Red on Red (17 page)

“So, whaddaya got?” the lieutenant asked.

“I got a line on the shooter—his name, where he is. I just got that an hour ago. I got a call from a little friend out there.”

“Is it solid?”

“Yeah, I think we’ll get ahold of him. We got nothing on him, though, not for the homicide. He’s got a bullshit warrant—he skipped a court date on a weed case—and we can take him in. We got a long day of talking, a long night. You good to run with me, Nick?”

“Yeah, I got a stop to make. Then I’m good to go.”

“Good.”

The lieutenant cut a slice of coffee cake and poured himself a cup. He
lit a cigarette and collected the cake and coffee before marching back to his office, content with his breakfast and the progress of his men.

“Let me know how it goes,” he said over his shoulder.

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.

E
ven 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-skinned, 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.”