by Blake Banner
“I believe you, stay on task.”
“I am. So she fusses over them, gives them coffee, et cetera. Just like she told it. Cut. Meanwhile, down at the ranch, two weeks earlier, Moses, somehow, in some way we do not yet know, has upset Mr. X.” She leaned forward, spread her hands like she was doing a magic trick. “We don’t know yet who Mr. X is.”
“That’s why you called him Mr. X.”
“Right. But he is big, he is bad, and he is dangerous to know. Moses knows him and somehow he has fallen foul of him. He turns up two weeks ago to settle whatever score it is they have. Moses throws him down the stairs. He shoots through the door, hits Moses in the leg. Moses leaves town. Mr. X doesn’t know that. And what happens that night is pure, simple, bad luck. The boys turn up. She makes them coffee. They persuade her to let them use the car. Meanwhile, Mr. X turns up outside. He arrives maybe seconds before they come back from the store. He is planning to break in and kill Moses, but to his surprise he sees the Toyota arrive and park. As you demonstrated yourself that morning, the visibility was shit. He can’t see through the windshield, but he has no reason to believe that there is anybody else but Moses and Angela in the car. He has no beef with Angela. So he gets out of his vehicle, he walks over, empties his magazine through the window. Exactly as you said, he does not go and finish Angela because he does not care about her. As far as he is concerned, he has killed Moses. He goes back to his car and leaves.”
“So, how…”
She raised a hand. “Wait! I’m on a roll. He hears through the Bronx grapevine that the two people shot that morning on Bryant Avenue were two medical students, and not Moses and Angela. Maybe he hears also that Moses has vamoosed.”
“Vamoosed.”
“Yeah. So he goes back, mad, crazy, and assaults her, asking her where Moses is. She screams the house down. He runs. We arrive. QED. I rest my case.”
I took a deep breath, pulled off half my beer, and set the glass down carefully on the ring it had left on the table. Dehan flopped back in her chair and spread her hands.
“Come on, Stone, it covers everything!”
The pizzas arrived. Emilio wished us buon appetito and left us to it. I folded a slice of pizza, bit it, and chewed, thinking carefully. After a bit, I nodded.
“You’re right. It covers everything, it is simple and it is elegant.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You just know, you just know there is a ‘but’ coming.”
I smiled. “It is your own but, so to speak.”
“The sweet one you mentioned in the elevator?”
I smiled. “The very same.” I stuffed the crust in my mouth and spoke. “Whamph abou Wosawio?” I swallowed and drank beer while she watched me, then repeated, “What about Rosario?”
She looked out the window and shook her head. “Mother….”
I spread my hands. “There is something missing, Dehan. I think you’re right. I think you are right in practically everything you said. But there is one, small detail, one small thing where it is different. I don’t know what it is. Not yet. But….” I paused, stared out at the Jag, watched the traffic pass, the people on the sidewalk, tried to think what that ‘but’ led to.
“What? But what?”
I looked her in the eye. “Whoever killed Sebastian, also killed Rosario. And Mr. X did not kill Rosario.”
She stared at me a long time. “I am ninety-nine percent certain that Ed Irizarry killed Rosario.”
I thought about it, then shrugged and folded another piece of pizza. “Then, if you’re right, Ed Irizarry killed Sebastian.”
“The boy he thought was leading his own son astray.”
I bit, chewed, shrugged and nodded.
She went on, “The son of the woman he raped and murdered. The connection is there.”
I smiled. “Yeah, the connection is there. All that’s missing are the facts and the evidence. And, while we’re at it, a motive.”
We ate in silence for a while, thinking. Then Dehan’s phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket, stuck it to her ear and said, “Yumph?” She listened for a bit, then swallowed and said, “Wait!” She laid out a paper napkin and made hand gestures at me to give her my pen. I did and she made a note on the napkin. Then she said, “How do you spell that? A-K-A-C-H-U-K-W-U, Akachukwu. OK. Put out an APB on him, will you? Thanks.” She hung up, looked at me. “The bimmer, registered to one Akachukwu Oni, a Nigerian national living in New York with a rap sheet as long as…”
“An elephant’s trunk?”
“That is probably racist.”
“Probably. What kind of rap sheet?”
“Trafficking mainly, drugs, guns, prostitution, but also assault and assault with a deadly weapon. Many of the charges are from Nigeria, where it seems he was let off for no discernible reason. Here he’s been charged several times but always got off when witnesses failed to show, or changed their testimony before the trial.”
I nodded. “Good. We are getting somewhere. Let’s go talk to this Akachukwu.”
Dehan stuffed a piece of pizza in her mouth and said, “Apparently it means Hand of God.”
I drained my beer. “Do you know what Carmen means?”
She made a face and shook her head.
“It means ‘Vineyard of the Gods.’ It might also mean ‘Poem,’ and is the origin of the English word, charm.”
She raised her eyebrows, said, “Huh,” then frowned at me. “You know this why?”
I stood. “I looked it up. You got an address for the Hand of God?”
“Yeah. It’s an apartment over the Lotus Garden, a Chinese restaurant on the corner of Randall Avenue and Bryant. Two gets you twenty he isn’t there and never has been.”
“You’re probably right, but it’s a place to start. Let’s go.”
We stepped out into the street. I stopped, with my car keys in my hand, and looked up at the vast, blue sky. “There is,” I said, “No apparent connection between Akachukwu, and Ed Irizarry.” I looked at Dehan, who was leaning against my car, waiting. “And there should be, Little Grasshopper. There should be.”
We went to his apartment. The street door to the stairs was locked up and the windows showed no signs of life. We asked in the Chinese restaurant under the apartment and the owner told us nobody lived up there, she used it as a storeroom. I had been wrong. It wasn’t a place to start. It was a dead end, and all we could do was wait: wait for a patrol car to spot either the BMW or Akachukwu, wait for the lab to work through the forensic evidence, wait and hope that Luis would regain consciousness.
Not for the first time, Dehan spoke my thoughts as we climbed back into the Jag.
“Let’s get back to the station house, Stone. I want to review Rosario’s case file and see if I can find any link with this case.”
“There is something we are not seeing, Dehan. It’s there, right in front of our noses, but we are not seeing it.”
* * *
Back at the station, we didn’t get very far with Rosario’s case file. We had just pulled it and started reading when the desk sergeant buzzed me.
“Yeah, Maria, what’s up?”
“You ain’t going to believe it, Detective, but Akachukwu Oni is here. He says he thinks you might be looking for him.”
“OK, don’t let him leave.” I hung up and stood. “Akachukwu. He’s here.”
Dehan’s eyebrows rose up to her hairline. “What?”
“Let’s go get him!”
We pushed out to the front desk. The sergeant indicated Akachukwu with her head, but she needn’t have bothered. He was unmistakable. He was leaning against the wall, watching us with dead eyes. He was six-six if he was an inch, and built like a barn. But there was no fat on him. It was all solid muscle. I am not easily scared, but this man was terrifying. I tried not to let him see I thought so, stepped over, and said, “Are you Akachukwu Oni?”
He didn’t move, just watched me with his expressionless eyes. His voice was exceptionally deep. He said, “Yes.”
“Akachukwu Oni, I am placing you under arrest for aggravated assault on Angela Rojas and the attempted murder of Detective Carmen Dehan. You don’t have to say anything, but whatever you do say will be taken down in evidence and used against you in a court of law.”
He placed his hands behind his back and as I cuffed him, he said, “I am here to cooperate.”
We frisked him. He was unarmed and we took him up the stairs to interrogation room one. There we sat him down on a chair and manacled him to the table. He dwarfed everything around him, made the furniture look like nursery toys. We sat opposite and I studied his face for a moment, trying to fit this new piece into an already incomprehensible puzzle.
I said, “You are entitled to have an attorney present…”
“I know my rights, Detective. I am not ignorant. I have already told you I want to cooperate. I do not need a lawyer.”
“OK. What do you want to find Moses Johnson for?”
He blinked. It was the slow blink of a giant iguana. “I am not looking for Moses Johnson.”
I frowned. “That’s not what Angela Rojas says. She says that when you beat her up, you asked where Moses was. What do you want with Moses, Akachukwu?”
“She is mistaken. I did not attack her, and I did not ask her about Moses.”
Dehan leaned her elbows on the table. She was frowning. She looked like she was having trouble believing what was happening. I knew how she felt. It was hard to escape the feeling we were being played somehow.
“Are you denying that you were at Angela’s house? Because we saw you, and you shot at us.”
He stared at her a long moment before answering. He managed to make expressionless look insolent as his eyes traveled over her face and her body.
“No. I was there. I went to visit and see if she was OK. Neighbors must look out for each other. She did not open the door, so I left.”
“You shot at us, Akachukwu!”
He gave a small shrug. “I have enemies. You came running at me, with your guns. I shot in self defense. I did not know you were police. If I had known you were police, I would have stopped.” He spread his hands. “You see, I am here. When I heard you were looking for me, I came of my own free will. I have nothing to hide.”
“Why were you wearing a ski mask?”
“I was not.” He smiled. It was not a nice thing to see. “You mistake my black face for a ski mask.”
I gave a small laugh and smiled on the wrong side of my face, where it looks sarcastic instead of ironic. “Akachukwu, you left traces of DNA at the scene. It’s being analyzed as we speak. It would go a lot easier for you if you confess.”
He gave me that direct, lifeless stare and I knew I was looking at a killer, a man who had no empathy and no compassion at all. “I cannot confess,” he said, “I have nothing to confess. You will not find my DNA at the scene of your crime, because I was not there.”
I was momentarily disarmed. I didn’t know how to tackle this guy. He was as cool as four rocks in a dry martini. With an olive. I shook my head at him and narrowed my eyes.
“You cannot be serious. There is no way you can walk away from this. You are going down for the attempted murder of a cop, Akachukwu. You need to cooperate.”
“You are mistaken, Detective. There will be no trial, because you have no evidence. You have no case against me. I will walk free.”
FIFTEEN
I was surprised to see Dehan smiling.
“OK, we’ll see how that plays out. Let’s talk about something else.”
He regarded her with the same dead expression he’d given me, and spoke in his slow, deep, deliberate voice. “What do you want to talk about? I want to cooperate.”
“Why did you kill Sebastian Acosta?”
“I don’t know who Sebastian Acosta is. I don’t know if I killed him or not. If I did, I do not know why, because I do not know who he is.”
Dehan now combined her smile with a frown. “You sweet on Angela? Is that it? You like Angela and you want her for yourself? That’s why you’ve been giving Moses a hard time? Maybe…” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Maybe you thought that Sebastian was getting it on with Angela while Moses was away.”
“I don’t know who Sebastian Acosta is.”
“He’s the guy you shot five times in Angela’s car the night before last. Shortly before three in the morning, you walked up to the car outside her house and you shot him through the window, twice in the head, three times in the chest.”
He took a moment to study her face. His expression would have been one of curiosity if he hadn’t looked so detached. Eventually, he said, “At three o’clock in the morning, the night before last, I was in bed, at my house.”
I said, “In the apartment over the Lotus Garden, on Randall Avenue and Bryant?”
“I don’t live there. I have a house on Crotona Park. That is where I live.”
“Why is your car registered there?”
“I have not got around to changing it.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow at him. “Is there anyone who can confirm you were at home in bed at that time?”
His eyes were hooded, half closed. His smile was one of the most unpleasant things I had ever seen, and he held it on her for a long time. “Of course,” he said. “Three of my girlfriends can confirm that they were with me.”
“What are their names?”
His eyes glazed, like she’d made an unreasonable request. “I cannot remember every name… July, Zoe…” He did what should have been a leer, but lacked the necessary humanity. “Maybe Carmen?” He shrugged. “They are at my house now. You can go there and get them to make a statement.”
I looked at her and nodded. “Send a car over. Get them to take detailed statements, twelve hours between seven PM and seven AM.”
She nodded and left the room. The door closed and we were left in silence. He watched me with a complete absence of any kind of emotion or expression. I decided on a different tack.
“You have any family in New York, Akachukwu?”
“I have no family. They are all dead.”
“Friends…?”
“I am not a refugee, Detective. I am not looking for a green card. I am a business man. I live here because it is good for my business. I bring a lot of money into the U.S., and I pay my taxes.”
“What kind of business?”
He leaned forward, focused hard on my face, and there was death and pleasure in his eyes. “I buy and I sell, Detective Stone. That is what all business is. Buy and sell.”
“What do you buy and sell?”
“Whatever will give me a profit.” He sat back, and now his smile became a huge grin. “If it is legal.”
“You have a long record of arrests, Akachukwu.”
“But no convictions. A businessman like me, in Africa, has many opportunities to make a lot of money. But he must tread a very fine line between what is legal and what is not legal. Tell me something, Detective Stone. Why do you call me Akachukwu?”
I frowned. “Because that’s your name.”
His face went dead again, but there was an indefinable danger in his expression, and I found myself glancing at his cuffs to make sure they were still on. “My name,” he said, “to you, is Mr. Oni. I do not call you John and Carmen, so why do you call me Akachukwu? For the same reason you assume I am a refugee, an immigrant looking for one of your green cards. But I am a very rich, successful man, Detective Stone, and I pay my taxes like I told you, so you should show me some respect and call me Mr. Oni.”
“Do you trade in drugs and weapons, Mr. Oni?”
“Only if it is legal.”
“Were you ever in the army… Mr. Oni?”
“I was in the Nigerian army, and after that I was a mercenary for six years. I made a lot of money, killing people legally, Detective. And then I started my business, buying and selling all kinds of marketable goods, all over the world,
as long as they were legal.”
“Do you sell services as well?”
He shook his head slowly. “No. No services.”
“Mr. Oni, somebody fitting your description was seen by a witness approaching Angela’s car the night before last, at shortly before three, and opening fire into that car, killing Sebastian Acosta.”
“A lot of black men are big, tall, and strongly built. Tell me something, Detective, this man who was seen, was he wearing a ski mask?” I didn’t answer. He smiled again. “If he was, that would make him very hard to identify, and you saying he fit my description, just makes you sound racist.”
“How did you know he was wearing a ski mask?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t. But I have seen my fair share of violence in life, Detective. The killing you described sounds like a professional hit to me, and most people doing a professional hit in a populated area, even late at night, will wear a ski mask. Wouldn’t you agree? So, it was a fair guess.”
I had a couple of uniforms take him down to the cells and went to look for Dehan. I found her halfway up the stairs, leaning against the wall and talking on the phone. She gestured me to keep going and fell into step beside me. “…and this was the night before last? At what time…?” She glanced at me. “Around two AM. Thank you, ma’am. If you don’t mind, we’ll send somebody over to take a statement… Thank you.”
We’d arrived at our desks. She sat, screwed up her face, and rubbed it furiously with her hands. I waited till she’d opened her eyes again and said, “What?”
“That was Lynda Graham’s next door neighbor.”
I made a face of curiosity and surprise and dropped into my chair. “Really?”
“Night before last, she complained to Lynda about the party going on till the early hours. Lynda told her to take a hike. She says she called the cops and a car came around. By that time the boys had gone, but she said there was another man who turned up, there was a violent row, she’s pretty sure the guy was beating up on Lynda, though she can’t be certain. When the cops arrived, Lynda told them there was no problem and they would keep it down. Shortly after that, the guy left in a dark sedan.”