Читать книгу Job or death in Philadelphia. An American crime novel - - Страница 2

Divorce stands out among other things I don’t like about marriage. After three failed marriages, I still can’t accept that a man I taught to shower, brush teeth, wear clean clothes, and eat healthily would start hunting on different hunting grounds and abandon me. I married my first husband by mistake. I married my second husband for romance; and I married my third husband for money.

My dad, a military officer, and mom, a nurse, thought I could do so much better with my looks and brains. They gave me a great education; I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at 4th and Walnut Street in Philadelphia, which was an Ivy League college. I majored in Business Administration. Years ago, my parents had dreamed of me working for Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers, running some important department, getting my career together, and marrying some executive, with a couple of million dollar yearly benefits package, and having a couple of beautiful kids in a mansion.

Instead, I married a guy I had met at the Mystery Book Club in the local Ink & Blood book store. Steve was short, with a triangular «chicken chest» and a round head. Add short-cropped hair, round glasses and a barn sweatshirt year-round, and you get the picture. He swept me off my feet, being an endless source of crime stories, real and fictional. He also educated me about gender relationships with my pregnancy as an unexpected complication. We got married a month before Iris invaded our lives, and spent the following year arguing about which one of us should enter the Greater Philadelphia area workforce and start winning bread for the family. It was Steve who gave up and filed for divorce. Being single, he could stay in his parents’ basement, have meals every day, and still keep up with reading every mystery novel ever published.

After Steve took off, and as a result of equitable distribution of marital property, I was left with our daughter Iris, and my first husband made away with the furniture and a 61-inch flat screen Scenium TV.

The local police department kicked my second husband out of our rental property after some amazing facts about his sex life surfaced.

I wasn’t terribly surprised when my third husband walked out on me on a bright Monday morning. The night before, we spent kissing in the dark; the next morning, after a substantial breakfast, my husband finished his coffee, belched and said casually that he was leaving.

«Bye, sweetie,» I said and rushed toward the door to see our daughter, Iris, on the bus.

«I mean, I’m leaving you.»

I tripped over the carpet. The following day we spent arguing over divorce. It turned out that after four years of marriage, he went out to explore other options. He used the word «options» like it wasn’t our marriage and our child we were talking about, but some alternative routes to get to his relatives in New Jersey.

Our divorce was completed with a settlement based on an equitable distribution relief principle. My husband evicted his stepdaughter and me from his house in the presence of two cops, and let us take only our personal belongings, like a pile of mystery novels and computer games. My husband’s lawyer argued in court that the defendant, a.k.a. me, contributed little to the family budget because I did not hold any job other than being a housewife. I couldn’t afford a lawyer, so I argued on my own behalf that it was our mutual decision for me to become a stay-at-home mom. Still, I had produced no income for the past four years, they argued, and was entitled only to child support. I lost my house, because it was my husband’s; I lost my car, because it was my husband’s as well. I kept some pieces of furniture, though. All antiques with mismatched drawers.

Struggling to survive in a sluggish economy, I took the first job available. I drove a cab, because I could keep my cab after hours. Besides, driving was one of my two favorite things to do. (The other was reading mystery novels.) I could drive anywhere, anytime, regardless of the weather. When I wasn’t behind the wheel, I would most likely be lying in bed with a new whodunit and a nice calorie-packed snack.

Six months later, I knew the streets of Philadelphia like my parents’ backyard. We rented a place on 4th and Arch Street, a quiet, sleepy neighborhood, where shootouts and police raids were usually over before three, and burglaries wouldn’t start until nine in the morning. After moving here from a Huntingdon Valley mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs, we got burglarized twice. The first time, thieves took our TV, which I didn’t miss; the second time, they took my quilt, which I did miss. In this neighborhood, a single white mother living without a boyfriend had «troubles» written all over her; that’s why I carried a compact pink, rubber-coated, ten-pound gym weight in my purse.

This particular glorious October morning, I kicked my Ford to life and cruised slowly towards Market Street Station, looking for a client. A man in a business suit flagged me down, and soon I had several dollars stuck in the pocket of my purse. Two hours later, rush hour turned the city streets into something remarkably similar to an elementary school’s hallways: the same chaotic traffic, the same noise, and the same intense knowledge of the priority of one’s needs. It was time to get off the road and have the second daily cup of coffee. I pulled into a secret parking space between two rundown buildings off Spruce and 13th Street and went into a tiny Uncle Tad’s coffee shop. They brewed very strong coffee and carried good ole American Tastykakes at a thousand calories apiece, but that was all I needed to wake up and start a bright new day.

The place was packed and, stepping inside, I held the door for yet another hungry fellow. Moving in lockstep between narrow shelves, I felt the guy’s hot breath on my neck. He got so close that he poked me in my head with the tip of his baseball cap. After three divorces, a man’s body in proximity could cause skin irritation, nausea and seizures. Inhaling and exhaling rhythmically, I filled my cup with coffee, got a heavy chocolate Tastykake, paid at the door, and got outside as fast as humanly possible.

I finished my snack and coffee, sitting on the cab hood. Food stinks up the car too much, and I like to keep it clean. I threw the paper bag into a trashcan and opened the car door, when suddenly I was pushed inside the cab with such force that my face met the steering wheel and salty blood filled my mouth. Somebody clenched my neck from behind and ripped my earrings off. They were 3.5-carat diamond earrings that my third hubby had given me as a wedding present and forgot to include in the list of marital property items. The earrings were worth more than the cab I drove, but for me, they also had a sentimental value, like tiny particles of dust from my past comfortable, suburban life. I never expected that the process of separation from my earrings would cause me so much pain. Instinctively, I turned around and smashed my purse into the predator’s face.

He grunted, pulled his knee off my back, and ran. I reached him ten feet away and hit him with my purse again. He fell to the ground. I stepped on his wrist, bent over and, with a victorious cry, pulled my earrings from his clenched fingers.

According to the Silver Cab Company policy, I couldn’t leave a cab unattended at any time. Jumping up like a mountain goat, I ran back to the car and got inside when the police interceptor wheeled in, soundlessly but with blinking lights. Thinking solely about the Silver Cab Company policy and the prospect of losing my job, I kicked the engine to life and floored the gas pedal. My Ford jumped ahead, and as if in a bad dream, I noticed a guy standing in front of the car. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. My Crown Victoria hit a man with a thud, knocked him off his long feet, and moved on top of him. Moments later, the car door was flung open, and strong hands pulled me out and pressed me to the ground. I tasted not only blood in my mouth, but dust as well.

I spent the rest of the morning answering questions and signing papers. The sergeant detective, Chris McAfee, a middle-aged guy with a round, kind face, wanted to know if I had met my attacker before. I wasn’t sure if the definition of the word «before» covered a five-minute time period, and answered negatively.

«Look here.» The sergeant sighed, handing a statement to me to read. «This guy claims he lost his memory after you hit him twice with the weights. He claims not to remember his name and his address. We sent his fingerprints out, but it might take days before we get the result, if he is local.»

«What if he is not local,» I asked, signing the statement without reading.

«If this is his first offense, or if he is not local, we might never find out who he is. That is why it is really important for you to recall seeing him before.»

The assailant had been a bit taller than me, physically fit, with skin the color of a strong coffee brew. I’ve seen at least a dozen guys like him every day.

«Go, look at him again. Maybe it will help.» The sergeant took me to the room with a glass wall, through which I could see my attacker talking to a cop. The diamond hunter was wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and the nicest facial expression.

The sergeant picked up the receiver and listened to it for a couple of minutes, then turned to me with a sad smile.

«He says that he never attacked you. He says that he wanted to take a cab, and approached you, and you attacked him and hit him in his face. He says that you ripped off your earrings when the police car showed up.»

«What?» I choked on my own saliva. «Wait. I was standing there, next to my car, having coffee. Then I opened the car door, he pushed me inside, smashed my face against the steering wheel, ripped off my earrings and took off. Now, he’s saying that I attacked him? This is the most blatant lie I have ever heard in my life. What about the cop in the car? He saw…»

«He saw you jumping inside the cab and trying to drive away,» the detective said.

«What about the guy I ran over? Maybe he saw something?» I was grabbing at the last straw, and the detective knew it.

«Maybe,» Sergeant McAfee said, looking at me with fatherly compassion. «A very slight possibility. But we can’t talk to him right now. He’s got a brain concussion and right now he’s sleeping in the hospital.»

For lunch, I got a cup of weak coffee and a doughnut. Then Sergeant McAfee took me to the City Courthouse. We waited for half an hour for the judge to call my name. The judge, enormous in his black robes, observed me through his round glasses, then moved his glasses to the tip of his nose and observed me from above them.

«Okay, what do we have here? Rachel Rydal. Thirty-five years old. Physical assault on a man, disobeying a police order to stop and get out of the car, an attempt to escape from the police, in the process of which another man was hit-and-run over and was injured. What is this, ma’am?»

«I don’t know,» I said. «The black guy pushed me inside the cab and ripped off my earrings.»

«Do you work?»

«Yes. I drive a cab.» Hot tears ran down my face as freely as if the judge had just opened a faucet.

«Where are those earrings?» The judge asked. The sergeant produced a plastic bag with my jewelry. «Where did you get them?»

«They were my wedding present.»

«Are you married?»

«No, your Honor. Divorced. One child.»

The judge snorted, flipping through my case pages. «Okay, Ms. Rydal. Bail is set at nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. Find a lawyer, will you?»

Being unable to produce a thousand dollars, I was locked up in a cell at the police station for the night and had another weak coffee and a glazed doughnut for dinner. I needed to get out of jail while I could get through the doors. One permitted phone call was used to call my friend Kathy, who drove all the way from Montgomery County to pick up Iris to stay with her, until she gets money to bail me out. The idea of calling my parents never even entered my mind, since my dad had a serious heart condition, and I wouldn’t be able to explain to him how just a brief involuntary encounter with another human being turned me from a nice, reliable, hard-working woman into a criminal.

Exhausted, I instantly fell asleep, and woke up in the morning to the voice of a police officer calling my name. For a moment, I couldn’t recall what day it was and where all my furniture had gone.

«Rachel Rydal, you have somebody waiting for you.» The young, handsome cop opened the cell door. I stepped out into a hallway while he was fastening handcuffs on my wrists and asked him if Kathy had paid the bail.

«They will give you all the information,» the cop said, ushering me into yet another hallway. «You will get to meet your victim.»

«My who…?» Well, excuse me, but it’s me who was the victim. This was my role. I’d been a victim of circumstances, of my husband’s treachery, of the sexual revolution, and a downsizing economy. And, if I victimized somebody, it was me, myself and I.

The police officer opened the door in front of me, and I stepped into a reception room with two men in gray suits standing there looking at me. The younger man was wearing dark sunglasses, as if he was hiding his face. It was him who said, «Ms. Rydal. Your bail is paid. Don’t worry about anything. This is your lawyer, Joseph Madnick.»

The older man with the huge shoulders and skinny legs nodded, scanning me over with a sour facial expression. Obviously, he didn’t like the sight of me, an innocent woman, standing with my hands cuffed.