Red on Red (40 page)

“You okay? Don’t fall asleep on me, Espo. I don’t know how to get there.”

“I’m okay.”

Nick knew that without having met Daysi, he would have drifted on longer with Allison. And he knew that, for all her own promise and allure, Daysi was also a crutch for him, a shot of Dutch courage, in his choice to go forward or back. He didn’t know where things would lead with her, but if the blue van delivered more than flowers, it was a dead end, full stop. Nick didn’t believe it, honestly. She wouldn’t have
had dinner with him, taken him home. Still, the idea became a flea, lots of them, and they itched. He wished he weren’t going home with Esposito. He’d trade a kidney for some privacy now. It felt like he was running away to join a merry band of outlaws in the forest. For Nick, upstate was associated with prison. Perps talked about going upstate, or “up north,” for their sentences in the bastions of maximum security—Coxsackie, Dannemora, and Green Haven, Attica and Sing Sing. Nick felt the chill in the air, and he suspected they had already arrived in the penitentiary latitudes.

After another half hour on the highway, Esposito directed him to a county road, the six lanes going down to four, then two, before they hit a winding rustic route. It was lit only in patches, and gravel skittered up against the undercarriage. The leaves had already turned here, started to fall, and the advance in the season gave Nick the feeling they had slipped forward in time. All the pollution of the city, all the body heat, it kept the leaves green for a few more days, a week. As the detectives traveled from asphalt to roads with more and more gravel, the houses got fewer and newer. Some were big enough, and some were not big enough, with two cars in a garage as large as the house. The garage doors were always open, like display cases. Ranches and colonials, none of them older than the owners. This world had literally been built for them and their children. Even the woods seemed new in places, the trees young and thin, scraggly. Acres of the city had been created from landfill, reclaimed from the water, but here, how could they extend the edge of the earth? On the old globes, this was the white space, inscribed in a spidery italic,
Terra incognita
. “Unknown country.”
Hic sunt dracones
. This is where the dragons are.

“You asked about my father?” Esposito said.

Nick never had. The car was as intimate and anonymous as a confessional, and Nick could almost picture the grille sliding open with a click, then closing the space between them when the talk was over. The impending disclosure made him uneasy, not least by the fact that he was the wrong man to sit in the absolution seat. He hadn’t expected this gift of confidence, and he was unwilling to offer anything nearly commensurate in return. He felt a pressure in his neck, like a bully’s knuckle. Esposito didn’t wait for a reply.

“He was a bum. A knock-around guy. Not a real wise guy, not real bad, but no good. He had a messed-up arm. When I was a kid, he told me
he got shot during the war. Which war, I never thought about. He was around when I was little. Then he runs away with some broad to Vegas, works in the casinos. He comes back when I’m fifteen for a year. He was sick. When he dies, I look to get the veteran’s benefit, to help out with the funeral. Turns out, he was never in the service. And when I go on the Job—you know how they ask if anybody in your family has a criminal record? I say no, and the guy from Applicant Investigations tells me my father took a couple of burglary collars. He even broke his arm in one, falling off a fire escape. War hero! My mother still loves him, won’t hear a bad word about him, never would.

“With your father, this morning? I’m sorry, again. Your father was more upset by problems in your marriage than my father ever was when he kicked his family to the curb. I don’t know if that’s crazy, or great. I hope it’s great. I think it is. I hate to think that life’s a lot better when you’re a scumbag. You’re lucky, Nick.”

Nick nodded, knowing Esposito could see him, understanding that nothing more needed to be said. Esposito settled into the back, resting, content; Nick could hear it in his breathing. They had to be close to home. Nick found himself checking the mirror every few minutes, to see if Napolitano was still behind them. The headlights flashed from behind as his phone rang.

“It’s Napolitano. It’s his turnoff,” Nick told Esposito. “Are we all right from here?”

Esposito started to laugh. “Yeah. Tell him we’re good, we’re five minutes out. Nick, we just came from a gunfight. Two of ’em. And a riot. You didn’t shake, you didn’t hesitate, you didn’t even blink. But a quiet drive through cricket country, and you act like you’re in a horror movie, like a lunatic is gonna jump out of the woods when the car breaks down.”

“I saw that one.”

“Which?”

“All of ’em. They taught me that people should live in apartment buildings, near Chinese restaurants that deliver, bars you can walk to. Civilization is lots of people, even when they’re assholes. When’s the last time we had the oil changed? We’re okay on gas, I think …”

“You gotta relax, Nick.”

Nick was relieved that Esposito had seen the least of his fears, just that one color in the spectrum. He’d stick to that, the city-mouse, country-mouse line, work it to the end.

“I will, when I get you home.”

“You’re staying over, too. I got room. Don’t be stupid.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to have your wife drive your house closer? Meet us halfway? Or is it up on blocks?”

“Redneck jokes! Shit, Nick!”

“Do all the kids play banjo, or do the little ones make that hooting sound on the jugs?”

“Almost home, Nick. I’m gonna have my kids beat you up, then my wife. She’s Puerto Rican, you know.”

Nick had never needled Espo that way before, had never taken that dog-to-dog tone with him. A little aggression in it, in the smack-around play. It was fun to stir it up a little, to bust balls in a new key. Nick wanted to talk. He’d talk about anything. He’d even pick an argument to avoid talking about Daysi. Or Internal Affairs. Or Allison. Or—

“Look at you, Nick! Now we got you all feisty! Is it because I got a broken leg and can’t get up to hit you? I could give you bad directions here, get you lost in the country. Then I whistle and have all the Apaches jump out on ya.”

“You can’t whistle.”

“You never heard me. It doesn’t mean I can’t.”

“Go ahead, I dare you.”

“You dare me? What grade are you in? You wanna bet, I’ll bet. That’s what men do, not schoolgirls. How much you wanna bet?”

That’s what Nick remembered, that’s what brought him up to the moment. The drive in the woods, the back-and-forth, talking again, but not about what he was thinking. It was a surprise to hear him whistle. The shriek of it was piercing. Cabs must have stopped in Manhattan. A surprise that Esposito could whistle like that. More of a surprise than the deer, Nick thought later, because at the time he didn’t have time to think. The deer, an antlered buck, a stag that could have stepped from a coat of arms, leapt from the bare trees at the side of the road, just before Nick hit the brake, skidding and swerving, the car coming to rest in the reverse direction.

The car clipped the deer on its haunch and knocked it flat. It lowered its head as if to charge, tossing its antlers back and forth. It made a chuffing sound, and plumes of steam left its nostrils in the chill air, rising up through the headlights. The deer rose on two skittish forelegs and attempted an unsteady stride forward before it buckled to the ground,
falling out of sight in front of the car. Nick started to get out, stepping on his sprain, but Esposito took hold of his shoulder. There was a clatter of hooves as the deer recovered its lame footing, denting the front panel with a futile sweep of its regal head, before it hobbled off into the dark to die. Nick’s eyes were red, from the pain in his ankle, for now. He felt on his hip for his gun; he had to find the poor thing, to end its suffering. Gone, the gun was gone. It had been taken at the hospital, by IAB, to count the rounds, to test his story. They didn’t believe him like his partner did. Esposito laid a gentle hand on his other shoulder, urging him wordlessly to move on. They didn’t speak again when they reached the house—less than a quarter-mile away—even after, when Esposito showed him to the room, the one he was in now. His eyes were still red, though not from the pain. This was where he was, here. He felt for the night table and found a pill bottle, forced a painkiller down his dry throat. His eyes started to well again before they closed. He would sleep on it, he would sleep for now.

T
hree of them, Nick counted. Why always three? A little one that zipped in and out of the half-light of the room, as if on a dare; a medium one that crept to the threshold, peering owlishly at the edge of the door; the largest—maybe ten years old, but stockier—who woke him more thoroughly when he dropped a shopping bag onto the dresser. When he left the room, Nick gingerly left the bed and checked out the bag: deodorant, toothpaste, hair gel, antacid, aspirin, nail clippers, a comb, toothbrush. Everything he needed, even underwear. Also, hemorrhoid cream and denture cleanser. That made Nick laugh, thinking of the story Esposito must have told his wife. No polish for a glass eye? And then Nick remembered that Esposito had done the same thing for Malcolm Cole, taking him up from Central Booking to the wake. That wasn’t this—not tactics, only hospitality. Still, there was a resemblance between the gestures, even the words, “hostage” and “host.” Nick went into the bathroom—his own, for the first time in his life—and cleaned himself up. The ankle was tender, and he was sore all over. A pair of Esposito’s jeans and a sweatshirt had been laid out. They were baggy on him, but better than yesterday’s suit. When he left the room, all three boys were waiting at the foot of the stairs beside their father, who was propped up on his crutches, wearing a sweatshirt and shorts that looked like donations from aid workers. Nick had only seen Esposito in a suit and tie before.

“Welcome to guinea heaven.”

When Nick descended the stairs, he suffered the ferocious affection of their greeting—RJ, Johnny Boy, and Little Al, in reverse order of apparition. Nick thought RJ was big for his age, then remembered he had no idea how old he was—ten, maybe, strapping but still baby-fat, with a
peculiar haircut, high and tight, the fluffy curls on top gelled. The same mob-kid Mohawk on the other two, the slim and pale middle one, and the youngest—chubby, olive-skinned, and energetic. It was with some effort that Nick dissuaded them from calling him “Uncle Nick,” which was too much for him, not least because “uncle” was cop slang for “undercover.” Once the greeting was complete, the children fled for better diversions.

Esposito had seemed more juvenile amid his offspring, a playmate among playmates as much as a father with his sons, and as they began the house tour, Nick felt like they were in a fort built with pillows and blankets on a bed.
Look what I did!
It was a kind of prefab palazzo, white and wide, a lofty two stories, with columns and vinyl siding. The lawn was yellowing, littered with toys, and there was a concrete statue of the Virgin Mary in a healthy row of hedge. You could see by what was cared for, and what was not, that the grounds were not kept to impress neighbors; there were none. All around was woodland. Nick had a flash of prisoner reverie, ungracious though it was, that the guards and hounds would find him before he made the river.

Back inside, Little Al whizzed by again, barking out in transit, “Can’t catch me!”
Agreed
. Nick took in the white marble floors, red-and-gold brocade on the walls, many mirrors. There seemed to be a lot of everything. When Esposito tugged at Nick’s sleeve, he thought at first it was one of the children.

“C’mon, let me show you.”

From room to room Esposito led him, not quickly. There were a lot of rooms, some fancy, some wrecked with kid stuff—a den with soft, wide armchairs and a big-screen TV, insistently referred to as “the entertainment center.” As they labored back up to the second floor, Nick wanted to tell him not to bother, but he saw how proud Esposito was, and let him continue. When Esposito mentioned that the shade of the wall paint was called Desert Dawn, Nick felt faint but held his tongue. Nick didn’t need to know this, either as enemy or friend.

“This is my room. Our room, me and my wife’s. Yours is across the hall.”

“Am I putting anybody out?”

“No, it’s a guest room.”

“How many bedrooms does this place have?”

“Five. Six, really.”

“How did you get the money for this? Did you rob a bank?”

Though Nick intended only casual flattery, the question reminded him of lines the mystery prick would have urged him to pursue as the infiltration proceeded. The thought made him choke. He was in the man’s house, in the man’s clothes. Uncle Nick knew his limits, the lines he would not cross.

“You okay?”

“Fly in the throat.”

“Anyway, I’d have to, today. Not today, but a year or two ago, and prices haven’t collapsed up here the way you’d think. In fact, it was my wife. She came across it in a divorce case, ten years ago. Guy who built it went under, needed the cash fast. Italian guy, like me—”