partitions-ironically known as French barriers-that had replaced wooden sawhorses for crowd control a decade ago. Uniformed officers stood side by side across the length of the curb that bordered 100 Centre Street.
A single car-a black limousine that would no doubt whisk Mohammed Gil-Darsin to his temporary home in Manhattan-was the sole vehicle that was positioned in front of the courthouse.
The only people standing still, not jostling to push closer to the steps from which Battaglia spoke, were the six enormous bodyguards-who looked as though they’d been plucked from some rapper’s entourage and who surrounded the sleek stretch sedan.
The district attorney commented on many of the specifics that had complicated Blanca Robles’s story. He separated those misstatements that were extrinsic to the alleged assault-asylum, bank accounts, tax records, phone calls-from those that related directly to her face-off with MGD and its immediate aftermath.
“…and my team, composed of some of the most experienced, senior lawyers on my staff, and representatives of this country’s pioneering and premier sex crimes prosecution unit, has ultimately been unable to credit the accuser’s version of the events of last Saturday beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Pat McKinney and I stared straight ahead. The late-afternoon sun was beginning to drop behind the Family Court building, but neither the direct glare nor the breeze sweeping in from the Hudson River caused even an eyelash to flutter.
“If we do not believe this accuser beyond a reasonable doubt at this time, then I cannot ask any one of these prosecutors to stand in front of a jury and ask them to require that of twelve good citizens of this county.
“We will press forward with our investigation, ladies and gentlemen. We urge the full cooperation of our witness, who has come to speak to us now only through her lawyer, Byron Peaser.
“We ask again, as we have from the outset, that she participate within the structure of the criminal justice system, rather than holding forth in media interviews and sponsored appearances. We hope that you, members of the Fourth Estate, will respect our need to see that justice is done.
“For today, we are left with no choice but to request the release of Mohammed Gil-Darsin, the defendant in this case, on his own recognizance, while we continue our search for the truth. Thank you very much.”
Two detectives from the DA’s squad moved in on either side of Paul Battaglia and escorted him inside the north entrance hall of 100 Centre Street and toward the back way into the DA’s office.
The brief statement in front of the building had been choreographed so that Battaglia would disappear before MGD was brought down from Part 31 to the south entrance hall of the vast lobby. The podium was left in place for Lem Howell and his client.
“Let’s go,” I said, turning to my colleagues. We were the only ones moving from our positions.
“Don’t you want to see this, Al?” Ryan asked. “Lem Howell dancing on your-”
“Not on my grave, Ryan. Don’t overdo this.”
“You’ve got to see him in action.”
“I’d rather have a drink.”
“We can’t leave now,” Mercer said. “We’ll look like we’re running away from something. Let’s just move off to the side. Prop yourself back against that wall and take it all in.”
Mickey Diamond and the guys from the local papers, who knew all of us, were trying to get our attention. “McKinney! What’s the tagline?”
Pat McKinney shook his head at the group in front.
“Alex!” Diamond screamed out. “Gimme something about how it feels right now, will you? Watching this perv walk out of here, Alex. How can you stand by and just stomach the whole thing?”
“Do you think he really did it?” It was one of the other reporters waving a microphone in midair.
The five of us were no longer standing quite so tall. I leaned against the massive pillar between the two entrances and covered my mouth with my hand to talk to Mercer.
“How I feel right now isn’t fit for print. What about you?”
“Right there with you.”
“The bastard did something to her in those twenty minutes in that hotel room, that’s what’s at the bottom of all this. He just picked the right vic, didn’t he?”