I never opened the red file folder. It sat on my desk like an ashtray a kid makes for his mother in school—a mother who doesn't smoke. No point reading the stuff until I knew who wrote it.
It took four days to set up the meet. Wolfe wasn't chief of City–Wide Special Victims anymore. Couple of years ago, three college boys slipped a little chloral hydrate into a sorority girl's drink at a frat party. When she passed out, they took her down to a basement they had all fixed up. When she came to, she was tied up, penetrated by all three of them at the same time. The games went on for a long time. Thirty–six minutes, to be exact. Easy enough to prove that. Easy enough to prove it all—the boys had it on videotape.
When they were done, they dumped her on the front lawn of the sorority house. Naked. Bleeding a little bit from where they used the broomstick. The house mother called everybody except the police, but one of the other girls finally got the victim to a hospital.
The rape kit came up aces. Lots of sperm, and the boys were all secretors. The hospital took nice close–up photos too. You could see the bruising and the inflammation so clearly that some freak would probably pay a good price for it—good torture–porn stuff is always in high demand.
Nobody thought to test the victim's blood. They figured she'd been drunk, never suspected anything else. Everything was quiet until one of the rapists' frat brothers saw the video at a beer party. It didn't turn him on. It made him sick—he had a sister of his own. He took it to the cops.
Wolfe played the video for a grand jury. The boys were indicted for the whole boat–load: Rape One, Sodomy One, Aggravated Sexual Abuse, Unlawful Imprisonment….They were looking at about a thousand years apiece on paper—maybe eight and a third to twenty-five in real life…if some whore judge didn't give them probation.
The boys said she was a nympho. Begged them to do it. Hell, told them how to do it. The video…well, they had that lying around, sure. But making the movie, that was her idea. Even asked them for a copy. "SHE ASKED FOR ROUGH SEX, SAY COLLEGE BOYS!" screamed the headline from the same paper that called a thirty–five–year–old teacher "Classanova" for having sex with one of his fourteen–year–old students. New York: No jungle was ever so savage. Or so cold.
The boys' parents put together a whole team of lawyers—a white–shoe firm to negotiate a civil settlement, a couple of hardball criminal defense guys to explain what was going to happen to the girl if she was stupid enough to take the stand. They offered a sweet package—let the boys plead to a bunch of misdemeanors, take probation, do some community service, maybe even some sensitivity training in "gender boundaries." And they'd pay for whatever therapy the girl needed, say a quarter–million dollars' worth. After all, she was a sick kid, but the boys were still willing to take responsibility for their part in the whole sad affair.
Wolfe had the girl with a therapist. A good, strong therapist who was a warrior in her own fashion. She got the girl ready to face it all—ready for war. Wolfe told the pack of lawyers she was going to do to the boys what they'd done to the girl. Only it was going to last a lot longer.
Then Wolfe got taken off the case. In fact, they pulled the whole thing right out of her unit. Gave it to a kid who'd never tried a sex case before. A kid who'd gone to the same school where it all happened.
Wolfe told them they were tanking the case. They told Wolfe to shut up. Wolfe told them where to stick it and went to the papers.
Accusations flew.
Wolfe got fired.
The case went to trial.
The boys were acquitted.
Wolfe was the best sex crimes prosecutor anyone had ever seen. Every cop in the city knew it. They all said if Wolfe had handled the Simpson case, O.J. would be working on a life sentence instead of his golf game. But nobody would hire her after the unpardonable sin of standing up. If you work for the D.A.'s Office, you can be a drunk or a fool, a moron or a pervert. You can be late to work, screw up cases, have sex with your secretary…it doesn't matter, if your hooks are good. But you have to go along to get along, fall to your knees when the bosses snap their fingers.
Wolfe wouldn't do that, so they threw her whole life in the garbage for payback.
The rest of the staff got the message. None of the others in her old unit stood up except her pal Lily, the social worker, who only worked there as a consultant anyway. Wolfe formed a new crew. Started working campus investigations: date rape, sexual harassment, stalking. The schools hire her on a per–job basis—she'll never have another boss besides herself.
But there was something else. Something I'd picked up from the whisper–stream that flows just under the city's streets. The word said she'd gone outlaw after being fired, running her own intelligence cell, picking stuff up from the deep network she'd established when she was head of City–Wide…and selling it.
You can't trust everything you hear from the underground—the whisper–stream vacuums up everything, gold to garbage.
But I knew who to ask.
"I can place the face," the Prof said to me out of the side of his mouth, "but the crew is new."
We were on a bench in the park next to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. A beautiful fall day, late September but still warm enough for the "Look at me!" crowd to display a lot of skin. The Prof was looking across to a parking lot where a tall woman with long dark hair was getting out of a battered old Audi sedan. She was wearing a white jumpsuit, a white beret set on her head at a jaunty angle. It was a good fifty yards away, but I could make out the distinctive white wings in her hair. I recognized the barrel–bodied Rottweiler she held on a short leash too. Wolfe. And the infamous Bruiser.
"You got them all?" I asked.
"One on the left," the Prof said. "With all the kids."
I took a glance. A small girl with long straight dark hair, surrounded by a pack of children. She was wearing a baggy pair of red–and–white–striped clown pants and a white T–shirt with some writing on the front. Big words, red letters. A beret on her head too; red. She had the kids bouncing around in some kind of snake dance, all of them laughing and waving their arms, following her lead. Black kids, white kids, Latino kids, Oriental kids…dozens of them, it looked like. The girl took a quick run–up and launched into a cartwheel, bounced up and clapped her hands. The kids all tried it at once, a riot of color tumbling over the grass. Adults stood back and watched, respectful of the magic.
"Catch the backup?" the Prof asked, tilting his chin at a big rangy–looking man in jeans and a cut–off black sweatshirt, his long light–brown hair tied in a ponytail. He had an athlete's build, stood with his hands open at his sides. Moving to the back of the watchers, rolling his shoulders, his hands empty, the man never took his eyes off the girl in the clown pants.
"Karate man?" I asked.
"Or boxer," the Prof replied. "Something like that. He ain't strapped, but he's got the broad wrapped, no question."
A young woman came down the path, a mass of dark–blonde hair spilling out from under a purple beret. Lemon–yellow bicycle shorts were topped by a white T–shirt with red lettering, same as the girl in the clown pants. She had a cell phone in a sling over one shoulder, a vanilla ice cream cone in the other hand. At her side was a light–tan dog with a white blaze on its chest—looked like a pit bull with uncropped ears. The dog moved with a delicate, mincing gait, its big head swiveling to watch anyone who got close.
The blonde stopped, dropped to one knee, held the ice cream cone inches from the dog's snout. The beast didn't move a muscle, feral eyes somewhere in the middle distance so it wouldn't be tempted to break the command. Then the blonde said something and the dog snapped the entire head off the ice cream cone in one happy snatch. The blonde stood up and kept walking, nonchalantly munching on what was left of the cone.