“Uh-huh.” She looks unmoved.
“Harassment is a crime, right? Stalking? He’s following me. Sending texts.”
“Listen, I hear you, I do. If it continues and he escalates, it could even be blackmail.” Her tone is sympathetic, if tired. “With just this…I’ll write up the report and tell you I’ll look into it. But—” She gestures to the packed station. “You can see what we’re dealing with here. I’m just being real with you. Without imminent danger, could be a while before you hear anything. And by a while, I mean maybe never.”
The one thing I know from all those years ago is that the Senator will stop at nothing to protect his career. Iwasscared back then—that was why I signed the agreement, took the money. I’ve been trying so hard not to think about it. To avoid facing it. But, God, I’m going to have to tell Richard about the photo. About the fact that someone is threatening to tell hiswife. That I’ve dragged him and his family into this unseemly mess. It’s just so humiliating.
I look around at the bedraggled crowd—it’s hard to tell the victims from the criminals.
“But what if thereisimminent danger?” I ask. And it isn’t until I say it out loud that I realize I’m afraid that there is much more at stake than Richard’s wife seeing the photo.
“What do you mean?”
“I think I know who’s doing it. We have a history.”
I can almost feel his breath hot and wet against my ear like it was that night, the smell of peppermint mingled with cigarettes. Later I learned he sneaked them only when he was with me, or at least when he was away fromher. And I felt special that he shared this vice with me. That had, of course, been part of his appeal to begin with—rich, worldly, sophisticated, with a dark side. He wasn’t actually a senator then. He was just an associate working with Noah’s dad, but he would be one within five years. It had, for a brief moment, felt like he could be my ticket to a whole new life.
We weren’t even together that many more times—maybe a half dozen after that first night, over as many months—before she found out. She’d probably been on the lookout. Surely I hadn’t been the only one. I understood that now. But back then? I’d been so young.
“Okay, who is this person?” The brusque policewoman raises her pen over her pad. She is taking this seriously now.
When I look down, I see that my hands have started to tremble.
“He’s…”
But with the NDA I signed, the$450,000check I cashed, can I even say his name in this context? I was never to utter it to anyone in connection with myself. Or at least that’s what the NYU student lawyer at the free clinic told me was the implication of the agreement.
“Don’t sign this” had been her unequivocal advice. She wasn’t that much older than me, but I got the sense they were meaningful years. “I know he’s offering you a lot of money, but it seems to me from reading this and looking at you and seeing how upset you are that he committed a crime.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” I’d stared down at my lap and away from her searching gaze.
Was it really rape when you went on a date with the guy afterward? Could it ever be dating if he raped you first? I could go around in circles forever. One thing I knew for sure, though: Partof continuing to have sex with him enthusiastically had been about erasing how that first night had felt.
“You were saying?” the officer presses when I don’t pick up where I left off. “He’s…?”
She’s discerned the general contours—it’s the same shape that lies at the bottom of most dark situations between men and women. Theft and denial. The malleable nature of consent. A fresh wave of shame warms my cheeks. Not only might I have already violated the agreement by even coming here, but I could easily make things worse. If he wants me quiet, coming after me so aggressively seems like a weird tactic, but then the Senator did always have an anger problem. He is resourceful and persistent, too. If he decides I’m a mess that needs to be cleaned up to ensure his election—he’ll see to it that I am.
I stand. “I don’t think I can…”
The officer nods, looks down, considering. I am obviously not the first woman to change her mind. She is quiet for a long moment before flipping her notepad closed. Her face has softened. “Listen, you want my advice?”
“Yes.”
“Hire a lawyer. Have them write a strongly worded letter to this guy. Tell him to back off or you’ll pursue legal action—a restraining order, file a civil complaint, that kind of thing. A lot of people care way more about the idea of public embarrassment than they do about cops anyway.”
Grand Jury Transcript
Testimony of Frederic Kostov
Conducted by Abigail Hoffman, Assistant District Attorney
November 30
Q. Thank you for being here, Mr. Kostov. Can you tell me where you were at approximately 2:00 a.m. on September 11th?
A. At the store.
Q. This is a store you own?
