Dead Red (21 page)

“I talk to Allison.”

“You’re not supposed to be screwing your therapist, Ray.”

“She’s not my—oh. I guess that’s your point, huh?”

He tapped his temple with his index finger. “Quick. You’ve done such a good job getting your body back, close to where it was. But I don’t think you’ve paid enough attention to your head. You ever see anyone after the accident?”

“No.”

“That sounds like you.” He gave my leg a gentle slap. “It’s never too late, Ray. Especially now, after what you’ve just been through. Let me guess. You’ve been thinking a lot more about your fall since the shooting.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that’s only natural, right?”

“Of course it’s natural. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get some help. You know how many guys I get in here—ten, twenty years on the job—they got themselves believing everything’s gonna be fine, soon as they get their strength back?”

“I know the speech, Muscles. There are two types of strength: physical and emotional. I watch PBS.”

“Everybody knows, but not everyone does something about it, Ray. I don’t care how great a shape your body’s in, if the mind falls too far behind, it ain’t worth shit.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

“You shouldn’t be. I’ve been preaching the mind/body connection for years. You’ve just been so focused on the body part—and I’m proud of you for that, don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s time to start working on the mind.” He got up out of his crouch. “Any fool can look at himself in the mirror and be happy with what he sees. Takes a certain kinda courage to see who’s really looking back.”

He was right. One thing about Muscles: he doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s mostly the truth that comes out. That might have been the main reason his business kept growing year after year. That and all the condos going up.

“Go do your twenty on the treadmill,” he said. “I’m gonna get a card from the office for you.”

“Thanks.” I moved over to my next assignment. Since I had started coming back here again three years ago, Muscles had me walking backward on the treadmill for at least twenty minutes a session. Something about the medial meniscus behind both knees benefitting more from this type of motion than the standard forward walking. Like most things Muscles told me to do, I didn’t understand it all, but knew enough to follow his directions. Maybe it was time to turn around.

Halfway through the twenty-minute backward walk on an incline, Muscles came up and slipped a card into the machine’s cup holder.

“She’s good,” he said. “Dr. Amy Burke. She’s on the Upper West Side and takes your insurance. I recommended her to Ricky.”

“Ricky was seeing a shrink?”

“I recommended her. If he was seeing her, we didn’t talk about it.”

“Aren’t there any good therapists in Brooklyn?”

“Lots,” he said. “It took Ricky a while to agree to see one; and when he did, he didn’t want it to be in the neighborhood. You know how cops are.”

I knew what he meant. It wasn’t easy for cops to admit they needed help. They convince themselves and their partners they’re too tough for that. The last thing they needed was to be seen coming out of a therapist’s office.

“And,” Muscles continued, “she’s got a background in PTSD.”

I slipped Dr. Burke’s card into my shorts pocket. “I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long, Ray. It goes without saying, you shoulda done this right after your accident.”

That was another thing about Muscles: he had a habit of saying a lot of things that could have gone without saying. You can do that when you’re able to bench-press a small car. I offered my hand.

“I’ll call her,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Cool. I gotta split.”

“Another home visit?”

“It’s what keeps this place open, Ray.”

I gestured with my head at the attractive new manager. “It does have its upside.”

“Focus, Ray.” He looked at the timer on the treadmill. “You’ve still got six minutes and forty-seven seconds left. Then you better hit the cold showers.”

Not only was Muscles usually right, he was always exact.

*   *   *

I had just kicked my sneakers off when the downstairs buzzer rang.

I pressed the Talk button. “Yeah?”

“It’s Ally.”

I stifled the urge to say “Yea!” and pressed the Lock button. It took her less than two minutes to climb the four flights to my place.

We gave each other a hug. I slipped my hand under the back of her T-shirt.

“You’re pretty sweaty, tough guy,” she said.

“I was hoping to get a shower in before you got here.”

She smiled and took my T-shirt off and then hers.

“Well, then,” she whispered. “What are we going to do about that?”

*   *   *

Thirty minutes after possibly the greatest shower of my life, Allison and I were sitting on the couch drinking cold Brooklyn Pilsners out of the bottle. As an atheist, I figured this was the closest I’d ever get to Heaven.

“That was nice,” she said.

“
Nice?
” I repeated. “You work with words for a living, and the best thing you can come up with is ‘nice’?”

She put her beer on the coffee table and swung her leg over so that she was now straddling me. “If I’m too complimentary,” she said, “you’ll stop working so hard to please me.” She kissed me and ran her fingers along my face.

“If this is work, sign me up for another year.”

“Just one year?”

“If I’m too complimentary…” I said, and then she kissed me again to stop me from finishing the thought.

“You were saying?” She leaned back and took her T-shirt off a second time.

“I don’t remember.” I leaned in to kiss her breasts. “But it couldn’t have been very important.”

“There’s a good boy. How about we take this into the bedroom?”

“I was thinking about ordering in some Chinese food.”

“Afterward,” she said, “that would be very nice.”

“Excellent idea.”

If this were a movie, we would have gotten off the couch in one motion, and I would have carried Allison into my bedroom. But this was real life, and I knew my knees would only let me down if I tried. Ally got up first and grabbed the empty beer bottles to bring them into the kitchen. We both heard two thumps coming from my bedroom.

“What the hell was that?” she asked.

I was pretty sure I knew what it was. I have a sliding glass door in my bedroom that leads out to the common deck area. It’s the main reason I keep the curtains pulled. Every once in a while, a bird will fly into one of the windows and either fly away dazed or need to be scooped up and thrown away. The thumps sounded like that, but I didn’t ever remember hearing two in close succession.

“Wait here,” I said, not wanting Allison to see dead birds and risk ruining the present mood she was in.

I opened my bedroom door and flicked on the light. The curtains were pulled as usual. I stepped over, pulled them aside and looked down. No dead birds. Good. But then I noticed two holes in the curtain as I closed it again and a little bit of glass on the floor.
What the fuck?
I turned around to see Ally in the doorway, now naked.

“What was it?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh, well.” Allison turned off the overhead, and the light spilling from the hallway framed her beautiful shape. She moved over to my bed and was about to lie down when she said, “Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“What the hell happened to your wall?”

I looked to where she was pointing, grabbed her by the hand, and moved us both out of my bedroom as quickly as I could. I shut the bedroom door and got us both over to the hallway and onto the floor.

“Ray?”

I didn’t answer her. I just reached out, grabbed my landline, and dialed 911.

Chapter 19

LESS THAN TEN MINUTES AFTER I’d dialed 911—and made it very clear I was
Chief Raymond Donne
’s nephew—my apartment was crawling with cops. From what I could gather from their conversation and radio chatter, there were also quite a few on the rooftops across the street. The two thumps Allison and I had heard were not misguided birds; they were sniper shots that ended up in the wall behind my bed. Had we been in bed when the shots were fired, neither one of us could have called anyone.

From the kitchen I looked over at Ally, who was sitting on the bed giving a statement to one of the five detectives who showed up. For some reason they would not share with me, I was to give my statement to a sixth detective whenever he showed up. When he finally came through the front door of my apartment, I realized why they had made me wait.

“Mr. Donne,” Detective Royce said as he entered the kitchen. “I see things have calmed down a bit since we last spoke.”

We “last spoke” a little more than two years ago, after Frankie Rivas safely returned home to his grandmother’s apartment. Royce was the lead in the investigation of Frankie’s father’s murder. He had known I was a more-than-interested bystander in that case and had made it quite clear—nephew of Chief Donne or not—he’d much rather I stuck to teaching and let the cops do what cops do best.

“Detective Royce,” I said, offering my hand. “Nice to see you again.”

Royce looked at the three uniformed officers crowding me in the kitchen and asked them to step out. When they complied, Royce gave me the same look he had given me throughout the Frankie Rivas case.

“What the fuck, Mr. Donne?” he whispered. “Who the hell did you piss off this time?”

“I honestly don’t know, Detective. My girlfriend and I were just ready to … call it a night, when we heard the shots.”

He looked over my shoulder at the other detectives in my bedroom with Allison and shook his head. “So, you have no idea why someone would be shooting at you?” He raised his hand. “And before you answer, understand that I know you were in the cab with Officer Torres the night
he
was shot and killed.”

Beneath his obvious anger, I also detected some genuine concern. He had let me slide two years ago by not looking too closely at my story or Frankie’s. Which was good, because neither story would have withstood much scrutiny. Royce was a stand-up guy, but that didn’t mean he liked to be messed with.

“Listen,” I said, “no one’s more confused about this shit than I am, Detective. I’ve been minding my own business since Frankie and—”

“Please. What about last year after that other kid of yours was stabbed under the bridge?”

“I was just helping out Dougie Lee’s mom. That was the extent of my involvement.”

“Bullshit. You don’t remember that cops talk to each other? Murcer called me after you got involved to ask me for advice on how to handle you.”

Detective Murcer was now, once again, my sister’s boyfriend.

“What’d you tell him?”

“To keep you on a very short leash.” He took a breath and looked as if he desperately needed one of those cigarettes he had quit smoking shortly before we met two years ago. “But this here, Mr. Donne? There is no leash short enough. This is some serious shit.”

“You don’t think I know that?” I pointed over to Allison. “That’s my girlfriend, Detective. I wouldn’t do anything to put her in danger.”

“Someone clearly disagrees with you.”

I looked around at all the cops filling my apartment. “I assume the working theory is this has something to do with Ricky T, right?”

“Yeah, Mr. Donne. You could assume that.”

“And the kid with the bike and the semi the other night? At the park?”

“How the fuck do you know about Kwan Myers?!” He shook his head. “Okay, you and me are going down to the station, and you’re going to tell me everything—and I mean
everything
—you know or think you know about what’s going on here.”

“He doesn’t need to go to the house for that, Detective.”

Royce and I both turned as Uncle Ray came into the kitchen and suddenly made the room crowded again. Neither of us acted surprised to see him.

“Chief Donne,” Royce said as he shook my uncle’s hand. “Good to see you again, sir. It’s been a while.”

“Yes,” Uncle Ray said and put his huge hand on my shoulder. “Raymond, have you told the detective everything you know about this situation?”

I looked from my uncle’s eyes to Royce’s. “Yes.”

“There you have it, Detective.”

Royce’s lips disappeared slowly and he shook his head.

“Sir,” Royce said as steadily as he could manage, “I believe when we get the ballistics back that we’ll be able to connect this shooting with the murder of Richard Torres and Kwan Myers in the park the other night. I also believe your nephew,” he gave me a look, “may know more than he … thinks and would be a great help in this investigation.”

That took a lot for Royce to say. My uncle was not used to people standing up to him, and it showed on his face and in the way he spoke his next words.

“I understand, Detective Royce,” he said. “And I have no desire to impede your investigation; nor does my nephew. But if he says he’s told you everything he knows, I am inclined to believe him. We both know that if he is brought into the station to give a formal statement, the odds of this appearing in the morning papers increases tenfold. I do not wish to see that happen.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “As it is,” he gestured with his head toward Allison, “his girlfriend’s a reporter, and it’s going to be a challenge keeping this quiet. If you know what I mean.”

Royce considered that and nodded. Allison looked over at me, no idea she was part of our conversation.

“Okay.” He looked at me. “You have a safe place to stay for a few days, Mr. Donne?”

“My girlfriend’s, yeah.”

Royce reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “Seems like we’ve done this before, doesn’t it?” He gave me a look that said he knew I wasn’t telling the entire truth and wasn’t sure how much I’d told my uncle. “Tomorrow, I expect a phone call recounting all the events in your life from your friend’s murder up to and including this evening. Out of respect for your uncle, we’ll postpone you having to make a formal statement at the station.”

“I appreciate that, Detective.”

“As do I,” my uncle added.