DiMaggio was in the back of the ballroom at the Plaza Hotel, standing on a folding chair against a wall so he could see everything. Feeling like he did as a kid, trying to see over the parking lot fence behind the bull pen at Shea Stadium. Only this was a press conference at the Plaza, with all the trimmings, for a rape victim nobody knew anything about a week ago. This was New York City. Where shit happened. Late one night when he was with the Yankees, DiMaggio had somehow ended up drinking beer with Willie Nelson at Elaine’s and Willie Nelson had said, “You know, you can pretty much turn New York up to any speed you want to.”
DiMaggio looked over the cameras and photographers and reporters to where Hannah Carey sat on the stage they’d set up for her. She wore a flowery-type blue dress and a single strand of pearls. The still cameras kept going off, that was the big sound in the room, all the motor drives and shutters. DiMaggio kept watching Hannah Carey, who didn’t seem to be blinking very much at any of it. If she was surprised at the turnout—the late-coming overflow was in another ballroom down at the other end of the ornate hall, watching on closed-circuit television—she wasn’t showing anybody. She sat there the way a model would between shots, back straight, eyes empty. DiMaggio couldn’t help it, he kept trying to picture her with Adair or Richie Collins or both of them, in some kind of pile, and could not. He’d had five minutes in the car with her. Read everything about her there was to read. Now he was watching her get ready to make her statement and still could not put her with them no matter how hard he tried. Couldn’t see her in some kind of two-on-one porno scene.
DiMaggio had been talking to people for one week exactly, Wednesday to Wednesday. He had spoken briefly to Brian Hyland, the Fulton cop, on the telephone, and to some of the trainers from the Vertical Club and a couple of the ball boys; he had hit some of the bars in Connecticut. He had tried calling Hannah Carey, without success. He found out who Jimmy Carey’s agent was and got an address for him on West Seventy-first; DiMaggio had left messages for Hannah there, heard nothing, started to wonder if she’d really left town the way Marty Perez had written. Now she had turned up at the Plaza.
DiMaggio wondered if there had ever been a coming-out party for a rape before.
The press conference was scheduled for noon. Ted Salter had called DiMaggio at the Sherry to tell him, DiMaggio sitting at the piano, fooling around with Mancini’s original arrangement for “Moon River.” He had planned to go up to Fulton, to talk to some of the other Knicks. Then Salter called and said, “She’s coming out.”
“Who’s coming out?” DiMaggio had cradled the receiver against his right shoulder, his left hand lightly touching the keys.
Salter said, “The rapee, that’s who. Do you believe this shit?” Salter didn’t wait for an answer, saying, “I just got a call from the news director at Channel Two. He used to work for our network here. Our girl is holding a goddamn press conference.”
Now it was twelve-twenty. Hannah’s lawyer stepped to the microphone, introduced himself as Harvey Kuhn. He was a short bulldog guy looking stupid in a double-breasted suit, but not as stupid in the suit as he did under one of those full curly Burt Reynolds wigs.
Kuhn thanked everybody for coming, trying to be friendly, but barking like he was talking to some prosecution witness. Then he took the voice down to a growl and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s keep this simple. A brave woman … Hannah Carey.”
She got up then, at least a head taller than Kuhn, Kuhn having to give this little jump to kiss her chastely on the cheek. She produced a typewritten piece of paper from somewhere, maybe the shelf inside the podium. She set it down in front of her, smoothing out where it had been folded.
DiMaggio was surprised they didn’t have her reading it off a TelePrompTer.
“Thank you all for coming.” She smiled weakly, then cleared her throat, the sound barely audible even over the microphone, way down there underneath the motor drives and the shutters. “I’m stepping forward today on behalf of all rape victims. All women somehow made to feel ashamed and forced into hiding by the way rape is handled in this country. Somehow we—all of us, men and women—have gotten it all wrong.” She looked up. “The victim’s privacy is now violated in the name of privacy.”
She was giving it a good, solid read.
“In some people’s minds, Ellis Adair and Richie Collins, as professional sports heroes, have already become the victims. It happens all the time this way, and the result is that the real victim becomes an abstraction.”
DiMaggio wondered if she had written it herself. He looked over at the brother; Jimmy Carey was staring up at his sister solemnly, almost her twin in his light-blue sports jacket and dark shirt. DiMaggio recognized Marty Perez, not from the picture that ran with his column but from the old days in the Yankee clubhouse, when he used to strut out like the top sportswriting rooster in the bunch. Perez stood at the end of the podium, to Hannah Carey’s right, cigar in his hand, not even taking notes. Maybe he wasn’t taking notes because he was the one who wrote it for her.
How far into this was he?
Harvey Kuhn stared out at the crowd, maybe trying to read it. Maybe he was one of the jerk-off lawyers who thought he could read juries, too.
Hannah Carey kept going. “I respect the wishes of all women who have come before me. I pass no judgment on the ones who have been victims of any kind of sexual battery in the past and then found themselves put on trial by our society. I share their pain. As I hope they share mine. But I have made the decision not to hide.” Hannah Carey took a long look now at the room, doing a slow pan, taking it from wall to wall. DiMaggio thought she saw him in the back, but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t know who was coaching her, Perez or the actor brother, but whoever it was had done the job.
“I do not choose to hide behind a gray dot, or a blue dot. I was raped last October in Fulton, Connecticut, by Mr. Adair and Mr. Collins. I was afraid to come forward at the time because I was not strong enough. Now I am. Strong enough to face all of you. Strong enough to press charges. Strong enough to see this through, not just for myself, but for all women. I am not afraid any longer, so don’t be afraid for me. This will be my last public statement until, hopefully, I will be able to tell my complete story in a court of law. Thank you.”
She folded up the paper. Kuhn popped up on one side of her, saying “No questions,” but when had that ever stopped anybody? The questions started to come from all over the ballroom, and then a lot of press in the room started to surge toward the stage. Harvey Kuhn was in front of Hannah and Jimmy Carey was behind her, but now they all bumped into each other, like some old slapstick routine from the Three Stooges. Hannah stopped to look at the swarm, not running as she did at the Vertical, but fascinated, wide-eyed, as the Plaza ballroom seemed to tip suddenly, all the press spilling toward her. DiMaggio could hear them cursing, each other mostly, and some of them yelling about publicity stunt, and then this anguished chorus, rising up out of the swarm for Hannah Carey: one question one question one question.
Jimmy Carey finally took one arm, then Kuhn took the other and they got her out of there, walking to the right, where Perez was, waving at them like a traffic cop. Marty Perez waited and let them pass, making sure the rest of the press could see him as part of the entourage, there on the inside, briefly lingering in the doorway, waving at someone, then making a strut exit of his own.
DiMaggio shook his head. Still a rooster.
Hannah kept whipping her head around, trying to keep up with all this guy stuff.
There was a whole roomful of it. They were all talking at once, like she wasn’t even there in the suite with the big view of Central Park that Harvey Kuhn, the high-rolling lawyer, had rented for the day.
Kuhn had been Marty Perez’s idea. Then Jimmy had joined in. He had always been great at going along. Hannah went along herself this time. She was doing it a lot, she decided. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure if the idea about the press conference was hers anymore. Now she sat there by herself on the couch, in this suite that was like some elegant drawing room. She was feeling light, a little dizzy, like she was being carried along, riding on top of something, afraid to look down.
Marty Perez stood there in a cloud of cigar smoke. “I’m telling you, I wrote some of it and I couldn’t wait to hear what she was gonna say next.” He went over to the bar and poured two Scotches, came back, and handed one to Harvey Kuhn. They clicked glasses and Kuhn said, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful goddamn friendship.”
Jimmy Carey, his back to Central Park, outlined against the first small explosions of color out there, said, “A beautiful reading is what it was. When she finished, I wanted to say, ‘Send everybody else home, she’s got the part.’ ”
Hannah couldn’t decide which one was enjoying himself more. Guy stuff. She wondered if guys got hard even when they were around each other, when they got going on some kind of ball game or something, or telling about some business deal where they’d kicked somebody’s ass.
Hannah was thinking she’d have to get out of here soon, starting to feel a little sick, wondering whether it was just Marty Perez’s cigar or all the testosterone or both.
It always came down to some kind of guy stuff eventually. Guy shit, she thought. Adair and Richie Collins, that was one kind. This was another. She was just along for the ride. She wanted to yell at them, tell them the whole point of the press conference had been for people to see her. But that was the kind of thing Hannah always kept inside, even with Beth.
“You think it would be all right if I left now?” she said. “This has taken a lot out of me.”
Perez looked at her like she was some room service waitress who was waiting for a tip.
Even her brother seemed surprised that she was still there. Jimmy Carey said, “You want me to show you the way out through the service entrance?”
“I think I can handle it,” she said. “You guys seem like you have a lot to talk about. I’d just be in the way.” It didn’t come out as sarcastic as she wanted.
Kuhn came over and sat down next to her on the couch. As he set his drink down on the coffee table, Hannah stared at his fake hair. It was curly and jet black and came too far down his forehead and even with that, Hannah could see this line of sweat at the edge, even in the cool suite. She imagined the rug like some dam, holding back all this water from spilling down into his eyes and all over his face.
When Kuhn turned back to her, giving her what must have been his courtroom face, she made sure to look him in the eyes.
“Before you go, we need to discuss one more thing,” he said.
“What would that be?”
Kuhn said, “Hollywood.”
“Hollywood.”
From across the room her brother said, “I forgot to mention it maybe.”
“Forgot to mention what?”
“We’ve had some preliminary inquiries from some movie people,” Kuhn said.
“They called me,” Marty Perez said, “and I put them with Harvey.” Perez tried to look humble, Hannah thought, and didn’t do much of a job at it. “Just trying to do the right thing,” he said.
Jimmy came over and sat on the arm of the couch. “We’ve got to at least hear them out, Sis. For the option money alone.”
Hannah said, “Can we back up for just a second?” She stood up and moved to the center of the room, the way she did sometimes with Beth, when she started to feel cornered by all her questions.
“Let me get something straight,” she said. “They’re talking about making a movie of this before … before there’s even an investigation?”
“In a word, yes,” Harvey Kuhn said, popping “yes” in there pretty good. “You want Hollywood? There it is. They don’t wait. They wait, somebody cuts the line. You know how they’re always saying the deal is everything out there? Forget it. The idea is everything. They like the idea, what can I tell you? Maybe the Tyson story was too black for them, black guy, black girl. This one jazzes them all up: Hannah the beautiful victim and Fresh Adair, the Willie Mays of basketball or whatever the hell he is.”
“I’m pleased they’re so pleased with me,” Hannah said. She turned to her brother, feeling him staring at her, the excitement of all the movie talk making his eyes wide and bright and a little crazy, like he had taken some kind of pill. “Sis,” he said, making himself go slow, trying to keep himself down, “I talked about this with Marty and Harvey already. Here’s what we decided.”
“What you decided,” she said, getting it in there fast.
“Here’s what we talked about,” he said. “We all came into this knowing there was a chance the cops might not bring charges against these two bastards. So say that happens. That happens, then we move on, you know we do, and address the possibility of a civil suit. Now play that one out for a second. We could win that, and there still might not be any bucks in it for you.”
Hannah said, gently, “Who ever said this was about bucks, Jim?”
“No one did. No one did. It’s the one thing we’re not supposed to talk about, leastways in front of you. So Marty and Harvey and I, who are looking out for you no matter what you might think sometimes, talk about it. Okay? Say the cops do bring charges. Say we go to trial and lose there, the way the woman lost to the Kennedys in Florida. Didn’t just lose, got her hat handed to her. Then what? Where are you then, Sis? It’s time to pay Harvey’s fee and the bastards are innocent and you’ve been dragged through the mud and you don’t have a nickel to show for your trouble. My question to you is this: Is getting them to trial, just that, going to be enough for you? That and everybody telling you how brave you were to come out the way you did in the first place?”
Hannah didn’t say anything because she didn’t know the answer to that one yet.
Jimmy said, “So who does it hurt if we just listen to what these movie people have to say? Are people going to say you committed a crime here because you made some money on this?”
“You’re saying they would start writing a movie now?” Hannah said. “Who would write a movie like that, not even knowing how it all comes out?” She had this picture all of a sudden of some fat movie mogul with a big cigar running in and tossing a script on the table in front of them.
“They mentioned something to me about writing it,” Marty Perez said, offhandedly. “I told them that was a little premature.” Perez sipped some Scotch, said, “But I have to tell you, kiddo, your brother’s making pretty good sense here. You ought to walk away from this with more than the good wishes of your feminist sisters, if you know what I mean.”
Hannah couldn’t help it, couldn’t even put up a fight, so she just let the smile come. It was for all of them, brother, lawyer, the newspaper guy. It was for them and the whole situation, the turns it was taking, spinning everybody further and further away from the night in Fulton when it all happened.
“What’s so funny, Sis?”
Hannah, still smiling, said, “I was just thinking that Richie Collins started telling me the first night that I should be a better sport.”
Nobody said anything at first, not wanting to get anywhere near her on that one. Finally, Harvey Kuhn said, “Are you saying we can move forward a little?”
Hannah nodded.
“Bingo!” Kuhn barked.
Marty Perez was back over at the bar—Hannah hadn’t even seen him make his move.
“You know what they say?” Perez said. “If you die with money in the bank, you miscalculated.”