Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

  “That’s Congresswoman Richardson’s district, isn’t it?”

  “What’s more, she’s head of the board of New Bedford Empowerment Corporation, the nonprofit corporation that will handpick the developer.”

  “Where did he get the kind of money to buy those warehouses?”

  “I guess his other businesses are doing well.”

  “That’s a little too well. Is he married?”

  “The man’s a loner. Lives in Westchester. Just bought a home in Harlem. No wife. No children. His father came from Ghana. He dropped out of school at fifteen, later got a G.E.D. before joining the Army. He rose to the highest NCO before getting discharged for fighting. He enrolled in NYU and finished a degree in computer technology in three and a half years with a three point seven five GPA.”

  “So he’s also some kind of computer geek?”

  “He’s a bright man.”

  “When was he in the Army?”

  “Eighty to eighty-six.”

  “What company?”

  “Bravo Company. Fifth Platoon.”

  “That’s the same company Stubby Clapp was in.”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody I know.”

  “Blades, when are you going to tell me what’s really going on? You promised me a story. I don’t want to have to take it from your hospital bed again, you know.”

  “Don’t worry, Semin. You’ll get your story. And I don’t intend to be in the hospital for anything other than to give blood.”

  She laughed. “Take care of yourself, Blades.”

  “Keep your cell phone on. You never know when I might be calling.”

  She laughed again. “Bye, sweets.”

  After I hung up I went to the fridge, searching for juice. The only thing I hadn’t finished was the bottled water. I opened one just as room service arrived.

  As I ate, I mused on the information Semin had given me. Gabriel Aquia was a man of many surprises. And I’d allowed his GQ mannerisms to fool me, thinking he was just style and bullshit. He was obviously an ambitious man, someone to be reckoned with.

  AFTER MY MEAL, I called my mother again to see if she’d heard from Jason. There was nothing new on that front. She told me Melanie had called saying she was concerned and would be flying back from California. That surprised me. And I was touched, but I told Mom to call Melanie back and tell her not to come. That everything would be okay. Then I hollered at Milo. He was in surprisingly good spirits. Frankly, I was disappointed. I thought he would’ve been more concerned about me. The police had been to the store a number of times, but business was going on despite the intrusions.

  The next two hours were spent shopping in the Fulton Mall, where I also got some cash from a machine. I went back to the hotel, got rid of the clothes I’d been wearing for the past twenty-four hours, and dressed in baggy black jeans and a loose-fitting blue polo shirt picked up at Macy’s.

  It was now nine o’clock. Anxious for any lead on Troy Pagano, I tried to get in touch with the guys from our old Undercover outfit. I hadn’t kept up with either Nelson Rodriquez or Evan Miguel. Using the little acting skill I’d picked up standing in for actors in the James Baldwin Playwriting Workshop run by Noah Plantier, I called the 103rd Precinct, where Nelson Rodriquez had been transferred after my shooting, pretending to be an old high school friend. Apparently Nelson Rodriquez had left the department. I called information and got four listings in Manhattan for Nelson Rodriquez. The third one of those numbers was for a bodega in Washington Heights. A little girl answered the phone. Then someone took the phone from her and said hello. It was Nelson. After a lengthy preamble, he told me he got injured in a fall from the second-floor fire escape of an apartment building while chasing a drug dealer. He bought a bodega and now spent his days trying to prevent kids from stealing his candy. Evan Miguel had been killed in a boating accident in Puerto Rico. I asked him if he’d heard that Troy Pagano was out. Troy had called him once, he said, ironically to ask about me. He hadn’t left a number, which didn’t surprise me. But Nelson knew that his brother, Rudy Pagano, a detective in the 1st Precinct, hung out at the Blue Girl on North Moore Street.

  MINUTES LATER I was rumbling over the metal grating of the Brooklyn Bridge in the 4x4, stealing glances at the hypnotic Manhattan skyline. At the speed I was going, the lighted skyscrapers looked like exploding fireworks. Beneath me, traffic whirred in waves up the FDR.

  If Rudy Pagano happened to be at the Blue Girl, he most likely would be in the company of other cops. To separate him from his friends wouldn’t be easy. But what choice did I have?

  I parked the 4x4 across the street from the Blue Girl, a safe distance from a hydrant, leaving little space for another car. I didn’t want the Jeep to be hemmed in, just in case I had to make a quick getaway. Then I crossed the shadowy street.

  Many of the old factory buildings of this once-thriving manufacturing area had been turned into lofts for yuppies and washed-up movie stars, with the accompanying over-hyped restaurants catering to their taste for caviar and foie gras. A few of the rough-edged bars once frequented by factory workers had remained, however, kept in business by construction workers and cops from the precinct nearby.

  The Blue Girl sat on the corner of one of these new-trendy streets. With its black door and dingy neon sign hanging askew, it didn’t look like much from the outside. But inside the atmosphere was perfect for getting drunk. The air was stale in the ultra-dark interior. Blasting full volume from the jukebox in the back, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. drowned out any other sound. I stepped through a wall of smoke and headed to the bar. It was not as crowded as I expected. Then I remembered the Yankees were playing the Mets at Shea.

  A group of men, each using the American flag as a head tie, were throwing darts at something—I imagined a dartboard, but I couldn’t see well enough. There was one empty stool at the bar. I sat down and ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. As the barman poured my drink from a half-full Jack Daniel’s bottle, I turned to measure the line of men drinking to my left and right.

  Smoke burned my eyes. Unable to make out any of the faces, I sat staring at the liquid settling in my glass. The music stopped. A disquieting hush settled on the room, as the men at the bar hung their heads as if they’d been disgraced.

  The thump of darts hitting the board became the only sound for a few minutes. A man coughed. Another cursed. Two men teamed up to call the bartender over, in loud, animated voices. One man got up and left.

  “Turn on the television,” someone shouted.

  “Roscoe, I already told you the thing broke,” said the barman, a short man with a flushed face and patchy blond hair.

  “The fucking Arabs knocked out your TV, Phil?” another man said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, it’s those fucking Arabs,” the man next to me chimed in.

  “You all shut up,” the bartender said.

  “This is still America,” a man replied.

  “Yeah, you can’t tell nobody to shut up in America.”

  “First Amendment,” the man next to me said.

  “Where you from, Phil? You American or you an Arab?” Someone at the far end of the bar said with a laugh.

  The bartender didn’t reply.

  “We need to send all those fucking Arabs back to the desert. Let them eat sand,” the man said.

  “Yeah,” three or four men said in chorus.

  “We don’t need no non-Americans in America.”

  “Yeah,” came the chorus again.

  The man next to me looked at me suspiciously. I turned my face away and sipped my drink. The place fell silent.

  As if deciding it was dishonorable to get drunk in silence, someone got up to feed the jukebox. The room was filled with music again, and the men lifted their heads and looked at each other and smiled.

  The whisky soon found a soft spot in my brain, and I began to feel warm and separate from my surroundings. I finished my first drink, and the bartender refilled my glass. I nodded
a thank-you. I didn’t want to move again. I felt a happy solitude in this seedy bar, surrounded by men trying to soothe their pain with alcohol. I’d been there before. And right now I felt like giving it another try.

  The door opened and a chunky bald man came in. He strutted through the sudsy smoke as if he expected it to dissolve. And if it didn’t he looked like the kind of man who’d pull out his gun and blast his way through. He sat at the only vacant stool, two down from mine.

  Waiting for him to get settled, I swilled my drink quietly. He ordered vodka and asked the bartender about the TV. The bartender told him it wasn’t working and turned away.

  The man looked around the room. I turned my face when he glanced my way. He took a sip of his vodka and leaned his neck to one side, hunching over like a bear over a meal.

  I paid for my drinks and as slyly as I could, curled my fingers around the black polymer grip of the Smith & Wesson, easing it from my waistband. Alcohol and tension combined to make me feel faint.

  With the .45 at my side, I managed to walk up behind the man without him noticing.

  “Not a sound, Rudy,” I said, my gun pressed to his ribs.

  He began to turn around.

  “Don’t, unless you want your ribs air-conditioned.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Never mind. You and I are gonna walk outta here like we’re going to Communion.”

  “I ain’t Catholic.”

  “You’ll go to hell just the same.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere ’til you tell me who you are.”

  “Bye, muthafucker. I hope your life insurance is up to date.”

  He shifted on the stool, unsure of himself now. “Okay.”

  “Now get up. Real slow.” I ground the nozzle into his rib cage.

  He stood up and looked around as though he expected somebody to come to his aid. Standing at his side, I urged him forward with a sharp nudge of the gun. He began to walk slowly. Keeping the gun wedged to his ribs, I kept abreast, and we marched out into the night.

  Outside on the sidewalk he hesitated, looking up at the sky.

  I prodded him with the gun. “Too late for prayer. Keep moving.”

  “If you’re going to shoot me I wanna see your fucking face.” He turned around. “I shoulda known it was you.”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Why don’t you go peddle your shit somewhere else? Leave Troy alone.”

  “I hear he’s been asking about me.”

  “Why would Troy be asking about you?”

  I felt something hard and cold dig into the base of my neck.

  “I guess I found you, Blades.”

  That cold, arrogant voice, suspended on my brain for three years, swept over it like a lathe, dissecting my nerves, reducing me to an invalid. I tried to swallow but couldn’t. My gut burned as if a grenade had just exploded in it.

  Rudy wrenched my gun away and smirked at his brother. He pointed the .45 at me. “Be doing the city a favor if we plug this nigger right here.”

  “Leave us alone, Rudy,” Troy said in an avuncular voice.

  Rudy gazed into his brother’s eyes, as if he was in the presence of a prophet, his breathing coming in small, uneven gasps. He lowered the gun. “You sure?”

  “And you ain’t seen nothing.”

  “Shit, this nigger already dead as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Good. Give me his gun and go on back inside. I’ll join you in a bit.”

  Rudy handed over my gun to his brother and walked away with a sneer on his face. “See you in hell, nigger.”

  “Where’s your car?” Troy said to me.

  “I took the train.”

  “Don’t think I wouldn’t shoot you.”

  “I have no doubt about that. But I want you to look me in the eye this time.” I started to turn around.

  “Don’t,” he barked. “Now walk to your fucking car.”

  I sensed that he walked with a limp. He leaned his heavy frame on me as we walked. He smelled of beer and salami, and his clothes gave off the nauseating odor of burnt barbecue ribs.

  He directed me to open the passenger door of the 4x4. Then, pushing me inside, he motioned me into the driver’s seat before getting in.

  Our eyes met for the first time. His were red and half-closed. His face was stiff as stone, his jaw muscles jutting out on both sides like broken bones. He seemed to have lost a lot of weight and most of his hair; the few strands that remained hung in a disorderly manner on his head.

  “You ain’t looking too good there, partner.”

  “Wipe that smirk off your face before I make it permanent,” he said, waving both guns at me.

  “Sorry I missed you last night.”

  “Drive.”

  “Are we going to meet your friends?”

  “Just drive.”

  I started the Jeep and pulled away from the curb. For the next few blocks the lights were solid green. I drove slowly. A police cruiser passed us going in the opposite direction along Canal Street. We hit a red light at Church Street, and I squeezed the brakes, letting the Jeep creep to the stop. Taking my eyes off the road, I stared hard at Pagano, anger roiling in my gut.

  “Where’re we going?” I said.

  “I want you off my conscience, Blades.”

  “You make me want to puke. You shoot people in the back. And you and your friends pick on poor defenseless immigrants.”

  “I see being a crackhead runs in your family. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Last night I rescued one of the girls you kidnapped and assaulted. But I’m sure you know that. I just missed you.”

  “I was with my brother all last night.” His laugh was flat.

  “Then I guess I just missed him too.”

  The light turned green.

  “Drive,” he ordered.

  I eased off the brakes and the 4x4 jerked into motion.

  “We got to the Blue Girl around eight and stayed until three A.M. Phil, the barman, would tell you as much if you live long enough to ask him,” Pagano said.

  “It was very clever of you to target immigrants. They’re so afraid of deportation they’re hardly gonna go running their mouth to anybody. But you made the mistake of kidnapping the daughter of a woman who worked for me. She came to me. And when I began to ask questions, you shot me in the back.”

  “You’re not on crack. I take that back. You inherited a brain defect from all those mixed genes. How many times you gotta hear it was an accident?”

  “We ran that sting dozens of times. All of a sudden you don’t recognize me? Bullshit, you lying sonofabitch!”

  “Stop the car!” he screamed.

  I began to slow down.

  “Stop the fucking car! Now! Stop it!” He waved the guns menacingly.

  I slammed on the brakes, stopping in the middle of the street. A number of hapless drivers behind me had to swerve sharply to avoid smashing into the back of the Jeep. One woman flashed me the middle finger as she went by.

  “If you want to call me racist because I called you a nigger, go right ahead. But I would never shoot a cop. You don’t know how hard it has been the last three years trying to live with myself.”

  “I’m sorry, but I ain’t feeling your pain.”

  He screwed up his face. “I ain’t begging you for shit, Blades, okay? I just want you off my conscience. I hate myself for what I did. It was dark in that alley. I was tired. I’d had a few drinks. Shouldn’t have done that, but fuck, I did. I just wasn’t on that night. I wanted to get home. Get some sleep. I hadn’t been monitoring the radio. I didn’t hear the description of the perp. I didn’t know what he looked like. All I saw was a dark figure running down the alley and I thought, shit, he’s getting away. It’s gonna be on me if the muthafucker gets away. I didn’t want to let you guys down. My gun was in my hand and I just started shooting. I just wanted to stop him.”

  “If you hadn’t heard the description, how’d you know he was black?�
��

  He sighed and lowered the guns. “I just thought he had to be. I’m sorry I shot you, Blades. That’s why I was asking about you. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but it’s on my conscience that I never came to see you in the hospital. That I never said I was sorry. I may not have been a good cop, but I don’t know nothing ’bout any of that shit you’re talking about.”

  He got out of the car. Leaning through the window, he tossed my piece onto the seat.

  “I hope you die like the fucking cockroach you are,” I said.

  He walked off down West Broadway. I picked up my gun and got out, intent on following him. I still wanted revenge. I was not ready to give up my anger. Yet I also felt a gnawing frustration that anything done hereafter would be anticlimatic. There was nothing left. Nothing more to be gained from holding onto the rage. Anais had been right. It’s easier to hold resentment than to forgive.

  I stood on the sidewalk, fighting the urge to cry. Around me, New York, drunk on its own energy and monstrous myth, seemed to change before my eyes. The golden streetlights became crystals of fire and the black buildings, trees in a murky forest. And I was lost.

  34

  MY HOTEL ROOM was well chilled when I returned. I sat on the edge of the bed staring at the cheap water-color prints on the yellow walls. I hated to give up on the notion that Troy Pagano was part of this conspiracy. I wanted him to be dirty as sin. I wanted him to be the devil. But he was just a sad, misguided man.

  The cell phone rang. I picked it up off the bed.

  “Hello?” I expected it to be my mother.

  “Blades?”

  “Anais?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?”

  “How did you get this number?”