Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel (8 page)

“That’s right. We’re prosecuting Hitchins the same as we would if he had beaten a man on the street.”

“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

“Detective, there are a few things I’d like to get squared away before you arrest Rudy Hitchins.”

“Such as what, Counselor?”

“I’ve already prepared the necessary filing to get an order of protection to keep Hitchins away from Mary Margaret. I’d also like to know if you can arrange for a police officer to accompany Mary Margaret’s mother when she goes to Hitchins’s apartment to collect her daughter’s belongings while she’s still recuperating in the hospital.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?” I replied, my voice rising. “I don’t believe it’s safe for Mary Margaret or her mother to go anywhere near Rudy Hitchins. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to insist on the police doing this.”

“You’re going to insist, huh? Hold on, Counselor. The reason why her mother won’t have to go through the apartment is because when I talked to Rebecca Finn in the hospital, I found out that Hitchins don’t own the apartment. That bastard don’t even pay rent. The mother owns it. Mrs. Finn inherited the whole apartment building after her old man kicked off. It’s four units. Mary Margaret lives in a second-floor unit next to an old lady named Sarah Latham. There’s another tenant, an old man who lives on the bottom floor in a unit, and then Rebecca Finn lives in the other ground-floor apartment. The building is over on Canfield Avenue. Now, here’s the kick in the ass. You’re going to love this. Rudy Hitchins is still living there, but he’s got a new girlfriend, a broad named Gloria Lucinda, and she’s staying there with him. He’s with this blond bimbo while Mary Margaret’s still in the hospital.”

I thought about telling O’Brien that I’d already discovered that Hitchins had a girlfriend, having seen them at the hospital. But I certainly hadn’t known the two of them were now sharing Mary Margaret’s apartment—and bed.

“How do you know they’re living there?”

“Hitchins told the old lady next door that the blonde was his sister visiting from Chicago, but old lady Latham heard moans at nighttime coming through the walls—not the kind that a brother and sister should be making. She called Mary Margaret’s mother at the hospital to tattle. Them walls must be thin.”

“Or,” I joked, “Gloria Lucinda is quite a moaner.”

“Why, Miss Fox, I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

I ignored him.

O’Brien said, “Either way, Rudy Hitchins’s not scared about nothing if he’s moved his girlfriend into an apartment he don’t even own with Rebecca Finn living downstairs.”

I thought,
You’re right
.

Actually, I was pleased that Rebecca Finn owned the apartment building. O’Brien had warned me that most battered women were afraid of complaining about how they were being beaten because they had no place to go. Mary Margaret was going to be an exception. She’d be able to move home after O’Brien arrested Hitchins and tossed Gloria Lucinda out onto the street. This was working out perfectly.

“I need to speak to Mary Margaret one more time at the hospital before you arrest Hitchins,” I said. “I’m going over there as soon as I hang up the phone.”

Sounding enthused, O’Brien said, “Okay, Counselor, you did your part, I’ll do mine. I’ll arrest that prick.”

But our conversation wasn’t finished. “I have a favor to ask, Detective. I want to be there when you arrest him. I want to slap that protective order in his hands and watch his face. I want him to know that a woman is going to prosecute him in court for what he did to another woman.”

Once again, O’Brien was quiet for a moment. This time, I suspected he was smiling on the other end of the phone line. “You know what, Counselor? I’m beginning to think you clang when you walk.”

“What?”

“It means you got balls, little sister. Big brass ones!”

7

As I drove to white plains hospital, I asked myself: Why would a woman stay with someone who beat her? Rebecca Finn had told me this was not the first time that Rudy Hitchins had brutalized Mary Margaret. If her own mother owned the apartment where the couple lived, then why hadn’t Mary Margaret kicked him out the first time that he’d struck her? I didn’t get it.

Mrs. Finn looked exhausted when I walked into hospital room 505. She was seated in a chair, standing guard at Mary Margaret’s bedside, but as I entered the room, she didn’t look up. I noticed both of them had their eyes closed. I touched Mrs. Finn gently on her arm.

“Mrs. Finn, you look like you could use a break.”

Rubbing her eyes, she said, “I would like to go home and clean up a bit. I need some cigarettes, too. Damn hospital gift shop refuses to sell them.”

“I need to talk to Mary Margaret if she is up to it, and I’d be happy to stay here until you get back.”

Rising from her chair, Mrs. Finn said, “That would be great, honey. Actually, Mary Margaret was doing much better this morning. Her mouth is wired shut so she’s hard to understand, but once you get used to it, you can make out most of the words. I’ll wake her.” She reached over and touched her daughter’s hand. Leaning down, she said, “Mary Margaret, that lady from the D.A.’s office is here. She needs to talk to you.”

I watched as Mary Margaret’s eyes popped open. With a grimace, she pushed herself upward on her pillows. I heard her whisper through clenched teeth. “Okay, Ma. You going to be here?”

“Naw,” Mrs. Finn replied. “You don’t need me. I’m going for smokes. But I’ll be back in an hour. You two have a nice talk.”

With that, she left the room. I sat down in the chair that Mrs. Finn had been using and told Mary Margaret about the D.A.’s decision to have Rudy Hitchins arrested on a first-degree assault charge. Next, I explained the process and how I would get a protective order to keep him away from her. I felt she might be more comfortable talking if she knew a bit about me. After all, I was about to ask her to share intimate details about her relationship with Hitchins, so I decided to build some rapport with her by telling her a bit about myself.

I took a few minutes to cover such basic information as where I grew up and went to college. She listened and asked questions, which was good because I used those moments to get accustomed to her clenched-teeth responses. I’d just finished telling her about how I’d grown up in Elmira, New York, with one sister and had moved to White Plains immediately after I’d finished law school, when she asked, “Miss Fox, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Yes, his name is Bob and he’s in medical school in Albany.”

“Do you see him often?”

“We try to get together every other weekend. It’s been tough lately. But we’re committed.”

“Is he cute?”

“He’s a hunk. Brown hair, long legs, great build. It was magic from the start.”

“I’m glad. I thought Rudy was one of the sexiest men I’d ever met.”

“Tell me about him and your relationship.”

“Okay, but first, I want to hear just a little bit more about Bob. How’d you meet?”

“I was still in high school, working weekends at a combination dairy and café that was attached to a creamery where they made ice cream and other milk products.”

“Like an ice-cream shop?”

“Yes, but we also sold sandwiches, and because it was on a main highway outside Elmira, a lot of truckers used to stop in.”

“You were a waitress, like me at O’Toole’s? Truckers, they come on to you, right?”

“I was pretty young and naive. I didn’t really know sometimes what they were saying. Anyway, Bob’s parents owned a farm and he used to bring milk into the creamery and I thought he was adorable, so one day, when he was unloading his truck, I made sure to walk by and he said hello. We’ve been a couple ever since. He was my first and is my only love.”

“You going to marry him?”

“If he asks after he finishes medical school. He hasn’t given me a ring, but he gave me a pig.”

“A pig?” She tried to laugh but it came out more as a giggle through her wired jaw.

“Yes, from his farm. I loved the book
Charlotte’s Web
and he gave me a piglet named Wilbur.”

“I don’t read much. But I’m glad you are in love. I thought Rudy loved me when we first met. He made me feel so special.”

In her guttural monotone, she described how they had met four years earlier in a Manhattan nightclub. They’d bumped into each other at the bar.

“He came on strong, but I liked that.”

“When did you become a couple?”

“We clicked from that first night. But we kept seeing other people for about a month. That’s when I first saw his temper.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“We were in the same nightclub and a guy I used to date came over to talk to me. Rudy totally ignored him but I gave him a hug when he left. When we went outside to leave, Rudy accused me of disrespecting him. We were walking next to each other when he suddenly grabbed me and started choking me. He choked me to the point he lifted me off the ground, and I was trying to scramble with my feet to get some type of footing because I started seeing stars. I felt like I was about to lose my breath and pass out. I started to fight at him to break him off of me. I swung at him but missed. That’s when he released me and slapped me across the face. That was the first time he ever hit me. He said, ‘You’re my girl now. You don’t talk to and hug other men.’” She paused and then whispered, “That’s how I found out we were only dating each other from that point on.”

“Why didn’t you run away from him at that point?” I knew that would be a question that jurors would wonder and I did, too.

“’Cause I felt it was my fault. I mean, I’d hugged that guy and that’s what made Rudy angry. The next day after he choked me, he apologized. He was really, really sorry. He told me he was afraid that I was going to leave him and he even broke down and cried. It was so, so sweet. He went right out that same morning and he brought me flowers—not just a dozen, neither, he bought me sixteen red roses and a big box of chocolate-covered cherries. The next day, he done the same thing. He did it every day for a week and I said, ‘Rudy, you’re spoiling me. I’m going to get fat if I eat all this candy.’ He swore he would never lay a hand on me again, never. We’d been drinking that night, too, and, I thought, ‘I shouldn’t have hugged that guy. I was wrong to do that. And Rudy is just a very passionate guy.’ The truth was that I liked that he was jealous. It meant he cared about me. I was his girl, no one else’s.”

“Were there other times when he hit you?”

Mary Margaret’s already quiet voice grew even quieter. “Not in the beginning. I mean for weeks—maybe two—everything was great. But then he got mad at me again and it would happen. But by then, it was too late ’cause I was in love with him. And every time he did it, he would apologize and be really sweet and I’d forgive him. I told myself, ‘I got to stop making him angry,’ and I was sure it wouldn’t happen again.”

She seemed to be growing tired so I decided to focus on the sort of questions that I might ask her during a trial rather than questioning her more about why she’d put up with him for four years.

“Can you describe a typical incident?”

“Rudy liked to drink, especially on weekends, and he’d come home drunk and he always wanted sex. If I was drunk maybe I would’ve been okay with it, you know. But when he was drunk, he got rough, and if I tried to stop him, he’d get mean. He’d slap me around and hold me down. One time he tied me to our bed and left me there naked for an entire day. He’d rip my blouse off, too, if he were drunk. He liked that—getting all tough with me. One night I decided to fight back, well, not really fight back, but just tell him to stop when he grabbed me. I dug a fingernail into him.”