Lush Life (26 page)

The bulked-up PR turned to walk away, couldn't, wheeled back to Matty, and started in again. "But this right here?" Waggling his finger at the shrine. "It's up to you, the whites, you got to wipe out the gangs so this shit don't happen again. The gangs, the projects, this whole area, all of it." Marching away again, his back to Matty. "All of it?" Bellowing to the rooftops, then disappearing into the shadows in two strides, highlighting the one thing that had become painfully obvious this evening-how easily two rollers could attempt to snatch a waHet, throw a shot, then just vanish into the darkness in the span of a heartbeat.

Berkmann's was emptying earlier than usual this evening, not even 1.00 a. M. and the waiters were starting to look like loiterers. Eric could follow the conversations at the bar as clearly as if he were right up there with them.

Boulware was on his seventh or eighth complimentary Grey Goose and tonic; nearly off his stool now. his mouth a curtain of saliva as he held court with two, count >m. two girls at once, one of whose thumb was a loving metronome on the back of his hand.

Cleveland was dying to cut him off, but Eric wouldn't allow it.

"The, the irony is, if Ike . . ." Boulware faltered, blanched, briefly palmed his eyes, maybe his conscience starting to slap the shit out of him, Eric hoped. "If Ike could walk through that door? Could put his two cents in? He'd be the first to stand up for those guys. Not, not for what they did, but that, that, no one is born with a gun in his hand . . . That, that there's this, this culture of violence, of inequity, of unfeelingness . . ."

Unable to bear another word, Eric caught Cleveland's eye and finally ran his hand across his throat.

Just as the street seemed to be settling in for the night, three young black women came walking past the shrine and, caught up by the display, stopped to absorb the narrative, two of them automatically raising a hand to their face in a gesture of awed distress. The third one, who had a sleeping toddler draped over her shoulder, slowly shook her head.

"My God, he was just a child." Her voice high, on the edge of breaking.

"What are you talking about?" one of the others said.

"Look at him." She pointed at the old photo of Willie Bosket.

"That ain't him," her friend said, then pointed to Ike Marcus. "That's the dead boy. Don't you watch the news?"

The third woman grunted, shrugged the sleeping kid to her other shoulder. "Him?" she drawled. "Now all this shit here makes a lot more sense."

As Boulware stood hunched over, barking up cocktails in front of the riot gate of a Dominican jewelry store on Clinton Street, Eric came up from behind and hooked him in the ribs. Because he had never swung on anyone in his adult life, the punch probably hurt him as much as it did the other guy; nonetheless it felt so good, so right, that he didn't, couldn't stop swinging until his knuckles were the size of gumballs and Boulware was snuggled up atop his own spatter.

Squatting on his hams, Eric addressed the one eye that was somewhat still open. "Do you know me?" The smell was making him tear up. "Do you remember me? I should've done that the minute you walked in tonight, but you're twice my size and I don't give a fuck about 'fair'anymore."

Boulware's good eye started to settle like a sunset.

"So. What do you want to do, press charges? Maybe you should press charges, what do you think?"

Boulware had passed out.

"Seriously . . ."

As the rising sun began to tint the upper floors of the towers that edged the East River, Quality of Life walked into the Sanaa for their end-of
-
tour breakfasts, Nazir giving them a half salute, then sidling the six feet from his phone-card-trimmed register to the griddle.

"So," reaching for the white bread, "I hear you arrested that bastard who broke our window."

"Actually?" Lugo's eyes strayed to the miniature TV propped behind the counter. "I believe they cut him loose."

"What?" Nazir straightened up. "Why?"

"Something about him not having done it."

"Bullshit."

"Be that as it may."

"They don't tell us shit," Scharf said.

"They don't like us getting in their business," Daley said.

"Upstairs is upstairs," Geohagan said. "We're just infantry."

"But that's stupid." Nazir waved a bread knife. "Who spends all the time on the street, you or them?"

"Tell me about it," Lugo said.

The store descended into a momentary silence as they watched a girl eat a slug sandwich on a rerun of Fear Factor.

"What the fuck's that got to do with fear?" Daley said. "That's just disgusting."

"If you want to see good Fear Factor contestants, you have to come to my part of the world," Nazir said, wrapping the first bacon-and-egg sandwich. "We'd do great on that show."

A kid with a stitched cheek came barreling into the store so tricked out in Crip blue that no one took him seriously.

T need four quarter," thrusting a dollar across the unoccupied register counter, his head turned to the street as if something was out there.

"Oh!" Lugo reared back, wincing. "Where'd you get slashed like that?"

"Hah?" the kid said, then, "On my cheek."

Daley gave him change for the dollar.

As Nazir scooped another fried egg off the griddle, the 6:00 a. M. news came on, the president rolling in grainy waves on the screen.

"He's coming into the city this week, right?" Daley asked.

"The day after next or something," Lugo said. "Naz, you hear his speech last night?"

"Yes, but on the radio."

Lugo and Daley looked at each other.

"Everything he said I agree with." Speed-wrapping the second grease bomb. "My brother too."

"Good," Lugo said. "Glad to hear it, man."

'"Yemenis like a strong father. We respond to a strong father. The young people who come in here, they're very mocking about him and what he has to do now."

"In this neighborhood?" Scharf lit a cigarette. "Tell me about it."

"Sometimes your father does things you don't understand, but a father doesn't need to explain all his actions to you," Nazir said. "You need to have faith and trust that behind every act is love. Then later you look back or you sit quietly and it becomes clear that these things which seemed harsh at the time saved you. You were just too much a child to understand, but now you are a man with health and prosperity and all you can say is thank you."

"Fair enough." Lugo took a wolf bite out of his sandwich.

Preceded by his smell, Boulware stumbled in, misbuttoned, his face waffled with abrasions.

"Do you have an ATM?" he asked Nazir.

"Whoa, bro." Lugo straightened up. "That just happen?"

"What ..." Boulware blinking.

"It's like the fuckin' knife and gun club in here tonight, Naz," Daley said.

"Where'd you get the tune-up?" Lugo asked. "Where?" Boulware absently frisked himself. "No ATM," Nazir lied.

Boulware wandered back out into the street, Quality of Life eating their breakfast sandwiches as they watched him negotiate the early
-
morning traffic.

"Hey." Minette Davidson came into the squad room carrying the weather, flush-faced and breathless.

"Hey, how are you?" Matty shot to his feet, flattening his tie and offering her the chair sidesaddle to his own.

"I'm Minette Davidson, Billy Marcus's wife?"

"Sure, I know. Detective Clark. Matty Clark."

"I know," mechanically shaking his offered hand. "Has, has Billy been in touch with you?" The corners of her eyes were creased with sleeplessness, her reddish hair carelessly brushed.

"Billy? No."

"So you don't know where he is . . ."

"Do I?" Then, "What's going on?"

"Nothing. He finally came home yesterday morning, then left again last night, never came back. I was thinking, I just thought, maybe he was down here somewhere, came in to see you."

"You try to call him?"

"He didn't take his phone." She unconsciously began touching random objects on his desk.

Matty willfully kept his eyes from watching her restless fingers.

"But you think he's somewheres down here."

"Why." Her smile a twitch. "Where do you think he is?"

"Me?" Matty thinking, The hell would I know, then, "My guess he's probably off somewheres trying to hash things out."

Minette stared at him bright-eyed, as if waiting for more.

More.

"Personally, if I were in his shoes? I'd want to be with my family right now, but with these kind of situations, in my experience, people, they just . . . they can go every which way, you know?"

Minette continued to stare at him avidly, as if each word were a key to something.

Then, snapping out of it, she went into her purse, took out pen and pad, and wrote down her number.

"I need to ask you two things." Handing him the sheet. "If he comes in to see you or you come across him, could you please let me know?"

"Of course." He tucked her number in the upper corner of his blotter.

"The other is, if there's any developments . . ." She whipped her head around as Yolonda entered the room. "If you could keep me in the loop."

"Absolutely."

"And on my end . . ." She trailed off!

"You OK?"

"I think . . . OK. I hope it's just, I believe it's what you said, he's probably off somewheres trying to clear his head."

"Good." Matty glanced at Yolonda at her desk, going through the District Arrest Books again but listening.

"Because he felt like, he feels like, if he had only ... I don't know ... If he had done this instead of that, or that instead of this . . ."

"I can't tell you how many parents put themselves through that hell."

"So you're saying that's meaningless, right?" she asked gingerly, her fingers back to handling the objects on his desk.

"Let me tell you something," Yolonda chimed in, Minette wheeling to her voice. "If you're the parent in a situation like this, and you're intent on blaming yourself? You can just pick a reason out of a hat."

"Right. Yes." Minette bobbing her head.

"It's like your mind becomes this vicious warehouse, you know?"

"Yes.'' Minette all hers now.

"Although it doesn't help very much to say that, does it." "No, no, everything, anything."

"Do you think he's maybe trying to find the guy himself?" Matty asked, making Minette wheel back to him.

"How would he even know how to do that?" Her face twisting with incredulity.

Matty said nothing, just watched her eyes.

"That's insane."

"OK."

"That's a movie." "Good."

Then she was gone again, something making her draw deeper breaths, her lips slightly parted. "Minette . . ." "What?"

"Are you worried he might hurt himself?" "Hurt himself?"

Matty waited, then lightly touched her hand. "It's not a trick question."

"I don't think . . . No. No." Yolonda half-turned, studying them.

"OK. Good." He took his hand back. "To be honest, we don't really have the time to track him down and also do the work we have to do on the other."

"I understand."

"But I'll get the word out."

"Thank you."

"Everyone here knows what he looks like." "Thank you."

"Anticrime cruises these streets twenty-four seven," Yolonda said. "If he's walking around, they'll pick him up." "Thank you."

"I didn't mean to spook you like that," Matty said. "You didn't." Then, after a long moment of silence, 'You didn't," her voice husky and distant.

She closed her eyes and immediately nodded off, her chin dropping, then jerking up.

"Whoa," she said. "Sorry."

There was nothing, no real business left, but Minette continued to sit and Matty wasn't inclined to rush her out of there.

"Can I get you something?" he asked. "Coffee?"

"You know, when Billy left his wife and moved in with me and my daughter, Ike was what, ten, maybe?" looking to Matty as if for verification. "He lived with Elena, but he came over every weekend, and when he did, it was like, me, Billy, and Nina would be watching television and Ike would be watching us. I mean, oh my God, we'd go to a restaurant, a movie, a basketball game, always the same thing. Never smiled, never spoke unless spoken to, and never took his eyes off us."

Minette went off with the recollection, Matty just looking and looking at her.

"But, it wasn't sulking, it was more like, observing. I swear to God, I'd never felt so observed in my life." Smiling at him, through him.

"I mean Nina was a little hinky towards Ike and Billy too, but she was a lot younger than him, more babyish, and her I could talk to, but that first year with Ike? That was not fun. I did everything I could to make him feel at home with us. And Billy did too, of course, but the distance that kid maintained, that watching, it was like Children of the Damned, you know?"