Lush Life (9 page)

"And nothing was blocking your view, no parked cars, no moving traffic."

"It was like a ghost town."

The ADA took a beat to shift gears, the both of them watching as a gray-haired Chinese woman carrying two plastic bags of vegetables walked obliviously through the blood.

"I understand you overheard that guy telling the detective his version of what happened." "I did."

"So you know he's claiming two black or Hispanic guys did the shooting."

"Yeah, well, what did you expect him to say?"

"How do you feel about that?"

"You're asking me that why, because my girlfriend's black?"

Flaherty waited.

"Are you asking me if I would lie and try to screw some guy because he's a knee-jerk racist? Or are you asking me if I would lie to cover for two scumbags because they're the same color as the woman I sleep with?"

"Either."

"Neither.""Just between us." The ADA waved off a reporter before he could even get halfway across the street. "Walking around here four in the morning, you weren't stoned or anything?"

"I haven't gotten high in nine months."

"Have anything to drink?"

"Why are you asking me all this like I'm the bad guy?"

"Better me than a defense attorney, trust me. Have anything to drink?"

"A few beers." Condo shrugged. "These days? Basically, I'm into clarity."

"You ever been arrested?"

Randal stared at him. "I have two master's degrees, one from the Berklee College of Music, the other from Columbia University."

The ADA shielded his eyes from the sun again. "So, were you or weren't you?"

Thirty minutes later, back in the squad room, the ADA stole a peek at Randal's girlfriend, Nikki Williams, through the three-quarter-lowered Venetian blinds of the otherwise vacant lieutenant's office as she waited for someone from the Prosecutor's Office to take her through it again.

"The guy was pretty confident," he said. "How was the girl?"

Matty shrugged, folded his arms across his chest. "Bobby Oh says solid. Sober, good sight lines, says she saw everything out the corner of her eye beforehand because they were the only ones on the street. So it was like, peripheral, bang, focus, see two down, one running into the building with something in his hand. Plus apparently they were walking towards each other, him up from Eldridge and Delancey and her coming down Eldridge towards Delancey, so it was two completely different angles of vision, so . . ."

"Yeah, that's what he said. She hear any arguing?"

"Nope," Matty said. "No arguing."

"So what's with everybody hearing arguing except these two?"

"I don't know." Matty shrugged. "New York at night, ambient noise, or maybe what everybody heard was Lugo and his crew yelling afterwards, or the Arab bugling about his broken window, you know, got their timelines all inside out.""And how was Lost Weekend boy?"

"Boulware? Useless," Matty said. "They wound up taking him to Gouverneur to pump his stomach."

"So where's this Cash guy now?"

"Here." Matty steered the ADA down the corridor to the observation nook outside the interview room, where they could see Eric Cash once again slumped over the edge of the table, his forehead resting on his forearm.

Flaherty glanced at the wall clock: 8:00.

"You have a go at him yet?"

"No. I want to do him with Yolonda."

"Learn from the master, huh?"

"Get fucked," Matty said without heat. "She's on her way in from making the notification."

"I understand he's got a little something of a sheet?"

"Took a collar about six years ago up in Broome County for slinging coke," Matty said. "Drew a suspended sentence. I'm not sure what to make of it."

"He didn't ask for a lawyer?"

"Didn't even ask to make a phone call." Matty put his hands in his pockets, suddenly so tired he could feel the dewlaps growing along his jawline. "It would be nice if I had some notion of a motive."

"So go in and get one," the ADA said.

"Nice to have that gun in hand too."

"Sarge." One of the fresh day-tour detectives waved him in from the hall. "Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, line three."

"I agree, better safe than sorry," Berkowitz said. "On the other hand, with your two wits, it sounds like you got a slam dunk on your hands."

"No, I hear you." Matty starting to fade on the paraffin request as the hours piled on. "I'm just saying, if we can't find that gun . . ."

'You go at him yet?"

"Going in now."

"Is he hard? Soft?"

"My gut says soft, but . . ." There was no real eyeball test for that; some of the roughest-looking ghettoheads would cry like a babyafter one go-round in there, and the creamiest of college boys wind up giving you a thousand-yard stare that could bore through a mountain.

"All right, look, how about this," Berkowitz said. "Go in, see what you got on your hands, and if you still feel like you need the test, its probably not a bad idea, so call my boss, let him reach out for you."

"Upshaw?" Matty's face hurt.

"Upshaw."

Thinking, Fuck the first go-round, Matty rang Upshaw, the chief of Manhattan detectives, got the machine, sang his song, and hung up.

A moment later he dragged his ass back into the hall and sang his song to Kevin Flaherty.

"Well, gun, no gun, test, no test, I'll tell you right now what my boss is gonna say." The ADA studied Cash though the glass. "How often do we get two eyewits to a murder?"

A moment later Yolonda Bello came bustling into the room. "Hey, Kevin!" Stepping to the ADA and hugging him. "What are you, lifting weights now?" Taking a step back and palming his pecs. "You look so good." Then to Matty: "Doesn't he look good? I always tell him when I first came on the job I used to ball his old man, he never believes me."

When Yolonda went on like this, Matty just smiled politely until it ran its course.

"So, OK, I talked to the dead kid's father's wife, it was pretty rough, they have this other kid, cute, the vies half sister or something. Mullins is gonna bring them down when they can get their shit together. So . . ." Rubbing her hands as she peered through the blinds. "What do we got in there. Hard? Soft?"

"You all right, Eric?" Yolonda led the way into the interview room, she and Matty taking seats on either side of him. "You need anything? Coffee, soda, a sandwich? There's this new Cuban takeout right on Ridge . . ."

"I feel like I should be cuffed to that," he murmured, turning to eye the low steel restraint bar that ran the width of one short cinder-block wall."Oh yeah?" Matty said mildly, looking down and smiling as he shuffled his notes. "Why would you feel that?"

"I don't know." Eric hunched his shoulders and looked away.

"Listen to me," Yolonda said, putting her hand atop his and giving him the big soul-eye. "You need to know that what happened wasn't your fault. You guys were out having a good time, you got a little drunk, but you didn't do anything wrong, OK? The guy who did it? Did it."

"OK," Eric said. "Thank you."

"All right. First off, we need another description of the actors from you as best, and in as much detail, as possible."

"Ah, Jesus," he softly wailed, "I did that at least three times already." His eyes were puffed blisters.

"I know, I know." Yolonda touched her fingertips to her temples as if the request were driving her mad too. "But sometimes the more you go over something, details just pop out of nowhere, OK? I cannot tell you how often we've sat at this table with some witness or other going over it, over it, over it, and then all of a sudden it's 'Oh yeah, oh wait, oh my God.'"

"All the time," Matty said.

"OK." Eric nodded at his own clasped hands. "OK."

"Look, the fact of the matter is the tip line's been ringing off the hook on this," Matty lied. "Plus these guys, they booked on foot, no car, so we're definitely talking local hood rats, probably holed up somewheres in the projects, ESU's already going through doors, all of which is to say that there is no doubt in my mind that they're as good as got. But, Eric." Matty's turn to get in his eyes. "Here's what we worry about . . . According to you, they're armed, and that kind of foreknowledge puts cops in a whole different kind of headset, can make them a little too quick on the draw, you know what I'm saying? And if they come up on some unlucky stiff out there fits the vague description and that guy should make a quick move for his wallet, his ID, his green card-"

"Wait." Eric sat up, a vein pulsing in the hollow of a temple. "According to me they're armed? Like maybe they weren't?"

"No, no, no, Eric." Yolonda again. "What he's saying is you're our only eyewitness, ESU's out there based on your words, and we need as precise a description as possible because no one wants to draw down on the wrong guy and God forbid we have a tragedy on our hands.""OK."

"Think what almost happened to you when you came busting out of that building just holding a cell phone." "OK."

"Those cops would have to live with that the rest of their lives. As would the poor guys family. As, I hate to say it, would you."

"No, yeah, OK."

"So . . . Two guys."

"Yes."

"Both black?"

"Black and/or Hispanic, one guy a little lighter than the other, but I don't know for sure."

"Which one had the gun?"

"The lighter one."

"The one you think was Hispanic?"

"1 guess so."

"Gun was a .25?"

"No," Eric said carefully. "I already told you. It was a .22."

"Hang on." Matty fingerwalked his notes. "Right. And you knew that because"-squinting, rearing back from his own writing-"your dad made you take one with you when you moved to New York?"

"Yes." Erics tone increasingly wary.

"But you got rid of it as soon as you got here."

"As soon as I got here." Eric's body began to settle in on itself like a slow leak.

"I'm just, hovv'd you go about doing that?"

He took a beat to study their faces. "This precinct right here was running a cash-for-guns drive back then. I gave it to you, you gave me a hundred bucks, no questions asked."

"No questions asked," Matty repeated, Eric looking at him.

"I'm glad some body took advantage of that thing," Yolonda said, capping a yawn.

"OK, so. The guy with the .22 . . . Is there anything other than relative skin tone that made you think he was Hispanic rather than black?"

"I don't know." Eric shrugged. "Why does someone strike you as Irish rather than Italian?"

"Because they'd rather drink than fuck," Yolonda said. Startled by the blunt profanity, Eric turned to Matty as if waiting for him to wink or toss off a second quip, but Matty just kept staring at him as if Yolonda had commented on the weather.

"Hispanic was just an impression I got," Eric finally said. "Nothing specific."

"OK, well, maybe we can help you here." Yolonda's turn. "The shooter. What kind of hair did he have? Straight, shaved, kinky"-then reaching out to touch his-"curly like yours."

"I don't remember." Flushing at her touch.

"How about facial hair?" Matty asked.

"I think I said a goatee. It's in your notes."

"Forget my notes. Close your eyes and see it again."

Eric dutifully did as he was told and immediately drifted off into a hypnagogic limbo. Yolonda and Matty looked at each other.

"Eric," Yolonda softly saying his name, and he quivered back to the moment. "You OK?"

"What." Wiping his mouth.

"How about clothes."

"Clothes?" Fighting for alertness. "I don't know. What did I say. Hoodies?"

"Both had hoodies?"

"I don't know. One did."

"What color?"

"Darkish, black or gray. I'm, I don't . . ."

"Any words?"

"Words?"

"On the chest, the sleeves."

"I don't know."

"Slogans, logos, graphics?"

Eric shook his head, stared at his knotted fingers.

"Shoes? Sneakers?"

"Sneakers, I think. Yeah. Sneakers, white sneakers." All the way back now. "I don't know brands or styles or whatever? But definitely white sneakers."

Matty leaned back in his chair, intoned, "Male black or Hispanic in a dark hoodie and white sneakers," making a show of massaging his forehead as if another Diallo were a gimme."You have to understand," Eric said, offering them his upturned hands. "When I saw that gun, I handed over my wallet purposely not looking at him. I kept my eyes down, because I didn't want him getting worried that I would remember his face. I didn't want to die."

"That's very clever of you," Matty said.

"Clever"?" Eric looked slapped.

"As in street-smart," Yolonda said quickly.