Red on Red (63 page)

The lieutenant stood and stretched his legs. “Well, I might as well wait for the next train, get down to the hospital and check on Garelick. It’ll be fastest. Nick, you have to put in the ‘wanted’ card on this guy, in case he gets picked up for something, tonight or whenever. I know the last thing you want to do is type, but we have to cover the bases. Shit, they’re gonna want all kinds of paper on this—shots fired and car crashes, men down—I think I ought to just check myself into the hospital with chest pains, get a night’s sleep before I have to deal with it.”

“Do what you gotta do, Lou,” said Esposito. “Fuck ’em. Let the paper wait. I’ll go back with Nick. We’ll take care of everything. I know you were kidding, but you ought to get yourself checked out. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look your usual healthy self.”

The lieutenant laughed and lit a cigarette. Esposito seemed impatient, eager to leave. Nick didn’t see the point of rushing, and he was almost sorry to hear the arriving train. The lieutenant stamped out his cigarette, and the three of them boarded. Nick and Esposito got off a stop before the lieutenant, by the precinct, and they shook hands again when they parted. The gesture had the gravity of ritual, as if a treaty had been signed. The lieutenant felt that his men were functional, honorable, and cohesive, which he had not fully believed the day before. They had attempted something exceptional, and deserved more than they had accomplished. Nick almost agreed, almost believed him. What he didn’t believe was that Esposito’s plans had anything to do with typing.

W
hen they came up from underground, back into the blizzard, Nick started to head up Broadway toward the precinct. Esposito took hold of his arm.

“C’mon.”

“What?”

“I need you here.”

Esposito led him west, along 181st. Nick had questions, but he didn’t know where to start. They slipped and stomped through the snow. As they approached Ortega Florist, Esposito began to cross the street, but Nick stopped him. This was not how he wanted to end the night, but he couldn’t move on without knowing, without closing one case, at least. He’d have an answer, as Esposito would have, were the shoe on the other foot.

“Nick … It wasn’t like that.”

Nick waited, looking at him, without having to feign coldness. The snow was bright in the streetlights, the crazy uncaptained flight of each wide, wet flake skidding through the air, landing where it would.

“What was it like?”

“I didn’t even see her, Nick. I just stopped by.”

“Why?”

“C’mon, brother, you know me—”

“Yeah, I do.”

Esposito nodded. “I’m sorry. She’s just so goddamn hot.”

That was it; it was that simple. There had never been anything adult about his adultery. Human, but not even that.

Bad dog! Why did you jump up on the dinner table?

I like meat
.

Just beasting. Motivation really wasn’t the issue, Nick supposed, but it was satisfying to hear it put plainly. Nick considered whether there was anything else to be said, whether his own traitor’s heart had any right to demand more. No, let it go. Maybe he’d have a better claim on purgatory if he did, and he’d be in less of a hurry to get there.

“All right.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Just … don’t …”

“I swear to you.”

Esposito’s relief was genuine, as was his contrition, but he hadn’t understood Nick at all. “Not for me, Espo. Not just for me. Not even mostly for me. You’re chasing your own tail. What happens when you catch it?”

Esposito seemed almost stunned; he had gambled on forgiveness, but he hadn’t counted on compassion, the possibility or the need. Nick hadn’t intended any insult, but he knew the terrible recognition, when you take off your hat because your head’s a little hot and a stranger drops a dollar in it. Esposito blinked and shook his head, rubbed both hands through his hair. Nick smiled at the recollection of the high sign from Michael Cole’s interrogation, the cue to break in on the interview. The smile was another dollar in the hat. Again, he didn’t mean it.

“C’mon, Espo. Let’s go where we’re going. Let’s do what we gotta do.”

Nick took his shoulder and pulled him along. Esposito stepped unsteadily.

“Let’s see this through. Everybody thought it was my night tonight. Everybody felt it, the change of luck, the way things seemed to line up. It was my time, my turn. You know what? Today wasn’t a complete disaster. We broke the case. We didn’t get him, but someone will. He’s done. Now that everybody’s got their head out of their ass, me and you both, let’s do what we gotta do. Throw away the rabbit’s foot and tell me what we got, how we can finish this.”

“Gimme a minute.”

They walked west, clumsily through the snow, uphill and down, toward the river. Esposito marched forcefully but without speed, determined to move his mind away from himself. As they approached the covered walkway that bridged the railroad tracks, Esposito put his arm out for Nick to stop.

“He’s got the gun for me, Malcolm does. That’s what he says. But I don’t trust him. Yesterday, it was like pulling teeth. Today, he talks like he’s room service—‘Absolutely! Right away! Is there anything else?’ ”

Nick looked at the footprints leading across the walkway, down to the river. There were a few more coming toward them than leading away, reasonably fresh. What was he, an Indian? Stop it. Stick to what you know.

“Are we early or late?”

“Early. I told him two hours. Less than an hour since I talked to him. Quiet here, private, especially now.”

“You ever meet him here before?”

“Shit. Yeah. Mostly here.”

“So, you think Malcolm’s renegotiated the deal. With who?”

Esposito checked his phone for missed calls and shook his head. He kept the phone in his hand, at the ready.

“I’m afraid that them being brothers, it might mean something after all.”

The tribute to sibling unity was not what it might have been, under other circumstances. They walked over the bridge, over the dry concrete, then back into the snow, the steep slope down to the river. Nick slipped, and Esposito tried to grab his shoulder, and both landed on their asses. Neither of them could quite manage a laugh. Help was not help here; a hand was not a help. Nick tried to remind himself to trust his eyes, not his luck. They staggered to their feet, and then down the path, to just above the river, above the boulders by the feet of the bridge. They’d had a beer here, in better weather, after that day with the santero, the death and the rescue, maybe for atonement. Nick had last spoken with Daysi not far away. Esposito had chosen this place for other confidences and ceremonies as well. A kind of rhyme there, yes, but before Nick could dwell on that, Malcolm called out. Nick didn’t like that he was ready for them, that he’d seen them first.

“Hey, Espo! You’re early.”

“Hey, Malcolm, there you are! Am I early? Moving around in this shit weather, I thought I was late.”

“Nah, you know. Maybe it’s me. Was gonna call you, but I lost my phone. For real!”

Nick was glad that he wasn’t obliged to join them in the small talk.
Malcolm and Esposito were better actors than he was, but the lines were terrible, halfhearted excuses, lies that were as shameful for their laziness as for their deceit.

“You got that thing for me?”

“Yeah.”

Malcolm handed a package to Esposito, which he held and weighed, unwilling to expose its contents to his touch or the elements.

“So … you got your partner here…. What’s up, Meehan. Haven’t seen you for a while. Glad you’re feelin’ better.”

Nick didn’t smile, didn’t try to. Esposito must have told him that Nick had been sick, missing the previous meets. Malcolm extended his hand, and Nick shook it. Esposito pushed past the civilities.

“And you didn’t handle it yourself, right? Good. You hear from Michael? He call?”

“He didn’t have to. I saw him at the house. You guys are messin’ with his head. It’s bad. What he do? What you tell him he did?”

Nick was impressed by the control of information Esposito had shown. Clearly, he’d told Malcolm nothing about Jamie Barry. And he was surprised that Malcolm had accepted the lack of disclosure, that he hadn’t asked how Esposito knew that Michael had come back. Nick was also taken aback that Malcolm had agreed to find his brother’s gun without asking how they knew one was there. Malcolm sounded entertained by it all, and that bothered both detectives. The way he talked wasn’t a bluff of nonchalance but the bemusement of a spectator, a man who didn’t have a stake in the game. In jail, Malcolm had told them he didn’t care about his brother, and Nick had believed him. Esposito must have been right; Malcolm had gotten lazy once he’d gotten what he wanted, once he’d gotten out of Rikers. No, that didn’t quite fit, either.

“Shit,” said Esposito. “Michael’s out already? What he say?”

Nick wished Esposito had tried to bluff, had kept the worry out of his voice. There was no fear in Malcolm when he answered.

“He says he shot your partner—you, Meehan—but you musta known it was coming. And you, Espo, tried to send him to the nuthouse. The problem with Michael, like I tried to tell you, is he’s always right. So when things don’t work out, it’s because there’s big-time CIA shit going on. You can’t talk to him. You’re either stupid or you’re in on it. I was gettin’ ready to leave when he comes in, all shook up, more pissed off than ever. It takes me back. I gotta remember, this was his first night in jail.
I been fucked with by the police my whole life. I know what goes and what don’t. I know you got high-tech cameras, I know you tap phones, you got tricky shit goin’ on. Me and you, Espo, our shit is the trickiest! But when he starts tellin’ me he’s gotta figure out how you stayed so still when you hit the ground, Meehan, I just laugh. Oh, man, was that the wrong move, does that flip him out!”

Nick knew how that might happen. He noticed that Malcolm slowed down for the last part of the story, told it less like a joke about a stranger. He was sad about how it ended. That made some sense, but not enough.

“He comes at me. I take him down. I hold him down till he gives, even though he don’t say he gives. He could never fight, and I still got the big-brother shit going on. But I let him go, and he runs in his room, slams the door. I’m glad I didn’t have the gun on me, his gun. I wasn’t shittin’ you, Espo. It was hard to find. I only got it when I went to the freezer today, see if there was something to eat. I pick up this box—brussels sprouts. Nobody, nobody in my house, would ever eat that shit. Plus, it was heavy. I gotta give him that. It was a good way to keep everybody from messin’ with it. Anyway. I was thinkin’ about headin’ back down South myself, settin’ things up, like I said.”

Malcolm’s accent followed his itinerary, drifting down across the Mason-Dixon Line. “Ah” for “I.”
Like ah said …
Nick thought Malcolm was moving a little fast.

“So, Espo, you think we’re good now, with the tape of—”

“What tape?”

Nick could see Esposito tense up. The baroque avoidances in their own conversations on the matter might have been extreme—“That thing with that guy, and the other one”—but the only reason to speak of a tape would be for the benefit of a tape. The three looked at one another, unsure what could be said, whether they were past talking. Hands shifted in pockets—dodgy movements, menacing and feigning menace—jacking up alarm. Had Malcolm really given Esposito the gun, any gun, and did he have another? They couldn’t see one another, which might have been a blessing, buying a moment. Everything Nick had warned his partner against, all the code-red contingencies, now threatened, and the only way out of the hole was to dig deeper. Nick could not go further, could not go back. What next? Snow swirled down, and he tilted his head back, opened his mouth, to catch snowflakes on his tongue. One, two, three, all of them sweet and clean.

A man lumbered down the path, taking small, reluctant steps, heel heavy, guarding against slipping down the hill. There was an odd tempo to his respiration, once he was in earshot, up and down, fluttery breathiness, then low, labored moans. He was heard before he was seen in any detail. He fascinated the three of them, as a distraction and a grateful delay, but also because he was all mismatch—tan overcoat, too dressy and light for the weather, holding something dark by his chest and a newspaper over his head like a rickety awning, unready and unwilling to be here.

“Malcolm! Meehan! He’s got my gun! Tell him I’m a cop!”

Nick didn’t know the face, but he knew the voice. Esposito knew neither. Malcolm knew both. The man was not alone. Michael was behind him, and it was he who spoke first, firm and ready, as if bringing the meeting to order.

“Get down. Hands out, hands up, everybody.”

The man sank to his knees, and Michael pointed the gun at Nick, at Esposito, before returning the barrel to the back of his hostage. They obeyed out of amazement, hands still in gloves, unready to shoot. Michael addressed his brother.

“You left your phone.”

So Malcolm had told the truth; Nick had even gotten that wrong. Michael held it up in his free hand. He flipped it open and pressed a button. Seconds later, there was a muffled ring from somewhere within the IAB man’s coat. The man looked up at Nick, pleading in his eyes. The mystery prick, revealed. Younger than Nick had thought, thin and red-haired, pale and sharp-featured, practiced in expressions of severity, not this. Eyes, mouth, cheek muscles seemed like they wanted to have nothing to do with each other, bits of his face all trying to leave at once, to be first to the exits. A camera was around his neck, with a long lens. How long had he taken pictures, until he’d felt what he thought was a gun to his back? Nick guessed Michael didn’t have a gun, until he’d taken the IAB man’s. The man had descended with the newspaper over his head, as if his mother were in his ear, telling him to mind the cold and the wet. An Irish mother, maybe, waiting at home for him, supper on the stove. The redheaded man looked to Nick. “Tell him, Meehan! Tell him who I am! You know!”