Red on Red (47 page)

Daysi greeted him with an intense kiss at the door. She was nervous, too, he thought, as she looked at the bottle of Scotch.

“Nick! That was so sweet—my mother drinks Scotch. How did you know?”

“I’m a detective.”

“Don’t be, today. I mean, try not to pay too much attention, especially to Esteban. He’s in a mood. And pretend you’ve never been here before….”

The firmness with which Daysi took his arm disinclined him from making light of her precautions. She released him before they reached the dining room, where a fourth place was set at the table, as if he belonged there. A lace tablecloth, silver candlesticks; on a platter, a small turkey—less than half of it eaten—that gave off a spicy, non-Puritan aroma. Esteban extended a hand when Nick walked around to him, but his eyes remained fixed on his plate. Mama Ortega rose and hugged him, accepting the bottle with a knowing “Aha!” She opened it and filled highball glasses for the three adults. Daysi took hers gratefully and raised it. Nick toasted her and Mama Ortega.
Mama Ortega
. He called her that when he saw her in the store, and she was pleased by it, but he would be wise not to say it at this table.

“Happy Thanksgiving.
Feliz Gracias
—forget it. How do you say it?”

The reactions were as expected—a delighted smile from Mama, a scowl from Esteban, a wink from Daysi, before she downed the glass in its entirety.

“Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias.”

“You’re kidding. All that?”

“Por favor, Mama, es que yo—”

“Stop it, Esteban.”

“May I be excused?”

The question was sufficiently polite to offset the overt hostility of its timing, and Daysi cut her losses, nodding. All of the vectors and valences worked against Nick: age, culture, class—the hapless flatfoot could be derided from above or below, and Esteban could sneer at him like a hood rat, smirk like a rich kid. In the old stories, when the son of an absent father defends his mother against a new suitor, everyone knows who to root for. No one cares that the interloper was able to come up with a bottle of Scotch when the liquor stores were closed.

“I’ll call you when it’s time for dessert.”

As Esteban walked off to another room, Daysi rolled her eyes and reached for the bottle to refill her glass. Mama took a plate and filled it with turkey and side dishes, despite Nick’s protest. He was grateful that Esteban had gone. Daysi went through the show-and-tell of cultural difference. “Turkey” was
“pavo,”
and they roasted it like a pig, with garlic and oregano, stuffed with plantains and bacon. Pigeon peas and rice, salad. It was not what Nick was used to, but he and his father had eaten Thanksgiving at diners. With Allison’s family, the holiday had been stridently American despite their Cuban roots, with red, white, and blue dishes and cranberry sauce from a can. Nick ate quickly, like an inmate. Mama cleared the table as he finished, and left for the kitchen.

“Does he get to spend much time with the father?”

“Six weeks, every summer. And he’ll fly down for the weekend a few times during the year.”

“The father doesn’t come up here?”

Daysi shook her head, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. Nick had thought it adult to address it, though he regretted the tone and tack he had taken. “The father,” was the phrase, he had said it twice. What was he, a social worker? And what good did talking do? Daysi clumsily changed the subject.

“He doesn’t like flying…. How was dinner?”

How did the father get here the first time, did he swim?
Stop
. Hadn’t she asked him not to be a detective? Yes, but he couldn’t help
—stop
. He knew that this first family dinner was bound to be uncomfortable, but he didn’t feel like they were moving beyond it, making progress toward détente. He wished he hadn’t come here. Nick wiped his mouth with his napkin, slapped his belly somewhat flamboyantly, as Esposito might have.

“Great. Who’s the chef, you or your mother?”

“Mostly her,” said Daysi, trying to smile again. “Do you want more? There’s plenty.”

This wasn’t working. Nick needed a distraction. Should he shoot his gun, let a round go out the window? Not just yet: Mama Ortega came out of the kitchen with some sort of pie. After setting it down, she called out for Esteban to come back to the table,
la mesa
, Nick followed that much. The smiles faded as the minutes passed without response.

When Esteban appeared, he held out a telephone to Daysi. “It’s Papi. He wants to wish you Happy Thanksgiving.”

Nick noticed both that it was the first time Esteban chose to speak English, and that the phone hadn’t rung. A detective again. He couldn’t help it.

“Tell him I’ll call him back later.”

Her tone was icy. Mama Ortega got up to clear more plates, and Nick decided to help her. As he left the room, he could hear the voices raised behind them.

In the sanctuary of the kitchen, Mama and Nick exchanged embarrassed glances. She nodded to the leftover food on the counter—“You friends. They like?”—and when Nick assented, she began to put together a plate. She took out plastic wrap from a drawer and unpeeled a sheet the size of her wingspan, and tore it loose. Crackle-crackle, rip. The sound was like a record skipping, not just an ugly noise but a mark of ruined music. Another sheet. Crackle-crackle, rip. Nick looked away, so she wouldn’t see him flinching. Had he not seen the stuff, heard it, since the santero kidnapping? He gripped the edge of the counter, and had to force himself to let go. Mama put the plates and containers in a shopping bag for him. She gave him a kiss, letting him know that she was on his side, but the tightness in her mouth showed she knew it didn’t matter. At least that was what he read into it. When Nick made an excuse to Daysi about having to go back to the office, she didn’t protest. Esteban had left the room, and she escorted Nick out, clutching his arm, indifferent to witnesses. At the door, she had tears in her eyes.

N
ick worked Christmas and New Year’s. He talked to Daysi every day or so, and they met at least once a week. One evening, Nick brought Daysi back to his apartment, and though he’d warned her not to expect much, he was ashamed of how she looked at it, noticing that it wasn’t just as bare and worn as a hostel, but not particularly clean, either, with tumbleweeds of dust that scattered down the hall as he opened the door. A few minutes later, Esteban called her on her cellphone, complaining he was sick. He always called when they were out, at least once. This time, Nick didn’t mind as much; she hadn’t even seen the bunk bed. Daysi apologized, and took a cab home. It would remain a house without women. Their talks became even more frequent as their real time alone with each other—Were they still dates?—required increasing negotiations. Esposito called Nick daily, too, eager to hear about what was going on. Nick wished he had more to say. Work was sometimes a bitch, sometimes a bore. He didn’t want just a phone partner of either kind, but it was the best he could manage.

Nick found that stopping by the shop worked best, not just because it was where he’d first seen her, with all its fragrant reminders. Mama Ortega was always delighted to see him. If Daysi was busy, he could leave; if not, they could see each other for a moment, chat and catch up, maybe kiss. Often enough, it was still a nearly religious revival to see her, hold her, to hear her laugh at something he said, or something he hadn’t realized he meant. But he dreaded the idea they were sliding toward a match of problems rather than possibilities, something middle-aged and sympathetic. With Allison, at least—well, there was no point in dwelling on the past. It was essential for Nick to resist what he’d been taught, in
school as doctrine and at home by example: that you only get one shot at this, in life and in love.

Daysi called in tears once, saying she thought Esteban might be experimenting with drugs. He was moody, sleeping late, and he was rude to her, wouldn’t talk. Nick hated the term “experimenting” because it was a lie. Was he using the scientific method, with a control and placebo? Was he publishing his findings in medical journals? Nick didn’t say that to her. He lied, too, offering vaporous sympathy. He didn’t ask,
What kind of drugs? The same kind his father sold?

Nick had broken down and asked Esposito about the father. Esposito had been desperate to tell, but for Nick it was knowledge without profit. Esteban Otegui had been a midlevel boss, had been gone from the scene for almost a decade. One of his workers, a nephew, had killed three people. Otegui’s name had also come up as a suspect in the shooting of a cop, who had been wounded in the arm during a foot pursuit. The cop never got a good look at his face. Otegui left town around that time, headed back to the Dominican Republic, just before he was indicted for narcotics conspiracy. He had a sense of the moment, it appeared, an instinct for the opportune move. A federal fugitive warrant had been issued, but the reality was that Otegui had successfully faded from view. Little effort had been made to find him, since at the time the Dominican Republic didn’t extradite, and when the treaty was later signed, the list of higher priorities grew longer by the week. Whoever had coined the phrase “You can run, but you can’t hide” had possessed little practical experience in law enforcement. Esposito said he could keep on digging, but Nick told him not to bother. Daysi had other relationships that threatened Nick more.

In the past, they had avoided talk about her ex for the usual reasons—Nick scarcely spoke of Allison—and when Nick asked Daysi once, over dinner, what her ex did for a living, she said that he had “an interest” in this, “advised” and “consulted” in that. Nick found it hard not to laugh. What a man did was a noun—cowboy, astronaut, ditchdigger, dentist, cop. If you needed more than two words, it was a euphemism, a half-truth with a bad toupee. In a sense, he preferred the idea of the ex as a criminal. If Daysi had dumped him because she hadn’t wanted to help him disable land mines, save the rain forest, counsel gay dolphins, whatever, Nick could hardly see himself as a worthy substitute, let alone an improvement. But mostly, he didn’t think about her ex, didn’t really care.
Nick had only ventured the casual, cruel question about employment because they’d had to leave the restaurant halfway through the meal, after another crisis call from Esteban. What had it been that night? Had there been a thorn in his paw, or had a troll kept him from crossing the bridge?

When Daysi called the next time, she was cheerful, relieved. She’d had a heart-to-heart with Esteban, and was convinced he knew the danger of drugs, that he would never touch them. The moodiness was over a girl he liked, who didn’t like him. “Isn’t that sweet? My poor baby …”

“Well, thank God for that.”

Still, the moodiness was contagious. Hour by hour, Nick resolved to break it off, and then he resolved to work through it, to have a talk with Esteban, spend time with him, or avoid him altogether. Every night with Daysi was a one-off, an opportunity seized when Esteban was staying at a friend’s, or was on a class trip. At hotels, they joked about whether they should register under their own names, but neither could laugh at their need for aliases and alibis, ridiculous but real, and the nearly professional level of deception required of them.

Nick stopped by the store late one winter afternoon, an unseasonably mild but still bleak day that made the lushness and color of the place seem all the more like an oasis. He was glad to see the store empty, at first, with no customers, no other claims on her attention. He called out “Hello?” as his phone rang. Esposito. He’d talk later.

When Esteban walked out from the back of the store, the gaze was more forthrightly hostile than usual. Nick nodded to him—
Hey
—a greeting that was not returned, and the boy strode toward him with increasing speed. The face tightened, and he emitted an eerie rage-choked wail that would have frightened Nick had he heard it in the woods at night. Nick thought Esteban might cry before he got to him, but then he broke into a run. When Esteban took a swing at him, Nick dropped his phone. Esteban stepped on it, maybe on purpose. It was the only damage done, almost.

Nick punched Esteban in the stomach, dropping him. It was squalidly joyous to slip loose from months of constraint, his rival at his feet with little more effort than it took to turn a doorknob. The incoherent curses that poured from Esteban were music to him. Nick had been careful in choosing the gut, even as he pinned the boy’s arms behind his back, resting a knee on his side. He couldn’t leave a mark. It was not a fair fight, never could be, and even as Nick savored the moment of victory,
he began to doubt he had won. Mama Ortega rushed out from the back office. She looked angry, and she shouted at both of them.

Nick felt an instinct of adolescent protest, a temptation to blurt out
He started it!
Instead, he rose from his knee, stood, and stepped back. Esteban scrambled up and ran back into the office, yelling, shoving past his grandmother, without even looking at Nick. Mama Ortega started to scowl at Nick, then stopped, smiling sadly. Nick raised his hands—
What?
—and she shook her head, lifted her hands as he did, answering his question with a question:
Who knows?
She knew more, Nick thought, but it wasn’t her place to tell him, even if she were able, if she’d had the words for it. When she followed Esteban into the office, she didn’t say goodbye, which Nick tried to hope was a good sign.