Red on Red (51 page)

Esposito was greeted with cheers when he came back to the squad. Everyone stood and gathered around for handshakes and backslaps; he did a bounce-step from leg to leg to show he was fully healed, whole and ready. He looked better than before. He had lost weight and wore a new suit, a gray pinstripe; he had an eager, almost belligerent grin that sought to banish whatever doubts there might be about his fitness beyond the physical. Lieutenant Ortiz looked at him fondly, then peeked over to Nick with surreptitious hope. With the alpha here, the pariah might return to normal, and the pack would be restored to balance. The mood of festive relief lasted five minutes. Esposito sat down at his desk, and when he stood up, there was gum stuck to the seat of his new suit.

“Shit! Dammit! Who’s the slob who did this?”

The guys crowded around as if he’d been hurt again, remembering it, maybe, or just chagrined that the homecoming had been spoiled.

“Ah, what a shame!”

“Alcohol will get that out.”

“A new suit, too. What a pain.”

“Ice works, too, I heard.”

“All right, all right, enough already,” said Esposito, shaking off his moment of pique. The attention was a little much, even for him. “Everybody, stop staring at my ass. What works? Alcohol and ice? Hmm … Can you think of a place where we can get both?”

He looked over to Lieutenant Ortiz, who waved him away. “Espo, take your partner and go out and get drunk. We’ll hold down the fort. No sense in jumping right back in.”

“You sure?”

“That’s an order.”

“Then, you won’t have to tell me twice. Let’s hit it, Nick.”

Esposito picked up his overcoat with one hand and grabbed Nick’s arm with the other, leading him out the door. “Good to be back, guys. Great to see you all.”

They drove down Broadway to Coogan’s. It was mid-afternoon, chilly, the sky pale and papery, and the darkness of the pub was consoling. When Esposito headed toward the bar, Nick steered him to a distant table in the dining room; there was a modest crowd at the bar, men alone and in pairs, predawn shift workers from the construction trades and casual alcoholics, opinions at the ready, anxious to share. Nick didn’t know what he wanted to say, but he didn’t want anyone to hear it. Esposito took a pint glass of ice and a tumbler of vodka into the bathroom, returning after five minutes. Passing waitresses were enlisted to examine the results of the cleanup. One suggested peanut butter. Another brushed his seat with her fingertips, then gave it a cheerful slap.

“Looks shipshape to me,” she said.

“God bless your family,” he called after her, watching as she walked away. He turned to Nick and smiled. “I’m back.” He raised a glass, and Nick tipped his.
Tink
. The smile did not leave Esposito’s face when he asked, “Are you?”

“I never left.”

“Sure you did, Nicky boy.”

“Yeah.”

“What is it, your father?”

“Yeah.”

“And your wife?”

“Yeah.”

“And Daysi?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s bad about her, that’s tough. Her kid, though—what else is she gonna do, you know? Family comes first.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

The waitress was near—too near—and Esposito made a little circle in the air.
Same again
. He called after, “Plus whiskey! Two each! Irish!” He patted Nick on the shoulder, and they did not talk again until the drinks were delivered.

“Are you okay, Nick?”

“You’re an Esposito.”

“What?”

“Esposito, D’Amico, Donodeo. All of the names, I told you about. I got one now. The ‘family comes first’ thing—I’m an only child, I have no children, my parents are dead, and I’m in the middle of a divorce. It’s not an outlook that does a lot for me. What’s the Irish version of the name, O’Nobody?”

Esposito pursed his lips and considered. He raised his glass, and they drank.

“Sorry, pal. I guess I could have put it another way. But what’s done is done. Your father, God rest him. Your wife? You know better than me, but it sounds like that’s done, too. If you wanted to be with her, you’d be with her. You know where she lives. You could fight this, but you ain’t fightin’. Past is past. But Daysi? Not past, not done, not in the hands of God. Your hands, and you still got a fighting chance there, Nick. Now that the ex is out of the way. What’s he facing, ten years, at least?”

“Is it ten?”

Nick had avoided learning any of the particulars, but he surmised that an airport grab by the Feds was not for a misdemeanor. “Did you have a hand in that?” Esposito hesitated before he said no, and then realized the one word would not be sufficient. “No. The short answer is no. I didn’t slip a bag of dope into his pocket before he got on the plane. But you and me both know how this works, Nick. Old files fall by the wayside, cases get dusty, warrants get accidentally deleted from the computer. Maybe by my asking around about it, making a couple of calls, it was brought up to date.”

Nick considered the admission. He didn’t like Esposito’s intrusion, but it had been minimal and honest, a legitimate fix to a glitch in the system. Otegui’s arrest had finished the relationship with Daysi, but the alternatives were worse. What if he’d arrived safely, what then? Would he have told Daysi she had to go back with him? Would he have tried to force her? He hadn’t flown up to have a man-to-man with Nick, to tell him he’d better take good care of her, to be supportive and listen to her needs. No, Nick decided, there were no options but an ending, and this end was less bloody than the others. When he nodded, Esposito sighed with relief.

“I don’t think you should just write it off, anyway. Give it a little time. Then check back in with her again. The snot-nose kid, he’s still gonna be
in the picture, but you’re never gonna catch a break with teenagers anyway.”

“No.”

“Not even RJ. Boy, I know I’m in for a rough five years with him, maybe ten.”

“No.”

“You gotta get something out of this, Nick. You always do. You gotta.”

“No. That’s you, Espo, that’s your line.”

The eyebrows went up, alert to the possibility that the remark carried a hint of accusation; they descended again, in sympathy. Nick didn’t like that either, but he knew he ought to take whatever he could.

“Yeah. It’s my line,” he said, “But you can borrow it anytime. Anything else going on, Nick? Not that you need any other reason, to be pissed off at the world.”

“Matter of fact, there is. It doesn’t bother me too much. It probably should…. Anyway, I figured I’d tell you when I saw you.”

T
hey were at Rikers Island within the hour. Esposito drove with one hand and held the phone in the other, not yelling, but his voice rising in volume from the brusque introduction—“Yes, this is Detective Esposito.”—to subsequent demands to get to a boss, then dropping back down to sweet talk for the next round of secretaries. “Honey, don’t I know you? Listen, you gotta do me a favor, it’s important….” All the hustle-muscles that had lain slack and fat for the past months came alive as if they’d trained for the moment. He made arrangements and rearrangements, talked his way past gates. It was late in the day for visitors, late in the day for unscheduled inmate movements. After months of neglect, Malcolm was not happy. He’d learned that Esposito had been out with an injury, but it was of small consolation. He had plans of his own. Like most informants, he saw himself as a partner more than an underling, and to be ordered here to answer demands had broken the illusion. No more covert ops and coded messages; this was a yank of the leash. He shot Nick a brief, baleful glance, reverting to his old role, as if Malcolm were still outside, king of the corner, and Nick was the dull constable ambling by. Nick couldn’t say he liked the sight of him, either. Esposito did not trouble with any of the familiar banter. “Malcolm, what’s up with your brother?”

“Nothin’.”

“No, not nothing.”

“Like I said before, he don’t visit, and I can’t.”

“What do you hear?”

“That he wants to kill y’all.”

“Us? Me and my partner? Or any cop?”

“I can’t say.” He shrugged. “My guess, he has his preference, but he’d settle.”

“Your brother could get killed for that, Malcolm.”

Malcolm nodded, pulling on his lower lip; the gesture seemed more playful than pensive. “You know, that would bother me, and I’m sure it’d bother you both, him bein’ so young….”

Malcolm paused and looked at them, one then the other, as if they might want to take advantage of the break to offer condolences after his dry little elegy. He smiled when they said nothing, having put their pretensions to rest. “But it wouldn’t bother Michael. It would not bother Michael one bit.”

“He get religion?”

“He’s playin’ with it, I hear.”

“Is he talking to anybody? Arabs? Is he connected to anything? Is he getting money?”

Malcolm laughed. “Like I said, I don’t know. How am I gonna, in here? In here, somebody says they’re Muslim, they don’t go to court on Friday. Then they go back to Jesus when there’s bacon Sunday morning. Muslim, Spider-Man, he just wants to be somebody else. My sister says he’s on the Internet, lookin’ up shit. When she comes in the room, he screams like he got caught jerkin’ off, but he ain’t. He don’t go out much, barely at all. You know, the Dominicans, they only got to see him to kill him. Only, he got no place else to go.

“Anyway, the only Muslims I know, the Africans down the hall in the apartment building, all the girls got the sheets on their heads, all of that, they don’t talk to nobody but other Africans. And Nation of Islam people, ’cross the way—You know them, right?—they got chased out, when they set up a fish restaurant and everybody got sick. And there’s a guy on the corner sometimes, what’s his name—Papa Israel, yeah—he’s crazy. He says we’re a lost tribe. He go down to the Deuce to scream at white folk, now and then. The Deuce, Forty-second Street, you know what I’m talkin’ about? Yeah. I dunno if he says we’re Jews or Muslims. I think maybe both. Even crazy Michael knows he’s crazy. He wouldn’t talk to him, not like that. But Michael—he’s his own lost tribe. Who can say what’s goin’ on there, outside? People get funny ideas.”

“What’s your ideas, Malcolm? Are they funny?”

“Nothin’ funny about jail. I think about gettin’ out.”

“That’s good to think about. You will get out.”

“When I’m old.”

“Not too old.”

“Old.”

Malcolm had talked his way back from under the table to the other side of it; he was a partner again.

“I’m a convicted felon with a murder beef. What you gonna do for me, get me eighteen instead of twenty? Or you gonna pull strings on the inside, hook me up with double scoops of mashed potatoes? Get me to the front of the line, pizza night?”

“You talk about pizza and mashed potatoes. Then you talk about two years like it’s nothing,” offered Esposito, knitting his fingers, then gripping the sides of his chair, sliding it closer. “I never talked about years, about numbers. What are we talking about, Malcolm? What are you looking for? You want us to keep working together? You want to keep talking to me?”

Malcolm slid closer, too, on his own chair. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.” “Can you control your brother?”

Malcolm raised his hands, slid back, and smiled. “Yeah. But I couldn’t even try, in here.”

“What you thinkin’, Mal?”

That might not have been his nickname, but Esposito had decided to make it one, his own. A new name, for the new circumstance. Again, there was no pretense of friendship, but neither was there anger in the question.

“Are you thinkin’, or just playin’ games?” Esposito asked.

“I think. I got time to think. I do it better now. All I needed was the practice!”

Malcolm backed up in his chair and examined his fingernails. The detectives waited for him to finish. “My lawyer said all you got against me is the tape, with my confession.”

“Your lawyer might be right.”

“He said if you didn’t have the tape, I’d be a free man.”

“Your lawyer might be right.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Like the country music says, freedom ain’t free.”

“Don’t piss me off with country shit, Espo. I know you don’t listen to it, either. I see you as, what, a Sinatra guy?”

“Everybody loves Sinatra.”

“Not me.”

Esposito and Malcolm leaned in close together, and spoke in hushed tones. Nick stood up and walked around, mumbling what he remembered from the song. “I got the world on a string …”

“You want me to kill my own brother?”

That stopped Nick’s breath, and his memory of the rest of the song went with it. He reached for the next few lines. “Sittin’ on a rainbow …” No. This was not right. Another song. “Fly me to the moon, let me—Da!—upon the stars, something, something, something, Jupiter and Mars … In other words, hold my hand …”

“I could never ask anybody for that, Mal. But if you was to get out, it would be to take care of him. Take care of this. If all it takes is talking, talk. Think about it. Practice—for a week! That’s the next court date, right? Maybe the tape can get lost. But lost things can always be found, if I gotta look. And I can make sure that they’re found, even if me or Nick aren’t around to do it. Especially if we’re not, me or him.”