the identifications wouldn’t hold up.
“Maybe I should have been an actress, because the asshole bought the whole bit. I went back to the Assistant DA and informed him that my client was determined to go to trial and there was nothing I could do to dissuade him. You realize that once I speak to the client, the prosecution can’t get near him without tainting the case, so there was no way the Assistant DA could get a hint of what I was doing. He just shrugged his shoulders and we went before the judge and got a trial date.
“About halfway through the trial, Heller figures it out and goes crazy. Fortunately, I was questioning a witness at the time, so there was enough space between us for the court officers to get to Heller before Heller got to me. He tried to tell the judge what I’d done to him, but every defendant blames the lawyer when a case goes bad, so the judge didn’t want to hear about it. He asked Heller if he’d like to change his plea to guilty and Heller was so crazy by this time he agreed.
“Boom! Down comes the gavel and two weeks later, the judge sentences Heller to the max on every charge: four counts of rape; four counts of sodomy; two counts of felonious assault; two counts of aggravated assault; four counts of kidnapping; four counts of robbery. It adds up to life plus a hundred and forty-five years. Case closed.”
There is a unique moment in the lives of lovers. A mostly unremembered eyeblink that inevitably drowns in a wave of lust. It is the moment when man and woman are naked for the first time; when eyes slide across vulnerable flesh. Betty Haluka looked over at the giant who walked toward her. His body ran in a straight line, from his armpits across his ribs, his waist, his hips, his thighs. The difference—the ultimate injustice—in size between men and women passed quickly through her consciousness. He was monstrously big; she could exert no physical force against him. To voluntarily accept that surrender; to knowingly be that vulnerable—she could not complete the act without trust. The emotion was implied in the touch of his lips on hers and when her nostrils were full of the fragrance of the hairs on his chest, she took hold of him and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.
“You can forget about getting on top.”
When Moodrow came back to himself, the F was pulling into the Continental Avenue station, one express and five local stops further than he’d planned to go. He glanced at his watch as he left the train to wait for an express going in the opposite direction and noted that he’d be a little late for the meeting with Betty’s Aunt Sylvia, which was no big deal. He didn’t expect much to come from his trip. Maybe, if the place wasn’t too far gone, he’d have a private talk with the pimp or one of the dealers. See if he couldn’t scare them away.
SEVEN
T HE SECOND MEETING OF the Jackson Arms Tenants’ Association, Sylvia Kaufman noted from her position at the front of a hastily rented bingo room at St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church, was going to be far better attended than the first. Unfortunately, the tenants, instead of uniting around their anger at the abomination that had taken place in the Parks’ apartment, were standing in little ethnic knots, talking among themselves as if protecting state secrets: five families of Koreans, with wives and children near the folded bingo tables; a dozen Asians, Hindu and Moslem, united in their distrust of the whites who, they believed, controlled their destinies; a large group of the old-timers, led by Mike Birnbaum, who liked to blame all problems on the ‘new people’; and, finally, the Hispanics (including a group of Mexicans she hadn’t known existed before this evening) surrounding the Cuban Almeydas and two Colombian families who’d been in the building for almost ten years.
Curiously, none of the groups appeared to be intimidated and Sylvia wondered if they were showing off for each other or if they were too
“Maybe I should have been an actress, because the asshole bought the whole bit. I went back to the Assistant DA and informed him that my client was determined to go to trial and there was nothing I could do to dissuade him. You realize that once I speak to the client, the prosecution can’t get near him without tainting the case, so there was no way the Assistant DA could get a hint of what I was doing. He just shrugged his shoulders and we went before the judge and got a trial date.
“About halfway through the trial, Heller figures it out and goes crazy. Fortunately, I was questioning a witness at the time, so there was enough space between us for the court officers to get to Heller before Heller got to me. He tried to tell the judge what I’d done to him, but every defendant blames the lawyer when a case goes bad, so the judge didn’t want to hear about it. He asked Heller if he’d like to change his plea to guilty and Heller was so crazy by this time he agreed.
“Boom! Down comes the gavel and two weeks later, the judge sentences Heller to the max on every charge: four counts of rape; four counts of sodomy; two counts of felonious assault; two counts of aggravated assault; four counts of kidnapping; four counts of robbery. It adds up to life plus a hundred and forty-five years. Case closed.”
There is a unique moment in the lives of lovers. A mostly unremembered eyeblink that inevitably drowns in a wave of lust. It is the moment when man and woman are naked for the first time; when eyes slide across vulnerable flesh. Betty Haluka looked over at the giant who walked toward her. His body ran in a straight line, from his armpits across his ribs, his waist, his hips, his thighs. The difference—the ultimate injustice—in size between men and women passed quickly through her consciousness. He was monstrously big; she could exert no physical force against him. To voluntarily accept that surrender; to knowingly be that vulnerable—she could not complete the act without trust. The emotion was implied in the touch of his lips on hers and when her nostrils were full of the fragrance of the hairs on his chest, she took hold of him and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.
“You can forget about getting on top.”
When Moodrow came back to himself, the F was pulling into the Continental Avenue station, one express and five local stops further than he’d planned to go. He glanced at his watch as he left the train to wait for an express going in the opposite direction and noted that he’d be a little late for the meeting with Betty’s Aunt Sylvia, which was no big deal. He didn’t expect much to come from his trip. Maybe, if the place wasn’t too far gone, he’d have a private talk with the pimp or one of the dealers. See if he couldn’t scare them away.
SEVEN
T HE SECOND MEETING OF the Jackson Arms Tenants’ Association, Sylvia Kaufman noted from her position at the front of a hastily rented bingo room at St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church, was going to be far better attended than the first. Unfortunately, the tenants, instead of uniting around their anger at the abomination that had taken place in the Parks’ apartment, were standing in little ethnic knots, talking among themselves as if protecting state secrets: five families of Koreans, with wives and children near the folded bingo tables; a dozen Asians, Hindu and Moslem, united in their distrust of the whites who, they believed, controlled their destinies; a large group of the old-timers, led by Mike Birnbaum, who liked to blame all problems on the ‘new people’; and, finally, the Hispanics (including a group of Mexicans she hadn’t known existed before this evening) surrounding the Cuban Almeydas and two Colombian families who’d been in the building for almost ten years.
Curiously, none of the groups appeared to be intimidated and Sylvia wondered if they were showing off for each other or if they were too
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