Sol Stein - Other people

"I'll wait down here," said Bill.

"You won't go away, will you?"

"I'll be here."

In the room marked "Detectives," as soon as I said the word again, the detective, a very freckled man of forty, pulled a form out of the drawer and said "Sit tight" as he went to get a police matron. The matron was older than the detective. Why is it, I thought, in a police station nobody says hello to you, nobody shakes your hand?

The matron said something to the detective that I couldn't hear and the detective nodded. They led the way into a private room and shut the door. The detective offered me a cigarette. I shook my head. The matron sat at the side of the table.

"All right," said the detective. "When did the alleged offense take place?"

I told him.

"Where?"

I told him.

"Can you describe the alleged assailant?"

"I know who he is."

The detective looked up at me, then at the matron. "Before you give us the name, I have to make you aware that if you accuse someone, you could be subject to a suit for false arrest."

"Even if he's guilty?"

"Well, not too many allegations of rape draw convictions, miss."

The green walls of the small room had not been painted for a long time. There were marks where the backs of chairs had scraped against the paint. A two-year-old calendar had not been removed. Near it, some flakes of faded paint had fallen from the wall.

"Well, give us the name, miss."

I looked at the freckled face that was anxious to get this bit of work out of the way.

"Isn't rape a serious crime?"

The detective flicked a look at the matron. "Oh yes, miss," he said, "it always goes with the major crime statistics. The problem, please understand, is that nobody reports an armed robbery that didn't take place. Or a murder. But a lot of the alleged rape cases that walk in here turn out to be, well, borderline seduction, or fantasy, or won't hold up because there are no witnesses, no proof, and nowhere to look for it."

"I am not a rape case," I said. "I am a person reporting a crime."

The detective moved his bottom on the chair, squirming. He seemed the type that always felt uncomfortable with women he didn't know.

"Please spell his name."

I spelled Harry Koslak. "He lives in the apartment above me. I think he owns an Esso station in the neighborhood. At least he seems to be the boss there."

"Did he force his way into your apartment?"

I thought Should I have a lawyer with me? I haven't been accused of anything. I'm filing a complaint, why do I feel trapped?

The detective was waiting for an answer.

"I let him in."

The detective glanced at the matron again. Another one of those.

"He came to borrow a cup of sugar."

The detective started to smile, then stopped, a checked swing. "Do the neighbors in that building come around to borrow things often?"

He wasn't writing answers now.

"That was the first time."

"Didn't it strike you as strange that a man would come around for a cup of sugar?"

"No. He said his wife was cooking something and had run out."

"Okay. Tell me what happened. Keep to the facts. What you saw. What you said, what he said, what you and he did. No speculations."

I told him, eliding a few of the details.

"Did you go to the hospital?"

"Yes."

"What did they do?"

"Can I talk to the matron about this?"

"You're talking to both of us, miss."

"I mean can I talk to her with you out of the room?"

The freckled man lifted himself from the chair, closed the door behind him. The matron sat at the desk where the detective had been. She picked up the ball point pen he'd been using.

"They combed for pubic hairs."

"Semen test?" the matron asked,

"No. I'd douched. Took a bath first, then douched four times."

"Never do that!"

"I didn't know. I hadn't had the experience before. Nobody warned me."

"We'd better call him back in. He knows these forms better than I do. He'll see what I write anyway. Okay?"

I nodded.

"All right," the detective said, resuming his seat, and glancing at what the matron had written. "Is there any way you can identify the alleged assailant?"

"I've seen him around. I've passed him on the stairs. I've been to the gas station."

"Are you friendly?"

"With him? No, first time we spoke was when he came for the sugar."

"Can you identify anything about him that somebody wouldn't ordinarily see?"

"He's got a tattoo."

"What kind of tattoo?"

"It says Mary. It's on his upper arm."

"Anybody could see that."

"He wears overalls going to and from work."

"Well, you might have seen him in summertime with a short-sleeved shirt."

"I didn't live in that house in the summertime."

"Anything else?"

I thought of the strange curve of his erect member, the point he had made about it.

"No," I said.

"If you saw nude photographs of six men, just the torsos, could you pick him out?"

"I don't know."

"You saw him naked didn't you?"

"I wasn't making a study of him. I was scared."

"Sure, sure. I understand. I just want to know if there's anything that will interest the D.A."

"Is there?"

"Truthfully, hardly anything."

"There must be something that can be done!"

"Keep cool, miss. We could pay a visit to this Mr. Koslak. See what he says. He'll deny it, of course. No reason for him not to."

"He'd know I'd been to the police. He'll kill me unless you do something about him."

"Like what?"

"I suppose you can arrest him."

"I don't think there's enough to go on here."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"You've done it, miss. You've filed a report. If it happens again — I see on this report — well, don't douche or anything, go straight to the hospital."

"Is that the only kind of proof there is?"

"You could scratch, get some skin under your fingernails."

"He's strong, he could—"

"Well, you shouldn't ever do anything that would endanger your safety."

"You mean let him do it."

The detective said nothing.

"I know what you mean. Then I wouldn't be resisting, so it wouldn't be rape, would it? What the hell can you do?! "

The matron came over and put her hand on my shoulder. It wasn't the hand of a sister. It was the hand of a policewoman.

I found Bill downstairs, thumbing the pages of a beat-up police magazine.

"Finished?" he asked.

"Let's get out of here."

I sat in Bill's car shivering.

"Are you cold?" Bill asked.

"No."

"You look," he said, trying to keep his voice light, "like a machine about to self-destruct."

I didn't respond. We sat in silence for a few minutes.

My voice was a near whisper when I spoke. I could see Bill straining to hear and to understand.

"It's like one of those nightmares, you go to one place and then another and another trying to get some official to understand what you're trying to say, and you just get shunted about, and nothing happens till you want to scream doesn't anyone believe me!"

"What would you like me to do?" asked Bill.

"I didn't mean you. I meant the police, the authorities, somebody."

"You're still shaking."

"Would you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Call Dr. Koch. Call this number." I wrote it down on the back of a grocery receipt from my purse. "Tell him I'm coming down. You don't have to drive me. I'll take a cab."

"I'll drive you." Bill slipped out of the driver's seat and called from a pay booth on the corner.

"Dr. Koch wasn't very friendly."

"Oh he's friendly. He probably just doesn't like to see people at this hour of the night. Did he say okay?"

Bill nodded and turned the ignition on. He didn't tell me till later that Koch seemed very concerned until he asked who Bill was, and when Bill identified himself, it was then the coldness came into Koch's voice.