City Dark(31)

Hathorne sighed. “I did, yes.”

“Within the last year, isn’t that right?”

“There is a certain amount of theater played in online communities. Bravado is tossed around here and there. I’d guess if you were trapped as I was in a cell with so little to look forward to, you might—”

“Answer the question, please,” the judge said.

“Yes!” Hathorne snapped, his head turning toward the judge. Joe saw his jaw clench.

That’s it, Doc. Let go.

“So you looked forward to those online sessions, didn’t you, Doctor?”

“What if I did?”

“You can’t answer a question with a question,” Joe said. “You looked forward to these online sessions in which you bragged about taking on a persona widely considered to be evil, didn’t you?”

“You judge me,” Hathorne said, the utterance somewhere between a growl and a mumble. His head drooped.

“Excuse me?” Joe asked. His heart picked up a beat.

“You judge me,” Hathorne said. His head was still low, but his eyes rose. “What is it you look forward to, Joseph DeSantos? Other than your next drink? Will you swear to this court that you haven’t had one today?”

“Dr. Hathorne, you cannot pose questions,” the judge said. “You must answer Mr. DeSantos’s questions; that’s all.”

“Shall I repeat my original question, Doctor?” Joe asked.

“Drunkard,” Hathorne said, nearly spitting it. His breathing became audible, an engine-like pumping of air through old lungs.

The judge spoke next. “Doctor, once again, I—”

Hathorne cut him off by slamming his open hand on the fine wooden frame of the witness box.

“You weak, pathetic sot!” The last word cracked through the air of the old courtroom, echoing up to the rafters. For a moment there was stunned silence. In his peripheral vision, Joe could see Hathorne’s lawyers briefly close their eyes.

“I believe your point,” the judge said to Joe, “has been made.”





CHAPTER 27


Friday, July 28, 2017

East Twenty-Eighth Street near Avenue Z

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

11:59 p.m.

Halle Rossi was in desperate need of a pedicure. With her own fingernails, she was an artist, but her toes were a goddamn pain in the ass. In a red silk robe on her bed, she reached back and pushed the temperature button on the window AC unit down to sixty-eight degrees. A rush of cool air fluttered the hair, black and baby fine, around her face. She tightened the robe as she reached for her left foot again, a tiny glistening brush in hand. The color was Lincoln Park After Dark.

“Ugh, you fucker,” she breathed. She could reach her feet well enough, but the act of brushing on nail polish was not something she could accomplish without getting it all over the place. She put the capped brush back in the bottle on her nightstand and lay back on her bed.

Queen size, the bed dominated her studio apartment. Halle was fond of saying that she had the smallest rental in the city, which of course she didn’t, but it was unusually tiny, particularly for a seaside neighborhood way out in Brooklyn. She was born and raised in Sheepshead Bay, a little pocket of narrow streets and row houses east of the Coney Island strip, and she still lived there. After a century and a half of working-class life, it was pockmarked with a slowly evolving array of chain stores, pizza joints, Russian baths, churches, and synagogues.

Her parents still lived a few blocks away in a lovely house they had begged her to return to after law school, but she was twenty-six, and that was the last thing she wanted. She had no desire to be in Manhattan, though, as so many of her girlfriends and classmates did. She was a Brooklyn girl, and she loved her second-floor nook, one of four little apartments in a square brick building on a quiet street. What she loved most was the little rectangular balcony where she could stand and smell the ocean while she watered her plants.

The clock over the TV, opposite the bed, struck twelve and emitted a low clang. Under her thigh and just south of the crotch panel on her underwear, her cell phone vibrated, sending a little tingle through her midsection. Whoo! She scooped it up and opened it with her thumb.

Holly what up? It was her friend Ronit. Like everyone else in her life other than her parents and Joe, Ronit knew her as Holly.

In bed. U?

not even midnight come out

wtf no way. we’ll hang tmrw

come on

gt bed

whatev

tmrw

She sealed the exchange with two red high-heeled shoe emojis. Then she turned toward her balcony door, which was a few feet to the left of the window that held the AC unit. Something was making a tapping sound on the glass of the balcony door. Or maybe it was a scratching sound; she couldn’t tell.

The door was an unusually beautiful piece, with a lacquered wood frame and a full-length glass panel. It was the creation of the owner of the building, a red-faced Italian man who made wine in his basement and treated Halle like a granddaughter. She turned off the AC unit so that the room was quiet. At first, there was nothing. Then she heard it again, something between a tap and a scratch, like a tree branch brushing against the glass. Except there was no tree in reach of the glass. With a crook of her head, she sat up and swung her legs over to the floor. Seconds passed with just the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchenette. Nothing else.