Lush Life (32 page)

"You have a nice family," Yolonda said to the girl. "Your abuela takes care of a lot of kids."

"Thank you," Irma said.

"You ever make her worry for you?"

"She's just a nervous-type person," Irma said, then nodded to one of the little boys. "He's the bad one here."

"Girl's got a touch of Gump to her, huh?" Yolonda said as they came out of the elevator.

"Grandma too, maybe," Matty said. "Keeps a nice house, though."

The three kids were still on the bench, and Yolonda went straight for the fat boy, his game boxes propped on his thigh. "Hey."

Caught by surprise, the kid actually looked right at her, his eyes beneath that browridge like something peering out of a cave.

"You're Damien, right?"

His wounded reaction was impossible to mask, the other two instantly dropping their heads to mask their sniggers.

"Naw," he said, his voice surprisingly high. "That's the other one."

"Other one what?"

"Other fat nigger," the Latino bawled, almost in tears.

The big kid exhaled through his nose, forbearing.

"So what's your name?" Yolanda played through.

"Donald."

"Like in Trump?" she said kindly.

"You know where we can find him, Donald?" Matty asked.

"No." The boy winced. "I just know him from . . ." He looked down at himself, his explosive girth.

"Ho." The white kid was struggling so hard not to laugh that his hood was trembling.

"How about a girl Tania, you know her?" Yolonda asked the white kid directly to stop the laughing.

"Tania?" he drawled. "I know mad Tanias around here, yo." Slapping palms with the Latino kid.

"How about a guy True Life, you know True Life?"

"True Life? I don't know, like, maybe, I'm not sure."

"How can you be not sure if you know someone named True Life?" Matty asked.

"I know a boy Blue Light," the white kid said.

"True Life," Yolonda repeated.

"I don't know."

"How about you?" she asked the Latino kid.

"Hah?"

"You?" She brought it back around to Donald, still clutching his game boxes.

But he was deaf to the question, unnerved as he was by the sight of Billy Marcus, who had escaped from the car and was now standing there staring at him, his face streaming tears.

Iacone, bringing up the rear, looked to them and shrugged: I tried.

Yolonda glanced at Matty, You win, lose him.

"OK then," she said.

The three boys got up as one, turned, and began to lumber-toddle away with an over-the-shoulder wall-eyed self-consciousness, with Sunday-afternoon boredom.

Iacone mimed pulling a hood over his face, made his voice go high. "They killed Kenny, those bastards."

"I'll meet you back at the house?" Yolonda asked Matty, quick-tilting her chin towards the weeping Billy, Get him out of here.

"What did I ask of you?" Matty said as he headed back uptown, Billy Marcus raw-eyed in the passenger seat.

"I'm not a child," he muttered, staring straight ahead.

Matty started to say something more on the subject, then just dropped it.

They crossed Canal Street into the Lower East Side, the names of long-gone hosiery wholesalers still readable through flaking paint above boarded-up doors.

"Did I help at all?" Billy's breathing was still faintly labored, a wheeze like a distant teakettle seeping from his mouth between words.

"I hope so," Matty said, squelching an impulse to tell him about Eric Cash going south on them, about Let It Die.

"Do you think it's True Life?"

"Honestly? No, 1 don't."

"True Life," Marcus repeated, then as Matty turned west on Houston towards the West Side Highway, "Where are we going?"

"I'm driving you home."

"Stop." Marcus put out a hand. "I'm not there."

Matty pulled to the curb by a twenty-four-hour kebab house.

"So where are you."

Marcus rested his head on his fist, his eyes pinking up again. "You know ... I wake up every morning, and, for a second everything's OK . . ."

"Mr. Marcus, where are you staying?"

. . which makes it worse. Can't you just call me Billy? For Christ's sake."

"Billy, where are you staying?"

"I keep thinking I see him, you know? Not him, but like, his walk, say, walking away from me, then last night I smelled him in this bodega on Chrystie, but really faint, like I had just missed him by a second."

"Billy, let me take you home."

"No. Not just . . ." Marcus cut himself off, his eyes filled with agenda. A faint humming was coming from beneath his wheeze, a Master Plan vibration, but Matty was pretty sure it was nothing, a sugar castle spun out of madness.

"This is not good." Matty nodded grimly.

Billy stared out the side window, knees jiggling furiously.

"Look, I'm sorry, it's just, you're adding to your own torture and you're torturing them. I hate to-"

"No, you're right," Billy said, continuing to stare out that window as if looking for someone.

"Your wife is breaking down my door every day, 'Where is he. Where is he.'Your daughter, I can't even imagine-"

"I said, you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right."

Matty took a moment, then, "Give me your address again?"

"Henry Hudson into Riverdale," Billy said after a long pause. "I'll direct you from there."

Sunday afternoons were the casual Fridays in the squad room, the usual jacket and tie replaced by a precinct-logo T-shirt and jeans underneath the preponderance of all-week military brush cuts.

"Anybody know a guy, True Life?" Yolonda called out, tossing her bag on her desk.

"I know a guy, Half Life," John Mullins said.

"I know a guy, Twenty-five to Life."

"I know a guy, Blue Light."

Yolanda sat down at a digital photo manager and punched in True Life; no one in the system popping up with that tag. She then started cross-feeding factors for Irma Nieves's viewing: race, age, hunting grounds.

They were in Riverdale, sitting in the car by the entrance to Billys building on Henry Hudson Parkway.

"1 apologize for my bluntness earlier."

"No problem," Billy said distantly, squinting at the canopy over the building's entrance.

Again Matty debated whether to tell him how leprous this investigation had become; families often fed on even the bad news; deemed precious any scrap of new information, newness its own virtue. He understood that but could never get behind it. Besides, even here, in front of his home, even now after the long day together, Matty still felt like he hadn't quite gotten the guy's attention.

"You hanging around down there shadowing people at newsstands, following them back to their lairs, that's gonna stop now, yes?"

"I didn't even mean to do that," Marcus said, still squinting at his building. "It just happened."

"That's going to stop now, yes?" Matty stared at the side of Marcus's face, the bruised bags under his left eye. "Because I cannot work this in full effect if I have to be worried about you too." "OK."

"Excuse me?"

"OK. Yes." Then, turning to Matty full-on, "I get it."

Marcus made it halfway to the building, then came back, leaned into the driver's window. "You know, all day you keep saying your family, your family.' You should understand something. I love Nina, but she's not mine. When I met Minette, she was already six years old." Then, "Ike is mine."

Irma Nieves sauntered into the squad room two hours later than she said she would, but no later than what Yolonda had expected.

"I'm gonna punch up six faces at a time," Yolonda said after she got the kid seated in front of the screen. "You don't recognize anybody, just say no and we'll move on, OK?"

Irma ripped open a bag of Cheetos. "OK."

Yolanda brought up the first array.

"No," Irma said, blindly bringing the Cheetos from her lap to her mouth. The screen went gray, read please wait.

"You come from a nice family," Yolonda said.

Six new faces popped up.

"No."

"All boys are liars, you know that, right?"

Another please wait, another set of six.

"No."

"You're pretty, but smart is better."

"No."

"You cut out of school a lot?"

"No." Then, "No."

"You're lucky you have a good abuelay you better not break her heart."

"No." Two of the faces in this last set were both bloody and over fifty.

"Don't ever let a guy you just met hand you a drink."

"No."

"You use protection?"

"No." Then looking at Yolonda for the first time, "What?"

"Don't wind up a pregnant stereotype, your poor grandmother gets stuck taking care of your kids too."

"Him."

"What?"

"Him." Pointing. "True Life."

Yolanda read the printout: Shawn Tucker; aha Blue Light.

"Button those things up, I'm freezing my balls off just looking at you guys," Lugo said to the two young Latinos perched on their own rear bumper as Daley rooted around the rear seats.

"Yeah, it got cold," the driver murmured with resigned civility.

"What a night, right?" Lugo lit a cigarette. "Where you from?" he asked the driver.

"Maspeth?"

"You?" Asking the other kid, who sported an eye patch. "D. R."

"D. R. Dominican Republic? I was just there last year. Bet you wish you were there now, huh? I know I do. What part?"

"Playa?"

Oh, fuckin' beautiful, right? We stayed at the Capitan, you know that?"

"My uncle works there."

"Excuse please?" Daley moved them off the rear bumper, then popped the trunk.

"Capitan's the best, right?" Lugo said. "The girls. We had this kind of bodyguard, tour guide for the city? Guy took us everywhere, did our talking for us, showed us the highlights . . . And packed a piece."

"That's smart," the driver said with a little more life, maybe seeing himself driving away from this in a few minutes. "How much?"

"Fifty a day," Lugo said, absently swinging his arms, fist into palm.

"Pesos or dollars?"

"Dolares, baby."

"That's a lot down there," the passenger said.

"You only live once, right? What happened to your eye?"

"My cousin poked me with a wire when we was kids."

Lugo flinched. "Took it out?"

"Just blinded it."

"That sucks." Then addressing the driver, "Don't that suck?"

The driver shrugged, smiled shyly at his shoes.

The kid with the eye patch laughed. "He's the one that did it."

"And you still run with him?" Lugo squawked.

"He's my cousin." He shrugged.

"Look at this." Daley brought over a cardboard temporary license plate from the trunk. "Somebody fucked with these numbers here, see?"

They all crowded around to look, Daley holding it out with both hands like a newborn. "See the seven turned to a nine? That makes this a forged instrument."

"A what?" the kid with the eye patch said.

"I just bought this car," the driver said. "That was in the trunk?"

Lugo and Daley stepped off a few feet to confer.

"What do you want to do?"

Lugo looked at his watch: 10:00. "Let's do it."

They returned to the cousins at the rear of the car.

"That was in the trunk?" the driver said again, his eyes drawn down with anxiety. "That ain't even the one on the car, look for yourselves."

"Turn around, please?"

"Oh, c'mon, Officer," the driver said. "I bought the car from a guy yesterday I never even looked in there. I don't even know what that is."

"Not my call," Lugo said distantly.

"But for what is this?" The driver's voice continuing to climb.

"Damn, you got some wrists on you, brother," Daley said.

Two beds over, the littlest one, Paloma, had woken up, third time tonight, crying some nonsense about the man in her ear, and Tristan had to checker-jump the bed between them and start rubbing her back until she went down again. But this time she was more awake, flipped over, and stared at him, her eyes like X-ray beams in the dark.

"Just go to sleep, man."

But she just kept staring at him with this adult look on her three
-
year-old face, Tristan repeatedly having to look away as he kept up the massage like the mother had told him to.