Red on Red (5 page)

At the far side of the tape, a man rode up on a bicycle and lifted it, ducking under, and managed to get five or six feet before a burly cop spotted him. The cop charged over to block him, barking out, “Hey! You!”

“Who?”

“You, asshole! Who do you think?”

“What?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Gotta get through!”

“Do you see the yellow tape? What do you think it’s there for?”

“You don’t gotta talk like that to me.”

“If you listened, I wouldn’t have to. Go around. What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s muddy over there. I don’t wanna mess up my bike.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me. Get out of here. Beat it!”

The man walked off, taking his bike and wounded dignity, shaking his head. “You don’t gotta be like that….”

The man had begun to rewrite the story in his head to recast himself as the injured party.
Mindin’ my own business, doin’ nothin’ wrong, when all of a sudden this cop starts screamin’ …
Sometimes you had to freeze a
lobby for hours for a crime scene, and the inconvenience was real—especially for the mother with her arms laden with laundry, groceries, three kids in tow—but it had to be done. Most waited with some semblance of patience, but a few always tried to push through, or screamed as if the cops had lost sight of the real victim—Me!—who risked dinner getting cold, or having to use an unfamiliar bathroom. The man with the bicycle broke from his ruminations to look back and ask, “Who died?”

The cop stared at him coldly. “Who cares?”

The man got on his bike and rode off, muttering curses. Esposito walked over to Nick, slipping his notebook back into his pocket.

“We good here?”

“We’re not making any friends.”

“We’re not in the friends business. Let’s do the notification, pay a visit to Momma Cole. I was there a couple of times, after the Babenco homicide. And before, for an older brother. I wanted him for a shooting, when he got killed. Stabbed, at a club downtown. You know, Nick, these things have a way of working out. Anyway, she’s not the friendliest lady. Not that I blame her. Whaddaya think I should I go with, ‘You want the good news, or the bad news?’ ”

“It’s a classic, but maybe not this time.”

“Whatever. You’re the diplomat. Let’s go.”

The drive to the Cole residence would be a short one. The apartment was beneath the elevated subway, in the same projects, at the northern end. News would travel fast, and they had to get there first. The weather had slowed down the ghetto grapevine, but time was limited. They had to deliver the shock, to watch the responses and gather what they could before the defenses went back up. The rain had eased again, and the hustlers had begun to creep back out onto the corners, ready for the night. Esposito scanned the landscape from behind the wheel—he always drove, by mutual preference—as the wipers cleared the fat, irregular splashes that fell from the elevated train above them. On one corner, five or six young men, one or two women, had gathered on the far side of the street beneath a bodega awning. As the car approached, Esposito grabbed Nick by the biceps.

“Watch this.”

The car swerved across the street, screeching, and the gang half-froze, half-started to scatter, all of them too late as the car struck the puddle by the curb. The puddle was wide and deep, and sent a cascade of filthy
rainwater over them, staining their baggy pants and doo-rags and three-hundred-dollar sneakers. The car was half a block away before they recovered enough to throw beer cans and shout empty threats. Esposito bellowed with laughter and grabbed Nick again.

“Hah! Nicky! See ’em? Did you see their faces? God, this is fun sometimes….”

Nick cringed, even as he caught himself laughing, too. Were they all perps and hangers-on? Or had the youngest one’s big sister just marched over to tell him,
Cut this out and get home. You can make a life if you work hard and play by the rules
. Still, it was funny, as long as it happened to someone else, as long as you could imagine that they deserved it.

“Did you know them?” Nick asked.

“Probably. I couldn’t see. But it’s a crack spot. One of Babenco’s.”

“So that was kind of a tip of the hat to Malcolm Cole.”

“You might say.”

That was the kind of thing Esposito did often, a little reckless and almost righteous, and Nick wondered if he would have enjoyed it more if he could know for sure he wouldn’t be asked about it, later on, under oath. Nick grimaced at the thought, and Esposito smiled at what he mistook for a smile, for Nick’s appreciation.

When they arrived at their destination, they straightened their ties and tucked in their shirts, checking themselves in the rearview mirror. The messengers should be respectable even if the message is not, and they headed into the projects. From the outside, the housing complex looked much as it might have on the drawing board in the late 1950s, the model modern city of redbrick towers grouped amid playgrounds and tree-lined lawns. Once the door of the Coles’ building was yanked open, however—the lock was broken, again—the lobby looked like a set from a 1970s movie, Gotham bankrupt and at bay. By Sunday night, the porters hadn’t cleaned in two days, the yellowed tiles had a urinal smell, and the floor was littered with trash. As they stepped in, three kids tossed their blunt—a cheap cigar stuffed with marijuana—and froze a moment, ready to run. Esposito raised his hands. “At ease, men. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

They relaxed, and one giggled, while another bent to fetch the blunt.

“Yo! You cops is all right!”

“They not cops, dummy. They DTs.”

“Homicide? Shit! Who got it?”

Esposito stepped toward them and handed out his card to each, correctly estimating they would be more intrigued than repelled by his combination of real conversation and official status.

“You’ll find out soon enough, guys. When you do, if you hear something, give me a call.”

“Nah, man, we ain’t snitches.”

“Snitches get stitches.”

But even as they mouthed the slogans of defiance, each of them stared at their card as if it were a map to buried treasure, contact with a world they’d only seen on television.

“I ain’t talking about snitching,” Esposito went on. “I’m going upstairs to tell somebody’s moms some bad news, and if you guys help me, I won’t have to tell somebody else’s moms the same thing next week.”

Nick was intrigued by the way it was said here—“moms.” Plural or possessive? Neither, just slang, words thrown around. Nick didn’t speak the lingo. Best to say nothing. Snitches get stitches.

“Also, there’s money in it.”

“How much?”

“You call me with something good, I’ll let you know.”

The elevator opened, and the detectives stepped inside. Nick pressed the button for fourteen, blocking the panel with his body so the kids couldn’t see which floor he’d selected; they would know the family. They might be the family. As the doors shut and the elevator rose with a jerk, Nick asked Esposito how many Coles were left.

“God knows. There’s a pack of ’em, mostly older. As far as I remember, some went straight, and some went straight to the streets. There’s two younger brothers. I think they’ve never been in trouble, grandkids, whatever. Malcolm, though—he was one tough kid, a real hard case.”

There were families here that were inmate dynasties, generation after generation of wards of the state—killer, crackhead, whore, thief; the slow girl who got fat on paint chips; the lucky one in the wheelchair, with a settlement from when he was hit by a car. The clustered disasters made a certain grim sense: bad inputs and bad outputs. Other families were dizzyingly split—dead, jail, army major; dead, plumber, custodian, jail; jail, jail, hospital administrator. Most tragic were the families where the failures were harder to explain than the successes—two parents, churchgoers and job-holders, with four daughters who made six figures apiece, two sons who made their sneaker money sticking up old ladies in elevators.
There were good people here, too—more than the other kind—but detectives ran into them less often. These people … Nick stopped the thought before he could be sure what he meant.

At the fourteenth floor, a different music thumped through each door—R&B, salsa, reggaeton, until they came to a door marked with bumper stickers for a rap station. There was no sound inside, at least none they could hear, when they pressed an ear against the frame. Esposito hit the door with his fist a few times, waited, then turned around and gave it a few solid kicks with his heel.

“Who?”

“Police.”

“Who?”

“Police! Open up!”

They could hear shuffling footsteps approaching. An eye appeared at the peephole, and a wary male voiced called out, “Nobody called the cops here.”

“I know. We gotta talk to you.”

“You got a warrant?”

“Shut up and get your mother.”

There was no contempt in the tone, only a blunt indifference to a junior player trying to buy time he could not afford. The force of it, and the absence of anger, had a confusing effect on the other side of the door.

“She can’t … I can’t … She’s sleeping.”

“Wake her up.”

The footsteps trudged away. Esposito muttered, “If she can sleep through this racket, God bless her.” Just when they were about to start pounding again, the footsteps returned, and the door unlocked. A wiry young man in pajama bottoms opened it with obvious reluctance. How many times had cops come to his door? He was brown skinned, and though he must have been at least twenty, his faint, fuzzy mustache looked like it could have been the first he’d tried to grow. A disdainful stare met their faces, turning to disgust as he looked them up and down. Nick noted the condition of his own shoes.

“Wipe your feet.”

The young man turned away before the detectives entered, to show that they were not worth his consideration.

“She says to have a seat, she’ll be out in a minute.”

They followed him down the hall, past a kitchen with a pot of rice on
the stove, to a living room with two couches, one pulled out into a bed. On the walls were taped various certificates, attesting to attendance at drug awareness and parenting classes, a program called Positivity and Peer Pressure. The tattered curl of the edges added to the faintness of the praise. Two infants lay there; another toddler in diapers scrambled on the floor nearby. The uniform for a fast-food restaurant hung neatly on a closet door. The lights were dim, but the television was big and bright, with a video game paused; it showed a car chase on a city street, with gang members in an alley and snipers on a roof. Disapproving thoughts began to form in Nick’s mind as the toddler rushed over to him and hugged his leg. The young man leaned down and snatched him up.

“No, Daquan, no. They ain’t your friend.”

Nick stiffened at the child’s touch, but when the boy was taken away, he felt a twinge of regret. The hostile pomp showed the Cole kid had never been in trouble before—a real criminal knew to avoid needless provocation—but the act was aggravating. So it was going to be that way, was it? In the end, the undisguised enmity might make it easier; who wouldn’t rather break the heart of a bastard? No, it wouldn’t; the room wasn’t big enough to hold the hate as it was, and it was better not to add any more. Nick felt tired, and knew the pressure at the back of his neck would be a headache within the hour. He caught himself scowling, and made himself stop. Esposito maintained a tone of agreeable calm, as if they’d been offered tea on the verandah. The baby said the name Michael, and Esposito picked up on it.

“Michael, is Daquan your boy? I got a two-year-old at home, a girl. It’s a tough age.”

The young man kissed the child, but pointedly watched the frozen TV screen instead of looking at Esposito. “He’s only one. He’s big. He’s my sister’s. She’s out … like always …”

As Nick recalled, Esposito had three sons. He could have said so. He’d lied because he didn’t want to bring them into this, he didn’t want to think of this, with them. Still, he’d put out something of himself, connected on human terms. And the move had worked. The anger seemed to ebb slightly. The young man put the toddler down, collected the infants from the pullout couch, and brought them to a back room. He looked as if he suspected the detectives might take the children, as if Esposito might distract him with a comment
—Hey, nice TV!
—and slip a kid into a pocket like a shoplifter. And then Nick realized, they
were
there to
take a child from this house, or at least tell of his taking. Go ahead, stay angry, and hide your babies. Keep away from the police. They bring no good news.

A moment later, Michael Cole returned with his mother on his arm, shuffling out from the dark hall in a worn blue flannel robe. She was a heavy woman, breathing heavily, who carried herself as if she were getting tired of the weight. She settled into her seat with a long exhalation. She patted one arm of the couch as if it were a friend, and mopped her brow with a damp washcloth. Little Daquan ran to her and held her leg, before waddling over to the TV to slap the screen.

“There, now. My pressure’s no good. I had a stroke since I seen you last, Detective. I’m sorry I can’t help you. I haven’t seen Malcolm.”

Esposito leaned down and touched her hand.

“I’m sorry Miz Cole, it’s not that. I got some bad news.”

“He was arrested?”

Michael broke in abruptly. “They don’t come to tell you that, Mama. They ain’t that nice—”

“Quiet now, Michael. Go get me some water. Let these gentlemen get to the business they come for. What is it?”

She looked up, wide-eyed and ready for the blow.

“There’s been a shooting….”

And then she looked down, mopping her brow again, shaking her head. “Malcolm?”

Esposito nodded and looked to Nick. His fumbling in his pockets for the license provoked a scowl from Michael, and it was a long minute before Nick found it and handed it over. Miz Cole glanced at it, like it was a receipt. She had gotten one before, at least once; she thought the bill had been paid.

“Is he … ?”

“It doesn’t look good.”

Michael left for the kitchen and returned with the water. He sat beside his mother, holding her as she sobbed, and placed the glass of water on the arm of the couch. Daquan turned from the television and ran to her, stumbling after three steps to fall on his face. His piercing screech joined his grandmother’s low moan. Michael leaned over and scooped him up, and Miz Cole clutched him to her chest.