“Miss Rowena said you’d like to sit down with us. I’m afraid that’s not the way we need to proceed.”
“Why not?”
“It’s embarrassing for the victim. The victim is inclined to hide information. Third parties start interjecting themselves into the issue.”
“The issue? What kind of talk is that?”
“The kind I use when I speak to an intelligent man whom I’m treating as such.”
The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. No matter how old Levon grew, he always looked young. He was also an innocent, even though he had worked for Amnesty International and had been jailed in Cuba and Guatemala. But I use the term “an innocent” in a different fashion. Like George Orwell, he believed the human spirit was unconquerable. He also subscribed to Orwell’s belief that people are always better than we think they are. But sometimes his idealism and innocence led him into arrogance and elitism.
“Take it easy with her, will you?” he said. “She had a hard go of it last night. Nightmares and such. A black hand coming through a window.”
“A what?”
“Nothing. She has bad dreams, Dave. What the hell do you expect?”
“I’ll let you know when we’re finished,” I replied.
He looked back at the page on his monitor, his attention somewhere else.
I returned to the living room. Rowena was sitting in front of a giant brick fireplace and chimney, staring at the ashes caked on the andirons. “You’ll have to excuse the way I look. I was painting. Can we go up to my studio?”
I followed her upstairs to a spacious room with huge windows that looked down on the bayou and on live oaks that were so huge and thickly leafed that you felt you could walk across their tops. The sun’s reflection on the water was like light wobbling in a ra
in barrel. She sat down at a card table and wiped at her nose and raised her eyes. “So ask me.”
I sat down across from her. “You drank about four Manhattans before you left the lounge?” I said.
“I had a couple of drinks earlier, too, before I went to the supermarket.”
“Did you fall down outside the lounge?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I wondered if you hurt yourself.”
“Who said I fell down?”
“This isn’t a time to hold back, Miss Rowena. The prosecutor is your ally. Don’t let him go into court with incomplete information.”
“Jimmy Nightingale told you I fell down? You’re saying that’s how I got the marks on my body?”
“It’s the question others will ask.”
“Nightingale put those marks on me,” she said. “He’s salting the mine shaft, isn’t he? What a piece of shit.”
“Let me be straight up with you. The defense attorney will probably be a woman. Gender buys jury votes from the jump. She’ll say you didn’t call 911, you accepted a ride back to your car from the man you claim assaulted you, you didn’t go to the hospital, you didn’t have a rape kit done, and you showered, taking DNA possibilities off the table.”
“I told Levon.”
“Told him what?” I asked.
“I told him you’d side with that bloody sod whom people around here think so highly of.”
“That isn’t how we work, Miss Rowena.”
“Stop calling me ‘Miss.’ I don’t like your plantation culture. If your ancestors had their way, we’d all be picking their cotton.”