Neptune Avenue (7 page)

He sipped the smooth malt. He thought of saying something about how he might have expected her to be drinking vodka, but realized how dumb that would have sounded.

Zhenya picked up her drink and took a long pull. He wondered how much she might have already downed.

He rolled his glass between his palms. “I was wondering if you gave some thought to what I was asking earlier. If you can think of someone who might have had it in for Daniel.”

She made a face. “
In for
? What this means?”

“Someone who might have been angry with your husband. Someone who owed him money, someone he owed money to …?”

He could sense her tightening up again. She seemed to see him as a bad guy, like an interrogator in some Iron Curtain holding cell. He turned toward the ocean view. Bullshit. He was just trying to find out who had killed her husband—and his friend.

Normally when interviewing an uncooperative witness he might try to rattle her somehow, throw her off base. He could ask if she had a life insurance policy on her husband, imply that she was involved with the homicide. Come to think of it, he
should
check that possibility. …

He took another sip of whiskey. If he pushed too hard, she would just clam up. He’d have to come at this from a different angle. He turned back to her. “You don’t seem to like me very much. Maybe it’s my job, or maybe you just don’t like
me
. Whatever it is, it’s okay. …”

She didn’t contradict him.

He sighed. “When I was in the hospital, after I got shot, I was having a tough time. It’s hard to explain what it feels like when you’ve come that close to dying. You feel so weak. It kind of shakes up everything you think you know about life. …” He lifted his drink but didn’t sip it; just stared down at a faint circle of light shimmering on top of the dark liquid. He looked up at her, in direct appeal. “Your husband helped me get through that time. He pushed me to work harder in physical therapy. He knew what I was going through. And now I owe it to him to find out who did this.”

Eugenia scowled. “You are policeman. Police only helps police.”

He shrugged. “Okay, so I’m a cop. That doesn’t mean I’m not here to help you. Don’t you want to know who did this to your husband?”

Her eyes clouded up, and she rubbed them angrily. “Nothing can bring him back. You do not know how it is like to lose someone.”

He looked down at his drink again and was silent for a minute. When he finally spoke, his voice was muted. “You don’t know anything about me. My younger brother was killed when he was just thirteen.” He winced. This was something he never talked about. Was he bringing it up now as some sort of cheap way to earn her cooperation—or to win something else from her? He stole a quick glance: her face had softened a little, but not enough.

“Was you ever married?” she asked.

He chuckled bitterly. “Funny you should ask … Would you like to hear a little story?”

She just stared at him, still wary.

He cleared his throat. “Just before I got shot, I had started going out with a woman. You know what that means,
going out
?”

She nodded.

“All right.
So
—even though we had just met, she came to the hospital all the time after the shooting. I can’t remember if you saw her or not. Anyway, when I got out, she moved in with me. I
had
been married, a long time before, but I was divorced. And I hadn’t been with someone—
really
been with someone—for a very long time. And I fell for this woman pretty hard. I bought her a diamond engagement ring, I planned out how to surprise her with it. …” He glanced at Zhenya, who was regarding him now with much greater interest. He paused. It was an old interview trick, talk about yourself a bit, make yourself seem vulnerable, get the interviewee on your side so you wouldn’t seem like the Big Bad Cop. … Was that what he was doing? Or was it just the alcohol talking? The stuff seemed to be having a greater impact on him tonight than he’d thought.

He looked at her for a moment more, then turned away. Maybe he wanted to open himself up to this sad, lovely woman for reasons of his own.

“What heppened?” she asked quietly.

“It was New Year’s Eve. A year and a half ago. I made reservations at a fancy restaurant. I was all nervous, waiting for the right moment.” He chuckled sourly again. “You know what I was thinking about? Which knee to get down on when I asked her to marry me … And so the time came, and I pulled the ring out of my pocket, and I popped the question. And you know what she said?”

Zhenya shook her head, and he knew he had her full attention now—she was like a rapt kid, eager to hear the end of some bedtime fairy tale.

He snorted. “She told me that she was having an affair with someone else. And then she ran out of the restaurant.” He finished his drink and set the glass down heavily. “Don’t tell me I don’t know anything about loss.”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, looking out at the dark ocean. Jack was embarrassed and felt a little guilty about using his personal stories. What Zhenya was thinking, he had no idea, though he could tell that the air between them was considerably less strained.

He sighed. “You know what I think? I think that somebody might have tried to kill your husband two years ago. And maybe it was the same person who succeeded the other night. You know what else? I think you know something about this, something you’re not telling me.”

Zhenya sat in silence, a silence that lasted so long that he thought she might not say anything at all. Anxious, the woman ran her palms along the armrests of her chair. She kept her eyes averted, but finally she began to speak. “Where I come from, we do not use police to help our troubles. Where I come from, police
is
our troubles. But you was my husband’s friend.” She cleared her throat. “There was a man. For some times, my husband knows him. But then they was having some kind of
arg
…” She struggled with the word.

“Argument?”

She nodded.

“What about?”

She shrugged. “I told you: my husband does not tell to me his business. But some weeks ago, I see him talking to this man. And I think Daniel is very
aff
…” Again she struggled with the word.

“Afraid? Daniel was scared?”

She nodded nervously. “This man is very bad. I am afraid also.”

Jack was careful not to look directly at her; he didn’t want her to stop talking. It all clicked into place. Her weirdness during the first interview. Her edginess around him. It wasn’t hostility, after all—it had been fear.

“Do you know his name?”

She chewed her lip. “You will not say to him that I am the one who telled you? You must make promise.”

He nodded gravely. “You have my word on it.”

She stared at him. He could almost see the gears of worry turning in her head.

But she told him the name.

When he stood up to go, she led him through her dark apartment, and they stood for a moment in her little foyer, a moment when time stretched out, full of something he could not name. “I’m so sorry about Daniel,” he said again. And then he took a risk: he held out his arms. For a moment, she just stood looking at him, and he thought that maybe she was offended or that she had just gone back to being cold, but she stepped forward and gave him a quick hug.

After the door closed behind him, he stood out in the hallway for a moment, remembering the feel of her lithe body, pressed close to his heart.

Out in his car, though, he slumped back in his seat. What the hell was he thinking? This woman was in a period of
grief
.

He resolved to let Linda Vargas handle any future contacts—and to make sure that Daniel’s widow would receive any necessary police protection.

T
HE ROOM WAS SHAPED
like a huge wood-paneled fish tank, and it was chilly, with an antiseptic smell. The ceiling was high; if it were lower, the proceedings might have felt too human, hardly the desired effect here in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Jack slipped into the back row of the public gallery, an uncommon experience for him. (He had been inside such courtrooms many times, but he usually sat up on the witness stand.) Now—here on the first day of his two days off—he had the time to take in random details, like the scuffed linoleum floor and the back of the pew in front of him, covered with graffiti scratchings:
Cherry. Poppa D.
And that great old standard,
Fuck You.

The jurors were not dressed for a noble proceeding: they looked as if they’d been plucked off a Brooklyn sidewalk. The judge, a tall, handsome black man, sat back in his leather throne with one hand splayed over his face as if he was getting a bad headache, perhaps inspired by the schleppy defense attorney, who stood next to the jury box anxiously shuffling his notes like an actor who had forgotten his lines.

At the prosecutor’s table sat the assistant district attorney Jack had come to speak with; all he could see now was that she was tall and that she had gracefully graying hair. He had looked up the name given to him by Eugenia Lelo and found that this woman had prosecuted the man three years ago. Jack was eager to confront him, but he knew it was better to do some homework first.

The witness on the stand was a patrol cop, a young guy with gelled, spiky hair who sat up at full attention, like some kind of wary woodland animal. As his testimony proceeded, Jack learned that he worked the Sixty-second Precinct—Bensonhurst—an Italian neighborhood with a growing population of Asians and Russians, one of whom sat in the loneliest seat in the house. The defendant was a small Russian man with a bald spot and no visible neck—that was all Jack could see from behind.

The charge was fraud. The cop had been driving on the Shore Parkway when he came upon the defendant, parked at the side of the road in a rear-ended car, which also contained three other Russians. Behind it sat a crumpled car occupied by a frantic Korean woman. The Russkies claimed she had been negligent in her driving.

The defense attorney searched for his next question. The judge asked a court officer to lead the jury out. Then he scowled down from the bench.

“Counselor, I spent part of my weekend looking over the papers for this case. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but you’re wasting the court’s time. I’m going to adjourn until tomorrow morning, and I hope you’ll have a better handle on your case by then.”

The lawyer started to sputter an excuse, but the judge cut him short and stomped out. As soon as he was gone, the lawyers and court officers abandoned their serious faces; they got all cheerful and buddy-buddy, even the defense attorney and the prosecutor, who Jack was now free to approach.

ANNETTE O’DEA WAS A
tall woman, handsome, in her midfifties. She wore a navy blue business suit, not too fancy—it wouldn’t do to make a jury think the prosecutor was hoity-toity. Around her neck sat one of those kerchiefy things that was supposed to be the equivalent of a man’s tie. She looked prim—until she opened her mouth.

“The poor bastard went out and got himself some cheapo shyster instead of going to the usual firms,” she said in a gravelly voice, shaking her head as she and Jack stepped out of the elevator.

He nodded. The Russians had the lawyers they went to, the Dominicans had theirs, and so on through the tribes.

They came around past the X-ray security check and walked out of the building into a fiery hot afternoon. Despite the blast of heat, the prosecutor lit up a cigarette and inhaled as if the thing contained emergency oxygen. Over the tops of the old stone buildings that huddled together in downtown Brooklyn, thunderclouds were moving in. O’Dea looked up and snorted.

“The judge just wanted to wrap things up in time to beat the rain home.”

Jack smiled. Decades of dealing with the legal system had taught him how the supposedly grave, impersonal courts were actually administered by a bunch of very human, crotchety individuals.

They crossed a stone plaza filled with pigeons and office workers sneaking cigarette breaks. Jack hurried to keep up as the prosecutor strode across busy Court Street. She navigated through the heavy sidewalk traffic and veered onto Montague Street, the main commercial strip of Brooklyn Heights. She turned to him. “I almost feel sorry for the defendant, but I don’t.”

“Because he’s guilty?”

“Right you are. He’s guilty as the day is long. He’s a crook and he’s incompetent enough to let me prove it. He’s a
schlimazel
. You know the difference between a
schlemiel
and a
schlimazel
? A
schlemiel
is a guy who spills his soup. A
schlimazel
is the guy he spills it on. Jesus, how do I know these things? I’m Irish Catholic for chrissakes.”

She stomped on her cigarette, turned off the sidewalk, and pushed into a fancy pub. “This okay? I hope you don’t mind me eating, but I had to skip lunch.”

“It’s fine.”

They took a back booth, surrounded by gleaming gold railings. The prosecutor ordered white wine and a cheeseburger, then spread her napkin on her lap. “This is one advantage of eating at a nice place—I hate those cheap napkins that get lint all over your clothes. Anyhow, this defendant is a real chump. He’d have to be, to lose one of these cases.”

Jack nodded. The law said you were automatically in the right if you got rear-ended—it was just made for fraud. The perpetrators of these scams had no fear and no shame. They’d pack a car with fellow citizens in need of a little extra cash, then go find a slow car inhabited by an elderly person or a woman, someone juries might stereotype as a bad driver. They’d pull in front of it and jam on the brakes. After the “accident,” everybody went to the doctor. The bill went to the government or the insurance company, and the settlements went to the perps—with a kickback to the collaborating doctor.

O’Dea took a gulp of her wine. “This is what I’ve learned in twenty-three years of fraud cases: the defendants never say they were wearing high heels when they tripped on the sidewalk. They were never alone in the car, and they’ll never have sex again.” She scoffed. “Last month I had a case, the defendant actually said, ‘Because of the accident, I can only do it doggie-style with my wife.’ Mind you, they’re both in their sixties; he claims they were having sex seven times a week. I ask him, ‘Who’s the doggie—you or your wife?’ He says, ‘I can’t discuss this in front of a lady.’ I said, ‘You can tell me—I’m not a lady.’”