Peaser picked up his briefcase, gave me his best “drop dead” expression as he passed me, and left the room.
Ryan Blackmer stood next to me, whispering in my ear as the team took their places around the table. “I’m never going to say ‘I told you so,’ Al, but there’s a new piece of garbage under every rock you pick up with this broad.”
I nodded my head while Ellen reminded Blanca Robles about what the remainder of the day would entail. “I’ll give you another rock to look under, Ryan. Will you cut a subpoena for the IRS for her tax records this afternoon, and don’t tell McKinney that I asked you to? It’ll take a good two weeks for them to come back, but at least we’ll know if she’s playing any games on that front. And you are welcome to a huge ‘I told you so’-in the middle of Times Square-if you’re right about this.”
We spent the rest of the morning prepping Blanca for the questions, exactly as Ellen had scripted them. Unlike a trial, there would be no surprises for the witness in the grand jury. Now that she had gone public in a televised press conference, the usual jitters occasioned by facing twenty-three grand jurors in an amphitheatrical setup would be less of an issue.
Mercer kept Blanca company while she ate lunch. The rest of us further refined the questions down to the barest bones possible to make out the charges.
At quarter of two, we walked upstairs to the grand jury waiting area. Row after row of uniformed cops with gun cases and drug arrests picked up their heads when our small army came in. The photo of Blanca Robles on the courthouse steps was on the front page of both tabloids, and a buzz rippled through the witness benches as the warden went inside to make sure there was a quorum.
A few minutes after two, Ellen Gunsher went inside the jury room. I entered behind her and walked up the third tier of steps, to perch on the windowsill behind the foreman.
Ellen spoke from behind the table at which her witnesses would be seated. The court reporter was next to her, taking down every word.
“My name is Ellen Gunsher. Today I’ll be presenting to you the case of the People of the State of New York against Mohammed Gil-Darsin.”
Baby Mo’s name was an instant wake-up call to the jurors jaded by dozens of cases heard throughout the last three weeks of their monthlong term. Newspapers rustled as they were put away, muffins and sodas were deposited in totes and backpacks, and everyone gave Ellen his or her undivided attention.
“I’d just like to remind you that in the event you have read any accounts of this matter in the papers, or heard any stories on the news, you must put aside all that information. When I submit this matter to you, I will ask you to vote solely based on the evidence you hear today from the witnesses who appear before you.”
The jurors all nodded their heads, although it was unlikely that any of them could be held to that standard, any more than it was possible to enforce the fact that the proceedings within the jury room were deemed by the law to be secret. By day’s end, most would be bragging to family and friends that they had heard the evidence about the scandal between the infamous MGD and the housekeeper.
Ellen walked to the door and admitted Blanca Robles, who followed her to the front of the room. She appeared to be appropriately nervous-which jurors always liked-and scanned the faces in the room. If she was counting the number of black men, I figured she’d be disappointed to know there were seven of them.
She remained standing while the foreman, who had a heavy Spanish accent, administered the oath.
Ellen spoke next. “Would you talk in a loud, clear voice and tell the jury your name, your age, and in which county you live?”
The pedigree questions were short and simple. There was no other mention of Blanca’s personal life. Information about her imprisoned boyfriend was outside the scope of the direct examination.
On to the work history. Where was she employed, for how long, and in what capacity? Had she ever met or known Mohammed Gil-Darsin before Saturday?
“Would you tell us exactly what happened from the time that you entered Mr. Gil-Darsin’s room on Saturday evening?”
Blanca had taken direction well. She made eye contact with the foreman-most likely because she identified with his Latino accent-and crossed herself before beginning to speak.
She told her story even more convincingly than I’d thought possible, playing to the audience with every exaggerated gesture in her. Gil-Darsin grabbed and pulled and pushed her, his naked, erect thing rubbing against-
“Do you mean his penis, Ms. Robles?” Ellen asked, needing to establish every element of the crime.
“Yes. As God is my witness I can’t say that word in public.”
Some of the jurors were riveted on her expressions and movement, while others focused on the wall clock above Blanca’s head or stared into their coffee cups. The language of sexual assault wasn’t easy for most people to stomach.
“Then he put it in my front-”
“Do you know what a vagina is, Ms. Robles?”
“Of course I do. Is there he put it,” she said, clasping her hands together in front of her and murmuring something under her breath.
“What did you say?” the court reporter asked.
“I was just praying.”
I walked to Ellen’s side and whispered to her. She nodded and said, “Please strike that last question and answer from the record. I’d like to ask the jurors to disregard what the witness said, please.”
Ellen got her back on track with a handful of leading questions. There was no adversary to object to them.
“Did the defendant put his penis in your vagina?”
“Yes.”
“Did the defendant put his penis in your mouth?”
“Dios mío, yes,” Blanca said, as tears rolled down her cheeks and the expression on her face looked like she had swallowed a fistful of lemons.
Ellen moved through the outcry, meeting the police, being subjected to a hospital examination-and within six minutes, the witness had completed her testimony. It was merely the outline of the crime, but enough of a legal foundation on which to send a man to jail for the next twenty-five years of his life.
If Blanca Robles’s case was to make it to a trial six months from now, Lem Howell would likely take these six minutes-and all the flesh that had been left off the bones for this presentation-to skewer the woman for the better part of three days in a courtroom.
“Thank you, Ms. Robles. You may step out.”
Before she could push back from the table, the hands of three jurors shot up in the air. I followed Ellen to the first one and listened as the ponytailed guy in a flannel shirt and jeans asked her, “What about the lady’s lawsuit? I know what’s in the papers isn’t evidence, but I got some questions about her lawsuit.”
“As your legal advisers, sir,” I said, “we must tell you that lawsuit is not relevant to this proceeding. There is a separate forum-the civil court-in which that matter will be decided.”
Grand juror number eight seemed displeased by my response. I guessed he had the blue-collar reaction of a pox on both their houses-the wealthy African son-of-a-thieving-dictator and the hoping-to-win-the-lottery maid who might have been too melodramatic for this guy.
We crossed the room to reach number thirteen, a retired high school principal in her late sixties. “You didn’t ask her if she screamed. I want to know whether she screamed when she says this guy attacked her.”
“I’m going to decline to ask that question, ma’am,” Ellen said. “There is no legal requirement that any victim of a crime has to scream.”
“I’d still like to know why the girl didn’t scream,” she said, a little louder than was necessary.
Behind her was the assistant foreman of the grand jury, an African American businessman in his early forties. “So, what did Mr. Gil-Darsin say about this?”