Authors: Edward Conlon
“Guy, listen, nobody’s in trouble here, but we got work to do, so let’s do it and move on. Do you know where Maria is? Your girlfriend?”
“I know a lot of Marias. Everybody Spanish does.”
“ ‘I know a lot of Marias,’ ” said Esposito, going into sardonic-repeat mode. “Are you kidding me? Where’s your girlfriend?”
“I got a couple of girlfriends.”
Esposito whirled to face him. “The man says, ‘I got a couple of girlfriends.’ ”
Nick wasn’t pleased by the direction it was taking. Esposito stepped away, but what he said next was not entirely under his breath.
“That’s where he gets his panties.”
“What?”
“What—what?”
Nick cut in again. “Stop messing around. Your girlfriend Maria, somebody reported her missing. Where is she? When did you see her last?”
Esposito stepped in close. “When’s the last time you saw her alive?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You said no one was in trouble.”
“That was before. When was the last time you saw her?”
“Three or four days ago. We had an argument.”
“Over what?”
“Stupid stuff, nothing.”
“Over what?”
“She didn’t live here. She only stayed sometimes.”
“What was her full name? Date of birth? Did she get mail here?”
Nick broke in. “What happened to her?”
“She didn’t get mail. She was Mexican.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
The man was still off balance, but he was beginning to recover. Esposito and Nick both stepped in to him, close, looking down. Esposito tapped him on the chest.
“What’s your name?”
“Costa. Raul Costa.”
“Raul Costa, answer every question I ask you, when I ask it, or I will knock your teeth down your throat.”
Costa’s lip trembled, and then his lips pursed into a self-pitying, sulky frown. But there followed in short order the information they needed: Maria Fonseca, who’d turned twenty-one in August. She had lived there for six months, more or less, and he had a phone bill with a
call to Mexico on it, from when he’d let her talk to her family as a birthday present. The detectives uncuffed him and let him go to the bedroom to find it.
“Do you believe this guy?” Nick asked.
“I’ve met him five minutes, and I wanna hang myself, too.”
“Did you notice, he hasn’t asked much about her?”
“I think he’s enjoying himself.”
Esposito went over to the photograph of the woman and child.
“I bet it’s him and his mother. She shoulda strangled him in his crib.”
Nick went back into the room with Costa to check on him. The room was small and neat, and he fished through a stack of papers from a dresser drawer. He glanced back at Nick when he came in, then continued to look. There were no feminine possessions in the room. Had he packed them up already, thrown them out? In the closet, there were two blouses, one with red and white checks, one flowered. In a paper bag in the corner, there were balls of yarn, patterns for making clothing, rolled into loose tubes. There was a white sweater, the top of a white sweater, that could have been for a child, a girl barely in her teens, the same white wool Maria had used in the park.
“What was the fight over?”
“Because … I have other girls!”
Costa had a smirk on his face that he didn’t try to suppress. He returned to the old bills, then took one out and handed it to Nick. On August 10, there was a long number, an international call. Nick took the paper and put it into his pocket. When he leaned in to look at the other papers, Costa tried to block his view. Nick picked up a pile of snapshots and saw the topmost, Maria and Costa. At the beach, on separate towels. She smiled. He had a sullen glare. Before Costa could protest, Nick barked at him—“Evidence!”—and put it into his pocket. Costa said nothing, tensing up. Nick was alert to the tension and pushed him back a pace before checking the second photo. The image didn’t register; it was out of focus, a haze of shapes. The next was appallingly clear, and Nick flung the stack of pictures away, disgusted. He had many curiosities about Costa, but whether he could put his ankles behind his ears, absent even his revolting underpants, was not one of them. Nick rubbed his hands on his jacket, shaking his head, and Costa seemed pleased as they returned to the living room. The sight of Esposito took some of the spring
out of Costa’s step, but the detectives were done with him, and he knew it.
“Did she kill herself? She said she would kill herself. Did she leave a note?”
“Yes,” Nick lied.
“Can I see it?”
“No.”
“What did she say?”
Nick took the DOA Polaroid from his pocket and held it out to him. Costa reached to take it, but Nick pushed his hand away. Nick wouldn’t let him touch it.
“Is this her?”
Costa stared at the photo, without evident emotion. “Yes … but she didn’t … I mean, can you at least tell me what the note said?”
All he wanted was gossip, Nick knew, to flatter himself as he laughed in his little underpants after they left. Nick couldn’t stand to look at him. Esposito laid a hand on Nick’s shoulder to calm him, and turned to Costa.
“Mr. Costa, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry about how we were when we came in. It’s a bad situation. We have to be going now.”
All the anger was gone from Esposito’s voice; instead, there was almost a sniveling civility, as if he were concerned that Costa might make a complaint. It wasn’t like him, and Nick didn’t like it. He had come to appreciate his partner’s vigilante instincts, even as he hoped to restrain them; the idea of Esposito kissing ass—and this ass, of all asses—was more than Nick could stomach. But when Nick turned away, he took in the picture on the wall: Mother now featured a fine set of whiskers and a shiny black nose, six tits, and a tail. Nick turned again and began to hurry out of the apartment. Esposito took his time following, but he kept to the far side of the room, so Costa would not see the improvements to the portrait. Costa trailed behind, returning to his earlier cockiness, seeing that they had nothing on him, that his secrets had been taken to the grave.
“What did she say? Did she say anything about me? I have a right to know!”
Nick was at the door when Esposito responded. Again, he was regretful about the earlier misunderstandings.
“Mr. Costa, since you weren’t married, it’s confidential. It’s a legal thing, about suicide notes. But man-to-man, it’s a lot of hysterical female bullshit about syphilis, or one of those type diseases. The doctors, they can cure it with one shot. Most of ’em, at least the ones they know about. I think. Anyway, I thought you should know. Sorry, I don’t shake hands—nothing personal.”
This time, they heard the door lock behind them. As they descended the stairs for the next errand, Esposito looked back and grinned. He held up his pen, and gave it a little wave, like a conductor’s baton.
“No dog? Now he’s a son of a bitch…. Didn’t I tell ya, Nicky? You gotta make ’em pay.”
O
utside the building, they paused for a moment, not from tiredness but to let the last place leave their minds a little. Nick bowed slightly to Esposito and tapped his forehead in salute. He had conjured plagues and abominations upon the enemy. Esposito returned the bow, graciously. They crossed the street to Kiko’s building and went upstairs. Esposito took the lead spot at the door; this visit was for his case. Salsa music dunned inside, making the walls vibrate. No one would answer even if someone was home, because no one could hear, and they pounded the door and kicked it, more in frustration than in a belief that anyone would answer. Nick tried the knob, and the door opened. How was it that people felt safe on this block? Maybe the rest of the neighborhood kept their doors locked against Kiko and Costa. Nick and Esposito stepped inside, and Esposito moved past Nick, to take the lead. His case, his bullet.
“Yo! Anybody home here?”
Again, the long hallway, and the rest of the layout like Costa’s, a small one-bedroom. Nick touched the wall and could feel the beat of the music in it. Again, they were uninvited, but at least they’d announced themselves.
“Hey! Police here! Hey!”
Again, an assailant. A little boy of two or three charged down the hall and grabbed hold of Esposito’s legs, hugging him. The boy was naked except for a diaper, chubby and golden-skinned, with wild curly hair. The child was odd-looking, with popping eyes, a wide upturned nose, and a long lower lip. His face could have been made with bits of bat, bug, and monkey. Still, he was a sweet-natured beast.
“Hi!” the boy said.
Esposito holstered his gun and picked him up. “Wouldja look at you!” He carried him over to the stereo and turned off the music. There was a comfortable little couch with a single throw pillow, a vast new wide-screen TV, slim-bodied and freestanding on the floor beside a video game console. Nothing else in the room. The floors were bare, as were the walls.
Sesame Street
was on, a song about the letter
N
.
“Hey, little man, who’s watching you?”
“Hi!”
“Dove es su mama, su papa?”
Esposito sometimes slipped bits of Italian into his subway Spanish, the loose change of foreign words from his own childhood. Nick’s Spanish was pidgin, but when he heard Esposito’s accent, the word stuck out—it was spoken with Italian leisure instead of Caribbean speed.
“
Dónde
, not
dove
. Don’t confuse the kid any more than you have to.”
“Dónde es su mama, su papa?”
“No están.”
“Beautiful.”
Esposito set the child down, and quick peeks in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom proved him truthful. The child took hold of Esposito’s hand while he looked. There was a mattress in the bedroom, and clothing in piles and plastic bags; the kitchen had no furniture at all.
“Donde es su mama, su papa?”
“No están.”
“No shit.”
“Very nice,” Nick said, fretful. He was disturbed by the child left alone, still angry from the Costa encounter. These people, he started to say to himself, not knowing what he meant, only that he didn’t like it.
“What?”
“His memoir. I can see it: ‘Chapter One, in which I am abandoned by my parents, and a policeman teaches me to curse.’ ”
“Oh, relax. He don’t know a thing we say.
Habla inglés, bambino? Habla inglés?
”
The baby smiled, uncomprehending. He was no prettier for it, poor kid. Esposito crouched down and picked him up again.
“What’s your name, little man?”
He pinched Esposito on the nose and laughed.
“We’re in the clear. Look at the mug on this little bastard—ugly little
thing, isn’t he? The babysitter probably watched him for an hour and jumped out the window.
Cual es su nombre?
”
“Mi nombre es Jose.”
“See?”
“Sí.”
“No, not you, junior. Anyway, as long as I have you here, do you hereby give me permission and authority to search this apartment, for evidence relating to a homicide that occurred within the county of New York, including but not limited to weapons, papers, and communication devices that could have been used in the course of or the furtherance of this crime, and are evidence thereof? Well, do you, Jose?”
“Sí.”
“Well, there you have it.”
“He’ll make an excellent witness. The jury’s gonna love him.”
“Only if they put him on closed-circuit TV, and put a dot on that face.”
Jose pinched Esposito’s nose again, and, squealing, kicked to be let free. Esposito set him down, and a pursuit ensued—“I’m gonna getcha! I’m gonna getcha!”—as the detectives considered their options.
“We could arrest the first person who walks through the door,” Esposito said.
“Yeah, it’s something. But it doesn’t get us anywhere.”
“No.”
Nick went back down the hall and locked the door. Whoever came in wouldn’t surprise them. There had been enough of that today. Nick didn’t think they’d find the shotgun here, and they didn’t. They were as likely to find golf clubs. There was nothing—nothing in the bedroom closets, some milk and leftover Chinese in the refrigerator, three cans of beans in the cabinets. But Nick saw a cable bill from February on the floor beside the bed; they had been here since the beginning of the year, at least. Kiko lived here. Had they surprised him, Kiko might have fought them, or he might have come quietly, for an hour of polite denials; Esposito was prepared for these possibilities and more, to make a civil impression, or a brutal bond. He was not prepared to babysit.
“Well?” Esposito asked.
“Yup.”
“And?”
“Leaving is out. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“We could call somebody.”
“Who? The cops?”
If they locked up Kiko, or Mrs. Kiko, it would be for endangering the welfare of a minor, a misdemeanor, a wonderfully broad charge. Child Welfare might take Jose away, or they might not. What had happened today? Mrs. Kiko might have had a twelve-year-old girl from down the hall watch Jose, and her mother had called her home. There might not be a Mrs. Kiko, and it might not be Kiko’s kid. Whatever it was, it wasn’t bright, and it wasn’t right, but nobody necessarily needed to get arrested for it. And they weren’t here for the baby.