Red on Red (61 page)

Nick closed his eyes for a few minutes, lying down on Garelick’s sack bed. It was surprisingly comfortable, and he only woke when he slid off the side of the plastic. Jolted, Nick looked around. The lieutenant was on the phone with Napolitano or Esposito, confirming their position in the catch car. North and west were parkland, steeply sloped and thickly wooded. They couldn’t cover that, shouldn’t need to. Was there coffee left? No, yes, it was cold. Don’t need it. Did Nick hear right? Perez would be walking around, in plainclothes. What kind of clothes? Nick jumped up and grabbed his shovel. Garelick looked doleful as he got up. Nick checked his watch. Quarter to three, dammit. He’d overslept.

The lieutenant stopped him with a hand on the shoulder.

“Put some rocks in your pocket.”

“What?”

“Rocks in your pocket. Slow down. Wait for it to happen. Don’t run, don’t push. It’s up to him now. He’ll come. This is your day, Nick. Things are turning for you. I can feel it.”

“What?”

“Rocks in your pocket. Trust me.”

Why were Garelick and Lieutenant Ortiz speaking to him in rustic fables? Two stomachs, lucky rocks, like he was a peasant boy who needed references to simplest nature in order to comprehend the wider world. Still, Nick understood, and understood both men to be right. When he looked at the lieutenant, he almost didn’t recognize him. His advice was unassailably wise, and his regalia forbade any dissent. Had he offered his ring, Nick would have kissed it, kneeling. Instead, he took a breath and waited for Garelick to get a shovel.

They slipped down the path toward the school, but when Garelick started to shovel, Nick pulled him away, told him to keep walking. Whatever sudden reverence Nick had felt for the lieutenant, he did not feel obliged to clear his way for a triumphal procession. They started digging out the sidewalk in front of the gate, rough and sloppy, good
enough for civil servants on loan. Nick’s long underwear was soon cold and wet beneath his coveralls; he didn’t want to think about Garelick, with his suit beneath his suit. Snow, snow, snow falling down. How Nick had loved it when he was young. Everyone did. Did Grace, today? A bell rang. The girls must have been dismissed. Nick dug faster, hoping Garelick would follow. The detectives moved toward the bus stop, and they were halfway there when Garelick fell.

Garelick began to yell in another language, bitter and foreign. Nick thought he was making it up at first. The words were like coughing—spitty, gargling sounds, like popcorn cooked in his lungs. Garelick’s face went gray, his color not much darker than the snow. A man walked down to them from the bus stop and leaned over, asking what was wrong. He was dressed for the cold, well-prepared—a blue down coat that almost reached his knees, a bulky black knit cap. He also carried a shopping bag. He looked familiar to Nick.

“Ees nothing. He drunk.”

Nick did a bad Russian accent, haplessly inspired by the Slavic-sounding noise. Nick jerked his head away from the stranger and leaned closer over Garelick, fanning his face with his hands. The girls began to walk through the gates, all of them at once, the whole school. No one would stay late today, for sports or clubs. Nick and the black-capped bystander looked over to them at the same time, and then Nick looked down again, so he wouldn’t be caught staring.

“Good luck,” the man said.
“Vaya con Dios.”

The man in the hat walked away, across the street, then turned and waited. Nick spoke into his sleeve, calling for help, pressing buttons, and when he did not hear an answer, he called 911 from his phone. It would take a while for an ambulance, in the snow. The hat waited in the middle of the street for girls to come to the bus stop. He knew no cars would come. There would be almost no traffic today. He could wait and watch. Nick knew him, but couldn’t place him. Again, the halves of his mind were not yet speaking. He couldn’t leave Garelick. Garelick twitched, and Nick touched his face. It felt cold, but everything else did, too. Nick looked over to the man in the street—hat man, his man—and saw that he was speaking with someone else. The second man came over—Perez—as the first began to pace, agitated.

Nick tried to keep his voice down as he asked, “What did you say?”

“What happened? Is he all right?”

“No, I called an ambulance. What did you say to the guy?”

“Who?” Perez was baffled. “What guy?”

“In the street, the guy you just talked to?”

“I said I came to pick up my daughter, she was crying. She said something bad happened at school. I said I was afraid it was one of those crazy school things, like from Colorado or Virginia.”

Perez had conjured another damsel, but the distress appeared to be actual and widespread. One girl screamed, then another; two fell in the snow.

“Stay with Garelick.”

The man in the cap began to move through the packs of girls, who were slipping and falling, laughing and throwing snow. Nick got up and slipped, got up again, moving in toward him—thirty feet. More shrieks—terrified or delighted, the same to the ear—girls falling over, bending down to fix their shoes. Bedlam, bedlam. The girls thinned into smaller groups, heading toward different bus stops, the train. The man began to pace, going back and forth, approaching one group, another. Nick slipped again, hit the ground hard. The wind was in his eyes when he got up. He couldn’t see the man, still couldn’t place him. Another context, not this. A scream again, not delighted, very near. Nick couldn’t see where it was coming from until he saw a girl who looked like she was dancing, swatting at her boot with each frantic kick. This was the signal, the sign. Twenty feet ahead, Grace and the man in the hat. He pulled her free arm, and she pulled away. He saw Nick coming, turned to her and slapped her face. “You liar!” It shocked Nick as if he’d been slapped, too. The man was not only enraged, he was wounded, hurt to the core, as if he had offered only love and had been betrayed. He dropped the bag and ran. Nick was close, but both of them scrambled on the sidewalk, neither gaining ground.

When the man broke off to the street, Nick saw a figure in black striding forward, his robes flapping back. He was bellowing into the winds as if he commanded them. A car rounded the corner, sliding as it turned, hitting the curb and skidding again, gaining traction. The catch car, with Esposito and Napolitano. It rocketed forward, then slammed into a hydrant on the far side of the street. The lieutenant marched ahead, slapping his hips, then yanked apart his cassock, buttons spraying, to get to the gun. Grace cried out, “Shoot him! Father, shoot him!” He did, but he missed.

The man stopped, stunned, then began to run. He lost traction for a second, then adjusted his stride, skating over the snow. Rocks in your pocket, just the thing. Nick followed after, pushing with a side step, sliding forward, and by the end of the block, where the park began, Nick was almost within reach. That was when the catch car almost hit him, swerving near, fishtailing as brakes were slammed. Nick dove to the side, and as he lay in the snow, he was racked with so much pain he thought the car had not missed. He heard sirens.
That was fast
. Not for him. For Garelick. How was he? Even as the thought formed in his mind, Nick knew it wasn’t first among his regrets, and he was afraid he might cry. As he struggled to stand again, Esposito and Napolitano crouched over him, one trying to stop him, the other trying to help him up. Nick didn’t know which was which, but he saw that Esposito had tears in his eyes.

“Shit, Nick, are you—”

“Go.”

“Are you okay, Nick? Can you move?”

“Go! Nappy, go! Get him!”

As Napolitano lumbered off, Esposito stayed with Nick. He grabbed a shoulder, and then quickly released him, fearful a bone might be broken.

“Nick! Can you get up?”

“Yeah.”

As Nick regained his footing, his ribs, his back, and most of his muscles ached. Was all this pain from the chase, the snow shoveling, a spill? He was still wondering when he saw Napolitano trudge back from the edge of the trees. No, that wasn’t why it hurt. Nick collapsed back down in the snow, sitting down, face in his hands, and only looked up again when Lieutenant Ortiz seized his arm, struggling for breath. “Did we do it?”

The particular form of the question almost sounded vicious, reminding Nick of the scope of the disappointment. He dreaded seeing Grace again, and tried to figure out what to tell her. But the thought of her moved him past self-pity, spurred him against reacting as her father had, wailing about ruin and loss. It wasn’t his own head he needed to hold in his hands.

“No. Yes. I know who he is. Where he lives. We need a lot of people, to cover the perimeter. We need dogs here.”

C
ops had begun to descend on the location in volume, six or seven cars, lights flashing. Perez was beside a stretcher that bore Garelick into an ambulance, and joined him inside as the door shut. A uniformed cop had secured the shopping bag the rapist had abandoned: a six-pack of beer, a nightgown—for a little girl, pink, full of princess frills—Vaseline, duct tape. Sister Agnes led Grace back toward the school, an arm around her, cooing reassurances as the girl wept. The sight of her in tears almost made Nick tear up, for its own sake, but also because it made vivid in his mind his promise to her, about doing what had to be done. She managed a weak smile as she walked past and said, “Sorry…. I know you tried.”

Nick scanned her face for glimpses of irony or rebuke; there were none, only a kind of broken tenderness. He had been pitied again, which made him ashamed. He tried to separate the natural disasters of the day from the man-made ones, and he couldn’t manage it, couldn’t even decide which events were disasters. If Garelick hadn’t collapsed, the man wouldn’t have come over, and Nick would never have seen his face. If Perez hadn’t made up his batshit story of the girls being at risk, the man wouldn’t have rushed in. What had the man imagined, a school shooter, a gas leak, that had made all the dropping bodies and yelling seem part of a catastrophe instead of a holiday? This was the lesser fantasy, modest tricks of color and light in the fun house mirror in the rapist’s head; far stranger was the picture of himself, as Grace’s rescuer. No, there were benefits to both incidents—God forgive him, he hoped Garelick was all right. The only unmixed non-blessing, Nick realized, was when his partner had almost run him over. That would take some time to work through.

When Nick walked past one of the cops, he overheard him say, “Man, that Esposito is something else. Shit really happens when he takes ’em down!”

Before Nick could react, the lieutenant waved him over as he closed his cellphone. Esposito was beside him, and he stepped back a pace when Nick walked over. The lieutenant was excited. “Finally, a break! One of the K-9s—the bloodhound—they’re finishing a job in the Bronx. They should be here within the hour. They asked, do we got something from the perp? It’ll make it easier for the dog to track him. I said no, but maybe there’s something in that shopping bag he left. I can’t even remember, was he wearing gloves?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Nick, tapping Esposito on the arm. “C’mon. Let’s take a ride.”

Nick looked around for an undamaged car they might use—“There’s one”—and Esposito handed him the keys with a look of self-reproach so profound that Nick laughed. The misery in his face cheered Nick beyond what was conscionable; still, now there were angles to work, tactics to plan, an occasion for hope.

“Stop it, Espo. You drive.”

The lieutenant’s phone rang again, but before he answered, he warned them, “Don’t be long.”

Esposito got behind the wheel. He couldn’t look at Nick, not yet. They rolled down the hill, braking and releasing, more cautiously than even the slick road warranted.

“So …” Esposito kept his eyes on the road with such distracted determination that Nick wanted to make him pull over, take a deep breath.

“So …” Nick began haltingly. “So, what do you feel like for dinner?”

“I feel like eating my gun, Nick.”

That was not what he wanted to hear. Which one was who now? Nick didn’t even want an apology, not for this. Not for anything; Nick just wanted things to go back to where they were, whatever they were. Not this, and no one dead, neither of them. When they passed 181st Street, Nick saw Esposito turn his head toward Daysi’s shop, and he realized that Esposito was still waiting for a response.

“If I believed you, I’d have to take your gun from you.”

“I don’t know, Nick. I never messed up like I did today. I mean, I know you know that it was an accident. Otherwise you wouldn’t be busting my balls. And I appreciate that, you being a shithead in the old
way. But it’s different, and I don’t like it. I don’t have a sense of things like I used to. I do, but it’s wrong. Yesterday, last month, last fall—whenever it was, when we were the goddamn kings of this—if I’d hit you with the car, you woulda landed on top of the rapist, knocked him out with your thick head. That was our luck then. Now … Well, today we weren’t even partners. I was in the car with Napolitano. It wasn’t right. I know why you’re pissed at me, but … This ain’t the time, I know. Where are we going, anyway?”