False Allegations Read online

  "Did what, Heather?"

  "I told on him. I told my mother. But she said that's what I deserved, dressing like a slut, not listening to her and all. She called me a fat fucking cow. She always called me that. My father…they're divorced, he lives in L.A., I never see him. So I told a teacher. A guidance counselor. And then she went to my mother."

  "What did you tell the counselor?"

  "That we were lovers. That we had sex. Not…real sex. I was too smart for that. I mean, I was a virgin. And I knew there were ways they could tell. I knew what to tell them. I told them we did…other things. My mother was real mad. Not for what happened—what I said happened—but because I embarrassed her. She went and got the strap. But I told her if she ever raised that thing to me again, I'd break her fucking arm for her. She knew I could do it then—I was almost as big as I am now. Strong too."

  "So what happened?"

  "She didn't do anything. Just left me alone. But she told her boyfriend. A lawyer. And he told her she could make money if I sued him. So that's what we did."

  "Did you go to the police too?"

  "No. At least, not at first. Her boyfriend, he told us we should ask for money first. In a letter. But he wouldn't pay. He wrote and said I was a liar. And I was."

  "How did the case…?"

  "It made the papers. They even took my picture. My mother's boyfriend had me dress up like a little girl. No makeup, a big loose dress and everything. We sued him for five million dollars. I looked just like I really was—a fat, ugly, sad little girl."

  "He ever pay it?"

  "No," she said, her voice strangling on grief. "He never paid it. He killed himself. With a gun. In his apartment. In that same room."

  "Ah…"

  "He left a note. Not for the papers, for me. He mailed it to me—I got it after he was gone. It said: 'Your lies took my life.' That's all."

  "What happened then?"

  "I went…nuts. My mother put me in a hospital. I was there almost five years. I wanted to kill myself too. So I could apologize. So I could be with him and apologize. It took me a long time before…"

  "Before…?"

  "Before they let me out. Then I went to college. I went to high school in the hospital, so I was ready. When I got out, I just drifted. Waiting for something, I didn't know what. And then I met him."

  "Kite?"

  "He gave a lecture. It only cost ten dollars. He talked about the climate. The American climate. How we have witch hunts all over again, only this time, about child sexual abuse. After the lecture, I went up to him. And I told him the truth, like I just told you."

  She clasped her hands under her breasts, lifting them up like the offering she'd made to the man she killed so many years before, her voice rapt with true–believer lust. "He didn't shun me. He listened. He explained to me why I did it. He said if the climate was right in America, I wouldn't really have caused that much damage. Nobody would have been hurt. The right people would have asked the right questions, and the truth would have come out. That's what he does. That's his work.

  "He told me something else too," she said softly. "How I could make up for what I did. Helping him in his work. That's what I've done ever since. Almost ten years now. And when he told me about you, I was scared. I read your file. You're a criminal. You went to prison. I think you even killed people—it says you did in your file. But he was sure you were the right man for this. It's so important to him."

  "What?"

  "The truth—don't you understand? He always says the people who say it never happens are just as crazy as the ones who say it always happens. He believes this wom—In this case, I mean. I do too. And he says you're the man to prove it for him…If you can't break a story, it can't be broken, that's what he says."

  She turned her head toward the water, looking at the dark river as if it would give her strength. "He says you would have broken me. That if you had been on the job, I never would have gotten away with it. Oh God, I wish that had been. But you're a…mercenary, that's what he calls you. I was afraid you wouldn't play square. That you'd take money from the other side and betray us. He's not a…strong man. Not physically, I mean. I was afraid you'd take his money and then just go away and laugh at him."

  "So you thought you'd…what? Scare me?"

  "I thought if you knew…that I'd kill you if you betrayed him, maybe you'd…I don't know! I wasn't really trying to hurt you. Not hurt you bad. If I wanted to do that, I would have used these," she said, one pudgy little hand going to the waistband of the sweatsuit. She moved slow and careful, taking out a pair of brass knuckles. Not fitting them over her fists, just showing them to me. "I know how to use them," she said. "I learned to do it in…there. Some of those attendants, they…I wanted you to know, if you did that to him, I'd kill you."

  "I believe you'd kill me, Heather," I told her. "That's why I'm walking away. I got enough enemies."

  "You can't!" she cried, grabbing my hand. "Please! He needs you. I do too. I'm sorry for what I did. Sorry for what I did to…him. And to you too. I don't care if you hate me. I wouldn't even blame you. I hate me too. Please, please…just take the money. And…whatever else you want."

  I had no map for this, so I went with the only thing I knew. "Tell Kite I'll call him in a couple of days," I told her, scooping up the feed–bag purse as I got to my feet.

  I didn't look back.

  The Prof was standing next to Clarence's Rover as I approached, a lawyer's black leather attaché case in his hand. "She rolled in alone, home," he said. "In a big beast. All white, smoked glass—a high–glide ride."

  "You get a look inside?"

  "Just a glimpse, when the door opened. I tried to sneak a peek, but I couldn't see nobody else. She was behind the wheel."

  "Think Kite doesn't know?"

  "No way to tell, Schoolboy. She parked a long way down. Bitch had to gimp it for a good quarter mile."

  "Yeah. That the stuff from Wolfe?"

  "That's the true clue, babe. Pickup went smooth. Clarence copped it from that blonde with the doughnut–snatching pit bull. She was right on time."

  "Thanks," I said, taking the attaché case from him. "How's this scan to you?" I asked, running down what happened in Kite's apartment, what Heather just told me too.

  The little man listened close, head cocked so I didn't have to speak up, a habit that marked him as clear as a jailhouse tattoo. "She knows how it's done, son. Stripped to freeze your eye, dropped the sucker punch before you could catch the lie. Can't be the first time she played that tune."

  "Yeah. Felt like she was going for it too. I hadn't stopped her, she was gonna hurt me."

  "You think pain's her game?"

  "No."

  "You sure?"

  "No. And I'm not gonna find out either. That's a freaky, dangerous broad. I think she was telling the truth. She wants this. Wants it bad. I think she's used to bulling her way through things. She's real…I don't know…physical. Maybe she works the bad–cop thing with Kite. When he does questioning…"

  "If rough–off's the tool, she's a fool," the Prof said. "You got to check out the canvas before you paint."

  "I know," I said, remembering. It was one of the first things he taught me.

  "You gonna play it?" he asked me, not pushing either way.

  "Man went to a lot of trouble," I said, thinking it through out loud. "Time and money both. It's me he wants. For this job, anyway. I don't know what he'd do if I pulled out, but there's no reason to risk it. We're gonna get paid, right? And some of that money's gonna buy us the same gun he's pointing at my head—information."

  "Yeah," the little man agreed. "I wouldn't want that Wolfe woman getting me in her sights either."

  I reached in the feed–bag purse, counted out five thousand and pocketed it for Bondi. Then I handed the purse over to the Prof. "There's twenty in here. Five apiece for you, me, Clarence, and Max. Hush money, bitch thinks it is. I'm gonna stay hushed for a while. Near as I can tell, Kite wants me to talk to
someone, see if they're telling the truth. I'm gonna do that. Then…"

  "You backed, Jack," the little man said.

  I drove away slowly in the Plymouth, enclosed in the steel but looking out through the glass. Thinking about how safe the Prof always made me feel.

  I'd come into prison a rookie thug, pulling armed robberies cowboy–style, ready to risk a life sentence for a payroll. The prison economy produces entrepreneurs the same way the Outside does. Pressure extrudes. There was this guy who was always just one beat off from the crime music the rest of us lived by. The Prof called him Einstein and, after a while, we did too. Einstein was always coming up with great ideas. One was books–on–video for the deaf: On the screen would be a person signing the whole book, like closed caption. Another move was Mother Nature's cigarettes: organically grown tobacco, no pesticides, rolled in recycled paper. He was going to sell them in health–food stores. The flash of his ideas always blinded him to the one little problem with them.

  Einstein was out in the World once and finally hit on a winner—selling special limited editions of books by authors who never made the best–seller list but had real followings among collectors. He did it right: leather–bound, ribbon markers, marbled endpapers…everything. First time he tried it, he ran off a printing of five hundred, and he sold every single one. Then, of course, the genius figured he was on a roll, so he went back for a second printing. Couldn't figure out why that one flopped.

  See, Einstein was a citizen in his heart. Only reason he kept coming back to prison, he was always using a gun to turn banks into his personal ATM, grabbing R&D money for his next project.

  Einstein read a lot. I mean, a lot. He was always looking for the Answer. Anyway, one day he comes out on the yard, sure he'd finally found It. He just finished some book on the Civil War—it was all about how rich men avoided the draft by paying poor men to fight in their place. So Einstein figured this time he had the perfect scheme: why not let rich men who got convicted of crimes pay other guys to do their time?

  He ran it down all excited, the way he always did. The first guy to respond was a stone fool named Vinnie. "I wouldn't do that for a million bucks," he sneered, superior.

  But the Prof wasn't going to let anyone riff on Einstein. "Yeah, right. You too slick for that trick, huh? Naw, you wanna keep sticking up your goddamn bodegas for chump change! How much you pull from your last score, Dillinger? Few hundred bucks? And what you doing on this bit, another nickel–and–dime? My man Einstein may be loco, but he ain't stupid!"

  By the time the Prof was done with my education, I knew a dozen slicker, safer ways to get money. All crooked.

  I knew this was one of them—but I didn't know how to do it yet.

  I sent the money to Bondi in a plain little box, tightly duct–taped inside the brown paper wrapping. It's a big–time felony to ship cash into Australia, so I put the package together as carefully as a letter bomb—if the cops opened it at the other end, it wouldn't bounce back to me. I did all the lettering with a pantograph—no handwriting, no hands. For a return address, I used a sex–dance joint in Times Square. Maybe they'd figure some old customer was sending her a present.

  I used the Main Post Office on Eighth, the busiest one in the world. As I walked out, I stripped the surgeon's gloves from my hands, tossed them in a Dumpster, and disappeared into the subway.

  Back in the office, I went through the package I'd paid Wolfe for. Kite was born in 1951. Weighed six pounds three ounces. No prior live births listed to his mother. Pediatric records showed regular visits. Nothing remarkable except a bout with whooping cough and surgery to correct an undescended testicle.

  Parents both dead, car accident. Drunk driver took them out when Kite was eleven years old. Raised by mother's sister and her second husband, a lawyer in Spokane, Washington. Tonsillectomy, age thirteen. Pretty late in the game for that—must have been painful. Straight–A student in high school. Chess club, debate team, drama society. SAT score of 1540. Full scholarship to college.

  In 1970, his aunt's husband was arrested for a series of highway rapes near the Idaho border. The rapist was a cripple–hunter, cruising the side roads in bad weather, looking for cars that had broken down…cars with women drivers, alone and stranded. He wore a stocking mask, never left prints. They caught him with an undercover operation, used a woman decoy cop standing next to a car with the hood up. Found the stocking mask, heavy pair of leather gloves, and a lead pipe wrapped in black friction tape. When they let him out on bail, he called a press conference. He said all the evidence had been planted—they had the wrong man and they knew it.

  But two of the victims ID'ed him. The mask didn't help—he hadn't been circumcised until he was an adult, and the penile hood had a distinctive flap of darkened flesh where the surgeon had left a piece.

  He pleaded guilty on the eve of trial. The prosecutor agreed he was suffering from a "mental disease or defect" and prison wouldn't be appropriate. He was committed to a closed psychiatric facility for an indefinite period, his status to be reviewed periodically.

  Three months into his term, he was stabbed to death in the shower room.

  His mother's sister remarried a year later. Kite never returned to Spokane. I glanced over the law school stuff—just a flesh–out of what Wolfe had already told me. Law Review, Order of the Coif, American Jurisprudence Award in Contracts. Admitted to the New York Bar in 1975, Federal District Court in 1976.

  Never married. No indication he was gay. The Sutton Place address was the only one anybody had. No driver's license. Premises permit for a SIG–Sauer P230 semi–auto.

  He had a SEP account at a major brokerage house. Started in 1988, rolling over the 401(k) from the last law firm he'd left. Present value: $588,644.22. The Sutton Place joint was a co–op. Mortgage of $860,000, this after a down payment of $750,000 flat. Monthly nut, mortgage, carrying charges, and taxes: $13,100.29. Paid perfectly, auto–EFT from his business checking account. The unit he owned included a basement garage. A 1996 Cadillac STS sedan was registered to him at that address. A white one.

  Kite was listed as the sole stockholder of Screentest Supreme Software, a closely held corporation based at the Sutton Place address. Its only asset was a series of copyrights and trademarks. His 1994 IRS 1040 showed a net income of $801,444. Nothing looked cute about the tax return on the surface: no exotic deductions, no tax shelters. No employees either—he paid everything on a contract basis, from word processing to an occasional chauffeur. Heather received checks totaling almost forty thousand in 1994, all marked "research."

  Bank accounts, T–bills, a smattering of stocks, mostly technology issues. His real estate portfolio was heavy: five co–op apartments in the city, from a three–bedroom high–floor to a couple of studios. A management company was handling them, and it looked like it was doing a good job—they were all fully rented. They all had mortgages too; he was carrying most of them flat, showing a slight profit on the biggest unit, making his profit off the mortgage deductions and depreciation.

  American Express, VISA, MasterCard…all paid–to–date, no balances. Except for the mortgages, he didn't owe anyone a dime.

  Wolfe's papers estimated his net worth at $4.3 million, "conservative."

  The package also contained photocopies of various briefs and motions he'd submitted when he'd worked as a lawyer, a couple of contracts he'd drawn, even a transcript of oral argument on an appeal. The briefs were more science than law: charts and graphs, citations to articles in psychiatry journals, complicated logic chains painstakingly and elegantly drawn.

  One of them was a custody case, Kite representing the father. The mother said she had discovered the man was sexually abusing his son. She wanted him barred from visitation. Kite argued that she'd made the whole thing up, proved that she'd been abused herself as a child, said she was "spooking at shadows" and that she was a "secondary victim of an incompetent therapist." His deposition of the therapist was a masterpiece. He questioned her about the protocols
she used, showed she had no special training in the use of anatomically correct dolls, pointed out a few minor exaggerations on her résumé, asked why she never videotaped her sessions with the child. And his own brief was full of citations to studies by psychologists pointing out the damage to any child forced to carry the burden of a false allegation.

  He won that case. The court said the mother's conduct was so egregious that it warranted an outright change of custody: the mother was allowed to see the boy only under supervision. The decision was upheld on appeal.

  A year later, the mother was arrested for trying to kidnap the kid. She was all set to flee—had fake ID for them both. They bagged her at the airport, tickets to France in her handbag.

  Kite had an AV rating, the highest, from Martindale–Hubbell. He was listed in Who's Who in American Law. Except for a half–dozen brief mentions in the New York Law Journal over the years, the newspaper search had come up empty—he wasn't a publicity hound.

  No. He was a hover–hunter; a bird of prey who didn't need a perch to work from.

  The last document was a double–spaced list of all the lawyers Kite had consulted to since he went into solo private practice. It ran four pages, went coast to coast. I recognized a couple of the names—media–slut matrimonial bombers—but most I never heard of. Wolfe had annotated the list, breaking the names down by specialty and type of case. Mostly custody and visitation, but a good many civil lawsuits and a few criminal cases.

  In the matrimonials, Kite worked for whoever hired him. In all the others, he was always for the defendant.

  I read it all through, then I read it again, looking for a pattern. The only one I could think of didn't pan out: although most of his clients—or, actually, the clients of the lawyers who hired him—were male, almost a third were female. He wasn't one of those "father's rights" guys.

  Wolfe was good, and her microscope went deep. But I didn't see any cracks in the wall.