Habit of Fear (13 page)

“Who do they think we are?” Tim whispered as they settled into seats far enough to the side to reestablish their second-string status.

“Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.”

“Julie, be your own age.”

“John Barrymore and Theda Bara.”

“Oi.”

Ginny Gibbons was sitting on the aisle a few rows down, her chin in her hand, a down coat draped over the back of her seat—a starling among birds of paradise. Her escort was Seamus McNally. He had on the same tweed jacket, and his dark head was wildly tousled. Julie caught at a flash of fantasy: she was running her fingers through his hair, his head in her lap. “Oh, nice!” she said aloud.

“What?”

“I feel just fine,” she said.

“I told you you would. The bad times are behind you.”

She patted his hand. “We’re a good team, chum.”

She would not see McNally unless she went to them during intermission. Ginny never left her seat until she fled the theater as the curtain fell. And during intermission Julie had work to do.

She started with a couple of notes on what people were wearing, something she was not good at; not that it mattered much. She could say they were wearing umbrellas as long as she said they were there. She caught sight of Richard Garvy moving out of the crush at the bar. People were hailing him still by his series name, Mike Bowen, even among this elite crowd. She eased her way to him. “Have you got a commitment yet from your playwright, Mr. Garvy?” During their interview at the Plaza he had refused to talk about his Broadway plans until he was sure of the play.

“Have
you
?” he snapped back, a mischievous tilt to his eyebrows. Was he telling her that Seamus McNally was the playwright and that they had spoken of her? He was. “You’re blushing, little lady.” He touched her under the chin. “So I have my answer and you have yours. Come and meet Mrs. Garvy. She doesn’t turn out for these things often.”

“May I put it in the column that you’re doing a play by Seamus McNally?”

“You may. It’s called
The Far, Far Hills of Home
.”

“Nice,” Julie said.

“Bucolic.”

Julie laughed, remembering McNally’s description of himself as a bucolic playwright. Of which there were not many left.

“We’re going to try to bring it in in the spring.”

Mrs. Garvy was a tall, shy woman, the very antithesis of Mike Bowen’s noisy television wife. Julie wondered if they had married before or after the series caught on.

“This is the young lady with whose father I may have gone to Trinity. Remember, I told you how she loved your anemones?” A perfect non sequitur.

“Wasn’t Seamus talking about her?” Mrs. Garvy asked.

“The very same,” Garvy said.

She gave Julie her hand. “I do hope you find your father.”

J
ULIE WROTE UP
her items for the column that night and phoned them in in the morning. She hadn’t expected Tim to be there that early, but he came on the phone before she cut off. “What do you think, Julie?”

“About what?”

“You mean nobody’s called you? You don’t know?”

“I’m listening,” she said, irritated. She had not slept well.

“Two guys have confessed to the attack on you. It’s the lead story in the
Post
.”

S
HE PUT ON HER
jacket and walked to the corner deli, the nearest place she could buy a newspaper. She ought to have known, she told herself, that the silence of the police did not mean they had abandoned the case. And yet she thought of Russo’s summary after the lineup fiasco: they’ll be a damned sight harder to bring in the next time. Could it be two different men? She ordered an egg salad on rye and a carton of orange juice and opened the paper. Her feeling was one of dead calm as she read the story at a glance.

At four o’clock that morning two West Side men had walked into the Nineteenth Precinct station house and confessed to the June 18th sexual assault on Julie Hayes,
New York Daily
columnist. Frank Kincaid, twenty-three, and James E. Donahue, twenty-two, were to be arraigned later in the day in Criminal Court. The men cited conscience as the motive for their surrender to the police. Neither had a previous arrest record. The
Daily
had offered a five-thousand-dollar reward at the time for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the assailants, an amount subsequently doubled.

The deli clerk stretched his neck to see what she was reading. “I know those guys. One of them’s old lady comes in here all the time. What gets into kids like that? I mean in this neighborhood—what’d they need it for?” Obviously he did not know he was talking to the victim. Probably didn’t know there was one. “Pickle?”

“Please,” Julie said.

“But there’s something phony about it if you ask me. I don’t buy that ‘conscience’ business. I mean three months later? Forget it.” Then a new idea hit him: “Maybe they think they’ll get the reward. How about that?”

“Very funny,” Julie said, but it crossed her mind that Kincaid’s mother could use it.

Detective Russo called her after the arraignment. The first thing he told her was that he had been the arresting officer. “I’d just finished my tour of duty, got home and took me shoes off. The chief called me, thought I ought to have the privilege. My wife didn’t think it was such a great privilege. She didn’t want me to come in. You know how superstitious she is.”

“I know.”

“With us living in the neighborhood. Maybe she’s right. We’ve been talking for years of moving out to Rockland County. She’s got a sister living there. Maybe this’ll make it happen. I’ll go out of my mind … frogs and crickets—and babies. She wants babies.”

Julie wondered if the problem was in her own mind: people did not seem to be making sense. This kind of personal chitchat from Russo, and at a time like this? Almost casually he came back to what had to be the focus so far as she was concerned. “Anyway, we’re holding them for the Grand Jury. Their bail’s set at a hundred grand each. I thought you’d like to know.”

“You know—I am interested,” Julie said. Then: “That’s a lot of money.”

“I don’t think they’ll have any trouble getting it up. You’ll be asked to testify at the hearing. Detective Hadley’ll get in touch with you.”

“How come they turned themselves in?” Julie asked finally.

“Seems like they had a fight. They probably got tanked up, and one of them went soft. I’ll tell you the truth: I didn’t think we’d ever get them up before the Grand Jury. Now I think we can get an indictment. We have a lot of stuff once the DA can start fitting the pieces together. I think we got a good chance.”

Julie had hung on as long as she could. “Am I crazy, Detective Russo, or are you holding back on something?”

“I’ll tell you one thing that bothers me, Julie. The lawyer representing them at the arraignment is from Joe Quinlan’s office. You know who he is, don’t you?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“He’s one of the top trial lawyers in the city. Big-shot politician.”

“Yes?”

“Well, Joe Quinlan is a West Side boy, all the way up from the streets and Our Lady of Good Hope High School. All right. Here’s what I’m afraid of: he’s too big for us, Julie. Do you understand?”

“I guess so,” she said, but she didn’t.

T
HE LETTER FROM IRELAND
came as Julie was leaving the shop on the morning she was to testify before the Grand Jury. She read it while hanging onto a subway pole on the way downtown.

Dear Miss Hayes:

Your letter to my uncle, the late Michael Desmond, was received and opened by me. He died last June, may his soul rest in peace. He lived with his sisters until they died and then with my husband and me and our four children until he went into the hospital. I was his heir, though what he left most of were debts. He did leave me his notebooks and letters, and him being a newspaperman they are important. If you will let me know what information you wish, I will go through them and look for it. I remember him talking about someone named Mooney.

Can you advise me if his letters are valuable? Are there people in America who would be interested in purchasing them? I am told universities over there are very keen on collecting such papers.

If I can be of service to you in Dublin here, please let me know. Dear Miss Hayes, I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

Yours faithfully,

Sally O’Rourke

THE GRAND JURY BEFORE WHICH JULIE APPEARED THAT
October morning was composed of seven men and five women—racial, age and economic factors, she assumed, well sorted out. They looked to have grown experienced in their jury tenure, self-assured and compatible. The assistant district attorney who went over Julie’s testimony with her was a well-groomed young man named Eric Amberg. Everything about him, his hair brushed to a crest, his moustache without a straggle, his vested pinstripe suit, everything suggested tidiness and command; he was solicitous without being warm, his eyes fending her off in case she expected too much involvement of him. When he finished rehearsing her, Julie studied the defendants where they sat at the table with their lawyers—two lawyers now. Donahue had the pallor of the mortuary about him; he was sallow and pale, with blackish hair that looked unwashed, a clump of it falling over his forehead. He kept moistening his lips. Afraid? That ought to give her some satisfaction. Kincaid wore a white turtleneck sweater and looked like a retarded choirboy. He wanted to jump up when anyone approached their table. The lawyers kept patting his arm reassuringly. He’d have been brought up scared—of his vagrant father, of the nuns, of every kid on the block bigger than himself. The smaller ones he bullied and, she wouldn’t be surprised to learn, abused.

When she took the stand, the judge questioned her at length on her state of mind that morning, the circumstances under which she had accidentally strayed into an area where she would not ordinarily have gone. She was frank about the scene between her and her husband that precipitated it. She had forgone legal counsel, and too late she realized the advantage the defense would take. If Kincaid and Donahue came to trial, she would be portrayed as a frustrated, rejected wife available to almost any man on the prowl. Furthermore, the lawyers from Joe Quinlan’s firm had done some hasty research; they had learned that years before, she had studied karate. Why, the question was, had she not put up a stronger defense? The DA’s man, Eric Amberg, countered by asking if that was the strongest defense Quintan’s office could put up for their clients. The judge reprimanded him for violating court decorum.

He apologized. It was all so bloody civilized, Julie thought. She was thanked and dismissed by the judge as soon as she had given her testimony. She wondered why the others were there at all, since Kincaid and Donahue had confessed. She remembered the deli clerk who’d said he did not buy the pinch of conscience as their reason. She might not buy it either if she could properly evaluate the situation. She couldn’t. What she was failing to understand was their motive for the crime itself. With all the whores in the neighborhood, why Missy Glass or her? Anger, aggression, the need for power? Had it nothing to do with sex? Kincaid, she thought, had more fun using the knife than his other weapon. He couldn’t have managed one without the other. He probably couldn’t have managed alone, either. She looked back just before she pushed open the courtroom door. Those two were wimps—weaklings—standing up there pretending penitence. Yes. Pretending, she felt sure. So what were they pretending that Sunday morning when they assaulted her?

She pushed her way through the crowded corridor, lawyers and clients hastily settling on their pleas, battered wives and beleaguered mothers silently mulling alibis to which they’d falsely swear. What about the alibis Kincaid and Donahue had claimed? Thrown out when they confessed—like an old pair of lisle stockings.

“Friend Julie …”

She turned back. May Weems was trying to catch up with her. Julie’s first thought was, Oh, no. Not again. Then she remembered that Missy Glass was waiting to testify—or in her case it might be not to testify—before the Grand Jury. “How are you, May?” Like old friends meeting at Broadway and Forty-second Street.

“I come when Missy Glass say to me she got to come.”

“Good,” Julie said. Then, not knowing why it was good, she added, “Thank you.”

“What I come to tell you, Miss Julie: I couldn’t help it, I told my pimp about you, you paying my fine and why, me being a witness like? I had to tell him or he’d of whipped me.”

“No harm,” Julie said, having no notion why the girl shouldn’t have told him or why the telling was at issue now. After all, the grimmer parts of the story made headlines in the straight world. “Why shouldn’t you have told him?”

May shrugged. “I just wanted you to know I done it.”

“You aren’t here on other business are you?”

May Weems grinned, something she rarely did, aware that her part of “the life” was reflected in the condition of her teeth. Caps and chips and a couple of vacancies. “No, ma’am. I is clean as Missy Glass.”

W
ITHIN THE WEEK THE
Grand Jury indicted Kincaid and Donahue. Their trial was set before Judge Weinstein in the spring session of State Supreme Court. The men were free on fifteen thousand dollars bail each, a sum far lower than that set following the arraignment.

Far be it from Julie to question the amount of bail. Or anything else. Her feeling of relief was enormous: she had done what she had to do and ought now to be able to get on with her life. Whatever that meant. It was crazy, she told herself, but fast upon the relief came a feeling of emptiness, a void. She was going to have to face the specifics of living without Jeff. The change in life-style wasn’t going to bother her … except that she had never had a life-style of her own until now. She counted her money and thought about Ireland. She could manage the trip and, if she then chose and was careful, a few months’ residence there. Then what? She knew exactly what she was doing—warding off decisions, hoping something would come up to forestall their need, to propel her life for her.