“Wow.” Lawrence can’t hide his shock. “This looks like a luxury hotel.”
“You got the eye, Lar. The building used to be a bed and breakfast. But we gutted it from the basement to the roof. We stripped this baby down to the studs.”
“Really cool offices,” Nate says, following DeFiore into the biggest glass-enclosed conference room on the main floor.
“You’ve surprised me, Mr. DeFiore.” Smiling, Eleanor sinks into a leather chair. “I’m not easily surprised.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Mrs. Quinn. The build-out cost me a fucking fortune. One-point-five mil for the architect alone. But who cares? It’s just money.”
DeFiore’s associate, Mitchell Manzano, shakes our hands. Up close, he looks less like DeFiore’s son than he did in court. He’s in his late thirties, older than I thought. Today he has on sexy black labor-union glasses, which add an air of maturity. “You should wear those all the time,” I tell him. “Women love men in glasses.”
He smiles. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
Beside me, Nate is heads down with Abby Friedman, the trial consultant, who’s around Eleanor’s age. He says something I can’t hear, and when she cracks up, I catch the sparkle in his eyes. Not that I blame him. Abby is a knockout, a voluptuous brunette with great legs. She’s wearing an Armani coatdress that emphasizes her curves, but in a tasteful way, and her sky-high Louboutin heels are expertly polished. Striking yet formidable, she projects trust and authority.
DeFiore turns to Billy, who’s in pressed khakis and a sport coat. His hair’s been trimmed, but his bangs still brush his eyes. “You clean up nice, kiddo. Those jumpsuits make everyone look guilty, unfortunately.”
Billy lifts his pant leg to show off his bracelet. “This makes me look guilty too.”
“We’ll get that off before you know it. Speaking of, let’s start. Mitch, the door?”
For the next hour, DeFiore walks us through where we are and what’s ahead. He’s been working the phones since Monday, trying to sort out the facts. Myriad issues come into play during a trial, but from his perspective, there are three primary questions at stake in this case: when, specifically, Diana went from being conscious to being unconscious; if Diana was unconscious, did Billy know; and if Billy did know, when exactly did this realization occur?
DeFiore’s immediate concerns are the EMT and hospital reports, neither of which he’s seen yet. However, he read the sheriff’s report, which describes Diana as “breathing but unresponsive.” This could pose a problem if the emergency techs and intake nurses offer corroborating impressions: an unresponsive woman cannot give consent.
“Still,” he says, “the State has to prove that Billy knew she was unconscious but had sex with her anyway. Which isn’t easy to do, not by a long shot. And from what I hear, the EMT report is a mess, and their eyewitnesses are recanting. Plus, the responding officers didn’t secure the scene, so their physical evidence is probably useless. But I’ll know more in another day or two.”
“Knock, knock,” Felicia Drake, DeFiore’s co-counsel, says as she slides open the glass door. “Sorry to be late. I couldn’t get off a call.”
DeFiore waves her in. “I was telling the Quinns about the sheriff’s report.”
“A shit show, right?” Felicia is a Jersey girl with thick ankles and a nasal voice. Her pouffed hair is dyed jet-black, and her eyeliner is applied with a heavy hand. “That report does us no favors. Hopefully, the others will say different. But don’t worry too much about it; we’re still sorting everything out.”
Eleanor looks at DeFiore, expecting him to contradict Felicia, or at least apologize for her bluntness. Instead, he nods in agreement.
“I wasn’t worried about it until you walked in, Felicia,” Eleanor says.
“I’d like to read the report,” Lawrence says. “Assuming it’s handy.”
“Trust me, Lar. You don’t. These reports are excruciating for family—on both sides,” he adds, as if we’ve forgotten that Diana has parents too. “The DA is presenting preliminaries to the grand jury next Wednesday. They’ll review the evidence to date and determine if it’s enough to indict. But our assumption is the case will be greenlit.”
“We should be at the grand jury,” Nate says.
“You can’t,” Lawrence says. “None of us can.” He looks at DeFiore. “Tell him.”
Felicia answers. “Sessions are closed. It’s just the prosecution and their witnesses.”
“But who’ll speak for Billy?” my brother asks.
DeFiore starts to reply, but again, Felicia answers. “No one. And the greenlight is a sure thing, not an assumption. Anderson wouldn’t call a grand jury unless he’s confident he can get a majority of votes in favor of indictment.”
Felicia is a female version of DeFiore, except the same qualities that I find oddly charming in him—large, pushy, bombastic—I find unforgivable in her.
“That’s not fair!” Nate blurts out. “What about Billy’s rights?”
“At this point, Nate,” Felicia says, “Billy has no rights. Rather, his rights don’t matter to the DA. Or to the public. No one is rushing to defend rich white jocks, not for rape. And certainly not if a victim is deemed ‘unresponsive.’”
Felicia is correct on this point. Billy’s profile has obviated any chance of an impartial or fair trial. To be clear: I’m defending my brother here, not defending rapists. I know that sexual violence is dehumanizing. It’s life-shattering. It causes victims to feel unsafe in their bodies, often for the rest of their lives. Still, this doesn’t make Diana Holly any less a liar. Or my brother any more culpable.
“What’s really unfair,” DeFiore adds, “is that the DA will gloss over the couple’s prior relationship. If Anderson is smart—and trust me, he is—he’ll zero in on choice details. Like, say, white, wealthy, Princeton, binge-drinking, violence, eyewitnesses, resisting arrest. He’ll use them to tell a familiar story. Then he’ll pound this story into the jurors’ minds, over and over, until they can recite it forwards, backwards, and sideways. Not that repetition is necessary. We all know the story anyway. And a prior relationship, especially one that’s loving and consensual, only confuses the narrative.”
“That’s where we come in,” Manzano says. “Our job—and by ‘our,’ I mean all of us—is to come up with a more compelling story, one where the relationship is central.”
Lawrence turns to Billy. “You’re quiet.”
“Of course, he’s quiet,” I say. “We’ve been talking about him like he’s not here.”
“Get used to that,” DeFiore tells Billy. “Soon, you’ll just be ‘the defendant.’”
“Then ‘the rapist,’” Nate adds. “Then the ‘inmate.’”
“Nate!” Lawrence and Eleanor snap. But Billy starts to laugh. Nate and I join in, and once we get going, we can’t stop. My laughter, loose and alive, unravels inside my chest like a long paper dragon.