Red on Red Page 7

  “This is the police. Sí, la policía. Is Reuben Alvarez at home?”

  “I need to know if the kid goes to school there, if he’s there today…. Yeah, I can get a subpoena, but that’ll just waste everybody’s time….”

  “No, this is the detective squad, not the hospital. You got the wrong Number…. No, I don’t know why he’s not getting better, lady. Ask the doctor.”

  “No, but you gotta come in to talk to me. That’s how it’s done….”

  “Does anybody there speak English? No, you don’t speak English, believe me. Stop kidding yourself, you don’t. Get me somebody who does.”

  “Tell you what, let me talk to your supervisor…. No, I don’t need a subpoena to talk to your supervisor. Just put him on the phone….”

  “Like I said, lady, you got the wrong number….”

  Napolitano, Garelick, Perez, Smith, Valentini, Crimmins. There were no strangers. Good. The phones kept ringing, and almost half the time, they were answered this way:

  “Detective squad. Detective McCann. Can I help you?”

  “Detective McCann. How can I help you?”

  “McCann …”

  There was no Detective McCann. He was a figment used to dodge wives or girlfriends, pesty complainants, or demands for administrative arcana from headquarters. Several angry letters had been sent to the squad accusing McCann of incompetence; one, which was framed and hung up on a wall, thanked him for talking a runaway son into coming home. Nick was never McCann, and neither was Esposito. Nick disliked lying altogether—almost altogether—and Esposito never felt the need for that kind of evasion. Garelick was McCann most often; he may have invented him. Garelick also minted any number of Jewish holidays when he wanted to take off, and though the boss was suspicious, he rarely denied him.

  Nick signed in and went to his desk. There was a mild apprehension as he checked his new cases, the fresh feuds and afflictions. None would be heavy ones, since on-duty detectives would have been called out to the scene, but the little cases were frustrating, all the effort spent on petty disputes. Three cases today. Not too bad. A missing teenager, described as a chronic runaway; a fistfight between neighbors; a series of threatening phone calls, made from tenant to landlord over a leaky sink. The advantage to the sluggishness of the system was that the day or two the report took to make it to the squad often acted as a cooling-off period. Three phone calls closed all three cases. The runaway girl had returned, the neighbors had sobered up and shaken hands, and the tenant had gotten his sink fixed and had sent an apology along with the rent check. As Nick hung up the phone, relieved, there was a rap at the glass that separated the lieutenant’s corner office from the main room.

  Lieutenant Ortiz was a veteran of thirty years on the Job, most of them with the Detective Bureau. He hadn’t spoken with a criminal in nearly two decades and hoped never to do so again. His battles were fought entirely within the police department, in his office and the slightly larger offices belonging to the captains, inspectors, and chiefs he had to answer to; they would drop by in the middle of a shooting and complain that the desks were messy, or too much overtime was being made, or the vehicle inspection logs were not up to date. For his subordinates, the lieutenant’s management skills consisted entirely of a determination to make miserable those who caused him misery. It was rumored that his wife cut his hair, an irregular brush cut, and he expected that someone else should make coffee, even if he was the only one who wanted a cup, and his smoking was so constant that it even bothered the smokers in the office. He also treated the men with a kind of mock belligerence that Nick found in the long run was better to feed than fight. Nick now stood before the lieutenant’s desk, allowing his moment-ago calm to sustain him through the impending interrogation.

  “What the hell happened last night? I heard you and Esposito killed an old lady!”

  “We did, more or less.”

  “What?”

  “Well, we did. Not on purpose. But—well, there you go.”

  The lieutenant seemed slightly deflated at the lost opportunity to argue. “Don’t take it so hard, Meehan. I mean, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  “Esposito … he didn’t do anything I should know about, did he? You guys seem to get along. I’m glad about that. You got a level head, Nick. Esposito—you know how he gets … a little enthusiastic sometimes.”

  The question troubled Nick; he was briefly worried that the lieutenant was aware of his status. No, he couldn’t know. They were careful about these things downtown. As for enthusiasm, Esposito had once chased a perp with a gun down an alley, breaking his ankle just as he closed in. He tackled the perp and cuffed him, then ordered the perp to carry him on his back to the street. Nick shrugged. “It was a disaster, but everything was by the book.”

  The lieutenant seemed satisfied by the response. He put out a cigarette solely for the purpose of lighting another, pausing to think.

  “The guy you locked up last night, did you get a statement out of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how—Never mind, I don’t want to know. Where’s your partner?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll take a look for him. He’s probably in the dorm. I went home for a bit. He kept rolling.”

  “All right, let him rest a little. So, basically, with last night’s scorecard, we closed an old homicide, but the new one’s still open, with nothing on it, right?”

  “Right. Plus, the suicide’s still unidentified, and there’s the old lady. I don’t think the ME is gonna do anything crazy like make her a homicide. Do you?”

  The medical examiner could theoretically determine that the death had been caused by another person, and it was not a bad theory. It didn’t seem right to call it natural. Nick believed Miz Cole would have lived had they not done what they’d done. Even if her heart had had only one more day of beating in it, another hour, another single beat, and they’d deprived her of it, it was in that sense a homicide. The ending is all that counts. But in practice, it put too great a burden on the bearer of bad news. In fact, Nick had already called the ME. They’d done the autopsy first thing in the morning, and had deemed the death natural. Miz Cole and Milton had already been shipped to the funeral home. The suicide hadn’t been examined; she was scheduled for later in the day. The lieutenant didn’t know any of that yet, and Nick did not feel the need to enlighten him.

  “How could they?”

  “When the old lady in Harlem with the heart condition died after the cops knocked her door down, they made it a homicide.”

  Lieutenant Ortiz pressed his hand across his temple and brow.

  “Don’t try to cheer me up. Go. Some days, this is not my cup of shit.”

  That was Esposito’s phrase, Nick thought, and he wondered who’d copied it from whom. As Nick left the lieutenant’s office, Esposito entered the squad, his hair wet from the shower, freshly shaved, in yet another clean suit, though the tiredness told in his eyes. He began to rummage through papers on his desk, then stopped and shook his head before turning away and walking to the meal room for coffee. Nick followed him.

  Nick asked, “What do you need?”

  “I started to look, but then couldn’t remember what I was looking for.”

  “Can’t be important, then. We gotta go.”

  “Yeah. You hungry?”

  “I am. Let’s get some breakfast first. We got a little time.”

  There were three or four diners they went to for breakfast, on a sporadic circuit motivated by obscure grudges. The bacon was chewy in one, the owner was rude in another, and they only had milk instead of half-and-half for coffee in a third. Otherwise, there was not an iota of difference among them. The detectives only sat down for breakfast on occasion, weekends mostly, and so they were somewhat familiar faces in each of the diners, rather than regulars in any. When Nick proposed breakfast to Esposito, Garelick announced that he was hungry, too, and within a few minutes, there was an outbreak of sympathetic pa
ngs. Napolitano suggested the Athena, because the last time he’d gone to Joe’s, there’d been a scattering of white pellets in the bathroom that he’d thought was rat poison, and he didn’t want to think about it while he ate. Perez seconded the motion, on the grounds that the Washington had an inferior grade of pancake syrup, and it was thus decided.

  Napolitano was dapper and stout, all sharp creases and round curves, with a deliberateness of movement that made him seem as if he might be more at home in the water. He had a genial demeanor and a stubborn streak, which suited his role as the union delegate. Though he had an Italian name and African skin, he was of indeterminate Caribbean origin, and on the phone, he was adept at making residents of most continents believe he was a cousin. Garelick was the oldest man on the squad, nearing sixty. He was thin and pale, with fine wild white hair and baleful eyes. He had decades of experience, keen powers of observation, and a chess player’s intellect, strategic and roving. None of these abilities were dedicated in the slightest to police work. Office politics were his sole concern, and he was a vigilant guardian of custom and tradition. He didn’t retire, he admitted frankly, because he couldn’t stand his wife. Garelick couldn’t stand Perez either, but to Perez’s credit, he didn’t seem to notice. Perez was the youngest of them, and though he had a menacing aspect, with his shaved head and fixed stare, in truth he was sweet-natured and considerate, anxious to please. He should have been a natural fit for Garelick, as Perez endorsed Garelick’s every opinion, but Garelick was unused to a steady diet of respect, and it disagreed with him, like rich food. The five of them took two cars to the diner, so they could proceed afterward to their separate errands.

  As they walked in, they met two detectives coming out. In the customary split, there was a younger and an older one, the first fit, the other thick. Esposito and Napolitano recognized them, and Garelick pretended not to. Hearty handshakes were exchanged.

  “Hey!”

  “How you doin’?”

  “You look good!”

  “It’s been a while! You’re still at …”

  “Special Victims?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whadda you guys got, way up here?”

  “The pattern rape, the guy who pretends to be the plumber’s helper, with the old ladies and kids. A bullshit lead. This wacko says his neighbor keeps askin’ where he can buy Girl Scout cookies—but we gotta talk to everybody. It’s a phenomenal operation—three twenty-four-hour surveillance vans, we’re up on wiretaps, they got the youngest-looking hottest female undercovers on the Job, playing jump rope next to whorehouses. Every chief calls every day, has to know the latest. Not bad, though. We make our own hours, weekends off, unless something happens. Tons of overtime. What about you guys?”

  Death by rope, gun, and misinformation.

  “Ah, the usual shit.”

  “Anyway, gotta go. Good to see you.”

  “Likewise. Good luck.”

  “Yeah, stay safe.”

  “Take care.”

  They found a corner booth and slid inside. Esposito, Napolitano, and Garelick exchanged testimonies of grievance and outrage.

  “Can you believe those guys?”

  “So fucking full of themselves. Can you believe that?”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “They get three vans and cheerleaders.”

  “We’re lucky we don’t have to pay for gas for the squad cars.”

  “The other day, I had to.”

  “Some people, they got it easy,” said Garelick, as if he’d spent his morning splitting timber. “The one, though—Paulie—I knew him as a cop. He was good. Two shoot-outs.”

  “The other guy, Johnny T, he was no slouch, either,” added Napolitano. “A lot of gun collars. Good guy, too.”

  “Fuck ’em both,” said Esposito, to general assent.

  Nick thought about the codes of the place, like with the bedouins—my brother is my brother, and my cousin is my enemy, unless another tribe makes a claim on the well. The five men at the table would have gladly given blood for the two who had left, but Nick doubted that they could have sat together for fifteen minutes without an argument.

  “Do you want menus?”

  The waitress was in her early twenties, with a sweet, plain face and a top-heavy figure. Napolitano made a pretense of looking at her name tag—Marina—and Esposito didn’t bother with the pretense. The menus offered what they’d seen at every diner they’d ever gone to and ever would: eggs, pancakes, french toast; bacon, sausage, ham; orange juice and coffee. There was little else available, and nothing else was desired. There was no more need for menus than there was to pass out the lyric sheets to “Happy Birthday” before the cake arrived at a party.

  “Yeah, we need menus.”

  “Please.”

  “Sure, we’ll have a look.”

  Marina nodded and turned, and ten eyeballs took note of her retreat.

  “Wouldja?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No question.”

  Nick looked around the table at the yearning gazes. As far as he knew, Napolitano was happy at home, and faithful to his wife; Esposito professed contentment but cheated at will; Garelick’s marriage was a prison from which he made no effort to escape, in either the short or long term. Perez was unattached, as far as Nick knew. It occurred to Nick that he understood nothing of human nature and relationships.

  After Marina returned, the orders were placed, and she collected the menus. Garelick noticed the momentary lag in the palaver and took action. “She should have brought coffee, without asking. Anticipating needs is at the heart of all of the service professions. I didn’t get a real night’s sleep last night. Nine hours—I know, it isn’t bad—but I still think I’m owed, from past aggravations. How about you, Nick? You need coffee?”

  The question was baited, all at the table knew, though it was unclear whether its intent was playful or pointed. Garelick had been one of the cavilers who’d warned Nick about Esposito at the beginning.

  “Yeah, coffee. A lot, a helmet full of it.”

  Garelick was pleased at the response. “A helmet isn’t such a bad idea for you, in and of itself.”

  Esposito caught something of the implication and directed his own question to Perez. “How about you, Ralph? You got your helmet on, for the game? Or do you just carry around a pillow, for when you can’t stay awake?”

  Conflict was constant, the “them” a given, sliding in scope and scale from the hordes on the horizon to the man across the table, next to you on the bench. The “us” was variable, but Napolitano had hoped to maintain solidarity at least through breakfast.

  “Remember, Espo, when I had that shooting, what’s-his-name, the guy’s shot right in the balls? He was mistaken for his brother, who’d shot somebody else. Completely innocent, this guy, but it turns out he was a rapist. DNA hit, a month later—he was jumping out on joggers in Prospect Park. I was sure he knew who shot him, and he was holding back. You know, the usual thing, all lies and ‘Fuck yous.’ Fact was, he was blindsided. He wouldn’t have told us if he did know, but he didn’t. Remember, Espo?”

  “I remember,” said Esposito, nodding with vigor, evidently seeing other relevance to the recollection. “You remember, Nap, how that ended, in the hospital?”

  Napolitano’s smile was more rueful than Esposito’s. “Oh, yeah, now I do. Walking out—”

  “Yeah, walking out, I ask the guy—remember, Nap?”

  “God knows I do. I had a few meetings about it, was getting ready for a sit-down with the good people at the Civilian Complaint Review Board, until the DNA hit. When we’re leaving the hospital room, Espo turns to the guy and says, ‘I just got one more question for ya.’ The guy makes a face, like he’s gonna answer this one after all the others. Espo says, ‘Does it whistle when you piss?’ ”

  Napolitano laughed almost as much as Esposito did, but Nick knew that if their satisfaction had been the same, they would have still been workin
g together, as regular partners, and Nick would have been the odd man out. Perez laughed the hardest, glad to be included, and Garelick shook his head. “If they locked you in a room with a mirror,” said Garelick to Esposito, “it’d be half a day before you found out you were locked in a room.”

  The food arrived, and conversation became desultory before falling off altogether. Near the end of the meal, Garelick suddenly took on an animated look, and he finished quickly. He was more indulgent toward Perez than usual, in that he had so far refrained from any direct criticism during the course of the meal. When Perez had mopped the last bit of egg from his plate, he got up from the booth, took a newspaper from the counter, and headed to the bathroom. Garelick summoned Marina in some haste, for the check.

  “As soon as you can, we gotta go,” he said to her.

  “No problem.”

  Napolitano pushed his plate back and smiled. “Are you new here? I haven’t seen you before.”

  “Yeah, I’m new, but this is my last day. I’m just filling in for my sister. I’m going back to Greece tomorrow. I’m going back to college.”

  “Really! My grandfather was Greek,” Napolitano said, perhaps truthfully. “All I remember, though, is ‘kale nita’—‘good night’!”

  Marina nodded in appreciation. Garelick was oddly excited by her news, as if he had been relieved of the responsibility of paying her tuition. Nick knew he had some stratagem in mind.

  “Well, good luck to you!”

  Marina accepted Garelick’s vehement benediction with a slight blush, and when she left, the remainder of the party looked at Garelick, wondering what was afoot. He had a cunning expression as he took out a pad from his pocket.

  “If I can prove that Perez is completely out of his mind, will you guys work with him, take him off my hands?”

  “No.”

  “Why would we do that? You want me to buy a car, if you can show it doesn’t run?”

  “Would you lay off him? He’s a decent guy!”

  Garelick was undeterred by the responses, and indifferent to the practical result of his experiment. He coughed and slid the notebook to the center of the table. “All of you are witnesses. I have written down a phone number that a complainant gave me. It’s disconnected. Nick, would you call, please, to confirm this?”