Red on Red (67 page)

“You know that’s bullshit. You even seen what I got. Remember the pictures, when you came? You know!”

Ah, yes, the stack of snapshots in the bedroom drawer. A candid, you might call it, ankles hoisted. The one that followed the snapshot with Maria at the beach. That was still on Nick’s desk, folded in half so he’d be spared the sight of Costa. Nick tried to console himself with the idea that even if the picture hadn’t been folded, the face still wouldn’t have meant anything, even if he’d looked at it every day. What bothered him more was how he’d tossed away the other pictures in disgust after he’d seen the naked one, when there might have been more evidence in the pile.

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“That’s the best you got?”

No, there was always more. The prospect of prison showers, an angry God who saw all things. Costa gave him the shrug. That was all? No more fire, no more fear? The shrug, how well Nick knew it, the fleeting sympathy, the bored refusal. Even talk about DNA didn’t rattle him, as if he’d made an agreement with his molecules not to cooperate. This was over. He was in Nick’s handcuffs and would wear others till he died; the city was safer, the victims would take what comfort they could. That didn’t matter. It did, but the taste of it was not as it should be. The last duel had been fought to a standstill. Nick and his nemesis, sticking out their tongues at each other. They were so tired, both of them. Where was the third?

Esposito was still not there, still had not called. What was he doing, weighing bodies down with rocks? And how long could that take? Stop it, stop. You can’t cry that no one is helping, when you want to brag that you did it all yourself. Nick stopped. Two stomachs, lucky rocks. Was that the best he had? There had to be something better, or at least something worse.

What was the worst thing Nick could say? Was there a list, a world record for the worst things anyone had ever said? A wayward thought. More and more of them would come until he slept. Another one, more wayward still. When it struck Nick, he knew it was a revelation, a true one. But it didn’t feel as if scales had fallen from his eyes. It felt more like he could now see in the dark; he could see better in the dark, without the distraction of daylight. He realized he’d barely spoken about young Ms. Lopez Santana. Which was a strange thing—at a minimum—given how she had brought them together, how much she’d meant to
both of them. He’d be a different man if he pursued this line, he knew. When Nick did, Costa could see the change, and he was intrigued. Nick was smiling. He felt a little sick. He did not know whether he was casting out demons or calling them to come.

“Yeah? What is it?” Costa asked.

“Raul, this is over now, between us, the business part. I think that’s the first question you asked me, and I’m gonna tell you. I mean, we’re done here, so it doesn’t matter. Man-to-man, I know you’re not all bad. You weren’t bad to Grace, never roughed her up—she never said you did. I know. She tells me everything. She’s something, isn’t she? Special, that one—a little wild. Unbelievable! I mean, she can be kind of a pain in the ass, the way she insists—condoms, condoms, condoms. You’d think she owned the rubber company. Shit, is it worth it, though…. I want you to know, she’s in good hands now.”

Nick never looked at him as he spoke, casting his eyes farther up the wall, so they seemed to envision a private bliss. A leer spread across his face, then faded; Nick wiped his brow, smiling, wise to the ways of the world. He went on. “I don’t kid myself. She picked me up when she dropped you. One day she’s gonna drop me for somebody else. Still, while it lasts … Would you look what she gave me? I asked her for a picture, and she got dressed up special, had this taken for me.”

Nick walked over to him, holding out the picture, and Costa’s body sagged as he longingly took in the trashy image. His head sank down. When he lifted it again, his shoulders wriggled, as if he needed to extend his hands, to gingerly reach. Nick drew the picture back—
Nuh-uh
—to let him know that only one of them could touch. Costa began to cry. Faintly at first, struggling against it, before he surrendered to despair. He bawled and shook, blew his nose on his shoulder. Nick had sickened himself with his own performance; Costa’s brought him to the edge of vomiting. He felt cold again, as if he had the flu. Costa didn’t look at Nick when he raised his head, finding his own spot on the wall where the pictures would play for his private show, the last before the curtain went down. A pendant of drool hung from his lip, swinging back and forth.

“You know what got me about her? All the other ones, they screamed and cried. I know they were lying, but still … Grace, she got into it. You know what she said when I left?”

Now he looked at Nick. The drool descended, dropped.

“After, she fixes her hair—you know how she does it—straightens her
uniform. Looks at me. You know? She says, ‘All you had to do was ask.’ That’s how she got me. That’s how I knew. And she broke my heart….”

Costa’s head went down again before he could see Nick cover his mouth, with both hands. He wanted to cover his eyes, his ears, too, like all three monkeys. The jag resumed for a while, until Costa stopped, suddenly, disgusted with himself. Now, suddenly, here was the revulsion, little and late. Nick didn’t want to guess where that small island of self-reproach might lie, if it was that; he had gone far enough, and now Costa was coming out to meet him.

“I’ll tell what—how it was. The others, it didn’t happen like they said, what was in the papers. And Grace! That wasn’t in the papers at all! You know why? It was love … a love story. You know. They don’t care about that. I can write down what happened. Just give me a minute. Would you let me clean myself up? Leave me alone. Get these off my hands….”

Nick nodded, stood, and walked out of the room. When he was out of sight, he rushed down the hall to the utility room and threw up in the slop sink. It felt like an exorcism, getting rid of whatever was left inside him. When he finished, he wondered how he’d arrange it, to uncuff one of Costa’s hands. If they’d been at the squad, Nick would have done that already, cuffed the weak hand to the waist-high steel bar, so he could write. He would have rewarded him with the tidbit of freedom for some minor conversational breakthrough. Not here, not alone, even though all of Costa’s defenses had been breached. If there were a fight, Nick was determined to keep it unfair. But it was over. There was no fight left in Costa. Nick wouldn’t be careless, but he could let him have his hands. He wanted the story, whatever it meant, wherever it led.

When Nick returned to the boiler room, he told Costa to lie down on his stomach, next to the wall. Compliance came without question or protest. Nick placed Grace’s picture on the ground beside Costa’s head, so escape would not be his first thought. As Nick transferred the cuffs from Costa’s hands to an ankle and a sturdy floor-level pipe—tight, but it fit—Costa’s respiration neither sped up nor slowed. His body remained limp. He rolled over and sat on the milk crate when he was directed to do so. Nick tore out the pages that had writing on them, and handed over the pad with a pen. Costa began to write, and Nick withdrew from the room. He waited just outside the door for a moment, then went back to the slop sink to throw up again.

Every few minutes, he’d quietly look in on Costa, who never seemed
to notice or care as he wrote in rapid script, inspired. Nick washed his mouth out at the sink, felt in his pockets for a mint. The only thing he had was the lollipop he’d taken with Costa’s wallet and keys. He rinsed out the remnants of his vomit from the sink, gargled repeatedly. No message on the phone, still, and Nick and decided he had to call the desk, even 911, no matter what. He was suddenly starving, light-headed with hunger. But when he began to dial the precinct, it didn’t go through; no reception, underground in the concrete bunker. Nick didn’t think it was too risky to step upstairs for a minute, but he checked the boiler room one last time, just to be sure.

There was Costa, hanging from the wall. Before Nick ran over to him, he put his gun on the floor, both guns—Costa’s, too—in case it was a trick, an ambush. He stopped ten feet away, half-hopeful, half-afraid. The notepad was on the floor, as was the pen. No, no tricks. The legs were in an odd knock-kneed position, the arms slack, shoelaces around his neck, affixed to another pipe. The face had a blue cast, like snow in the moonlight. Nick knelt slightly to hoist Costa up; he was heavier than expected. But when Nick slid his knee underneath Costa for support, he felt the hard-on with his thigh. That was supposed to happen with hanged men, he knew, but Nick jumped back, revolted. Costa slipped down again, went back to dying.
Such
an asshole. Nick lifted him up as he had before, wondering how he could cut the noose. When the shoulders twitched, Nick almost dropped him again. Costa still didn’t breathe. Nick took his keys from his pocket and sawed where the laces were frayed. Not blue, the face, more purple. A dozen scrapes with the key, but the laces did not break. Nick held Costa up, waiting for him to inhale. Face-to-face, Nick could see spit caked at the corners of Costa’s lips, a nub of brown food between the teeth. Eyes rolled back, half-open. Twenty seconds, fifty, without even a last spasm from the reptile brain. Nick held him, chest to chest, and could not feel a heartbeat other than his own, but his was a jungle drum. Resuscitation was a necessity, the last of lessening chances, but he hadn’t even cut through the shoelaces. Mouth-to-mouth was out of the question. It just wasn’t going to happen. Nick hadn’t killed Costa when he might have, he’d tried to save him when he could, but he would not kiss him back to life. Another minute, two, and Nick gently let Costa go.

N
ick moved his milk crate into the hallway and sat down. He didn’t know how long it was before Esposito appeared, running.

“You got him?”

Nick nodded.

“He’s in there?”

Again, yes.

“That’s amazing!”

That it was. Nick was tempted to begin explaining, but he didn’t have the heart for it, or maybe it was the absence of another organ, lower down. When Esposito saw Costa, he cocked his head to one side, then the other, in an oddly parrot-like motion, before he went into the room. Nick didn’t see or hear him for a few minutes. When Esposito returned, he began to gesture in tentative palms-up circles, reaching for explanation, until his arms dropped.

“Nope. Nothing. I got nothing to say,” Esposito managed.

Nick raised his hands.
Comprendo, señor. Exactamente
.

Esposito collected the other milk crate and sat down beside Nick. After a while, Esposito coughed. “You wanna ask me how my day was?”

Nick laughed at the echo of Allison’s question. It reminded him—no, another time.

“I do, I do want to know. How it turned out.”

Nick’s apparent bemusement reassured Esposito, and though he began his story with a halting caution—“When you left, it took me some time, some time just to try to figure out what to do.”—soon after beginning, the momentum gathered, and there was excitement in his voice, not the old proud delight in an escapade, a feat, a win, but a humble awe
at what had happened, almost as if he hadn’t been there. For a long time, he talked about looking down at Michael, to see if he moved, listening for a cry.

“Finally, Malcolm says, ‘You gotta help me. I gotta go to the hospital.’ I look at him. ‘I gotta help you?’ ”

Esposito blinked and made a face, less displeased than curious, looking out at some imagined distance, and did the parrot head-cock again. Nick had never seen him do that before, but he guessed it was not the second but the third time he’d done it that night. Nick hoped never to see it again. He felt cold despite the dank heat of the hallway, and though he didn’t want to speak, he knew he had to ask.

“So where is he now?”

“St. Luke’s,” said Esposito casually, oblivious to Nick’s trepidation. “You know, with all the shit he put me through, I was thinkin’ about taking him to a hospital in Brooklyn, the Bronx, the worst, biggest take-a-number-maybe-we’ll-get-to-you-by-Tuesday joint I could think of, and make the prick limp back home. You know that wasn’t the first time Malcolm talked to that rat? When I was huntin’ him—back before—he called IAB, said I took a shot at him. Can you believe these people, what they believe?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Me neither. St. Luke’s is fine, and he wasn’t going to Columbia, at least not with me. Half the Detective Bureau is there, with Garelick. Had to take my own car, and he bled on the seat. Anyway, I was pretty pissed off at him, not tellin’ me that the guy had called again. They met a couple of days ago, and the guy gave him a tape recorder. Malcolm told me he didn’t tell him anything, but he figured he ought to cover his bets. Today, the guy calls, Malcolm plays it cute. ‘Maybe you should be there, when I go to meet somebody, by the bridge.’ ”

“You don’t think he told him about the other tape, with his confession?”

“Would you tell him about the tape?”

Nick worked on that for a while. “No, but I’m trying to get away from the ‘What would I do if I was him’ kind of thing. Matter of fact, I gave it a try, not too long ago.”