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“This is Joe Oliver. I believe that you know about me.”

“Hold on.”

The phone’s receiver clattered and then came the sounds of children expressing happiness and complaints. I heard her voice before she got to the phone. It sounded nothing like the woman I remembered begging me to pull her hair.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Summers? It’s Joe Oliver.”

“Yes. I was expecting your call.”

Somewhere on the other end of the line a door slammed and the noises of midwestern early-morning domesticity ceased.

“To begin with,” I said, “I want you to know that I appreciate your letter and what it means. I know you didn’t have to reach out.”

“Thank you, but you’re wrong there, Mr. Oliver. Since I came back to the church I have thought about all the bad things I’ve done. Some of them there’s no coming back from, but…but in your case speaking the truth is the least I can do. When would you like me to come to New York?”

“Let’s talk about that a little later,” I said. “First I want to ask you some questions.”

“Okay,” she said on a sigh.

“You said in the letter that you had been arrested and then coerced into pressing charges against me by a man named Adamo Cortez.”

“Yes.”

“This man said that he was a policeman?”

“He was a policeman,” she corrected, “a detective.”

“And he was the one who arrested you?”

“No. I was picked up with my, with my, um, boyfriend at that time, Chester Murray. They brought me to the station house on One Thirty-Fifth.”

“The thirty-second precinct?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But it was on One Thirty-Fifth. I remember that it smelled like disinfectant.”

“They all do at some time or other.”

“I guess they must,” she said, trying to let my poor attempt at levity in. “I don’t remember the names of the officers that arrested me. Chester was driving, but I had leased the car. There was twenty pounds of cocaine in the trunk. They took me to this room and wouldn’t let me talk to Chester or call a lawyer or anything. They didn’t even let me go to the toilet…”

Beatrice went silent there for a minute or more. I knew what she was thinking. If a cop wants to turn an arrest into an agent, he puts a scare into him, or in this case, her. Hunger, humiliation, and hurt are the tools. Not all worked on every perp. You had to create a specific cocktail for the personality. For Beatrice it was fear of isolation, maybe a little withdrawal, and a bladder so full that she had to relieve herself without benefit of the facilities.

“I was there for at least a full day before Detective Cortez came to see me.” She was once again defeated by the illegal methods. This reminded me of Rikers and the burn on my face when I was slashed by the jagged edge of a number ten tomato can lid.

After another long pause she continued. “He said that they could hold me for two days more without pressing charges and by then Chester would have turned on me.”

“You think he would have?” I asked. I don’t know why.

“Yeah. Chester once gave evidence on his cousin just so they wouldn’t put another mark on his record. He wouldn’t have even gone to jail, but he turned Jerry in anyway.”

“What did Adamo look like?”

“Short for a man. Black hair with a pretty thick mustache. His skin was brown like a brown egg if it was shellacked.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“I—I don’t remember.”