Red on Red (68 page)

Nick inclined his head deliberately toward Costa, determined not to mimic the parrot head. Esposito returned to the circling palms.

“Yeah, but—see? Nothing’s different. Malcolm made a move on me,
behind my back. Fuck him, but so what? We’re both still goin’ in the same direction. It’s all the same now, and it’s done. I took the tape recorder out of his pocket. Into the river. Plus the camera. I dropped Malcolm off outside the hospital and told him to lie to the cops till tomorrow. Not to lie, just not to talk, not yet. ‘Uncooperative.’ And he’s gonna stay uncooperative until somebody asks him about Michael and the other guy. Once it’s out in the open, he breaks down, tells them the truth.”

“The truth.”

“The truth. Not everything! Enough though, and all true. This ain’t—They won’t ask—for some kind of … encyclopedia. Whatever, you know? I told Malcolm to say what happened. And what happened was that he went to meet the IAB guy, and his crazy brother followed him, and Michael killed the IAB guy because he thought he was killing a real cop. And there was a struggle, and Malcolm got shot, and Michael went over the edge, hit his head on a rock.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Yeah. The gun Michael killed Jamie with, that’s next to him now. Malcolm’s gonna tell ’em about that, too. So’s the other gun, that he took from the IAB guy. It’s all together.”

“I don’t know, Espo. There’s always something you didn’t see….”

“Yeah, Nick, I know. And no, there isn’t. I do this for a living. You, too. For one, there isn’t always something. Some cases just won’t break, no matter how good you are or how hard you try. This isn’t one of them. My phone? I paid cash for an extra one, just for Malcolm’s calls. It won’t come back, not to me. It’s in the river, too. Whoever catches this won’t be as good as me—I’m not bragging; it’s just the way it is—but I gotta expect they’re professional. Has to be. It’s a cop killing, after all. And they’re gonna solve it, almost all of it. They’re gonna find out what went down with those three guys, but the picture they get is a close-up. It leaves us out. The IAB guy must have been freelancing, too, breaking rules. They don’t do one-on-one late-night meets like that, with guys like Malcolm. It’s basic safety, basic sense. He went way over the line trying to get me, and it’ll show. Incompetent. Maybe obsessed. Will they look for more? No. I wouldn’t, honest to God. You look for more when you don’t have enough, or it doesn’t fit. This is an exceptional clearance. It’s closed.”

“There’s always …”

Nick couldn’t finish. He had no words left in him. Yes, he had a few,
but he couldn’t speak them. There was already something that his partner didn’t know; he hadn’t factored in a major variable from the beginning, and Esposito’s predictions were less persuasive when Nick considered the past. Their shared past, the reason for it. Nearsighted of Esposito, you might say. Nick looked at Esposito, as tempted by confession now as he had been by any prior sin. Did Esposito know already, seeing or not-seeing? They were not in the friendship business, he’d been reminded before. Nick nodded, yes, then shook his head, no. He smiled, helpless. What to say? Esposito knew what to say, what had to be done.

“Did you know his name?”

“Who?”

“The guy. The dead guy. You know the one I mean.”

“No.”

There was nothing defensive in the denial, as Nick knew it was almost a technical question, a request for specifics. The substance was already known.

“No, never did. Never asked. Never met him, like I said. Never told him anything but the truth, until you sprung Malcolm. And I never told him anything after.”

Nick couldn’t watch Esposito as he spoke. He was disgusted with himself, even as he was relieved by speaking. The post-purgative solace. He waited for a reaction, and when he didn’t hear one, he went on. “I was stuck where I was, in the Bronx. Pissed off and going downhill. After a real bad day, this guy I know—not a bad guy—says ‘Be a field associate, you can go back home.’ Didn’t know it was you they were looking at. Didn’t really realize till we partnered up. Couldn’t tell you after. Here we are.”

Nick had heard the song before, from others in the interview room—the daisy chain of reasons, how the boss yelled at you when it wasn’t your fault and the bus was late and the ketchup squirted on your favorite shirt, and that was why the dog got shot.
An accident, really, and mostly just a shame …
Every asshole has his reasons. Nick kept his head down after he’d finished. Like choosing a blindfold before execution, he thought. The next words hit him like a pistol shot.

“You poor guy.”

Nick looked up. He hadn’t heard any sarcasm, but he needed to see to be sure. Esposito seemed as confused as he was, struggling to explain. The palms again, circling, head cocked.

“If you banged my wife, I’d kill you. But if you didn’t even think
about it, not once, I wouldn’t understand you. You never hurt me, Nick. You hurt yourself, trying not to. Your word is good enough for me.”

Nick smiled and closed his eyes, tilted his head back. Waves of grievous relief passed through him, and he nearly fell asleep. Was it just because of tonight, this day and this night, that this most fundamental of betrayals appeared no worse to Esposito than a bump in the road? Nick had to think so. Last Tuesday, next Wednesday, it would have likely rated better than the fourth- or fifth-biggest surprise. Esposito cleared his throat.

“So whaddaya wanna do with this shithead, the one on a string?”

“Call it in. I guess I got to.”

Nick just wanted it to be over. Esposito shook his head, not to dissuade him but in deepening dismay, foreseeing the fallout. “Your case, your call. But this is bad, Nick. You catch a bad guy, a guy you know, you take him into a basement for a couple of hours, and he winds up dead? The DA, they’re not big on the vigilante shit. The Job? I don’t know what they’ll do, but they ain’t gonna give you a medal. Not anymore. Lawsuit, too—forget about it. You know there’s family somewhere, and they’re gonna say you killed the guy. You’ll win in the end, I know. But Nick, this is America, this is New York. They’ll put you through shit for years even if you don’t get locked up.”

Esposito didn’t look at Nick as he spoke. Nick watched him weigh the options and consequences, spelling them out as clearly as if he had chalk and a blackboard. Something of a teacher to him, in his lesson’s belabored simplicity; something of a doctor, delivering bad news. The logic was flawless, and Nick felt his stomach tighten and sink.

“What I done, with the Cole brothers? You could look at it two ways. You could put me in jail, or not. That’s it. I get caught, or I get away with it. No medal, no attaboy, nothing. I knew that going in. Now I wish I’d listened to you, even though it worked out, even though I still don’t see any other way I coulda done it, keeping you safe, keeping things the same. But you, you do everything exactly right, all official, by the book, except for the very end. You work your ass off, you work smart, and I don’t even know how you got him, Nick, but I know you got lucky after that. On top of that! Grand slam! A straight flush! You shouldn’t even get a medal for this, Nick. You should get a parade. And now? Now you’re fucked.”

Esposito the philosopher, tracing the paths that had taken them to this moment, the path that led away—cause and contingency, randomness and inevitability. The convergence of choice and chance. Nick shook his head again. He didn’t know if he could bear any more wisdom, any more truth, even at the barest, coldest solid-state minimum, but his partner went on.

“Like I said, your case, your call. Isn’t it funny, Nick, how when you start, you picture all the great things you might do, and in the end, you wind up wondering what you can get away with?”

When Nick rose from his crate, his calves began to cramp. As he clutched the wall, Esposito jumped up to steady him, seizing an arm. After the pain passed, Nick limped back inside the boiler room, for a last look at how he’d solved his last case. This was how it all ended. No, not everything, only the good part. He could conceive how a kidnapping charge could be made against him, at least how the arguments would be framed.
The law says it’s when you take a person against his will, not a “good person,” and a cop of all people should know better….
Maybe they’d go easy on him, in the end, but he wouldn’t be a cop anymore. His career was over. Was that so bad? He looked at Costa, the kinked neck, the darkened face. Nick wished he could have been proud.

Esposito still had his gloves on as he picked up the notebook, and started to examine the pages. “Shit, Nick—you broke him? He even wrote it out for you? He wrote this?”

“Yeah.”

For a second, Nick did feel pride, if only in the narrowest aspect of the contest, that he’d cracked a code, found a way in. He almost didn’t care what Costa had to say. All had been revealed, and Nick assumed that Costa’s final disclosure had been equally candid and complete. The story would go where it would, and Nick would make no further effort to spin it, stop it, shove it along, no matter what.

“What did he say?” Nick asked.

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“What?”

It hadn’t occurred to Nick that there might be something other than truth at the end of the ordeal. He tried to take the notebook, but Esposito held it away from him, in his gloved hand.

“Hang on. Wait, don’t touch. I hate to break this to you, Nick, but
there’s pages and pages about how if he’s a rapist, you are, that you’re no better than he is. She’ll never stay with you, blah, blah, blah. Plus, a lot of sex stuff.”

Nick stepped toward Costa’s corpse as if he were about to punch his lying dead head, when Esposito stopped him, grabbing the collar of his coat.

“Are you kidding?” Nick’s voice nearly cracked. “This guy blames me?”

Esposito shook his head, then nodded. No and yes.

“Easy, buddy. It is what it is. He says everything was going fine for him, till you showed up. That’s the gist of it, yeah.”

It seemed like sacrilege to erase a man’s last words, even this man’s, but Nick could not let them be heard. “Throw that shit out. Burn it. That is just not—”

“Easy, now. Would you let me finish? There’s a lot here, a lot of cross-outs and starting again. But look at the first page. Just don’t touch.”

Esposito held the pad in front of him. “I, Raul Costa, have done NOTHING wrong. It is NOT my fault.” That was it? Nick found it hard to concentrate on the pages that followed, found it hard even to think of it as a confession, with all the shrill denunciations and mopey platitudes. As if Nick should have expected more.

“Shit. I mean, I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I wanted a real statement from him. For him to just admit what he did.”

Esposito’s laughter perplexed him.

“Don’t you know what you got? Leave it to you to see the downside…. I love you, pal, but you got this wrong. It’s perfect. Just the first page. Nothing about getting arrested, nothing about you yet. It’s all whiny bullshit about how life is unfair. Don’t read it like a confession. Read it like a suicide note. It is! I’m gonna put it back in his pocket, just that page, not the rest. Let’s get out of here.”

Esposito shook his head, smiling, and Nick realized how well it worked, how it would make the lie true. Was it that? The words had not changed, but they now said something else. They had been translated by circumstance. Or maybe they had become hostile witnesses, repudiating their prior testimony. But their meaning would not settle and fix, not as intended; the story would go on, with or without Nick. Maybe it was time to just get out of its way.

Esposito asked if he’d searched him, if Nick had anything from the
body. Nick handed over the wallet, keys, lollipop. Esposito said he’d take care of the warrant, so that when cops found him and ran his ID, they would know who he was, what he had done. The story would arrive with the body at the morgue, shaping the understanding of what had happened. This walking depravity had finally been overtaken with remorse, had fallen prey to his own hatred. Which had happened. It was what had happened. True enough, close enough. Let’s finish and be done. Tomorrow, a fresh start.

Neither of them spoke after that, until they left the basement. Esposito took the wallet, wiped it down, slipped it into Costa’s back pocket. Keys in the front. There was a momentary hesitation at touching the body, but Esposito pushed on, did what he had to do. He unlocked the cuffs from the ankle and pipe and handed them to Nick, who rubbed them on his leg, as if to get the Costa traces off before putting them into his pocket. He remembered Esposito’s revulsion at the morgue, and thought how hard it must have been for him to touch the body. Nick was glad he hadn’t disclosed the details of his last, nauseous proximity to Costa’s mortal arousal. Esposito shuddered when he finished, brushing his shoulders as if there might be flecks of death on them, like dandruff. Upstairs, Esposito circled the lobby, checking for cameras, but Nick waved him on. He knew there weren’t any. Someone had checked it for the stakeout earlier today, when Grace had left for school. They were in the clear.

Outside, the chill air tasted as sweet as mint, and snowflakes fell like flower petals in the lamplight. So beautiful, all of it was. As Nick looked north to the park, remembering how it had started, he felt dizzy. The magic landscape seemed to circle and buck. How it all goes round and round; maybe Ivan Lopez would find this body, too, just like at the beginning. No, there was no going back. It would be another story tomorrow, about someone else. Nick felt steady again, almost strong.

Esposito had walked ahead of him, was already at the car. He opened the door and was about to get inside, stamping the snow from his feet.

“I’ll give you a lift home.”

“Nah. I’ll walk. Clear my head.”

Esposito looked doleful, uncertain. His face could have been Nick’s face from yesterday, hours ago, most of his life.

“See you tomorrow?” Esposito asked.

“No.”

Esposito looked bereft, alone. Nick knew that face, too, and he spoke quickly, careful of his emotion, fearful of the breadth of its spectrum.

“No. We’re off tomorrow.”