Robert Tanenbaum - Outrage

“I think we should tell Dad.”

“So you want your father to fight your battles for you?”

Giancarlo furrowed his brow, surprised that the debate had taken this sudden twist. “I guess I was thinking this is the sort of thing that adults handle.”

“Maybe,” Sobelman said. “When there is no other choice, maybe you will have to enlist your father’s help. But if that is your first response, what have you learned from this experience? Rather than standing up yourself and saying this is wrong, and maybe suffering personal consequences, you’d rather some higher authority do it for you. Count on the government, perhaps, to make those tough decisions that you don’t want to really know about. Just so long as the streets are safe at night and the trains run on time, eh? Oh, and of course, hope that when the crisis has passed, the government remembers to return your rights to you.”

Zak nodded. “Right, so we don’t tell Dad,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to Max and Chase and get them to lay off… if Esteban comes back.” He looked for approval from Sobelman. “How’s that?”

Sobelman smiled and patted his hand. “You do what you think is right; you’re almost a man now. But remember what I told you about the bar mitzvah being more than a right of passage. It is the day you become morally responsible for your actions in the eyes of God and man.”

Zak sighed. “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

Although it was only midmorning, Monday already promised to be an unseasonably warm day in the Bronx. It showed in the desultory attitudes of the youths hanging out on the northwest corner of Mullayly Park as they stopped talking and watched the attractive white woman approach.

She was petite but otherwise unremarkable, except that she was walking a dog that easily weighed as much as she did and looked like it could eat the local pit bulls for snacks. The youths hoped the pair would pass on by, but instead the woman and her dog walked right up to them.

“Are you Raymond?” she asked a tall black kid in front of the group.

“Who wants to know?” Raymond replied, trying to hold his ground and not look intimidated while keeping an eye on the dog, who he thought was staring at him like he was a leg of fried chicken.

Marlene noted the look and smiled. Walk softly, she thought, but with a big dog, especially in the Bronx.

It had been nearly a week since her meeting with Alejandro Garcia and Amelia Acevedo. She had been able to meet with Felix the following day in the company of Alea Watkins, who looked like an English teacher but fought in the courtroom like a barroom bouncer. She’d listened to Marlene’s presentation and then said she’d be happy to take the Manhattan case. In the meantime, Marlene would work as a private investigator for Felix.

After his indictment, Felix Acevedo had been transferred from the Bronx jail to the Tombs, otherwise known as the Manhattan House of Detention for Men, which was situated at the northern end of the Criminal Courts Building complex. It was a massive gray building; if the exterior was cheerless and imposing it was even more oppressive within its cold stone walls, steel gates, and cell bars.

Marlene had wrinkled her nose at the smell of the place as she and Watkins passed through security and were escorted to an interview room. It smelled of unwashed bodies, splashed urine, industrial-strength cleansers, and the acrid aroma of fear.

Some of the latter was coming from Felix, who was waiting for them seated in a chair on the other side of a table. His head was down and he did not look up when they entered.

“Hello, Felix, my name is Marlene Ciampi and this is Alea Watkins,” she said, standing before him. “Your mother has asked Ms. Watkins to represent you for your case in Manhattan and I’m going to help look into the allegations. I’m a friend of Alejandro Garcia, so I hope you’ll trust me and tell us the truth no matter what.”

At the mention of his mother and Garcia, Felix looked up hopefully. It was then that the women saw that behind his thick glasses his left eye was swollen shut by an ugly purple bruise, and his upper lip appeared to have been split, requiring several stitches to close.

“Did that happen in here?” Watkins asked as they sat down across from him. The young man nodded. “Do you know who did it?” He dropped his eyes and didn’t answer. “Are you afraid you’ll get hurt if you tell us?” He nodded.

Watkins and Marlene exchanged glances. “We’ll see if we can get you moved to a safer place,” Watkins said. “In the meantime, are you okay with me representing you?”

Acevedo shook his head. “My dad will be angry.”

The statement caught the women off guard. “Because you’ve been arrested?” Watkins asked.

Felix shook his head again. “Because lawyers cost money.”

The women smiled. “That’s okay, Felix,” Watkins said. “We’re going to help you for free. All you have to do is tell us the truth. Remember, we’re your lawyers; anything you tell us is a secret and we won’t tell anyone else without your permission.”

Acevedo looked troubled. “I told the truth but they didn’t believe me.”

“Who didn’t believe you?” Marlene asked.

“The detectives.”

Marlene leaned across the table. “Were you telling the truth when you said you killed Dolores Atkins, Olivia Yancy, and Beth Jenkins?”

“They said I did.”

“That’s not what I asked you, Felix,” Marlene said gently. “Did you kill those women?”

Felix looked frightened for a moment. Then he shook his head as tears sprang into his eyes. “I didn’t kill nobody. I would never hurt no ladies.” He looked around fearfully as if he expected the detectives to materialize. “They showed me horrible photographs and said I did that to those ladies. I just wanted them to stop. Now I can’t sleep. I have nightmares… And it’s terrible in here. It smells bad and people are mean. And at night… at night… they scream and cry. Please, can I go home?”

It took the women a few minutes to get Felix to calm down. When he finally relaxed a little, Marlene asked him to recall everything he could beginning the night before his arrest. Although Alejandro had told her about Acevedo’s special ability, they were both surprised at the detail of his recollections of what had happened, especially conversations. He seemed to recall these verbatim-from the confrontation with the coat-check girl’s boyfriend to his conversations with Garcia and the police officers who arrested him.

The two women had not yet seen the transcripts of his alleged confession to Graziani and the Q amp; A statement he gave to the assistant district attorney; because of the magnitude of the investigation the DA was still gathering the voluminous police reports to give to the defense. Yet he repeated the back-and-forth between himself and the detectives as though he’d memorized lines from a play.

“I told Detective Graziani that I wasn’t at Olivia’s apartment and he said, ‘You’re lying, Felix. We showed a witness your mug shot; he’s sure it was you he saw coming out of the apartment building. Don’t bullshit me, Felix.’”

Marlene and Alea Watkins had exchanged looks at the mention of a witness claiming to have seen Felix leaving the apartment building. “What did you say then?” Watkins asked.

“I said, ‘Okay, I won’t.’ And he said, ‘You remember being in Olivia’s apartment, right?’”

Acevedo sighed and slumped down in his seat. “I just wanted him to stop asking me questions so I told him, ‘Yeah. I remember now. Olivia. She’s my girlfriend.’”

Marlene and Watkins looked at each other in alarm. This was a new twist. “Your girlfriend?” Marlene asked.