“I’m done now, Lieutenant. Thank you. Oh, here’s the mother. Mrs. Delliah?”
“Yes, I’m her mother. She’ll be all right, won’t she, Doctor?”
“Yes, but I want to keep her for a couple of days. The bleeding’s nearly stopped now. I’ve got all the samples I need for the police.”
“No police,” said Mrs. Delliah, crossing her arms over her large breasts. “No police.”
“I see,” the doctor said in an emotionless voice. “Which family member did this to her? Father? Uncle? Brother?”
Taylor looked up, startled. Then he realized that the good doctor had seen her share of ongoing sexual abuse and rape cases. Probably too many. She looked incredibly weary, the anger dull in her eyes.
“Nobody,” said Mrs. Delliah firmly. “The girl was playing with a coat hanger. She did it to herself.”
Ellie started crying, deep gulping, very ugly sounds. Taylor wanted to strangle the woman.
“Why would she do that?” Taylor asked, still holding Ellie’s hand. “No, no more lies. Why are you protecting your brother, Mrs. Delliah? Look what he did to your child! For God’s sake, are you just going to let him get away with this? The man’s sick.”
He was shouting, trembling from the force of his anger. The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder; Mrs. Delliah had backed up two paces.
Ellie cried and cried.
Taylor returned to his apartment on Fifty-fifth Street at Lexington at midnight. He was exhausted and disgusted. But he was going to get Uncle Bandy. Oh, yeah, he was going to nail the miserable bastard. No one was going to stop him.
7
He took a taped statement from Ellie the next day. He arrived in her private room at just after seven in the morning, early enough, he hoped, that her mother wouldn’t have yet made an appearance. Lord knew what the woman would say today.
Ellie smiled when she saw him and held out her hand to him, shy, as a child would to an adult who had been kind to her. He’d thought about his questions, about how to phrase them, and he spoke slowly and gently. Her pitiful tale nearly broke his heart. She’d been abused by her uncle since she was ten years old. He’d told her that she was his sweet little girl and she had to keep being sweet or she and her mother wouldn’t be able to live in this beautiful apartment and she wouldn’t be able to go to her nice private school and play with all her nice friends. At least he’d waited to rape her vaginally until she was nearly fifteen. Taylor didn’t know whether or not he’d sodomized her and he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Uncle Bandy always gave her nice presents, but he hurt her and she was afraid of him. This time he’d made her bleed real bad.
Taylor got all he needed and was just listening to Ellie tell him about her private school and the friends she had there. He delighted in the normalcy of her talk and wished he could take her home with him.
Mrs. Delliah arrived. She was subdued this morning and her clothing was less garish. She was wearing an expensive camel-hair coat over a plain wool dress of expressionless brown. Her face was scrubbed clean and he realized with something of a surprise she wasn’t yet forty. Her red hair, less dubious this morning, was drawn back in a bun. She looked even more like a domestic today, one who wasn’t a hooker on the side. To Taylor’s relief, she didn’t verbally attack her daughter. She was stiff with him, but at least she wasn’t cruel to Ellie. She kissed her and petted her and told her she wanted her to come home.
Taylor said, “I would like to speak with you, Mrs. Delliah, after you’ve assured yourself that Ellie is all right. I’ll wait for you in the hall.”
Ten minutes later, Mrs. Delliah joined him. She looked wary and defiant. He motioned her to a waiting room. He said without preamble, “Your brother is sick. He needs psychiatric treatment immediately. Hell, he probably needed it twenty years ago. He could have killed your daughter. You’ve got to stop this and press charges and see that he gets help.”
She was wringing her hands, scraping her knuckles on the heavy rings. “I can’t.”
“If you don’t, he will continue to rape Ellie. Surely you know that. Didn’t you know that he was abusing her for the past five years? Well, even if you didn’t know, this is different, this is the real kicker. She’s been completely violated now. She has nothing left and soon she will know it and not be able to deal with it. Is that what you want for your daughter? She’ll take the abuse only until she can run away, and then she’ll be alone and on the streets and then it’s drugs and prostitution and God knows what. Is that what you want for her?”
“I don’t have any money.”
“There are organizations to help you. You aren’t stupid, Mrs. Delliah. You can get a job.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you are pimping for your brother, using your own little girl. If you don’t press charges, I will report you to the authorities and Ellie will be taken away from you.”
She started crying. Taylor wasn’t moved. She disgusted him.
“Will you press charges or do I see that Ellie is given to a family who will protect her?”
“He’ll kill me,” she moaned, hugging herself now, rocking back and forth.
“Don’t be crazy. Of course he won’t kill you. Tell me his name now, Mrs. Delliah.”
“I didn’t know he was gonna rape her. I didn’t know he was doing things to her, I didn’t! I just thought he—” No, she wasn’t stupid. She was smart enough to stop herself.
He wanted to hit her, but said instead, “Will you press charges?”
In the end, she agreed. He took her to the precinct station and she signed a warrant and her statement. It was late afternoon when Taylor and his partner, Enoch Sackett, went to Uncle Bandy’s address.
Taylor supposed he really wasn’t surprised, but Enoch, tall and thin as a cane, just stood in front of the magnificent brownstone saying, “Shit, Taylor, this guy torments little girls? And he lives here? It looks like a set for the rich and famous. Why? A guy who has all this? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Uncle Bandy was Mr. Brandon Waymer Ashcroft of the brokerage house of Ashcroft, Hume, Drinkwater, and Henderson, Water Street, New York, New York. He answered the door wearing a smoking jacket that shrieked London, with soft striped wool pants and leather slippers on his feet. He had a handsome angular face, was sitting firmly in his forties, slender, with a manner smooth as vintage Bordeaux. He appeared bewildered by their presence, a neat dark eyebrow edging up as he surveyed them on his doorstep, but utterly civilized. After inspecting their I.D.’s he stepped back and waved them in. They followed him over a beautiful old Tabriz into a study that was all smooth mahogany and built-in bookshelves with uncut heavy books covered in dark rich colors, and the smell of rich pipe tobacco.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen? Please, be seated. Something to drink perhaps? A sherry? Forgive me. Beer?”
“Perhaps,” Taylor said, “you should put on your shoes and leave the Savile Row jacket in your closet. A nice conservative sport coat might be just the thing. An American label. You’re under arrest, Mr. Ashcroft, for the rape of your niece, Miss Eleanor Delliah.”
His bewildered look intensified, his brow furrowed. He appeared to be intellectually insulted. He never lost his smoothness. He worried with a pipe he never lit, a ruse Taylor recognized to give him time to think. He was content to let him think until hell froze over. It wouldn’t do him any good. “I really don’t understand, gentlemen,” he said at last, adding quickly, “I should call my lawyer, I believe.” He also thought he should see his sister, poor woman, for an explanation of this madness.
Taylor agreed.
Enoch winked at Taylor and smoothly cuffed Mr. Brandon Ashcroft, his hands behind his back. There wasn’t really any need, but Taylor wanted this touch of humiliation. The man deserved it. On the way to the station, Mr. Ashcroft told them freely that his poor sister had gotten pregnant years before and he had forced the man to marry her—paid him off, actually. But the man had left her and Ashcroft had freely and willingly supported her and her daughter for the past fifteen years. They had seen her apartment. It was very nice. Both mother and daughter were well provided for. Didn’t they agree? There had to be some confusion here.
