The Price of Silence (11 page)

One truth that guides me is that I love my son above anyone or anything else. I will do whatever is necessary to keep him safe, to make sure I am there when he needs me.

Sergeant Daniel is on the stand. He is a thirty-three-year veteran of the police force, a tall, large African American with a soft face and drooping eyelids that give him a tired, worn look. He sets his eyes on Ms. Perotti’s son, Josh, sitting on a spectator bench. There is compassion on his face.

“You are the detective in charge of this case?”

“I am.”

“When did you first interview the defendant?”

“On April twenty-first of last year.”

“Can you briefly tell the jury what transpired during that first interview.”

“I showed Ms. Perotti the crime scene photos showing the dead body and then asked her about her relationship to—”

Josh

I wish he’d stop gawking at me. Just because we talked a little about music, no way are we pals.

Mom had been back home about ten days when the doorbell rang. I expected it to be Mrs. Ricklin from down the hall; I walk her dog two times a day. Instead a big man in a suit and a bow tie filled the whole doorway.Al Roker, that’s who this guy looked like.Al Roker when he was fat.A nice-guy face. An-ling had been dead about a week is my guess.

“Is your mother or father home?”

“No.” I was wondering why Julio, the doorman, hadn’t buzzed to say this guy was coming up.

“When are they coming back?”

Down the hall, Mrs. Ricklin was calling me.“Joshy, Joshy, Scottie needs to go out. It’s late, Joshy.” Mrs. Ricklin is eighty-two years old and I guess she can call me anything she likes.

“I’ll be right there!”

In my head I thanked her for being deaf so that I had to shout and my voice didn’t give away how scared I was. Four guys were waiting down the hall by Mrs. Ricklin’s apartment and two of them carried satchels with NYPD written on them. One beanpole guy I recognized from the police station in Brooklyn. Last week he’d taken my fingerprints along with Dad’s.“Just routine,” he’d said and I’d gotten through it without breaking into a sweat by pretending I was in a TV show—
CSI, Law and Order
,
NYPD Blue
, take your pick, anything that wasn’t real. Now the guy was back and I was glad Mrs. Ricklin wasn’t wearing her glasses. The men and the NYPD logos on the satchels could only be a blur to her.

“Who’s there, Joshy?”

I meant to answer her right away, but it was like I was standing in front of a huge crowd expecting me to hit the drums, but I couldn’t remember any music. My stomach was flip-flopping all over the place and I was sure it was showing on my face and this man—the guy on the witness stand now—would think I had something to tell him. By then Scottie was barking.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Ricklin. They’re friends of Dad’s.” I reached for my jacket hanging by the door and stuck my arms in it.“I’ve got to walk her dog or he’s going to shit all over her rug.”

I had to squeeze out the door because the man didn’t budge. I locked the door behind me, called out,“Come on, boy.” Scottie raced to me down the hall.

The man intercepted, started playing with him, tugging at the leash in Scottie’s mouth, spinning the dog around, lifting him off the ground. Scottie growled with pleasure and I felt totally betrayed.

On one of the spins I grabbed the dog. “He’s really got to go, sir.” The man let go of the leash. I clipped it to Scottie’s collar and shouted to Mrs. Ricklin that I was going to take her dog on a nice long run along the river. “It may take an hour, so don’t worry.”

The policemen followed me down the stairs. All five of them. The big man introduced himself as Sergeant Daniel, sticking his badge under my nose while I skipped down the stairs two at time.

“My parents aren’t coming home until late,” I lied.

“They’re going to a dinner and a movie. I don’t know where.” I could tell he was having trouble with the stairs and I didn’t slow down. “They gave me money for takeout.” I showed him a twenty dollar bill from my pocket, just in case he thought they were terrible parents or something.

In the lobby he told his guys to wait in their cars; he was going with me.“Scottie needs to run,” I reminded him, but that didn’t phase him. The beanpole guy wanted to come with us, but Sergeant Daniel said no, he was just going for a walk, nothing more. If he thought he was going to catch me off guard—just-the-two-of-us-and-the-dog-taking-a- nice-stroll-in-the-park kind of thing—he didn’t know anything about teenagers.We’re a lot smarter than we make out to be.

We crossed the street into Riverside Park. Scottie left his mark on every tree on our way down to the Hudson. Sergeant Daniel walked with a rock-in-the-shoe lean to his left.When we passed our first bench I asked him if he wanted to sit down and untie his shoe. I don’t know why I did that. If his foot was hurting him, he didn’t need me to tell him what to do.Maybe I was trying to show him what a nice guy I was. He laughed at my question and kept on going.

“You’ve got a search warrant with you, right?” I said. “What are you looking for? An-ling hasn’t been in our apartment in months and months.” Scottie started pulling at his leash and barking wildly. I jerked him back. “Shut up!”

He can’t stand squirrels.

“Why don’t you just ask Dad? He’ll let you in.We’ve got nothing to hide.” He could even look down in my room in the basement. There was nothing there yet that had anything to do with An-ling.

“Your father has a very poor view of the police.”

Who wouldn’t? They were harassing Mom and then two detectives showed up at Dad’s office without calling first. One of his students came in the waiting room and overheard An-ling’s name and some of the questions and spread the news that the police were questioning Professor Howells in the Asian artist murder case.As a result, three students dropped out of his class; the Dean called him into his office to discuss damage control and now Dad wanted to sue the police.

I’d been asked questions too, after the fingerprinting.

Q: How well did you know An-ling?

A: Not much. I only saw her when she’d come over to see my mother.

Q: Never alone?

A: Once she came down to the basement to see my drum set.

Q: Did you ever go to the studio?

A: No.

Q: Never?

A: No.

Q:Do you have any idea who had a grudge against An-ling?

Did she ever mention how she came to the States? Do you know if she had another name?

No. No. No.

My arm jerked. Scottie was choking on his leash and a squirrel leaped up the tree to safety. “You’re not even close to finding her killer, are you? That’s why you’re coming to our apartment with a search warrant.You’re desperate.”

Sergeant Daniel didn’t even blink.“You should think of becoming a detective when you grow up, but you’re going to be a percussionist, I hear. At least that’s what your mother thinks. Is that how you see it?”

Mom discussing me with a detective? What else did she tell him? “I’m not good enough. I don’t know.”

“Billy Higgins. He made a name for himself playing on Ornette Coleman’s early recordings. Smiling Billy.You ever heard him?”

I shook my head.

“Get one of his CDs and listen good.You’ll learn a lot. He wasn’t one of those show-off players who need people to break out clapping and hooting in the middle of the piece to tell them how great they are. I hope you don’t need that when you play, because in the end it doesn’t serve the music and the music is what playing is all about.”

“Making the music shine,”I said. Playing is also about stepping out of the world and finding you’ve become someone else, like a swimmer when he dives into a pool and starts moving his body through the water and suddenly he’s become this incredibly beautiful fish without any weight to him.“Making the music shine.”

We were walking along the river by now and Sergeant Daniel told me how he loved the smell of sun mixed with water when the weather got warm, how the smell reminded him of eating his mother’s fish stew when he was a boy younger than me.Then he said how sad it must have been for me when Mom left to live with An-ling. How it must have made me angry too.A girl she’d known for just a short time becoming more important to her than her own son.

“It wasn’t like that. Mom only wanted to help An-ling because she was going to be a great painter.Then Mom and Dad started having some problems. Older people, you know, everything becomes a big deal with them. Mom and Dad argued a lot, over what to eat for dinner, what movie to see, where to go on vacation. Mom needed some time off, that’s all. She didn’t leave to
be
with An-ling.

“And it wasn’t a big deal. I knew she was going to come back and so did Dad. It’s happened to a lot of the kids in my class, except most of their parents get divorced. Mom came back.”

Sergeant Daniel finally did sit down on a bench. “Set your butt down here too. Scottie needs a rest.” I sat down at the other end.

“How many times did you go to Brooklyn, to the studio?”

I wanted to lie again, but his face had turned real serious.

He wasn’t going to take any bullshit.

“Four or five times maybe, but I only went there to see my mother.”

“I thought you only saw your mother for brunch on Sundays in Manhattan?”

“Sometimes I wanted to see her more.”

“Nate! Nate!” Beanpole was running down the path.He was waving his arm, his hand flapping in front of his face like a screw in his wrist had come loose. “He’s home.” My heart started pounding. Glad for the interruption, panicked at what was to come.

By the time we made it back up to Riverside Drive, Mom had come home too. Dad started arguing with Sergeant Daniel. Mom wanted me to go to Mrs. Ricklin’s and stay there.The two men with the satchels headed first for my parents’ bedroom. Dad tried to follow, but Sergeant Daniel blocked the door.

“Why don’t the three of you wait in the living room? Let us get our work done and we’ll be out of here in no time.”

Dad didn’t budge. “What kind of idiot judge issued this search warrant? On what grounds? You’re looking for what? This makes no sense! No goddamn sense! You’re going to take her clothes, her letters, her makeup? What else? Her laptop? You’re going to find nothing and then what? The innocent citizen grins and bears it. Is that it? You can’t really think my wife had anything to do with this, Sergeant. In Fort Greene, just the other day, ten blocks from where the girl lived, some druggie shot three people dead.”

I kept looking at Mom, who hadn’t moved from the front door. I wanted her to tell Dad to shut up. Her eyes kept sliding from Dad to Sergeant Daniel, but her mouth stayed tight.

“Did you ask the druggie about An-ling, Sergeant Daniel? How do you know he didn’t kill her too? Did you get a search warrant, invade his home, go through his clothes? No, right? Because you blacks stick together. A white middle-class woman, she’s a killer for sure. I know what you’re doing. Don’t think I don’t.You’re getting back at us for—”

I flung my arms around his chest, hugged him hard. “Dad. Please,Dad. Just let them get through with it.”He put his arms on my shoulders real slow, and he started breathing again. I could feel his heart beating hard against my cheek.

“It’ll be okay, Dad.”

The three of us sat in the living room after that. Forty-five minutes later the police were gone.They took some of Mom’s clothes and all three of our laptops.

The next morning Sergeant Daniel’s testimony for the prosecution continues. In his hands he holds two sworn statements dated April 27, 2005 and May 17, 2005, both signed by Emma Perotti. They have been entered into evidence as People’s Exhibits Two and Three.

“Sergeant Daniel, in your May seventeenth meeting with Mrs. Perotti, did you repeat some of the questions you asked in your April twenty-seventh meeting with the defendant?”

“Yes, I did.”

Guzman, his arms folded, rocks gently on his heels. “How did Mrs. Perotti answer the repeated questions?”

“She varied her answer in one instance.”

“Please explain to the jury.”

“On April twenty-seventh I asked the defendant when she had last been in the Tercer Street loft and she stated that she left the loft on March thirtieth and never went back. When I asked the same question on May seventeenth, she stated that she went back to the loft on April seventeenth.”

“Did you ask her why she lied in her first statement?”

Fishkin leaps up. “Objection!”

“Withdrawn. Do you know why the defendant changed her statement?”

“She stated she’d put the April seventeenth visit out of her mind because she was so upset about her friend’s death, and it was only after I showed her the hardware store owner’s statement that she remembered.”

“Did you ask her why she went back to the loft on April seventeenth?”

“I did. She stated that she needed to pick up some clothes she’d forgotten.”

“Did you ask the defendant to explain why she bought the can of insulation foam on that day?”

“Yes.”

“Please read to the jury her answer from the May seventeenth statement.”

Sergeant Daniel fishes a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. After a quick glance at Emma Perotti, he slips them on.

“‘The last time I visited the loft, on April seventeenth”—his voice is soft, but naturally low enough to carry across the court-room—“ a mouse ran out from under the kitchen sink. I grabbed a broom to kill it, but it got away. An-ling was scared of mice and when I found a large hole under the sink, I went down to the hardware store a few blocks away, bought a can of insulation foam, came back to the loft and plugged the hole.’”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Guzman walks back to his table and picks up a clear plastic bag containing what looks like a white item of clothing. He gives it to a court officer. “Your Honor, at this point I would like to offer People’s Exhibit Eight into evidence.”

After the court reporter has labeled the exhibit, a court officer takes it to Sergeant Daniel.

“Please remove it from the bag, Sergeant,” Guzman says.

“Show it to the jury.”

Daniel draws the item out, unfolds it with great care and holds it over the railing of the witness stand. It’s a very wrinkled embroidered silk blouse.