Speak of the Devil (23 page)

I thanked her for her time and gave her my card. “If you hear from her.”

She slipped the card into her apron pocket. “I am not holding my breath.”

From the hallway, I tried the number. I was spilled into a voice mailbox. The recorded voice was yelling to be heard above a background din. “
This is Donna! Not here. Leave a message and I’ll call you
!”

I was tempted to leave her a message to call her mother. But I restrained myself.

THE MOVING COMPANY WHERE DIAZ HAD WORKED OFF-AND-ON WAS called U-Move. It was located in a cinder-block building off Fourth Street. A light-skinned black man shaped like a cheeseburger heard me out. His name was Rodney. He sat at a gray metal desk in a small cement room with a buzzing fluorescent light hanging overhead. A half-naked woman in gold boots glowered angrily from the calendar on the wall behind Rodney’s desk.

Rodney was working on a medium-sized pizza and a bucket of Pepsi. He offered me a slice of the pizza and seemed relieved when I turned it down. Rodney’s job seemed to be to answer the phone and put the caller immediately on hold. He did it as easy as breathing.

I didn’t exactly ask, but he explained how U-Move operated.

“We hire out a crew chief and a driver, that’s all. Crew of two. We figure out from talking to the customers how much stuff we’re gonna be moving. If it’s a big job, gonna take more than two, we pick up extra manpower. We call them cash crew.” Rodney plugged the hole in his face with a large bite of pizza, chased by a hefty splash of Pepsi. He continued, chewing as he talked. “Crew chief and driver are on the payroll. The extra manpower gets theirs in cash. Off the books. Less paperwork.”

This last statement was borne out by Rodney’s office. The only paper I spotted, other than the napkins on his desk, were the calendar pages below the half-naked woman.

Rodney folded a slice of pizza in on itself, lengthwise. I feared he would inhale the whole thing at once, but he didn’t. He chomped down on it.

I asked him about Roberto Diaz. Rodney remembered him.

“Sure, we used him sometimes. What a jerk, huh? Shooting up the parade like that? I had no idea the guy was like that. We’ve been sweating it they don’t find out and put the company’s name in the paper. That wouldn’t be so cool with the customers.”

“Did he work here on a regular basis?”

The fat man shook his head. “He was never on payroll. He was strictly cash crew.”

“How does that work? The cash crew. You just keep a list of available names?”

“Not really. We’ve got some, but that’s mostly up to the crew chief to hire out. They got friends or people they know. We tell them not to hire garbage, but a good crew chief isn’t going to hire garbage anyway. He’s the one who’s got to work with the guy.”

“You didn’t consider Diaz garbage?”

Rodney licked his index finger. It looked like he was licking a small sausage. “Nah. I mean, I didn’t really know the guy. Saw him a couple times. He came in here once and put his feet up on my desk. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t pull a gun when I told him to take them off. But he seemed okay. Nobody called in any complaints about him. Past that, I don’t care.”

“Let me tell you who I’m actually looking for,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of Diaz’s. A guy named Angel. You wouldn’t know anything about him?”

Rodney answered immediately. “Shit, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”

My heart hiccupped. “Is that right? You know Angel?”

Rodney nodded. “Bastard robbed one of our customers, better believe I know him. Son of a bitch walked off with a box of jewelry and a box of booze. The woman we were moving caught him red-handed. He was stashing them away in his car. All sorts of hell, believe me. This woman busted Angel, and he called her a cunt to her face. Sweet, huh? Her kid was right there. We had to do the whole damn move for free to keep from being taken to court.”

I asked, “How long ago was this?”

Rodney chased some pizza dust off his face. “I don’t know. Two years? It’s been a while. Maybe longer. Three years.”

“I’m guessing Angel was cash crew?”

“Totally. Guy like that?”

“You wouldn’t have an address for him, would you?” I asked.

Rodney shook his head. “I told you. No paperwork.”

“How about a last name?”

“Angel? Sure. Ramos. Angel Ramos. What’s up? Is he in some kind of trouble? He call someone else a cunt?”

“He stole something.”

“Yeah? What’d he steal?”

“A person.”

“Shit. How do you steal a person?”

“Usually with violence.”

The phone rang. Rodney strangled a napkin between his hands and picked up the phone. “U-Move. Hold on.” He said to me, “So you’re trying to find Ramos?”

“That’s right.”

“Hold on.” He jerked open a side drawer on his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. Finally, some paperwork. “Eight oh seven President. That’s in the Slope.”

“What about it?”

“We’re moving a family out of there today. Started at ten.” He checked his watch. “They should still be loading.”

“What’s that got to do with Angel Ramos?”

Rodney was finished with his pizza. He pulled a pack of Rolos from his shirt pocket and began picking expertly at the foil. “Angel’s brother is a crew chief. That’s how we got Angel in the first place. He’s running the job in Park Slope.”

My heart did another one of those hiccups. “Angel’s brother?”

“Yeah. Victor. He’s a good dude. Nothing like his brother, except . . .” Rodney loosened the top Rolo from the pack and popped it into his mouth. “They’re twins. Creepy as hell, man. They look completely alike.”

VICTOR RAMOS HAD AN ANGRY RESTING FACE. SMOOTH. NO CREASES, with eyes that were like a simmering python’s. Pale, like Gabriella Montero had said. A pale swamp green. He was seated on the front steps of 807 President, staring into space, when I came up the walk. Despite the cool temperature, he was dressed in a muscle T-shirt. A glaze of perspiration covered his skin. He wore a pair of canvas work gloves and looked like he probably stood six-one or so. His chest was broad, his biceps the size of small pigs.

As it turned out, the angry resting face was simply genetics. When I gave him my name and told him that Rodney at U-Move had said I would find him here, he cracked an easy smile. “Rodney. You bribe him with food?”

“He seemed to have that area covered,” I said. I pulled out one of my business cards and handed it to him. The smile dropped away.

“You’re looking for Angel.”

“How do you know that?

“Because
I
haven’t done anything wrong. What is it this time?”

“When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked.

The reptilian eyes rested on me a moment. “Last time was right before the last time he went to jail. Next time could be never, as far as I’m concerned.”

“When did he go to jail?”

“This last time? About a year ago. Before that, a couple of years.”

“Your brother go to jail a lot?”

“My brother’s a fuckup. Yeah, he’s got the prison thing down. He goes in for a little vacation, he gets to hook up with a whole new set of losers, then they let him out too early. Some system, huh?”

“What kind of things does he go in for?”

Ramos ran a tongue over his front teeth. “Pimping’s a big thing. Angel don’t treat women good, I can tell you that. But they come in useful for him. He goes in for all sorts of stupid shit. He’s been hit for robbery, car theft, aggravated assault. Kid stuff for Angel. They’ve never nailed him on anything really big.”

“But he’s done big?”

“What am I going to tell you? You’re the investigator. I guess you’re investigating.”

The door to the brownstone opened, and two men appeared, carrying a couch wrapped in a quilted moving blanket. Ramos sprang to his feet.

“Excuse me.” He placed a hand on my chest and moved me aside as if I were a leaf. The two movers came down the stairs and carried the couch up a metal ramp into the moving van. “I can’t talk,” Ramos said. “That was my break. It’s over.”

“I need to find Angel.”

“Last time I saw him, I tried to take his head off. Son of a bitch was trying to recruit my son for his street crap. His own damn nephew. Boy wasn’t even ten years old.”

“What do you mean, ‘street crap’?”

“What do you think I mean? Drugs. He tried to get Ricky to be one of his delivery boys. It’s a good thing I don’t have a daughter or he’d a been trying to draw her in, too. He strings those girls of his out on his dope, then pimps ’em out so they can pay up. Last I heard, he was running a whole racket. Angel’s nasty, man. What can I say?” He smiled again. “We both got the good looks, but I got the brains. Or maybe I married brains. My wife comes from just over there, Boerum Hill. That’s where we’re raising our family. We’ve got another kid on the way. I never told my wife about Angel trying to hook Ricky into his scene. That’s me and my boy’s secret. We talked it out.”

The two movers emerged from the truck. The shorter one said to Ramos, “Fucking chest of drawers up there’s made of lead.”

“Save it,” Ramos replied.

“Like to fucking chop it into pieces, what I’d like to do.”

The two went back into the building. Ramos turned to me. “I can’t help you. I mean it. I swore off Angel a couple of years ago. Far as I’m concerned, he’s a dead man. I got my family. I got this job, which he almost lost for me once.”

“How about a name?” I said. “Someone he’s tight with. Your brother must have a main man.”

Ramos grinned. “Main man. Listen to you. Only main man Angel ever had took a cop’s bullet in the head when we was all ten. Angel saw it happen. He was right there. Been mister bad boy ever since. No redemption, no return, you hear what I’m saying?”

I heard what he was saying. I heard it clearly. Ramos picked up a weight lifter’s belt from the steps and strapped it around his waist.

“What can you tell me about Angel and a convent up in Riverdale?” I asked. “The Holy Order of the Sisters of Good Shepherd.”

“Convent? I don’t know, man. You mean like nuns?”

“Exactly.”

“Hey, if any of them are young and pretty, that’s about all I can think. Angel’s got no time for religion.”

“You just used the word ‘redemption.’ ”

“Yeah, well, that’s me, not Angel. Our mother took us to church when we were kids. Tried to, anyway. Angel’d take a handful from the collection plate when it came around. That’s about how religious he gets. That and his name. Our parents sure wasted a good name on that one. They thought ‘Victor’ and ‘Angel’ would get us both off in the right direction. Our mother died when Angel was doing one of his stretches. The old man refused to let them bring him out for the funeral. He won’t even talk about him anymore.”

“This friend of Angel’s who was killed by a cop. What was his name?”

“Willy. Willy Padilla. They were tight, man. Blood brothers. Willy was a good kid, too. One of those kids who could always crack you up. Always goofing. That little kid could’ve gotten away with anything. Angel and I had an older sister used to say that Willy Padilla was going to grow up and really make the girls cry.” He shook his head. “It was a really fucked-up thing.”

“You have a sister?”

“You want to talk to my sister?”

“You tell me. Does she keep in contact with Angel?”

“Only if he can talk to the dead. You want to see my sister, you can go over to Green-Wood Cemetery. She married a guy who killed her about five months later. It’s a hell of a family.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ramos looked past me into the middle distance. “Yeah, well . . . Shit happens, I guess.”

“What happened to your sister’s husband?” I asked. “Did he pay for it?”

Ramos returned his gaze to me. The smile on his lips was barely discernible and not particularly pleasant. “Oh, he paid.
Mi hermano
collected that debt.”

“Angel?”

“Angel can be very talented with a knife.”

“I see.”

Ramos laughed. “Yeah.
You
see. My ex-brother-in-law, man? After Angel’s little talk with him, he’s not seeing so good anymore.”

He waited for my reaction. I had one, but I didn’t show it to him. “One more thing,” I said. “Do you have any idea where your brother might be hanging out these days? Where was he living before he went to jail?”

“That’s easy. Fort Pete. That’s still Angel’s turf. Is that what you’re asking? You want to find him, here’s what you do. A block off Culver, that’s Murray Avenue. Take it north as far as the Eubie Blake Apartments. It crosses Viceroy. Then south as far as the big brick building where they clean linens. You know, like for restaurants. You can’t miss it. Big brick place, takes up about the whole block. That’s on Lee Street. That’s the strip. You run that strip, including about four blocks over to Hanover Boulevard. And check out a church there called Sweet Music Methodist. It’s just a shell. No church left, just rats and drug dealers. You work those two strips, and you check out that church, and if you can do that and stay alive, you might find someone who knows where Angel’s at. I hope you got some cash. No one in that strip is going to give him up for free. You know what they say—gotta pay to play.”

I pulled out my notebook and jotted down the information. I also wrote down the name of Angel’s childhood friend. “One more thing,” I said.

Ramos chuckled. “I thought the last thing was one more thing.”

“Did you ever know Angel to fool around with explosives?”

“You mean like bombs?”

“That’s right.”

“Shit, yeah. Angel was the king of Molotov cocktails when we were growing up. He’d go down to the waterfront over at Vinegar Hill and smash them against the rocks. They float. I mean, the flames’ll float on the water. Angel loved that. He’d set off two at once and watch them float off down the river.”

“What about something stronger?”

Ramos shrugged. “The dude’s been in three different prisons. You can learn a lot in prison. Knowing Angel? Wouldn’t surprise me.”

I thanked him. He shook his head.

“If you run into Angel, man, you’re not going to be thanking me for nothing.”