Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller (38 page)

“Yes, it’s — she’s my girlfriend — now — I guess. That’s not how it started, though.”

“Have you been intimate?”

I squirmed in my chair. “Well, it got that way.”

“Do you want to explain what you mean by that?”

“Not really,” I said.

Mrs. Dury gave me her chilly smile. “I’m afraid I need to know what you mean. If it embarrasses you to talk about it, then I’ll ask a few simple questions and you can just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

I didn’t say anything, because I was thinking it over. She must have taken that silence for embarrassment, because she began asking her questions.

“Did you and Amy Bedford have a relationship that included any sexual acts?”

“Yes, but only at the end. Just one time.”

“Could you please raise your voice a little, Billy? I had difficulty hearing you.”

No wonder. I was almost whispering. I repeated it more loudly.

“Did those sexual acts go as far as your penetrating her vagina with your penis?”

A throb of pain shot through my heart. “That one time,” I said.

“Is that a yes? Do you mean, ‘Yes, I penetrated her vagina with my penis?’”

“Yes. I did that. Once.”

“Where did that act take place?”

“In our bed.”

“You said ‘our.’ Do you mean you shared a bed?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where was that bed?”

“In a room we had on Rivington Street in Manhattan.”

“You were there for more than one night?”

“For three nights.”

“But the act you described only happened once?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just that once.”

“Did you have Amy’s permission, Billy, to penetrate her vagina with your penis?”

“Sure I did. Do you think I raped her? Mrs. Dury, I didn’t come here to talk about all that. I feel bad enough about that already. I came to talk about what you’re going to do to help Amy get out of Carter Bedford’s house so she’s safe from
him
. From her
father
. I’m still just her friend. Mrs. Dury, can I ask you what you’ll do? About all I’ve told you before, about what she told me?”

“Our team is going to look into it and take appropriate steps,” Mrs. Dury said. “Did you use a condom?”

She was a nice lady, I guess, but I wasn’t on her team. And I had admitted doing something bad. I decided not to play her game.

“I can’t speak to Amy,” I said. “Carter Bedford would just hang up on me or curse me out. Can I give you a letter for her?” I pulled it out of my backpack. It was in a sealed envelope.

“Why don’t you mail it?”

“She’d never get to read it. Maybe you could give it to her privately, so that he doesn’t know?”

“I’ll take the letter,” she said, “but I can’t promise anything, Billy. And I’ll have to open it first and read it. I would have to make sure it’s appropriate. Can we get back to my question?”

I said, “I’ve told you everything that matters, Ms. Dury. Amy’s in a terrible situation and it’s not me you should be asking. I just hope you’ll do something about it. I’m going. Thank you for listening to me.”

*

Now I had to wait. I thought about Amy all the time, about what she might be going through. At least, I decided, if the social services people got on Carter’s case, he would be worried and he would leave Amy alone. I hoped.

I waited, but I didn’t even know what I was waiting for.

One morning at first light I awoke and looked out the window at the trees rising from the mist that clung to the grass near the pool. The frogs had finally shut up. Birds twittered. With that dawn came my own dawning. I was wasting the summer. I wasn’t selling lemonade, I wasn’t reading any more great books; mostly I was sitting in front of a chess board studying a book called
How to Play the Chess Openings
by someone named Znosko-Borovsky who kept saying, “Beware!” or “A Trap!…” or “Beware of a terrible blunder here!”

And that’s what had happened to me. A terrible blunder here. I was wasting my life, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen, assuming they were going to advise me when they reached a conclusion and decided what were the appropriate steps to take —

“Oh, Billy, good morning, this is Mrs. Dury. We just thought you’d like to
know

…
“

That wouldn’t happen. They weren’t going to contact me at all. I was just the kid who’d brought them the information. The snitch. Worse,
the penetrator
. They had no obligation to keep me informed of anything.

I sat up in bed and smacked myself in the forehead with my palm, so hard that it rang my bell.

Asshole
.

I was at the police station fifteen minutes before the Office of Children & Family Services opened.

“No, I don’t have an appointment… Yes, sir, it’s an emergency.”

“Mrs. Dury? Barbara Dury’s on vacation. Won’t be back for another two weeks.”

It’s not always easy to accept that people have lives that focus on things other than what matters to
you
.

I dredged my memory. “Isn’t there anyone else I can see? Is there a Mr. Fox?”

“Lou Fox? Room two-oh-three.”

I ran up the stairs and knocked on the right door.

“Come ahead.”

Lou Fox was a man in his middle fifties, with half-glasses, balding gray hair and one of those beards cut to a length where it looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a week. He had friendly brown eyes.

I told him who I was, how I was involved, and why I was there. He didn’t bother punching it up on his computer. He said he knew the case.

“What exactly do you want, Billy?”

“I have a list.” I got it out, intending to read from it, but Mr. Fox stuck out his hand for it.

I passed it across the desk. This was it:

* Is Amy all right? Is she safe from Carter?

* Did you give her my letter?

* What’s going to happen? Will you take her from Carter?

* Will she be put into a foster home — or what?

* How can I get to see her?

Mr. Fox’s glance darted down the page. “What letter are you talking about?”

“I gave a letter to Mrs. Dury to give to Amy.”

“I don’t know anything about that. As far as these other questions… Is she all right? Yes, I’d say she’s all right, if by ‘all right’ you mean in apparent good health and good spirits. The other questions… well, they present a problem. I mean I can’t answer these questions, because it’s privileged material, and you’re not an immediate family member, and you don’t represent Amy legally, and it’s an ongoing investigation. In fact, it’s just begun. See what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying I’m not part of your team.”

Mr. Fox looked amused. “You’ve got it, Billy. Quick study.”

“Can’t you even give me a clue?”

“Didn’t you tell Susan Dury you weren’t a detective?”

He had heard the tape of our interview.

“I was being a smartass,” I said.

“Nobody’s perfect. A clue as to what?”

“Mr. Fox, Amy is twelve years old. Carter Bedford is a really bad person. He has sex with her whenever he gets drunk. And sometimes when he’s not drunk. That’s what she says. I know it’s true. You have to stop him. You have to help her. If you can’t do it, who else can?”

Mr. Fox’s eyes clouded and the smile left his face. He scratched at his bristly gray beard, and he was silent for a long minute.

“Yes,” he said, “we know that’s what you said she told you.”

“And it’s true,” I said. “I didn’t lie to Ms. Dury and Amy didn’t lie to me.”

“Well… that may be so.”

He let it hang there. And I got it.

“You mean you asked her and she wouldn’t tell you about it,” I said. “Amy denied it.”

He paused again. “I can’t discuss that with you, Billy.”

“But you know she’s lying. Covering up for Carter because she’s scared.”

“I can’t discuss my opinions, either.”

“What are you and Ms. Dury going to
do
?”

“We have
done
. Let me explain to you. We’re part of CPS, the Child Protective Service in Suffolk County. There’s an office in every county in New York State. A report like yours comes in, CPS is obliged to start an investigation within twenty-four hours. We visit the parents, we tell them about the report, although we keep the identity of the informant a secret. You follow all that?”

“I follow,” I said.

“If we decide the child’s at risk, if it’s necessary to protect her from further abuse, we can take her into protective custody. Or we can offer the family our counseling services. We have no legal authority to compel them to accept those services, although we certainly can inform the family of our obligation to petition the Family Court to mandate those services if we think the child is in need of protection. Still clear?”

“Clear.”

“But — and this a big but — it’s hard to do any of that, even the lesser things, if the child says nothing’s happening and there isn’t a shred of credible evidence. You still following?”

I nodded.

“Because, Billy, I’m not telling you anything about this particular case. I’m not permitted to do that. I’m just generalizing.”

I nodded again.

He said, “We also can, and always do, demand an immediate medical examination if we’re looking for bruises or evidence of hymenal penetration. Those words too big for you?”

“No, sir,” I said, dreading what was coming.

“But if there are no bruises, and someone has already confessed that
his
penis penetrated the female child in question, what are we supposed to do? Moreover, let me add, when the female child is twelve years old, that act of penetration is a felony. It’s statutory rape, and can get the perpetrator into a pisspot full of trouble. You follow my meaning? Do we want to go there? I don’t think so. But let’s back up to the report, okay? Where’s the credible evidence? Where’s
any
evidence? It’s just ‘he says, she says.’ No good. The whole thing gets filed as an unfounded report. No determination can be made. And life goes on. For better or for worse.”

My heart was beating hard. Beware!

“All this,” Mr. Fox said, “is just theorizing.”

He had taken my breath away. I finally got some of it back.

“Did you meet Carter Bedford?” I asked.

He peered at me over his half-glasses.

“Scumbag,” he said.

I understood the level of anger in his voice, and why he was willing to go as far as he did to enlighten me.

“Mr. Fox,” I said, “when Amy and I had—what I mean is—”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” he said.

Inez knocked on my bedroom door. I’d shut it, because I wanted to turn my back on the world. I felt awful. It boiled down to this: if I hadn’t admitted to what Amy and I had done, or, if better yet if it had never happened, the CPS-ordered medical examination would have shown that someone else had done it, and I don’t think that Carter would have been able to slither his way out of the responsibility. He could have yelled that it wasn’t true, and Amy could have stayed silent, but Mr. Fox and Ms. Dury would have had the evidence to take to the Family Court… and after that, who knows? Something good would have come of it.

Not now, though.

“Come in, Inez.”

She poked her head round the door, looking dark and glum, a little thin-lipped. She thrust the cordless phone at me.

“Call for you, Billy. That girl.”

I grabbed the phone. Inez vanished.

“
Amy?
“

“Hi, Billy.”

“Where are you, Amy?”

“Home.”

“Did you get my letter?”

“What letter?”

“You mean you just called me without getting a letter?”

“God, Billy, I’ve been wanting to call you for weeks. They wouldn’t let me. They don’t let me leave the house. I just sneaked the phone upstairs before Ginette went to the A & P. I found a jack up here behind the sofa she doesn’t know about.”

“Where’s Carter?”

“In Florida. In Bradenton. He drove down with his pal Woody—that was the guy in the van. Carter wants out of here. We got investigated. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can you meet me somewhere, Amy?”

“Billy, I’m locked in. I think they’re gonna keep me that way until we leave for Florida.”

“When’s that happening?”

Carter had quit the garbage business, she said. He and Woody were going to work at a marina in Sarasota, Florida, not too far from Bradenton. Bradenton was cheaper to live in.

“Woody’s buying a Jeep. Carter’s driving the van back up. When he gets here, we’re history. Did you know he sued your dad?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“You think I’m making it up?”

“Amy, my dad would have told me.”

“Well, the fact is, he
didn’t
tell you. Carter’s sued. He talks about it all the time. He’s got a lawyer.”

My heart began to race around my chest. I could hardly believe it. “And what happened?’

“He won’t tell me. I think it’s still going on. But he loves his little lawsuit.”

She told me that she had been locked in on the third floor of the yellow brick house in Springs since the night of the day Carter had snatched her off the street in front of the Winter Garden. They let her come down for meals as long as he was there. If not, her brother Stevie brought food up the stairs and handed it to her through the locked gate between the second and third floor. Stevie thought that was fun; he was a loyal son to his dad. Ginette wasn’t cooking much; she microwaved everything. What Amy ate most of was frozen french fries and frozen pizza and frozen tacos. She drank Coca-Cola and Sprite.

“It used to be a jail here,” Amy said. “So now it is again.”

“But they let you out to visit the social workers, right?”

“Carter took me there.”

“Why didn’t you tell those people the truth?”

She was quiet for a while.

“You know about that,” she said, “but I don’t want anyone else to know. I don’t want strangers butting into my life. They never really care. They say they care, but they don’t. You’re still a stranger to them.”

“Oh, Amy —”

“And if I snitched on Carter,” she said, “and they did whatever they could to him… what happens then? I live with Ginette? Forget it. Be what that woman Ginger said, a PINS kid? Get sent to one of those crummy facilities, wind up in a foster home? No, thanks. Carter got brought up in a foster home and it messed him up good. It’ll be better once we get to Florida. He won’t lock me up there. I’ll have nowhere to run away to.”