Red on Red Page 13

  Garelick joined them, calling out to Perez with cordial welcome, “You wanna cup? Fresh pot here.”

  Both Esposito and Nick noticed, and exchanged glances. Perez noticed, too, or at least he noticed the change in Garelick’s tone. Perez didn’t drink much coffee, but he came inside the meal room, drawn by the unexpected solicitude.

  “How do you take it?”

  “Regular.”

  They had worked together for months, and Garelick didn’t know how he took his coffee. Most partners knew after the first hour. Garelick even poured the milk and sugar for him; Nick thought that was a little over the top.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks!”

  “So, how did it go with the girl from the diner? Marina, wasn’t that her name? Did you ever call her?”

  Perez took a deep drink of his coffee, and warmth flushed through his face. It was as if the attention were strong liquor for him, too strong. He had an odd smile; it looked like a stroke in reverse. Half of his face—mouth, cheek, and eyebrow—lifted up, while the other half remained still, as if it didn’t get the joke.

  “I called her, and we did a lot more than talk! She is one wild woman! Believe me, I can barely walk today, I’m so sore.”

  Garelick let loose a high cackle of glee. Nick rushed to leave the room, knowing he couldn’t keep a straight face, tapping Esposito to follow. Nick snatched up the first file he saw on his desk, hoping it was the one he needed.

  Even the idea of a woman, Nick thought—half-thought, since he could not finish. He was straining not to run, not to lose control. He was just beyond the door, with Esposito a step behind, before they broke down, laughing. They were in the car, several blocks south on Broadway, before they settled down.

  “Poor Ralph!”

  “Silly sons-a-bitches are made for each other. Hey, speaking of—never mind that. How’d it go with the missus last night? You get lucky?”

  “Which was it, ‘silly sons-a-bitches’ or ‘made for each other’? What reminded you?”

  “Nice catch, but you still dodged the question. You get lucky?”

  “With your wife, it isn’t getting lucky.”

  “Call it what you want. Good for you.”

  The compliment hung in the air for a moment, and Nick wondered whether to correct his assumption. When it struck Nick, with some dismay, that Esposito was the only person he’d had a real conversation with in recent memory, he decided not to lie, or let the lie remain.

  “I skipped it. It was some kind of business dinner.”

  Esposito nodded before venturing, with unaccustomed caution, “Things between you and her … they done?”

  “I think so. When I think about it, I think so.”

  Esposito nodded again, and let it rest. Not the time to think about it, not now; work to do. Let the past pass. Nick began to shuffle through the cases, then put them down to look out the window, to take in the city, the brightness of day. Here on Broadway, there was braying novelty, a bazaar of small stores, sometimes two or three of the same on each block. Cellphone places, suddenly everywhere; five-and-dimes stuffed with Chinese-factory plastics, Day-Glo bath mats, dust mops, flip-flops, nearly worthless and nearly eternal; flashy little jewelry stores, barricaded behind Plexiglas and buzzers, Arab and Korean and Spanish, offering gold teeth, nameplate rings the size of brass knuckles, and giant tortured crucifixes, Christ’s eyes dotted with rubies, which made him look enraged, as if he’d come back to settle a score. The better ones only sold gold; the worse ones bought it, too, and were not judgmental if the rings came in with bits of finger in them. Hair salons and nail salons, bodegas and botanicas, full of candles decorated with half-breed saints. Corner diners for café con leche, rice and beans, pernil wallowing in steel trays of sweet grease, rows of spitted chickens in the window, toasting under lightbulbs. There were Dominican stores that looked more like garage sales, strange hybrid twofers and threefers, so you could buy video games where you got a haircut, batteries and cheap shoes where you picked up a money order. And then, a new one—

  “Look!”

  “What?”

  “The Dominican store, over there, by where the bum’s pissing.”

  “Where—No, I got it. Fresh Fruit and Financial Services. Never seen that before.”

  “ ‘I’m considering diversifying my portfolio. Plus, I want a coconut.’ ”

  “ ‘Can I roll over these IRAs into … this mango?’ ”

  “ ‘I would like to discuss estate planning, and a banana.’ ”

  And yet, it made a kind of sense. You want this? No? How about that? Nick didn’t know if the fruit was rotten or the advice was, but so much of everything else here was candy, candy and toys. Christmas morning, all year round. Twenty blocks up, twenty years back, it was less of an arcade. It was butcher, baker, newsstand, bar, bar, bar—Up the Republic! God, it brought out the scold in you, Nick thought, when you lived here long enough. Still, why was it that in the poorest neighborhoods, most stores might as well be called The Last Thing You Need? You didn’t have to leave the block if you wanted fake fingernails or clip-on braids, bootleg DVDs of movies that opened yesterday; you didn’t have to leave the neighborhood if you wanted your car windows tinted limousine-black, or a license plate frame with blinking lights, or spinning chrome tire rims that cost more than a car payment. But if you wanted to buy a book, that meant a trip on a train. There were libraries here, too, but once the after-school programs finished, they were so quiet Nick often picked them as places to meet informants. There was no risk of discovery. It brought out the scold in you, it did.

  As they stopped at a light, Nick got an elbow in the ribs. Children played in a school yard, racing and throwing things, and a handful of boys huddled in a corner, in intense conversation. Two black ones, five or six tan ones, one pale child with red-gold hair.

  “Guess which one’s the cop’s kid.”

  “If either of us left bastards around here, at least they’d blend in a little better.”

  The remark sounded harsh, even as Nick said it, and Esposito let it pass uncomfortably. But pass it did. On the next side street, he pulled over; another elbow, and when Esposito asked “Wouldja?” the question needed no further context.

  “I can’t really see her.”

  “I know. Me neither. Wouldja?”

  A female figure approached from midblock, in a short skirt, ample up top. You couldn’t quite make her out, but for Esposito, the point of the game was to commit before you could see her clearly. There was no fun picking an obvious beauty; it said nothing about your instincts.

  “No.”

  “I would.”

  “I know.”

  Esposito grabbed a random mug shot from the glove compartment. A tree branch and then a van blocked a view of the woman.

  “Excuse me! Excuse me, can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Yes?”

  Esposito had guessed right. She was a beauty, dark-skinned, with long curly hair pulled back, in a sexy-secretary outfit.

  “Police. Can we talk to you a minute, show you a picture?”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you seen this guy?”

  He folded the paper in half, covering the name. She took it and stared for a moment, her smile fading. “I’ve seen him. Why?”

  Espo caught the reaction, and hedged. “We’re looking for him.”

  “Why?”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “He’s my brother. Why do you want him?”

  “We just want to talk to him. He might have seen something.”

  “Last time cops told him that, he did four years.”

  “Really? For what?”

  “Like you don’t know!”

  She marched off, irate at being patronized, and they watched her form recede down the sidewalk. Esposito looked at the picture again—Anthony Gomez, arrested for assault—and tried to find the resemblance to the woman. He was pudgy, light-ski
nned, with a flat nose; she was none of these things. Nick had guessed that the comeuppance would one day come when the woman that Esposito picked turned out to be a hunchback, a nun, a man. This wasn’t the expected lesson, but Esposito didn’t seem to learn from it.

  “That’s why you gotta be careful with local girls.”

  “That was careful?”

  Esposito ignored the question, posing his own. “Can you picture this guy with a hot sister?”

  “No.”

  “Can you picture me, palling around with this guy, going for beer and ball games, to get close to his sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too. Wonder what he’s wanted for. Let’s get out of here.”

  Even the idea of a woman, Nick began again, but he was no more able to finish the thought, and maybe less willing. Let the past pass. He took out his notebook and looked at his errands. When they went for Kiko, it would take the rest of the day, and maybe the next, so Nick wanted to get his cases done first. The jobs had the feel of a household to-do list—flower shop for Maria, pick up Grace after school. Esposito was anxious to get ahold of Kiko, but Kiko had no reason to run. He might lay low awhile, but the killing had been territorial, and you don’t give up the territory you’ve just won. All they could hope to do was ensnare him in a conversation, trick and trap him into a statement after hours of interrogation. And what they did know was not promising. He was Dominican, which meant that his English might be bad; the interrogation might be like talking a cat out of a tree. Even if the cat came down, it was not because it had been persuaded by your rhetorical gifts. And because he was Dominican, he might be tied in with people who frightened him far more than the cops did, who knew where his family lived, back on the island. They didn’t know if Kiko had killed anyone before, but he had shot someone and walked away from the case. A crackhead customer had gotten mouthy with one of his dealers, and Kiko had put one in the guy’s foot. The crackhead had limped away and learned to keep his mouth shut. Flower shop for Maria, school for Grace.

  “Now what?”

  “The flower shop, talk to Daysi.”

  “I’ll always make time for Daysi. You wanna call first, make sure she’s there?”

  “No. What if she just gave me an address for Maria? We wouldn’t have a reason to go.”

  “We wouldn’t have a police reason.”

  “I like to have a couple.”

  “You only need one.”

  The store was a few blocks down, but they couldn’t even find double-parking on the street. Esposito found a hydrant around the corner, muttering about cops who don’t do their jobs. Nick noticed him running a hand through his hair, catching a glance in the mirror, only because he had done the same. The door of the flower store opened with a chime.

  Daysi was on the phone in the back, writing on a pad, speaking in rapid Spanish. She smiled at them and nodded, holding up a finger. Esposito and Nick took in the garden in the aisles, the colors and shapes, the humid perfumes. On the far wall were memorials, crosses of tightly banked carnations, wreaths draped with ribbons that proclaimed condolences, and a floral clock, showing the time, seven-thirty. Nick studied it until Daysi’s mother let loose a musical “Hola!” and vanished into the back for a moment. She returned with two boutonnieres, a red rose for Esposito, a white rose for Nick, and pinned them to their lapels. Daysi hung up the phone and laughed, then poured forth a torrent of insincere reproach at her mother’s flirtation.

  “Excuse me! Excuse my mother, I’m sorry. I told her men don’t do that here. She said she doesn’t care, it looks nice.”

  “That’s all right,” Nick said. “It does look nice. How are you?”

  “Good, good, busy, thank God.”

  Esposito found a mirror to examine himself. He wore a dark suit and managed a dangerous expression to go with it. “I wish guys still wore fedoras. I’d look sharp.”

  “You look like a pallbearer,” Nick said.

  “No, he looks very elegant!” Daysi interjected.

  “I feel like a pallbearer,” Esposito said, turning from the mirror to the memorial displays. “Look at all this!”

  “That’s a big part of the flower business, Detective, weddings and funerals.”

  “Ours, too. Love and death.”

  “Really? Where does love fit in?”

  “It doesn’t,” Esposito said, striding around the store to look at the arrangements. “Women send detectives after the guys who don’t send flowers.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “What’s this clock for? What does it mean?”

  “We don’t get too many of those anymore. It’s an old Southern thing. They say it’s African. The clock gives the time the person died.”

  “I’ve been to a lot of funerals,” Esposito said. “I’ve never asked that question, never been asked. ‘Exactly when did he die? Not seven-thirty! I thought it was at least quarter of!’ Who needs to know that? Is somebody putting in for overtime?”

  “I don’t know—maybe it’s like an anniversary. It makes you reflect. Maybe the next day, or the next, you see the time, it’s seven-thirty, it makes you look back at the person you lost, remember him. And remember that life is short, we shouldn’t waste time.”

  There was no rebuke in her voice, but the words themselves were hard enough that they brought conversation to a stop. There was an uneasy moment before the phone rang.

  “Excuse me, I have to get back, but before I forget, I have an address for you, from one of the girls. ‘Maria’ is all I have for her name. She was staying with a man.”

  Daysi handed Nick a slip of paper with an address, as she took the call—“Ortega Florist. Un momento, por favor.”—and put it on hold. Nick noticed that there was no ring on her finger.

  “She thinks it’s 2B, on the second floor. But it’s definitely the second floor, the second apartment to the right, when you take the stairs up. She lived with a man, just moved in, two or three months ago. The girl didn’t know his name, but he wasn’t Mexican. She saw them once together and said hello.”

  “Did she say what he looked like?”

  “Short, thin, thirties. Nothing to look at. One minute—Ortega Florist. Un momento, por favor—”

  “Dominican? Puerto Rican? South American?” Nick asked.

  “I think Puerto Rican. They had a joke, ‘Maria met a man, with the prettiest blue passport.’ Sí, diga, Ortega Florist …”

  Daysi beckoned her mother to cover the phone, so she could finish with the detectives. Nick tapped Esposito on the shoulder, to move on. Esposito stared at Daysi in dopey awe, turning to Nick a full five seconds after the tap—“Whuh?”—his reflexes preposterously slow, like a lummox in a sitcom. Nick felt a jealous twinge, then laughed, at his partner and himself, at how the most adult instincts bring out the most childish reactions. He’d seen her first.

  “Let’s get to it. Daysi has work to do. We do, too,” Nick said.

  “Yeah, right. Plus, I’m hungry. You don’t got anything useful here, do you, Daysi? I mean, tomato plants, banana trees? I mean, it’s all pretty to look at, but a man’s gotta eat.”

  Daysi laughed, too, not least at the transparency of his suggestions, when his appetites were so plainly carnivorous.

  “You’d be surprised,” Daysi said. “Both of you, open your mouths, close your eyes.”

  They obeyed like trained seals. After a few seconds of blind surrender, Nick felt a moist petal on his tongue, silky to the touch and grassy sweet, almost melony to the taste. His reverie was broken by Esposito’s moan. Nick opened his eyes and looked over, to make sure his partner’s pants were on. Daysi laughed again, and Esposito opened his eyes, too, the spell broken.

  “My God! That shit was great! What was it?”

  Daysi twirled a pom-pom of a bloom, ruffled in tangerine and crimson layers. She twirled it like an umbrella.

  “Marigold.”

  “Really? You can eat them?”

 
Daysi set that flower down and picked up a long-necked stem with a star-shaped flower, golden with pink edges. She smiled at Nick.

  “And you had a daylily. I’m sorry but I forget the variety. Some people think the different colors have different tastes, the reds a little more like apple, the yellows a little lemony. Maybe they imagine it, but it’s still nice. What did you think it tasted like, Nick?”

  “Like lettuce in heaven.”

  This time, Daysi let loose a laugh that left her coughing and holding her mouth, and the involuntary suddenness, the abdication of soft-porn delicacy, made it all the more erotic. Nick stared at her, smiling, until Esposito, who had a better sense of the moment, touched Nick’s shoulder, then hers.

  “This was incredible, Daysi, but I gotta warn you, I’ve been a cop for a long time. When you start sampling the product, it’s all downhill from there.”

  Daysi collected herself, and was gratefully distracted by her mother calling her over to take an order in English. She waved to them as she picked up the phone.

  “I’ll come back another time, if you don’t mind,” Nick said. “I’d like to talk to the girl who knew Maria.”

  Daysi nodded and waved again, and took out a pad for the phone order, to play her ceremonial part in whatever love or death had struck again uptown. When Nick walked out of the store, he felt sad, the way you feel when a favorite song is over. As they got into the car, Esposito looked over to him, shaking his head, and bit his knuckle—the Sicilian version of a cold shower.

  “Sonofabitch, you’re lucky you saw her first.”

  The man with the pretty blue passport lived ten blocks down. Nick told Esposito the address, and there was a momentary thrill when Esposito said that Kiko lived there, too. Convenience became coincidence, and coincidence seemed like conspiracy, before Esposito checked his notebook and saw that Kiko in fact lived across the street. Detectives are superstitious people; they are trained to look for patterns, to connect the dots in the dark, where inspiration can veer into hallucination. What would it have mattered if they’d lived in the same building, shared the same birthday, if it had turned out you could scramble the letters in Kiko’s name to get the other man’s? Nothing, nada. You can always find meaning in things, Nick thought, that doesn’t mean anything. He realized he was still a little giddy from seeing Daysi.