Julieanne Himelstein

Word Count 1948

I was sitting at the bar with Detective Angela “Mac” Morales after a guilty verdict in a case we had no business winning. We were doing what we do best– drinking too much and making what just happened in trial much better than it really was.

We first met on the hockey case, which we now call the “hockey ho” case. At the time, I could have sworn Mac was a Homicide detective, not a Sex detective. but she told me she ‘quit’ Homicide and ‘transferred’ to Sex, in order to ,“...(G)et away from ‘lying-ass witnesses, motherfuckers who buck me, no-shows to trial, and ungrateful pieces of shit.” She said that it didn’t take her long to figure out that in Sex, she still had “lying-ass witnesses, motherfuckers who bucked her, no-shows to trial, and ungrateful pieces of shit.” I guess you could say it was love at first sight and we have worked cases ever since. Many years later I found out she was kicked out of Homicide and dumped into Sex. Like most of us in the shit, drinking got the best of her.

Her cell phone buzzed and she must have caught a case because when I looked up she was gone.

The next morning I arrived in my office to find Mac and some woman who had seen better days sitting on my sofa. Mac knew full well I never allow civilians in my office, especially victims. You see, it’s supposed to be me who is seeing their shame and their goings on late at night. Not them seeing my shame and my goings on that shouldn’t have taken place inside a prosecutor’s office in the early hours before trial, which included the smell of cologne mixed with the sweat of armed and tattooed law enforcement sleeping the last of their shift hours on my sofa. I can’t resist tattoos mixed with Nines and I bet this woman smelled it all.

Mac muttered something about being in the ER all night after catching this rape case and that all the interview rooms were taken.

She introduced the woman as “Miss Carlotta Cobb, your victim”.

Carlotta’s wearing sweat pants cut off to the mid-calf and plastic hospital slippers on swollen feet with callouses wrapped clear around her heels, like they are baked on. A see-through plastic hospital bag with a drawstring sat on her lap filled with what looks like a dirty bra, a hospital baggie filled with salve and fresh bandages, an open bag of Cheetos, an almost-empty pint of Seagram’s Green Apple and a pack of Kool cigarettes. She looks fifty but the paperwork says she is thirty-eight. without her bra, her breasts sag underneath a too-tight “Have a Nice Day” t-shirt like next-day water balloons. She stinks of alcohol, Kool’s and ass all mixed into one. Her skin is yellowish with oversized freckles surrounding a mouth filled with stinky, rotten too-big teeth. Her face and neck are wrapped with fresh bandages over what must be a deep gash because stitches are showing and blood is already seeping through.

“Miss Cobb,” I ask, “How did you get that wound?” .

Carlotta reaches into the plastic bag, fishes out a Cheeto, pops it into her mouth, then looks at Mac. “How many times I got to tell it?” she asks.

“Baby, tell the DA what you told me at the hospital.” Mac replies.

“We was up at the shelter on Second and D and the dude say he just got out of prison down the way.” Her tone is flat.

“When you say ‘down the way’, do you mean Virginia?” I ask.

“Yeah, ‘down the way,’” she said as if there was no other way to put it.

“I went into the closet with him and then he cut me with a kind of a boxcutter and the motherfucker put his dirty dick in my pussy and nutted.”

“Is there any chance you say ‘Penis”’and ‘Vagina’ when we get to Court?” I ask.

Carlotta takes another Cheeto, bites half of it, cuts her eyes at me, then looks toward Mac. Part of the bandage on her face is now orange.

“Why did you go into the closet with him in the first place?” I ask. The jurors are going to want to know.

“Dude say he had vodka and a big fat blunt!” Carlotta said.

Mac and I roll our eyes at each other and if it weren’t for the thirty-two stitches and the fact that the MF had only been out of prison one day when he did this, Mac wouldn’t have even brought this to my office. She would have tossed it at the precinct.

They don’t give this bullshit to the prosecutors who try cases in Federal Court. They get the sparkling clean cases that they can’t lose, like attacks on women jogging in the park in the middle of the day, when they are supposed to be jogging in the park. They have DNA and clean confessions, they get public corruption cases that consist of recorded conversations where all they have to do is press PLAY. You know, the ones you see on CNN, the ones who wear loose-fitting Brooks Brothers navy-blue suits over flat asses, and cowl neck white shells with a string of pearls, nude pantyhose and kitten heels, and hair that doesn’t move. They will tell you they either “did” Harvard-Harvard or Yale-Harvard, then clerked for a Federal Court Judge or at the Supreme Court or worked on the Hill and their husbands are all partners at the white-shoe law firms or work on the Hill.

I really fucking hate those bitches.

I am far from an Ivy Leaguer. I drink too much and wear too-high heels and tight skirts, I overdo makeup, and my hair won’t stay still. I try all the ones no one else wants to try because I have nothing to lose.

I guess the only thing I have going for me is that I am no different than the most cut-up, ravaged, and unloved lot of them all.

And that’s why I got the two drunks drinking vodka and smoking blunts.

Before Carlotta walks out the door, Mac serves her with a Subpoena and tells her that it is an official order from the court to appear for trial and that if she doesn’t show up her ass will be arrested.

It’s the day of trial. After opening statements, the Judge says, “Call you first witness, counsel”.

I look back in the gallery at Mac, who leaves to retrieve Carlotta, who is supposed to be in the witness room, right outside the courtroom.

The calling of your first witness is a moment in trial. Little girls are easy. No matter what, their entrance into a courtroom is against nature and everyone’s heart drops.

In this case, only God knows what we are going to get. Mac had told me she showed up but I hadn’t laid eyes on her yet.

It should only take seconds to walk from the witness room through the courtroom doors.

Nothing.

The doors are still closed.

Another minute goes by.

A minute in trial feels like an hour.

No Mac.

No Carlotta.

Did she bolt? She’s all I have, and this motherfucker has a prior rape conviction, even though the jury will never know that. Without her, he’ll walk.

The jurors look past the almost empty gallery toward the courtroom doors and then at me and then at the Judge, who won’t stop looking at the clock above the doors.

Suddenly, after a sound like a battering ram against the outer doors, Carlotta bursts into the courtroom with her arms covering her head. Behind her, Mac is spraying her with something that appears to be the perfume I keep in my trial bag to mask smoke breaks or worse.

Carlotta is a sight. She has on a yellow cotton dress dotted with smiley faces, a straw going-to-church hat that halfheartedly tops a red wig cocked to one side. After all this time, she is still wearing the hospital slippers. She wades through the gallery, clasping onto the seats on the aisle. It doesn’t matter how she is dressed or how much perfume Mac sprayed her with; she still reeks of alcohol.

Once Carlotta enters the well of the courtroom, Mac sits down in the gallery, looks at me, and shakes her head.

As Carlotta walks past the jury box, the jurors lean back into their seats as far as they can. She practically falls into the witness stand.

I get right to it before everything goes to shit.

“Your honor, may I proceed?”

The Judge nods.

“Miss Cobb, please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what happened?”

Carlotta turns and looks at the jury.“We was at the shelter at Second and D and he pulled out a boxcutter and made me go in the closet with him.”

Are you fucking kidding me? Where did this ‘pulled out a boxcutter and made me go’ come from? He didn’t make her go into the closet. She gladly joined the man in the closet to share some vodka and a blunt. That’s what I had already told the jury in my opening statement.

I had to clean it up. “Miss Cobb, did he force you in the closet, or did you go in on your own?”

She looks out into the gallery at Mac, scratches her head causing her wig to move side to side, then looks back at the jury.

Mac buries her face in her hands, still shaking her head.

“Okay, he had booze and I wanted a buzz-on with the blunt and he had a boxcutter but I didn’t want him to mess with me.”

“Miss Cobb, why did you just tell us that he pulled you in the closet?” That alone could have made everything go south even with the thirty-two stitches and his prior.

“Those people going to think I wanted him to do what he did,” Carlotta said, pointing to the jury.

 I am letting this set for a minute.

I want the jury to digest the wide and jagged scar from the cheekbone to the clavicle a mile long, her wig cocked to one side, that ridiculous yellow dress and that hat, God help me. And then after a minute, I have to do something to save this mess.

“Miss Cobb, did you want to have sex with him?” That always gets juries. They hate that question, especially in light of the slash on her face.

Sure enough, one by one, the jurors turn away from Carlotta, and glare at me with utter contempt.

They are with Carlotta now.

They are all against me.

Just the way I like it.

Carlotta looks right at me, points to her scar and says, “You see this bitch?”

I got her exactly where I wanted her. Now I just need to get the sex act in evidence to prove the rape and then I’m done.

“You told us Mr. Lee ‘messed’ with you. What do you mean by ‘messed’?”

Carlotta looks over at the defendant, who is sitting back in his seat as if he is enjoying the show. She leans all the way back in her chair, looks up at the Judge and says:

“Your majesty, will you tell her to stop calling the motherfucker Mister? He ain’t no Mister.”

“Just tell us what you meant by ‘messed with,’ Miss Cobb” The Judge scolds.

Carlotta looks straight at the defendant and says, “Mister put his Subpoena in my Virginia.”

At least that’s how Mac and I tell it.

Julieanne is a former federal prosecutor from Washington, D.C. She prosecuted numerous cases involving sex crimes against women and children. She also played a leading role in the prosecution of one of the leaders of the attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya. Julieanne lives in New York City with her husband, an FBI agent, and is writing a novel.