Red on Red Page 11

  “If they thought it was me, it was Babenco’s cousin Kiko. If they knew it was my brother, it was Kiko. If they didn’t care, it was Kiko. You follow me? It was Kiko.”

  Esposito couldn’t shake Malcolm’s hand just then, but he did as soon as he uncuffed him inside, before leading him down to the cells. The detectives headed back uptown.

  Traffic was heavy and conversation was brief until the road cleared above the bridge, when Esposito stepped on the gas. He seemed to open up with the engine.

  “That was great. It went perfect! The video, he gave up everything! His clothes. Didja see the look on him when I gave him the clothes? It was like he was meeting Santa Claus. And that girl, Donna—was she hot, or what? I hadn’t seen her in years. I can’t believe I still had her number, and she was game, ready to go. And, and—wait a second, what was up with you? In the funeral home, when you made it look like you broke down? You cracked up, didn’t you? What was it that was so funny you almost laughed my homicide—two cases, two homicides—straight down the toilet?”

  Nick started to laugh again, at the memory and in relief.

  “There was a picture there, a painting of Jesus and the apostles. Everybody was black in it. It looked like an old commercial for something, an ad for menthol cigarettes. It just hit me.”

  “Well, it was a nice save. The thing about your mother—is it true?”

  Nick had to think for a moment. “Yeah, it is true. She died when I was a kid.”

  “Sorry…. Like I said, it was a nice save.”

  Esposito looked over to him with an appreciative eye—a man who would take advantage of his own mother’s death to salvage an interrogation was clearly someone he could work with. Nick didn’t think of it that way. He was neither as bad as that nor as good—and the gambit had failed as solidly the night before, with Michael, as it had succeeded with Malcolm. For Malcolm it had been a poignant gesture; for the other, an appalling presumption. Who knew how these things would go over? Still, if he couldn’t cry on cue, he could think on his feet, and he was glad for the compliment. He and Esposito were still in the testing phase.

  “Hey, let me cover half of Malcolm’s stuff, the underwear and toothbrush and whatever. What did you pay?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Buy me a beer next time.”

  “What was it?”

  “Forty bucks. The guy made some noise about it, but I didn’t understand him, and I didn’t have time.”

  “He might have been trying to tell you it only cost thirty.”

  Esposito laughed. “See? I told you it worked out, all around.”

  At the precinct, they went to their desks. Esposito was eager to begin work on the next thing—Kiko—and Nick was anxious to finish up the last, yesterday’s suicide. The fingerprints had not matched anyone in the database, as expected, so she was still a missing/unidentified person. The case would be reassigned to Missing Persons in a week if he couldn’t find a family member to notify, and she would be buried—physically in Potter’s Field, on Hart Island in the Bronx, statistically in a folder downtown. Nick had tasted of both fates, and he didn’t care for them. He took her to be Central American and illegal, someone who had slipped over the border or had missed a flight home, looking for work and finding it by the end of the day. She would not have gotten in trouble, at least not with cops, though she was no stranger to misfortune. Beyond those loose ideas, Nick had two phone numbers. Nick called the first—disconnected. The second was a beeper, and he punched in his number for the return call. When his phone rang, he snatched it up.

  “Sí?”

  “Sí?”

  “You speak English?”

  “Un poco …”

  “Soy policía, soy detectivo, es muy importante que tu a la precincto immediamente venir. Understand? You gotta come to the precinct. You talk to me, a hablar con mijo, right away. Tu nombre? Your name?”

  There was a pause on the other end. Nick’s Spanish was poor, and he didn’t know for whose benefit he repeated himself, in simultaneous pidgin. He wanted to make the other man feel uncomfortable trying to speak English, wanted to make him work at understanding, but the message had to be clear. Nick didn’t want to threaten him, whoever he was, but he had to let the situation seem threatening to him, to impress that his involvement couldn’t be sidestepped. That kind of blame-spreading was one of the primary skills of a cop, to make one person’s problems belong to someone else, to as many people as possible. Mi casa es su casa, and my problems are yours.

  “Mi nombre es Jose.”

  “Jose qué? Last name, papi, también.”

  “Jose Rodriguez.”

  “Okay, Señor Rodriguez, you come now?”

  “No, no, trabajando. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “No, not tomorrow. Now. How do you work, what kind—qué tipo trabajar?”

  “Taxi.”

  “Good. Taxi up here, drive up here, now. Five minutes.”

  “No, I in Bronx. Fifteen minutes, I go there.”

  “Good.”

  Nick didn’t necessarily believe that Jose Rodriguez had found his inner citizen, but he believed he’d show up. Nick took out the Polaroids of the woman in the park and laid them across the desk. Her black hair blended with the black night, and the flash had given the skin a bluish tint, a cool, almost underwater pallor, so that her face looked like a mask. There is something deforming about the official camera, for passport, license, or yearbook, that makes people go stiff and flat. Most mug shots are more natural; hostility and fear photograph better than a fake smile. The woman looked better than Nick remembered, less afflicted than she had seemed in the tree, less pitiful than she had seemed in the morgue. If only the same lying kindness that the camera had shown had found her before yesterday.

  When the cabdriver came, Nick put him in the interview room and pointed to a seat. He was young and looked Mexican, like the woman, which was good. He seemed nervous, and Nick encouraged it, leaving the room briefly—“Momento, señor.”—closing the door and sliding the bolt shut with an audible click. Nick went around to the side to have another look at him through the one-way mirror. The man’s left leg jack-hammered under the table, and his fingers twisted and untwisted into cat’s cradles. These little lab rat experiments said so little. Rodriguez was afraid because he was her lover who had left her; because he was illegal; because he had speeding tickets, a bloody machete under the driver’s seat from the last guy who’d tried to rob him; because he was a decent and hardworking man who had never even spoken with the cops before. You watched what he did, wondering what it meant; the only true proof of guilt was sleep. If he had killed someone, he’d have been slumped over, snoring, as Malcolm had the night before, in any two-minute break. A nightmare to be caught, but also a relief; fear had held the body rigid for so long that when it passed, it was like the bones turned to butter. Then again, if Jose Rodriguez had anything heavy on his conscience, he wouldn’t have come. Nick went back in and set the pictures on the table. Rodriguez glanced at them and looked up, offering dim and pointless observations. “A lady?”

  “Yes, a lady.”

  “She dead?”

  “Yes, she dead.”

  “Who?”

  “You tell me.”

  Nick let the silence weigh on him. Rodriguez’s eyes were on Nick, not the pictures, and Nick tapped on the table to return his attention to them.

  “Oh, I don’ know….”

  “Yes, you do. Look again. I’ll give you time to think, to remember.”

  Nick abruptly stood up and walked out. The door shut and the bolt locked with a bit more force. Esposito looked up from his desk.

  “Does he know her?”

  “Beats me. He’s playing dumb, though, so he gets the dummy treatment.”

  “You want me to talk to him?”

  “Why? Your Spanish is worse than mine.”

  “Yeah, but I’m fluent in Stupid.”

  “Fine. Let’s get some coffee first.”

  Nick followed Espos
ito into the meal room. Esposito rummaged through the drawer below the coffeemaker: ketchup packets, duck sauce, hot sauce, salt and pepper, but no sugar. The coffee club had been run by an elderly and meticulous detective named Gerhard who had taken great pride in it. Every morning, there had been bagels and rolls, and on Sundays, fresh Italian pastry from Arthur Avenue. Since his recent retirement, three successors had quit amid constant insults to their efforts; as a result, the position was vacant, and the squad had degenerated into barbarism, sneaking and pilfering private pints of milk. Esposito unstuck a sugar packet from between two mustards, muttering in disgust.

  “If Gerhard could see this, he’d be rolling in his grave.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Beats me. As far as the coffee club goes, he might as well be. Do you want to do it?”

  “God, no. Somebody should, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  Esposito took a carton of milk out of the refrigerator furtively, casting a glance out across the squad room, and poured the last of it into their cups. They drank them quickly.

  “How’s the hunt for Kiko?”

  “I got him. Name’s Babenco, too, might even be a real cousin. He’s got a couple of collars, drugs, a gun. He beat a shooting last year, on Amsterdam. I remember it. He shot a bum in the foot. Uncooperative. He shouldn’t be too hard to find. Wanna go out now?”

  Nick could see that Esposito was impatient, anxious to move. Nick wasn’t. If they caught up with Kiko tonight, it would be another twenty-four hours before they were done, straight through, at a minimum. Nick knew he had something to do tonight; it escaped him at the moment, but it would come. And he wanted to finish up the case at hand. Esposito took all of it in with a look, and resigned himself to respite. “All right. We’ll get going on that tomorrow. Now’s not good anyway. He’s probably out and about. Let’s finish up with your guy there.”

  Rodriguez was hunched over the pictures, twitching, and didn’t look up when the detectives walked in. That was good; it meant that he was concentrating.

  “Okay, Jose. Who is she?”

  “The lady … maybe I drive her?”

  Rodriguez shrugged and looked at them weakly. Esposito leaned in to face him, elbows on the table, gathering himself. He repeated the response slowly, as if it were unbelievable, offensive, painful to speak. “The lady. Maybe I drive her.” This is how he would spend the energy that would have gone into chasing Kiko. They tag-teamed, hitting Rodriguez with questions before he could think.

  “Not good enough. What do you mean, you drove her?”

  “She had your number. Your personal number, not your cab company.”

  “I don’t got cab company…. I got me. I drive Mexican people. They call me, I drive them.”

  “Let me see your livery license.”

  He gave them a fearful look.

  “Let me see your driver’s license.”

  His eyes widened further, and he began to fish through his pockets.

  “I no got it with me…. My name, Jose Rodriguez. You check on computer. I got license.”

  Esposito grabbed his arm and gripped it tightly. “ ‘You check on computer. I got license.’ Guy! Listen to me! I can play dumb with the best of them, but you’re reachin’ here! You’re pushin’ it! This is box-of-rocks dumb. This is Forrest Gump dumb. This is Polish-joke dumb. And I don’t like Polish jokes! My partner here is Polish. On his behalf, I find them offensive! You know how many Polacks it takes to screw in a lightbulb? ‘I don’t know, I’m a Polack!’ What are jokes? What are numbers? Who am I? Am I talking now? I’m so dumb, I don’t know! That’s what you’re doing now, Jose Rodriguez! You gotta tell me who she is, or where she’s from, or where she works, or lives, or I’m so stupid I might try to call my wife and get Immigration instead! I might try to throw you across the room and miss! You’d land clear out of the country, in Mexico!”

  Jose Rodriguez shrunk back in his seat and blinked. Nick, too, was startled by the force of it, was disquieted by the genuine aggression that had inspired the cockeyed harangue. He doubted Rodriguez understood one word out of ten, but one of those words had to be “Immigration.” Still, it seemed to work. When he sat up straight again, his memory had been refreshed. “Okay … maybe … maybe, I think, I think I know where I see her before.”

  “Fine, good, let’s go,” said Esposito, cheerful again. He had sent out his bad mood to do good work. Nick wished he could master the same trick.

  “You … drive me?”

  “The hell with that. Drive yourself. We’ll follow. I ain’t the driving police. I don’t care if you’re running a submarine service up and down the river.”

  Esposito stood up and extended a hand, indicating the way out. Nick scooped up the photos and pocketed them. Outside, Rodriguez headed tentatively to a beat-up old Lincoln and waited for the detectives to get into their car. Esposito kept his eyes on him as he started the engine. He asked Nick, “How much do you think he understood?”

  “Bits and pieces. Enough, I guess.”

  “Yeah. Hey, you’re not Polish, are you?”

  “I have my moments.”

  “Don’t we all. See, Nick? I told you I was fluent in Stupid.”

  “We all have our moments.”

  Rodriguez pulled out cautiously, and drove south on Broadway at a geriatric pace. His brake lights were off only for seconds at a time. Nick took the license plate down, as if it might have mattered; the car wouldn’t be his. Nick had to remind himself that he was not investigating any crime. The case was a tragedy, nothing else. There were facts he had to find out, but if he didn’t find them, the only difference would be that she’d be buried in Potter’s Field instead of some dusty corner of Mexico. Still, Nick felt his duty to the dead, a notion as old as the fear of fire. He had been bound to her when he’d knocked her down. When Rodriguez made a right on 181st Street and pulled over at a store, they parked behind him. Nick walked up beside the driver’s window. Rodriguez gestured to a florist shop, the gates half-down over the windows, covering a climbing bank of yellow roses, white lilies.

  “Here. She work here, sometimes.”

  “Okay, you wait, one minute.”

  Esposito waited beside the cab, blocking Rodriguez’s exit, as Nick went to the store. He tended to believe Rodriguez, or at least believed that this was the best they would get from him. Nick could pick up a wreath, if nothing else. The door was locked, and he tapped on the glass, drawing an older Spanish woman to shake her head and point to the clock. Nick shook his head in return and showed his shield. She nodded and approached to let him in, offering a quick, reflexive smile. She waved Nick in and walked to the back.

  “Un momento, señor.”

  “Sí, señora.”

  Another woman came out from the back, in a white dress, summery as she strode down the green aisle. She was younger than Nick by a few years, but not young in her eyes, which were strikingly green and, he somehow felt, always open. Her hair was tawny blond and lighter than her skin, and her smile was bright and easy; the mix of dark and fair in unexpected mixture caught him up for a moment.

  “Yes, Detective?”

  “Yes.”

  She extended her hand, and Nick took it, and he could smell her perfume amid the flowers.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so.”

  Nick withdrew his hand and fished in a pocket for the Polaroids.

  “A woman died yesterday, and we don’t know who she is. Someone told us you might know her. Would you mind looking at some pictures? They’re not pretty, but it’s important we find out who she is, so her family knows. Would you mind?”

  “No, not at all.”

  The older woman came out from the back as he spread out the pictures on the edge of a counter that held bouquets of fall flowers, yellow and red, with autumn leaves scattered amid the petals. She clutched the younger woman’s arm and leaned in, both women looking at once. The older woman gasped—“Ay, dios mío!”—even before she took in
the face, but the younger looked closely, carefully, before they leaned back and conferred.

  “Es Maria, de Mexico?”

  “Sí, es Maria, pobra niña. Ay, dios mío, pobra mujer …”

  The older shook her head, crossed herself, and stepped back. The younger looked down for a moment, and was about to speak, before there was another tap on the glass door. It was Esposito. The older woman opened the door for him, and he half-stepped in, looking for the nod from Nick. When he got it, he tossed a set of keys back out toward the street, so Rodriguez was free to leave. As Esposito sized up the scene inside, Nick could see he reckoned several kinds of luck had been hit upon at once. Nick touched the pictures to return attention to them as Esposito joined in.

  “So, you know her as Maria?”

  “Yes, she used to come around at the end of the day, buy the older inventory to sell on street corners.”

  No one had ever made the word “inventory” sound so sensual.

  “And she was Mexican?”

  “I think so. It’s a Mexican business, the street vendors, anyway. Her accent, her look, everything about her was Mexican. But I’m just assuming.”

  “You didn’t know her last name, did you?”

  “No, I’m sorry … but there are other girls who come in. I’ve seen her with them. They’re Mexicans, too. I don’t know if they’re family, but I bet they know who she is. They’re a little standoffish with you gentlemen, but I’ll ask. Do you have a card?”

  Nick had already taken one out, but Esposito beat him to the punch, offering his own.

  “I’m Detective Esposito, by the way. Pleased to meet you, and you, señora. Are you sisters? Sorores? No? Madre? No creo! It’s Detective Meehan’s case, but you can ask for either of us. And you are …”

  She handed out two cards of her own: ORTEGA FLORIST, DAYSI ORTEGA, PROPRIETOR. They were simple, in black italic script, with red and green vines making neat columns on each side. They were understated, elegant, like the word “proprietor.”

  “So, a florist named Daysi. Does that mean the same in English?”

  “Yes, we just spell it differently in Dominican, in Spanish.”