South by South Bronx (8 page)

Myers needed that roster, the list of stats. He sucked out my intuition, the human side to the files the disks. He did not need my help with computer facts with cell phone data. He had the latest technology the fastest tricks. The electronic toys that read mail, hear phone calls, trace cell phones down to restroom cubicles in crowded malls. He had the machines. He had to show it off, as if starting the game with a display of force: It was a fucking bread truck. The old kind, big and boxy. Picture on both sides, huge Jewish kid face snacking on a slice of rye.
Levi's Bread
. Inside, knobs and screens with graphs that snaked and lines that swerved and a map in color and rows of blinking lights. His “team,” those two always, those same two and never anyone else that I saw, working switches and knobs, earphones attached to faces as waxy as Ken, as inflexible as Barbie. A bread truck parked on the fucking Grand Concourse. What did he have to go and do that for? To tell me there were no FCC regulators hurling court orders at his ass, to remind me that his “team” was in that fucking bread truck meticulously working through the night.

You don't know what they're looking for, but you know they're looking.

I was no longer flattering myself that he sought me out for my expertise. In fact, I was striking out. Spook used a tried and true system of security. It wasn't hard for me to locate his squads, but this time he evidently went under with no security, no one with him. I told Myers that Spook was going solo, and this proved it. I knew his ways pretty well. I had my list of entrances and exits, particularly helpful during the Dirty Harry time. Chasing after Spook can be a real Tom and Jerry, but he would turn helpful if I was after someone else. Spook was just that kind of guy, ready-set to whittle down the competition. I guess he figured he'd take some dumb-cluck foreigner for the dough and invite him to come and get it. He could imagine some bunch of foreigners bumbling around every
cuchifritería
, searching that ghetto maze for a man with his own well-armed troop to protect him. The South Bronx is a complicated system of tunnels and trap doors, so maybe it wasn't so crazy for him to think he could get away with it. He just hadn't banked on the feds. I hadn't really either: Just what was with them? If Spook ripped off a pack of foreign terrorists bent on doing evil, the feds should be rolling with mirth that they got robbed! They should pin a medal on him, get him to work with them to set up the ringleaders, all U.S. Americans together fighting evil! Didn't they recruit the Mafia to fight Mussolini? Didn't they recruit the Mafia to assassinate Castro? What was so fucking outlandish about recruiting a spick dealer to fight for “his” country in a war on terror?

It seemed the thing that scared Myers the most was the possibility that Spook was truly alone in this. Dropped his security apparatus and did a fade-out with the whole bag. The money came and went. Spook opened four businesses, four bank accounts. He purchased four pieces of property, all in the South Bronx, each and every one the ratty kind of riot-gate shop stinking of rotted wood and empty shelves. These were his supposed investments in the scheme. He seemingly fronted the money from his own pocket, though looking at these pathetic properties it was unlikely he spent much. This was his goodwill tactic, promising these people not only a front for floating money but four locations in the South Bronx they could use for whatever purposes pleased them. This probably excited them, a home base with Manhattan just twenty minutes away on the 5 train. We were still getting down to the nitty-gritty of how Spook pulled the swipe, but it was clear the terrorists got sold four ramshackle properties in the South Bronx for ten million bucks. It was all they walked away with. The money had already passed through by the time the feds arrested the four losers left holding the bank accounts. Of the four, two were from Spook's family of regulars. Outer-fringers, Spook must have pulled them from a hat. He paid them each eight thousand dollars. Just another small business banking its money, right? They saw the money come and they saw the money go. Afterwards they still had eight thousand dollars in the bank. They also had federal agents asking them WHERE IS IT?

The other two were foreigners. Spook banked four million with them in separate joint accounts. They didn't even have eight thousand after it was over. They had expired visas, few documents, and fake Social Security numbers. They claimed to be Saudi Arabian students with very wealthy parents who had just gotten swindled big time. They were young, a little scruffy, and somehow accustomed to interrogations. Myers took me to see them at an FBI office downtown. They sure looked Puerto Rican to me in that way Arabs sometimes do. The two Spook regulars were pretty freaked out by the feds and were relieved to see me, a
compa'i
who could speak their Spanglish. They were a torrent of words, nothing to hide, talked volumes. They knew
nada
about the money or where it came from.

“And you believed them?”

“That's right,” I told Myers. “People who don't know can't talk.”

“So you're saying he likes to involve civilians, innocent types, people who don't know. Is that right?”

I didn't really get where this was going until later, when he and I were blowing down a couple of slices in my car. We were a few blocks from the precinct, going down the list of Spook people. Myers had his own list, drawn I imagine from his bread truck tricks, his electronic toys. Even with all that, he didn't have a knowledge of
cuevitas
, those little holes they go scurrying into when trouble comes, those loose lines of contact with the normal folk in the community who don't get picked up by bread trucks. I gave him my information. Maybe he would take it and go away. He was pushing for big raids. He didn't understand about the big splash and how it always causes a stink. You make a splash in one place and everybody else you don't nab will head into
cuevitas
so deep … could spend months looking and nobody on the street is going to tell you, not after a splash. Nobody likes so much noise. Sources dry up, the streets stop talking. There were times when it could do the precinct some good to be “seen” making raids, the sign of an active police force doing its thing. In most cases these raids were stage managed with the care of a Broadway production. Myers didn't know about that. His was a boyish enthusiasm that soon played itself out. I felt him pushing me. I sensed he was trying to get underneath me, lead me to make some admission. When I insisted this was a Spook solo number, he wanted to know how I knew, how I could be so sure. And yet we had spent the past day and a half looking up the people who guard Spook. Myers knew as well as I that none of them were with the man.

“But would that make sense to you? That he would swipe ten million bucks off some goons, then run off without his team to protect him?”

“The team wasn't in on it.”

“But if he has no security?”

“How secure would you feel surrounded by a pack of hot-headed South Bronx gunboys? Would you tell them you have ten million dollars?”

My words slowed him down a bit. He seemed to launch countless little offensives, but once blunted, would lapse into moody silence. There was a lack of air. We had long ago finished our slices. I rolled down a window and lit two cigarettes. There was the tender touch of rain droplets appearing on the windshield like blisters.

“He probably figured it was easier for him to ditch the gang.” I was blowing out smoke, relishing the warm harsh. “He can hole out someplace safe while the gang takes the blame, and maybe gets the bullets. Maybe we're playing into his hands.”

“But you still think we can find him?”

“Yes.”

“What about his brother?”

My stomach was churning bad.

“He's not always helpful.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means sometimes he doesn't know.”

“But what if he knows this time?”

I pinched my eyes shut. I could feel the next Myers offensive coming, that relentless assault of words. I felt tired just looking at him.

“I told you, he's clean.”

“Clean. Exactly the type his brother utilizes to perfection. What better place to stash the money?”

“What worse place. His brother's? Didn't you just come up with it? How much of a stretch could it be?”

“His brother could be a front for the entire operation.”

“David Rosario has never been involved in criminal activity. He wouldn't swipe a paper clip.”

“He bailed Spook out of jail.”

“That's right, a couple of times.”

“Sounds like involvement to me.”

“Hey, don't you have any brothers or sisters? He sometimes takes care of his wayward little brother. But not crime. He won't break the law.”

“How about the fact that Spook shows up at his apartment? He was there three times last week. Why is it that, if we watch David, we get Spook?”

Some cold wind blowing from him. Somehow, some way my blood was turning to ice. I was burning and freezing at the same time.

“So you've been watching him,” I said.

That's the thing about feds, Jack told me. They might know things but they won't tell you. Maybe not right off, maybe only when they want to use the information to make you do something. You don't have the information. In many cases you don't even see it. I expected Myers would get as cryptic as the Book of Revelations, but that wasn't what was coming.

“That's right,” he said. “I don't have a big team, you know that. Three weeks ago I managed to place somebody with David Rosario.”

“An operative?”

I was sucking on that cigarette too fast, or something else was making the surroundings shrink, all pressing in toward me.

“Let's just say
a good friend
.”

“So if you have the information David has it, why are you chasing Spook?”

“I don't have the information that it's at David's. But I know it's the two of them. It's between them somehow and I'm going to find it.”

His insistence, pressing against my temples, my neck. I started the car.

“You told me you wanted to trace the money to its source, to follow it on its journey through those terrorist arteries. To know who's who—who fills the trough and who feeds at it. You told me that just talking to Spook could give you valuable information. Now all you're talking about is the money. So what do you want? Is it the money, or is it Spook?”

He rubbed his eyes. “One leads to the other, that's right.”

“So you want Spook to hand over the money?”

“The money's course has been interrupted.” It was a night voice, a horror-movie narration. “The flow has to be reestablished. A lot of people went to a lot of trouble to set this up. A lot rides on this. There has to be a way to salvage this, to set the money back on its course.” Black mask, red parted lips, and some tongue-flicking like in that Marilyn Manson video.

“Sounds like you just want to give it back,” I muttered, more to my cigarette. “Is that right? Do you think you're going to get Spook to give it back?”

“The important thing is that we find him, and find him first … before the others do.”

Who says Myers had to be wrong about David and Spook? The two of them could be in perfect touch, symbiotic, instinctive. And what about those “others” who are after him? Good guys bad guys? Arab terrorists running around on American streets? See the first
Back to the Future
, also the '80s classic
Into the Night,
with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum. Could imagine talking to people on South Bronx streets:
Seen any Arabs around here lately?
So many Arabs look like Puerto Ricans. All they have to do is learn some Spanglish.

“They don't have to be Arabs,” Myers said, sick of my jokes. “They could hire anybody to do the job—anybody.”

The feds working to retrieve money stolen from a group of terrorists? This was not a plot twist I wanted to deal with. My wife rented the Coen brothers.
Blood Simple
: how one simple mistake leads to another simple mistake, and after that, does it matter how it began? I was on my fifth cigarette that day. Some days it's only two or three. Some days you hit five without thinking.

The 5 train is another South Bronx rhythm, cutting across the middle of the borough. Goes underground through Manhattan, all the way into Brooklyn before turning back. Climbs out to open air on elevated tracks just after that other Third Avenue station at 149th Street. It clatters past small shops, a post office, and the running track, before its first outdoor stop by the tall projects. The Jackson Avenue station looks more like a worn-out house suspended over traffic. The round bulby lamps along the platform glow at night like fiery lemon drops. The 5 train runs all the way down Westchester Avenue until it hits Southern Boulevard. Makes that sharp turn right after the Freeman Street station. Trains howl when they hit that curve, even though they hit it slow. It is an animal sound, dogs crying, flutes wailing, a sound that has always been and will ever be. I remember it when I was a little kid and subway cars were black and boxy. I remember walking with my father toward Hunts Point. I must have been seven or eight. I was holding his hand, and looked back at that wailing sound to see those train cars up on elevated tracks all lit up like a string of jewels and Southern Boulevard all covered in flashing lights and Christmas wreaths that hung across the street over traffic. These things have not changed. Christmas wreaths still hang over traffic during the holiday season, and the trains still play their melancholic pipes. The trains are silvery smooth now, hydraulic systems adding a rising whine to the clatter of a passing train. A different song for a new generation to learn. A straight line from past to present, the one true continuity in a place where the landscape changes constantly. The South Bronx has become more like a city rebuilt after a war than the old town whose stories are etched in jagged tenement brick. Change comes. Change kills the past.