A Cure for Night (10 page)

15

N
O SOONER
had I hung up with Melanie than Myra came knocking on my door, saying she'd just gotten off the phone with Midwood Sports after confirming that Malik Taylor was working that day. We left immediately, Myra driving us out. I didn't feel much like talking and spent the drive staring out the window, brooding about Melanie's rejection. We parked on Bedford, on the outskirts of Brooklyn College, then walked back onto Flatbush's commercial strip.

Myra led the way into the store, which was overly bright with fluorescent light, Jay-Z blaring. The teenage girl behind the register regarded us warily as we approached the counter.

"You need help finding something?" she asked.

"Someone, actually. We're looking for Malik Taylor."

"He's in the back," the girl said, picking up the phone and dialing a four-digit number. I was surprised that she didn't ask us who we were or what we wanted first.
"Yo, Malik? Some folks out front be looking for you." The girl paused, listening, and then glanced back up at us.
"They ain't say. They dressed all serious and shit, though. You forget to pay
your taxes?"

After some more back-and-forth the girl hung up and told us that Malik would be out in a minute. I followed Myra to a spot away from the register, near a selection of running shoes, where nobody seemed to be around.

It was less than a minute later that a young black man came out from a rear door and headed over to the counter. The girl pointed in our direction and Malik turned, hesitating when he didn't recognize us. He was compact, stocky, his heavy face accentuated by a beard. Perhaps the beard was to make him look older; it didn't otherwise seem to fit. After a moment he headed over to us.

"What's up?" Malik asked.

"We need to have a conversation," Myra said.

"About what?" Malik asked nervously, looking away from her and toward me.

"We need to talk about Devin Wallace."

Just hearing Devin's name made Malik wince. "Yo, I'm
working
here."

"Fine," Myra said. "We can talk out on the street."

Now Malik wouldn't look at us. "What's this about anyway, yo? It
don't got nothin' to do with me."

"So you want to talk here instead, do you?" Myra said, raising her voice loud enough that a couple of customers glanced over.
"Fine with me."

"Awright, awright. I can't just walk on out. I'll meet y'all
outside in five minutes' time."

"You're not going to go out some back door on us, are you, Malik?" Myra said.

"Yo, what I say? Five minutes."

"Go do what you gotta do," Myra said.

BACK ON
the street, I asked Myra why she was so confident Malik would really come out to talk to us.

Myra shrugged, taking a deep drag on her freshly lit cigarette. "I'm not," she said, exhaling smoke as she spoke.
"Tell you the truth, probably the best thing that could happen to us is he
sneaks out the back, runs like hell, and is never seen again."

"So that we can make him out as a suspect?"

"Fuckin' A."

I nodded, turning it over in my mind. While she was never exactly a shrinking violet, I'd never seen Myra as aggressive as she'd just been with Malik. I'd thought for a second that she was actually a little out of control, but I realized that wasn't it at all, that she was deliberately trying to scare or provoke him. I was enjoying watching Myra work on the street.

"Who do you think he thinks we are?"

"I assume cops."

"We don't look much like cops."

"If he asks, I'll tell; if he doesn't, I won't."

It took almost ten minutes, but Malik did come out. After five minutes had passed I'd asked if we should go back in, but Myra had just shrugged without looking at me. It was hot to be outside in a suit, the sun glaring down at us. If either the heat or Malik's delay bothered Myra she didn't show it.

When Malik did arrive Myra gave him a big grin. "Here we are," she said, putting her hand on Malik's back and walking him down Flatbush to the next corner, turning onto the quieter side street. I trailed behind them, nobody talking.

"Awright boss, what's this about?" Malik said, shrugging out of Myra's grasp and turning toward her.
"Why you comin' to where I work at and calling me out like this?"

"I was talking to a lady friend of yours not too long ago, Malik," Myra said.
"Cute little kid she had too. Matter of fact, kid looked a lot like you."

"Aw, man—" Malik interjected feebly.

" 'Man' is right, Malik," Myra interrupted. " 'Man' is exactly what we're talking about here.
'Cause you know what a man does when he knocks a woman up, right? I'm not talking about, you know, what
you
did, but I mean what a man is
supposed
to do in that situation?"

"It's not like that, yo," Malik said. "I provide for them the best
I can. Me and Yolanda see each other. This ain't none of your damn business
nohow."

"What we hear is Yolanda found herself a new friend. Only now that
new friend of hers is lying half dead in the hospital, they still don't know if
he's ever going to take a breath that doesn't come out of a tube. He could still
flat-out die, Malik. It's already one count of murder, could go to two."

This wasn't exactly true, but clearly Malik didn't know that. He tried to force out a laugh, but he was dry-mouthed and at least a little scared, because what came out was more like a hoarse cough.
"No way you jamming me up on that," Malik protested. "I heard you all already
put a charge on Strawberry for that."

"We know that you and Devin had your problems, Malik."

"More like he had problems with me than the other way around," Malik said.
"I just be trying to see my son from time to time, trying to do something
good
, man, and Devin, he don't want to hear that. Started cussin' at me, telling me I can't come see my own boy." Malik stopped himself, perhaps realizing that everything he was saying sounded potentially incriminating.

Myra had picked up on it too. "He told you not to see your own
son? When was this?"

"I don't know," Malik said. "Back in March maybe."

"What'd you say back to that?"

"I spoke back to him, sure," Malik said. "We got to shoving each
other some. Yolanda told me to get gone, so I did. Wasn't like we even really
went at each other."

"So why would you have a problem with Devin, right? He was only
keeping you from seeing your own son."

"I ain't gonna be beefing with Devin," Malik protested. "Shit, yo, I manage a
store
. Me on my worst day look like a little girl next to that motherfucker. You know he sling rock, right? He got all that shit. He got the rock, the powder, the chronic, that D called Bin Laden all them junkies be craving. He
owns
that courtyard out there in the Gardens. I beef with him, win or lose, I lose.
Devin's soldiers take me out for sure."

"Of course, that wouldn't happen if you killed him and got away with it," Myra countered.

"Come on, yo," Malik said. "Not like I even got no gun. And how am
I supposed to think I'm gonna get away with that? First with you, then with
Devin's crew 'round the way."

"Let me see if I have this, Malik," Myra said. "You're saying you
would have liked to kill Devin, maybe even thought about it a little, but you
were afraid you wouldn't get it away with it?"

"Motherfucker ain't even dead, is he?" Malik said. "If I capped
him, he gonna get up out the hospital one day, tell his boys what's what, it's
them walking into the store and taking me out 'stead of you coming in and just
giving me shit. I capped that bitch, why am I still here? Besides, why am I
going to give enough of a fuck to do that?"

"He's keeping you from your child," Myra said.

"That's no reason for me to get myself killed," Malik said.

"YOU OKAY?"
Myra asked once we were in her car heading back to Cadman Plaza.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing big and existential," Myra said. "Just that this morning
you seemed like you were ready to burst into song or something."

"I'm fine," I said. "Just some personal stuff's been a little fucked-up." In truth, I wasn't okay. I'd taken Melanie's rejection out of all proportion to the impact it should've had; she'd exposed to me the fraud of my pretending that I'd actually gotten my life back together.

"Well, if you ever need to talk to someone," Myra said, "I hear
Isaac's a pretty good listener."

16

W
E HADN'T
been able to get in to see Devin Wallace as long as he was in intensive care, not being either law enforcement or family. We'd tried to see him after he'd been moved out of the ICU, but unsurprisingly Devin wasn't interested. I'd kept tabs on Devin's progress with periodic calls to the hospital, and I came to find Myra as soon as I learned that he'd been released.

Myra nodded and stood. "You realize we're wasting our time,
right?"

"In what sense?"

"He's not going to talk to us," she said.

"Probably not," I agreed.

"But I do always like meeting a man who's worth shooting," Myra said.

MYRA LED
the way to Devin's building. We passed corner boys, dead-eyed kids looking nowhere as we passed, their bodies tense with the possibility of hassle.

The elevator was broken, a piece of cardboard with not working scrawled on it stuck to the door, so we took the stairs five flights. The walls of the stairwell were covered with graffiti, trash strewn around the stairs. I noticed a used condom on the third-floor landing.

Devin's door was opened by an attractive black woman, maybe twenty-five, dressed only in a bathrobe. She ignored Myra, stared at me with blank hostility.
"What you want here?" she demanded.

"We need to speak to Devin," Myra said. "Since I don't think he's
up for coming out, you'd better let us in."

"What you want with Devin?"

"What's your name?" Myra countered.

"Ain't no call for you getting up in my business," the woman answered.

"Then the least you can do is get out of mine and let me in to
talk to Devin."

The woman hesitated, still standing in the doorway. "Who that?" a male voice demanded from inside the apartment, the timing keeping the woman from feeding us some line about Devin not being here. Myra smiled at her slightly with one side of her mouth and arched her eyebrows, letting her know that there was no percentage in her trying to give us a story.

"Why you always gotta be hassling us?" the woman muttered, moving out of the way, Myra instantly through the door and into the apartment, me in her wake. There was no sign of Devin's sister.

Devin Wallace certainly looked the worse for wear for having taken two bullets in the back. He glared up at us weakly from his bed, a glassy daze in his eyes, presumably from painkillers. Even in his present condition I could tell that he was a good-looking, powerfully built man. He was light-skinned, with cornrows and a gold hoop in his left ear. His bedroom, like the rest of the apartment, was expensively furnished, but with a level of adolescent garishness not found in the living room: there was an Xbox 360 hooked up to a flat-screen TV, a framed Beyoncé poster on the wall. No doubt many a white teenager's Upper East Side bedroom looked much the same.

"That your nurse you got out there, Devin?" Myra said as we moved into the room.
"I like how you make her feel right at home. She bring the robe herself, or you
supply that?"

"I already told you all, I ain't talkin' to no five-oh," Devin said.
"You ain't got no right to come up in my crib like this."

"Yet here we are," Myra said. "That Yolanda Miller's robe your
nurse is wearing?"

"Ain't like I'm fucking nobody just now," Devin said. "I can't
even hardly breathe, dog."

"You see who shot you, Devin?"

"Shit, yo," Devin said. "I got shot in the goddamn back. I don't
got no eyes in the back of my head."

"You didn't get any kind of look?"

"Ain't like I'd be telling you if I did," Devin said. "I solve my
problems my own self."

"Who wanted you dead, Devin?"

"I knew the answer to that, I'd be takin' care of it," Devin said.
"No need for me to be lettin' you into my business."

"Are you saying you wouldn't tell the police who shot you even if you knew?" I asked. Regret grabbed me the second I said it. I knew better by now than to get in the way when Myra was doing an interview. Devin fixed me with a look, his brows furrowing, his mouth opening, but not in a smile.

"You ain't five-oh," he said to us.

"You're refusing to cooperate?" Myra asked.

"Yo, who are you, man?" Devin said. "I wanna see a badge."

"Why would I show you a badge?" Myra said. "You already said you
wouldn't cooperate."

"
SORRY ABOUT
that," I said. "Me and my
big mouth."

We were walking through the Gardens again, on our way back to the subway. I was furious with myself for blowing our cover.

"Don't worry about it," Myra said, not even trying to sound like she meant it.
"I think we'd got what we were going to get."

"Nothing."

"Not nothing," Myra said. "We got that Devin isn't cooperating
with the police. Anything he knows about who might have shot him, he's keeping
to himself and his crew."

"So what do we do with that?" I said.

"We don't do anything with it," Myra said. "It just means we know
the police aren't getting anything from Devin either."

A PACKAGE
from ADA Williams was waiting for me when I got back to the office. Inside was a brief, innocuous letter from her, saying that the enclosed represented additional
Rosario
material accumulated by the prosecution since their initial disclosure. I assumed they were doing this in order to provide cover for the photo array, make it appear to have been turned over as part of business as usual. Their ploy seemed too obvious to be effective, but I supposed they saw this as better than just turning it over by itself.

There were about fifty pages of documents that I flipped quickly through—I needed to review it all carefully at some point, but for now my focus was on finding the photo array, which was at the very bottom of the pile. I glanced at it, not expecting the array itself to have much interest, when something caught my eye. I picked up the page, which was a photocopy, fuzzy and in black and white, and brought it close to my face, squinting at the photos. Looking more closely, I realized what was strange: every one of the six men in the photo array had a birthmark on his face like Lorenzo's. In fact, the birthmarks all mimicked Lorenzo's: someone had clearly drawn them on. It looked like they'd done a decent job of tracking Lorenzo's actual birthmark, though it was hard to tell for sure on the poor-quality copy we had.

I decided this was something Myra would want to see right away.

"They added birthmarks to the photos?" she asked incredulously, as I handed it to her.

"Ever seen them do anything like this before?"

Myra shook her head, not looking up from the photo array. "There's
not anything wrong with them doing it, I guess, except then they should have
followed through at the lineup. This photo array highlighted Lorenzo's
birthmark, which made it as easy as could be for Yolanda to pick him out at the
lineup. And, of course, I didn't know about it at the time like I should have,
which kept me from being able to raise it to challenge the lineup."

"Maybe that's why they didn't turn the photos over," I said. "They
knew they'd made the birthmark a big deal, and they didn't want to play that
up."

Myra was still staring at the photos. "Sounds plausible to me," she said.
"Of course, I'm not who we're going to have to convince."