Red on Red (27 page)

A
t the precinct, the crowds were already beginning to form, the workers and wonderers forming up into little camps outside, the first ripples of snap and reaction. It wasn’t as bad as all that. They had gone by Kiko’s building before the trip uptown and had seen the small combustible head-to-heads forming up between cops at the perimeter of the scene and the local trouble. Nick had glanced up at the roofline and had seen more cops stationed there. That would keep the bricks from raining down, at least for now. This would be a day of noise, because a cop had killed someone. Esposito had rolled through the block, to take the temperature of the street. They’d seen the crackhead who had pissed in the lobby the day before; he laughed when he saw them, and gave them the thumbs-up. You could only control the rumors so much, but when the santero had been rolled out in his fantastic plumage, Nick was later told, he had called out that the police had saved him. When the boy had been carried out in the bag, half an hour later, the onlookers had not been able to see his wasted teenage face.

Right now it was still the afternoon, so the night people, the merchants and the creatures, had not yet stirred to offer their commentary. No, this one wouldn’t be bad. At the precinct, there were four or five news vans, and two or three cameras pointed at reporters who used the precinct as a backdrop, speaking into their microphones, in front of the cinder block. One reporter brought a garrulous old woman in front of a camera, but when she began to scream about Jews breaking her washing machine, the reporter made the cutoff sign. The detectives drove into the parking lot and walked in through the back entrance.

The media and the police machines were in simultaneous, sometimes rival motion. Neither was unfriendly, so they reminded the detectives, a
little too often. Everyone wanted to know, and even though there was no bad odor to this one, both machines had to act as if there might be. More union delegates arrived, with pizza, warning Nick and Esposito to be careful what they said. The two detectives had serial interviews, official and otherwise, some taped by Internal Affairs, and some conducted by the other cops, when they stepped out for coffee, or into the men’s room for a piss. Lieutenant Ortiz remained in his office, at his desk, as men of higher rank and lesser time surrounded him, testing his decisions. “If you thought it was nothing, why did you go yourself?” “If you thought it was something, why didn’t you go with more people?” Nick could see his hand gestures, cutting through clouds of smoke. It was as he’d said before, the operation had been an investigation, not an invasion, a jail-house rumor coupled with a chance meeting. Lieutenant Ortiz could handle the chain of command. The suspect Nick had arrested was in one of the rooms. When he was interviewed in English, he didn’t understand.
“No comprendo,”
he said. When he was interviewed in Spanish, he didn’t understand any better.
“No comprendo,”
he said. It was a philosophical approach. You could say it was the inspiration for philosophy itself. It didn’t help them. It didn’t help him, either.

Once Internal Affairs interviewed Fernando at the hospital, the mood in the office palpably changed. Word came in that after a detailed account of his abduction and day of torture, he told of the detectives’ arrival like knights on horseback, their expertise and restraint; more to the point, he had seen the boy, Miguelito, draw on them, had seen the glint of steel, the barrel yanked from the waistband, and he’d seen that Esposito had done the minimum necessary, to his maximum gratitude. Fernando’s story would play beautifully, uptown and down. He did not expound on Ellegua and vengeance, the red and the black, and he had agreed to speak to the media. The police did not discourage him, and the doctors made only mild complaints. It would hit the five o’clock news, and the six, and on news radio it would play every ten minutes, followed by traffic and weather. It would hit the Spanish media even harder, but after tomorrow’s papers, it would be gone. The chiefs left, with firm handshakes and clipped smiles.

When Nick and Esposito went to the hospital, the EMTs were still with the victim. They were in a little bay, behind sheets of loose curtain that were too short, like hospital gowns, depriving you of dignity where they were supposed to preserve it. A cop waited just outside, and
Esposito reminded him to bag up the plastic wrap. Great swaths of it, cloudy, clear, or pink-streaked, were heaped around the bed. There were tufts of it melted into his thighs in three or four places, and as many again on his arms. One eye was swollen, and his lower lip was fat, but there was less damage than you would have guessed. When the blood was wiped away, he looked no worse than if he’d been in a bar fight. His body had been cleaned; there was only a faint odor, not much stronger than the disinfectant air of the emergency room. The victim held the woman EMT’s hand. Nick reached out to take her other one.

“You know, I never got your name. I’m Nick.”

“Odalys.”

“Odalys, would you mind staying a minute here with us, with this guy? He seems comfortable with you here.”

“No problem. If you need his information, I have it here, on the chart.”

Odalys handed it over to Nick to copy down. Fernando Dotti, aged fifty-one, of San Francisco de Macoris, Dominican Republic. Local contact, a niece, a few blocks away. Odalys spoke softly to Fernando, and he smiled weakly back. Esposito stepped over to them, anxious to get a statement before the painkillers kicked in.

“He knows we’re police, right? We’re all police, right—Odalys?”

She nodded, oblivious to his little joke, and Esposito did not belabor it. Nick was proud of himself when he did not cringe.

“Just let him know again, he’s safe now, we’re all here to help him.”

“I told him. He knows,” Odalys said. “He says ‘Thank you,’ you were an answer to his prayers.”

“That’s okay. Let him take us through this, bit by bit, all right? Who did this to him?”

“The three, the three who were there, and another one.”

“Did he know them?”

“No, not before this.”

“Why did they do this? What did they want? Why him?”

“His brother. His brother Rodolpho died, last month. Heart attack. Fernando came up here just after, to help his brother’s family. The brother had money. The men thought he had a lot of money. He had bodegas, taxis. They took Fernando to make his niece give it to them.”

“How much did they want?”

“A hundred thousand.”

“Did she have it? Did she agree? Does he know what happened?”

Until then, the conversation had been concise, to the point; Fernando’s voice, though hoarsening, had been steady, expending no excess effort and no emotion. When Odalys brought up the next topic, however, he wheezed and growled, then gargled up a throatful of phlegm and spat it out in contempt. It caught the lower part of the curtain and hung there, dark and glistening, waiting to drop. They all watched it in reluctant fascination until Fernando began to hold forth, and Odalys tried to divine his relevant speech like a soothsayer amid his digressions and curses.

“Her husband, the niece’s husband, he’s—how can I call it, excuse my French—he’s a miserable prick…. He offered five grand and a Honda Civic. Three years old, two doors. It had thirty thousand miles on it…. Excuse my French, but he calls him ‘
pudejo.
’ It’s basically ‘private hair.’ ”

Odalys winced as she went on, as if she were unsure which group was more sordid. “Fernando remembers the kidnappers arguing over it. The main guy, who ran away—he thinks they called him Kiko—he said it was a good car, the Japanese make the best ones now, they run forever, it could run for another two hundred, two hundred fifty thousand miles. But then the other one, who got arrested—they called him Miguel—he said he didn’t do this for a bullshit used car. And then the little one, Miguelito—he was Kiko’s brother—it turned out Kiko had bought him a Honda, not new….

“So he got mad that Miguel called the car bullshit, and they had a fight over it for an hour…. And then Miguel gets the iron out, and he burns Fernando…. And Kiko says, ‘Go easy with
la plancha
’—I mean the iron—‘because it means they go to the hospital after, and the cops get involved.’ But Fernando doesn’t think Kiko meant it, meant to stop Miguel. They were gonna kill him. They talked about sending fingers to the niece, her cheapskate husband. And the little one, Miguelito, he was gonna go out and get a knife. He went to the bathroom before—he had to go. Then he was gonna go out for the knife.”

“How long did they have him?” Esposito asked.

“He’s not sure. Yesterday morning, he thinks. He went out for breakfast. Then it was dark and light again.”

“How did they take him?”

“In front of the house, the niece’s house, two guys with guns, Miguel and Miguelito, and they put him into a car, put a bag over his head. There was a driver, he doesn’t know who…. They drove around in circles.
His head was between his knees. The car stopped, and they sprayed him in the eyes with something that made his eyes cry. They took the bag off, put a baseball hat on his head, pulled it down low. They stopped, took him out of the car, walked him inside, upstairs. Miguel and Miguelito were on either side. They both had guns, and the spray that made his eyes cry. It was like he was drunk, they were helping him. Inside, upstairs, it was just them, then Kiko—maybe he drove—and they hit him on the head. And then they wrapped him up.

“ ‘I tell them’—That’s what he says. He says that he tells them, ‘Miguel? Miguel and Little Miguel? You’re both named after San Miguel, Saint Michael, the angel.’ That is the other name of his … 
orisha
, whatever. His Santeria devotion, Ellegua. But they don’t listen. The little one steps back, but Miguel, that’s when he first takes out the iron.”

“Who burnt him with the iron?”

“Mostly Miguel, but Miguelito, too. After a while, he doesn’t remember. It was a lot the same after that … hours about where was the money, where was it, and then the argument about the car.”

“Did he hear them ask for the ransom? Did they talk on the phone about it, or did he just hear them talking to each other?”

“Both. They had a cellphone, Kiko did.”

“Who was the fourth man? How long was he there? What did he do? Could Fernando recognize him?”

“He doesn’t know. He knows there was another guy there. He didn’t see him good. It was after they hit him in the face. He brought something—food, maybe—and they talked respectful to him. Not like Kiko to Miguel, or Miguel to Miguelito. Not like he was their boss, really … but you could tell he was older, or they treated him older….”

“Could you—”

“He wants to thank you.”

“That’s all right. He’s welcome.”

Odalys paused, uneasy, hesitating to translate the next line, until Esposito reassured her that she had nothing to fear, there was nothing he wished concealed. Nick thought he was pushing it a little, but Odalys continued, “He wants to thank you for killing the … little boy. He was the worst one, because he was young. He could tell….”

Esposito flinched at the praise. It was not how he would have put it, “little boy.” Nick asked another question, so Esposito wouldn’t dwell on it.

“What does Fernando do in Santo Domingo?”

“He’s a santero, a Santeria priest.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. He’s an accountant.”

“Did he work for his brother?”

“No, for a tobacco farm, a group of farmers. A coalition? No, a cooperative of farmers.”

“Okay … anything else?” Esposito asked. “Can you think of anything? Nick, Odalys, what do the doctors say? He’s gonna pull through, right?”

“Yeah. There’s the burns. He was in shock, probably, and we don’t really know his medical history … but look at him, his belly. And with the brother dying of cardiovascular disease, this experience … They’ll keep him awhile here, watch him.”

“Does he have to go back soon? To the Dominican Republic? After his medical treatment, can he stick around a little? There are DAs who have to talk to him. We already have Miguel, and I promise you, we will catch Kiko. We just have to know how to get hold of him, to talk to him, down the line. What did he say, just now?”

“He says San Miguel is also the patron saint of policemen.”

“Very nice.”

“He has a son at home, also a policeman. His name is Miguel.”

“Oh.”

“He says he trusts you. He trusts you both.”

“Good.”

“And he says—he says—I don’t know if I should say this—”

“Say it.”

“He says he knows there won’t be a trial.”

Fernando released Odalys’s hand, rubbing it gently. He looked at the detectives, extending his hands to them, and they took them. He spoke quietly to himself, so quietly that Odalys couldn’t understand. The lips barely moved over his teeth, as soft breath crossed, in and out. His eyes rolled up for few seconds, exposing the dizzying whites of them, and then his gaze again became direct. His grip was firmer than expected, and he smiled and nodded, then released their hands, as a sign for them to go.