South by South Bronx (15 page)

“I know how to find her,” he said.

16.

Waking from dream. Or still dreaming.

Or not. Barely memory of dream, just black after drinking. Sharp jumpcut from then to now. No sense of sleep. His body wasn't rested. He could have been dreaming if not for that pasty sick taste in his mouth. The need to piss, bad. That was what woke him.

The woman in his bed did not wake him.

The chair creaked. He had fallen asleep in the chair. He had planted it just right so he could watch her. Sat on it back to front and, leaning there with that long slim bottle to finish, he fell asleep. Or it all went vague and dark and then there was now. No telling how much time no telling even when. At least it wasn't a work day. He was almost sure.

It was a purple sky, a calm airless evening. Streetlights glowed dull and sleepy. He felt the bump at the back of his head. Again those brief pain sparks. He looked at her lying there across the bed. She was still in his clothes. He told himself that he wasn't going to turn his back on her, but it looked like he'd killed her with that one bop of the toy bat. It really looked like he had laid her out with just one blow, and so he felt safe to go take a leak, making sure nonetheless to take her purse with him.

In the bathroom, the dress still hung from the shower curtain rod like a limp flag. He flushed the toilet, splashed the slowness from his face, rinsed the metallic taste from his mouth.

He placed the purse on top of the wicker hamper.

The shower he took was brief. The stream of water set off minute brush fires in his head. He dried off with the only towel hanging there. Then he picked up the purse. He examined the strap. It was detachable, with a locking hook on either end.

“The strap on my purse is broken,” she had said, holding up a loose end.

“Shit,” he said.

He spilled the purse's contents on the blue furry bathmat.

The shoes came first. The delicate curvy arch. Manolo Blahnik. Since when was he with a woman who wore those? Shoes were his business. They were the first thing he noticed on a woman. Generally.

The lipsticks, compact, assorted makeup items. A CD slipcase. Daffy Duck plushy. All into a pile.

The cellular phone. He put aside.

The Smith & Wesson .22 pistol, with spare clip. He put aside.

The yellow envelope had writing on it. Inside was an ID card pinned to a letter.
This Document authorizes Ava Reynolds to have access to safe-deposit box 6315 on behalf of David Romero and Fischer-MacMillan, Inc.

The ID card was from the same company and had a picture of a wide-eyed, clean-cut Puerto Rican yuppie type. The letter was addressed to a bank on Third Avenue. Alex checked the address again, then put it all back into the envelope.

The gun had a metallic oil smell and hadn't been fired. It felt strangely familiar, as if his skin recognized it: She had hit him with it. He could almost feel the sharp sting of the metal striking him. With that, she had blanked out the rest of his day better than a tall bottle of bourbon. He thought carefully about what it could mean, that she bopped him. He'd had enough strange incidents with women during those hectic, near-forgotten one-nighters. He knew it was better sometimes not to overreact.

He thought about calling the police, like anyone would. Most people in distress will think of calling the cops if there's a spot of trouble. But Alex was a Puerto Rican who lived in the South Bronx, and that meant that any time he was in trouble he had to hesitate before calling the men in blue. It's just something to do with the way things go wrong between cops and Puerto Ricans. Something in the tone, the approach, the lack of communication skills on the cop part, and once they are in your house—BESIDES if a spick from the South Bronx called the police and said HELP! THERE'S A WHITE BLOND WOMAN IN MY BED, a battalion of cop cars would arrive within moments, sirens shrieking tires screaming. The people Alex knew always tended to be more DIY about such matters. It was usually better not to involve the cops.

He was still thinking about this when that blinding flash—the snap of a twig—the falling down fast slow, bathroom floor speeding up to face. Trying to turn to rise through churn to see through fiery snakes and ladders, a veritable falling star

she was holding the toy bat saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry and as he faded she was moving over him, pulling pulling

17.

because it was a soul-weary smile, a sense of shrug. No explanation necessary. She hit the
M
button. Her eyes went hopeless. A tiredness, an anger, some little girl some little boy a little lost when I looked in there

because she asked the question

because she slipped into that elevator fighting. Same David voice same David tone and she was more than herself because she was fighting for him, almost a cause a flag a sense that now (finally) she was on the right path

because she looked at me with eyes that knew me, and from the first time to the last time there was no sense of needing words. She wanted to tell me. “There's no time.” She knew my crippled, fallen state. Or she would not have said a word. No reason for her to tell me

because she worked for the killer, if that is what he is. She worked for him up until when, what moment, when did she turn? Myers clearly didn't want to talk about her and didn't stay to chat, but there was burn on his face, the echoes of her slap

because Roman met her in the park with David, the three of them slurping on
coquitos
. Roman likes to do his crimes in private and here was David, bringing an audience. She sat like she was memorizing them, playing the clingy girlfriend, somewhat hand in hand. Roman insists. He didn't trust her then and he doesn't trust her now.

“She could've lied,” he said. “First got in with David real tight. Got inside him, got inside the scam, got this Myers to bump off Spook, and then David.”

“But how did she get Myers to make the phone call?”

We were playing ASK EVERY QUESTION THAT COMES TO MIND no matter where it leads, what conspiracy theory, what magic bullet. There was that feeling of running down a long hallway.

“It was part of the deal. She's there when they come to the apartment. She hands it over, get it?” Roman lit a cigarette with a flash. “But instead, she runs off. David gets plugged. She gets the ten million.”

Now rain now sun. Sky goes dark, then bright. A pair of cell phones clamoring for attention. Rain, sun. The witch was getting married. The 4x4 following us was a dark cloud in the rearview mirror.

“But if that's true, why would she bring you the tape?”

My question sucked out the air. I had Roman in my car, bugged or not. Better for Myers to hear. What would he make of it, what would he think? Lies are funny things, the way they build their own traps. One must keep meticulous records.

Roman seemed to think long and hard. I felt like he was trying to build a case.

“She came to me,” he said, “because she needs you to take Myers out.”

Myers. Guilty not guilty, true hero or rogue. The insect presence in my ear. Lieutenant Jack noticed he was missing lately, wondered if maybe the guy got what he wanted and hiked his ass back to D.C. I knew better. He was a living presence, everywhere at once. I took it for granted he could hear me, see me, follow me on an illuminated map. I wasn't going to lose him. He wasn't going to lose me. There would soon be Anderson's rock-hard face, maybe the personification of what was left of my conscience. He could've said, “Why didn't you come to me?” He wouldn't bother. He already knew why. That elevator-drop sensation that stone-rock Roman face, clearly having second thoughts about everything, but it was probably just resentment.

I was tired of pretending there were choices anymore. I was shooting down a path. I was growing a new face. No time for stray thoughts. No raindrop-on-windowpane moments, no need to stay sane to join the crusade or be part of the bunch. This was independence day this was the end of the collective security of the group.

The theater was just off Van Cortlandt. It still had an old marquee. Its battered face must have been the thing of postcards once. Regal, archaic, The Majestic was an old Bronx movie theater that closed down in the early '80s. It stood alone on a block flanked by empty lots and a couple of tenements whose businesses on the ground floor were all shuttered. There were no movies playing on its big screen, the rows still standing but bereft of seats. It was an empty space, dusty and rotted. The front was cinder-blocked up, but that wasn't the way in. A tenement next door had a small business, a funeral parlor. It shared a basement entrance. That was how Roman brought me there.

Roman ran this little operation from the top floor. Fenced goods, stolen property, a whole warehouse. Boxes, crates, car parts. One area was full of CD burners stacked in tens, jewel cases by the crate, and a complete rig for running off cheap pirate discs. There was pop and hip-hop and scores of
bachata
compilations that his scurrying merchants sold at five bucks a pop from every sidewalk in town. In the office, he had laminating machines, printers, two color copiers, and an entire offset printing setup. Another room: boxes of passport stamps, blank state IDs, DMV stickers, and even a box of blank credit cards. These were the money schemes Roman was into now as he slowly phased himself out of the drug trade. He was “moving on,” away from instability and danger to lucrative and less aggressive forms of quick cash. Pirate CDs, forging, stolen goods. Car parts! There were also weapons, another department he was phasing out. When the police raid this place, they will see the mixed assortment of automatic weapons, pistols, and those three grenade launchers as an arsenal for an army planning an uprising. Roman was Puerto Rican. There was no uprising. It was about making money.

The funeral parlor was a front. It was run by three old guys who probably never buried anyone in their lives. The entrance was solemn and tasteful, but once past that coffin showroom it was all warehouse. In the basement, walking past thick pipes and a boiler, what stuck in my mind was the elevator. It was steel, no walls, just a solid platform big enough to fit Roman's 4x4. On coming in, we actually had to walk through a part of the elevator shaft. Down there, a corridor, a rusted yellow pipe. It jutted out of brick and disappeared into the floor. I lost Roman a moment, then noticed he was a floor above me, fiddling with a little yellow box on the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“The elevator's broken,” he said. He fiddled in the box some more. There was a loud clatter boom and the platform far above my head started moving. It was a few floors up. It was coming down right at me. There was no clearance in the shaft except for that small corridor. I made for it, grateful that the big steel door was open. I barely cleared it before the platform landed. I mounted it, and rode back up to Roman.

“Very funny.”

“Accidents can happen,” he said, “even to cops.”

We rode the platform up two more floors, to the very top. A dingy skylight. A long corridor. The floor was bare planks of wood, like on a construction site. Inside a cage, piles of computer equipment. He unlocked the door and started rooting around in some boxes.

“Spook loved intricate systems, these sort of Rube Goldberg setups with people instead of cogs, each one filling a role that makes the machine work. But nobody was really aware of anything outside of their small, limited role.”

Roman seemed to be reminiscing as he thumbed through blank ID cards in one box, photostats of card faces in another.

“Safe-deposit boxes were his favorite. He loved to pull tricks with them, you know. A key that leads to a box that leads to another box with another key that leads to a box with a code word, an address, or phone number. He had scores of these little deals set up. Paid people just to hold a package, to hold it until one day someone comes to the door and says,
Afghanistan banana stand
.”

“Plus, he's got a million cousins.” I thought I wasn't smoking, but the minute Roman lit up, it was fire time.

“He must have worked this the same way. I didn't add it together before, but when David came to me for those ID cards, I wasn't thinking it had anything to do with the swipe. I still fell for that clean routine.”

Now he was looking through a box of plates, the masters of cards he had already made. Most pro forgers ditch this stuff, but pride in good work sometimes turns them into collectors. And sometimes Roman does refills.

I was a cop, madness, a wonderland bust, a sea of officers flooding in behind me. Once it would have been a big moment. Now it was ridiculous paltry, proceeds going to charity. I could leave it all to Lieutenant Jack. He deserved the collar for busting an operation we never bothered to fuck with.

“You think he set this shit up the same way?”

“Sure.”

“So she has a key?”

“A key. Or something leading to a key. I'm pretty sure of it. And she'll probably use one of these cards to do it. A fake account, a letter of authorization …”

He handed me a couple of plates. I felt a weird shudder, involuntary. A ghost tickling my elbow with a feather: The name on the card was
David Romero
.

Roman exhaled, as if a weight had been lifted. What else? Regret, as if deep down he felt he were helping the wrong side. I didn't know about sides. I had reached the fork in the road, the big choice. Was that Myers on my cell phone again? I was not building a file this time. I was not walking it over to Internal Affairs this time. I saw nothing but closed faces, a huge system of tacit agreements and secret handshakes. I felt alone again, much more than before. If I tried to trust a cop, trust the turns and twists of the system, where would that get me? I was implicated. I needed to sit with Myers and find out how much. Was this what he planned? Was this his plan, her plan all along? Roman had a point: How could I be sure she wasn't working for him still? I needed to look in her eyes again, to weigh the feeling, see if I had read her right the first time. Maybe her rebellion was my rebellion … I had to start thinking like her. “This isn't the time to be a cop.” I could see it clearly now, that gold shield on the captain's desk. Maybe Myers wanted me to think if I handed her over to him, the slate would be wiped clean. “It's between us.” I have suddenly ended up working for him. I am the new recruit, the next member of the team. What could Myers possibly do for me, reinstate me as a cop? Get my respect back? Stop the death threats, the stares, the cold shoulders? What could she do? Pay me. Carry the plan through to the finish. David and Spook talked about moving the money out of the country, where the trail would get blurry and fade amongst the many varied jurisdictions. “I once dreamed of having my own island,” I'd said. The Great Escape, Steve McQueen vaulting over barbed wire on a motorcycle. “Well, maybe not your own island,” David had replied, “but …” Sun. Sand. Beach. Spanish. My wife and I have already booked a flight for our vacation. A nice hotel, Valldemossa, “The Hotel Vistamar.” An appointment in a bank in Palma de Mallorca to confirm an account, a down payment on a house in Port de Soller … ridiculous …

“You can make up your own mind then,” David added, a nice stiff payment just for looking the other way, stalling for obstruction. This was something else. Right way, wrong way. A Hitchcock movie where the good guys kill the wrong guy. There was only one way to make it work. I had passed the fork in the road. (I was fooling myself.)

Roman's stare was empty, drained from thinking. He must have been traveling those same roads.

“You can't do it, Sanchez … you can't save yourself. And I can't save the organization.” His last puff on that nib of cigarette. “You still want to find her?”

“That's right,” I said, handing him the plates back. “How long would it take you to run off a couple of cards for me?” Roman sighed, took the plates. We went back downstairs on the elevator, to the office.

The talk came in whispers. Walking streets hunched over from breezes shaking trees. Traffic backed up. A black 4x4 circled the block. Roman was running from
cueva
to
cueva
, collecting all his nuts. He checked the windows he checked the doors. Last thing he wanted was for his boys to get a whiff of some ten million. The thought nagged at him that should some money come to him after, he would have to kiss this world goodbye. It was all toast, all glimmery ash. Something going down, the natives can smell it. Bosses heading underground, visibles scurrying into holes. Spook's organization was falling apart. Every branch could smell a raid, a police swoop, a big bash. Someone said it was the cops who knocked off Spook, some old score that had to be settled. When the head of an organization is killed, it ripples the whole populace around and within. All sends signals all makes a statement. Even if the cops put forty-one bullets in a guy by mistake, it's the signal, the statement: forty-one bullets.

Roman couldn't see any way any how that he would be attached to the money. He couldn't see any way any how that there would be a payday, a reason to risk his neck, maybe even less now that Spook was dead. He had said no then. He was still trying to say no. When I told him my plan, he was furious. There was no way he was going to set himself up like that.

“The cops are coming anyway,” I said, “and besides, it's not you I'm setting up. You're just the bait.”

“I'm telling you, man, I don't like it.” We were both outside the theater, watching the traffic flow through calm purple dusk. I felt stupid, out of my league, searching for a way to convince him it was in his interest to throw in with me and not just vanish. He could do that. I could blather about accounts, Mallorca, and money to come, but I already knew that was no way to get him. It was really not the reason. In fact, he had very little reason to throw in with a crooked cop who thought he would try to make good.

“Forget it,” I said, brushing him off. I was walking to my car. “Go ahead. Disappear.”

“Hey, wait a minute.”

“No. Look, the more I think about it, the more I see this is just my personal business. I got myself into it. What I'll have to do now is just about me. Not you. You're right. You weren't in this. So go, disappear. I'll try to keep them far from your ass.”