Gardened of the Damned

by Blake Banner

  She pointed at me like she was going to shoot me with her finger.

  “Different motives, but it would be too bizarre for it to be coincidence. So, same killer, same overall crime, but different personal motives.”

  I nodded. It made sense.

  I had been expecting it. So when I was awakened from my sleep by the incessant ringing on my doorbell, I wasn’t surprised or alarmed. I groped for my keys in my pants pocket and leaned out the window. It was cold and still dark. The sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour at least. Dehan was doing her cold weather dance and grinned at me. “They are early risers,” she said.

  I threw the key down to her and groped my way to the bathroom.

  As was her custom, when I got downstairs she was frying bacon and eggs and making coffee. I sat at the kitchen table.

  “Did you sleep?”

  She gave her head a quick shake. “No.”

  The toast popped. She buttered it and shoveled bacon from the pan onto the plate with a spatula. Then she broke the eggs into the pan.

  “When we were small, we were like sisters, always in and out of each other’s houses. Her parents didn’t care that my dad was a Jew.”

  I blinked. These were big issues for before coffee. But she didn’t need an answer, now she was shoveling eggs.

  “These days, Jews and Christians are uniting against Islam, a common enemy, but not so long ago Catholics hated Jews about as much as Muslims do.”

  She put two huge plates of eggs and bacon on toast on the table. She had even found some mushrooms and fried those too. She went back for two cups and the coffee pot. She was still talking.

  “But Alicia’s parents weren’t like that. Gregorio and Marcela. They were good people, you know what I mean?” She sat and attacked her food with a kind of determination to get the job done. “And I was thinking about that all night. How do you know a person is good? I mean, really good?” She glanced at me as she stuffed food into her mouth. It didn’t stop her talking. “I meam, whadish goom, righ?”

  “What is good?”

  She nodded. I sipped my coffee, hoping it would give me strength, and speared a rasher of bacon. She swallowed, as though she was getting the food out of the way of her stream of thoughts.

  “Yeah. Nobody has ever been able to define good or evil. It’s one of those things, like love. You can’t define it. But we know, don’t we, when a person is good. We know when they are false, hypocrites, on an ego trip—and we know when they are genuinely good.” She waved her knife at me. “Me? I’m just confused. You, you’re basically a good guy who is smart and has learnt to be careful. Gregorio, Marcela, and Alicia, they were genuine good people.”

  She was starting to carry me along with her relentless flow. I said, “That’s a lot of genuinely good people: Sean, Gregorio, Marcela and Alicia. What are the odds?”

  “Astronomical. But you get enough monkeys with typewriters, one of them will write the Torah. The point is, they found each other, they came together, and they tried to do good. Sean was a kind of catalyst for them, do you see that, Stone? His energy, his conviction, his faith—whatever! He acted as a catalyst and they started to do something to bring about change. And that is why they died. It’s wrong, Stone. They—people like Conor Hagan—they own the world, and they can’t be allowed to keep getting away with this kind of shit.”

  “You didn’t sleep at all?”

  “No. You done?”

  “No, I am still mopping and I still have my coffee. Your revs are too high. Let in the clutch and breathe.”

  “It makes me mad, Stone.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Why?”

  “Why can I see that?”

  “No. Why do they get away with it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the nature of the world we live in.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  I drew breath, looked at her, and killed my reply before I said it. She had tears in her eyes as I reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. “We do the best we can, Carmen. It’s all we can do.”

  The horizon was turning pale and the dawn chorus was in full swing as we stepped into the street. There was a fresh, green smell of hope in the air. Somewhere in the distance, a car radio was giving the weather report for the day, and a bus, grinding through it gears, ferried yawning people from slumber to morning. Hope, I thought to myself, was it one of those things that Dehan had talked about, like good and evil, and love? Something you couldn’t define, but you knew it was there.

  I sighed and climbed into the car. I was no good with all that abstract stuff. I was good at getting the job done and that was exactly what I planned to do.

  SIX

  Gregorio was still at work. He did the night shift, but Marcela was home. They had the top floor of a double fronted house on Irvine Street, near the corner of Garrison Avenue. We climbed the stairs to the top floor, where a plasterboard wall had been put in to turn what should have been a family home into two apartments. Once the wall was up, somebody had started to paint it, but given up half way. The landing was big enough for just one person. Dehan went ahead and rang the bell.

  Marcela was short, overweight, and pretty. Dehan had to stoop to hug her, and winced at the shriek of pleasure the woman let out in her ear. They babbled in Spanish while I waited on the stairs, and Marcela kept coming in for follow up hugs and kisses. Finally, Dehan turned and said, “Marcela, this is John, he’s my partner.”

  She dragged Dehan into the apartment so she could get at me, gave me two big kisses on my cheeks and told me how handsome I was in two languages. Then she pushed us both into her living room.

  They sat together on the sofa and Marcela pinched her cheek and squeaked, “Ay, mi Carmencita preciosa!”

  Dehan smiled and held her hand in both of her own. “Tita, we need to talk to you. It is really important.”

  Marcela became serious. “Is this police business?”

  “It’s about Alicia, Tita.”

  Marcela put her hands to her cheeks and gasped. “Ay Dios mío! Did you find her? Is she okay? Did something happen to her?”

  “We don’t know yet, but we found Sean.”

  “You found Sean?” She could tell from Dehan’s face that it wasn’t good news. “Is he dead?”

  Dehan nodded. “Yes, Tita, he was murdered twelve years ago, when he disappeared.”

  Marcela’s face drained white. “So, Alicia…?”

  Dehan reached quickly for her hand. “No, Tita, not necessarily. We don’t know what happened to Alicia. Sean’s body was there all along, right by the church, tu me entiendes? But nobody recognized it because they changed his clothes. But Alicia, there was no body found anywhere, so maybe she escaped. Maybe she went away where they couldn’t find her.”

  There were tears in Marcela’s eyes. “She would call. She would tell me where she was.”

  “Not if she was trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me? Who from?”

  “That’s what we need to find out, Tita.”

  I sat forward. “Marcela, did Sean come to your house often?”

  Her face lit up. “Oh, yes, all the time. Such a nice boy, very handsome and so kind. They were going to get married.”

  “How did he and Alicia meet?”

  “At the church. He was a good Christian. Very devoto.” She gave a cheeky smile. “Maybe too much, huh? I think maybe I never get grandchildren!” She laughed uproariously, slapping Dehan on the leg.

  I smiled. “And Alicia was also a good Catholic, right?”

  She clasped her hands to her heart and cocked her head. “So good, such a good child. Loved her mammy, didn’t she, Carmencita?”

  “She sure did, Tita.”

  “So, what was Alicia doing at the church, Marcela?”

  She shrugged and pulled a face. “The soup kitchen, distributin’ the clothes for the poor people. ’Cause it gets real cold for the homeless people in the winter. She work with the huerfanitos…”
>
  “The what?”

  “The little orphan children. Some of them, their parents have died, others their parents have gone to prison, or they can’t care for them because they drinkin’ or takin’ drugs, you know? These kids got nowhere to go, no school, nowhere to live.”

  “And Alicia helped them? How?”

  “Father O’Neil is a good man.” She turned reprovingly to look at Dehan. “I know you don’t like him, but he is a good man.” She looked back to me. “He organize classes for the kids to learn reading and writing, math, the basic things you gonna need, and he provide a place for them to sleep and stay when is cold.”

  “And Alicia was involved in this program?”

  “Involve? She run it! She was runnin’ the program, and Sean was trying to get compensation for the eviction on Tiffany Street. They were both really trying to help the community. Like two saints.” She started to cry. “But they was too good, and God take them to his bosom. Lord know we need people like this in the world. Why he takes them away?”

  Dehan put her arms around her and held her. “We don’t know he did, Marcela. Let’s wait and see, okay?”

  “Marcela, we only have a couple more questions.”

  She blew her nose and nodded at me.

  “Did he ever talk about what he was doing? Did he ever mention any people, any names?”

  She rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in the air. “Ay! Always! Always! He was talking about Conor Hagan. He was obsessed with Conor Hagan. I tell him, ‘Sean, there are more bad guys in the world than Conor Hagan!’ but he don’ wanna know. He is obsess, he gonna bring him down and punish him for the bad things he done. I tell him, ‘back off a little or you gonna get problems,’ but he don’t listen to me.” She paused a moment to fold her handkerchief. “A week or a few days before he disappear, he come and he say to Alicia, ‘they callin’ me, warning me to back off,’ they are tryin’ to buy him off and threatening him. He said to her, ‘you want we can split up, so you and your family are not at risk?’ She said no, she was gonna stand by him. That is the kind of girl she is.”

  “So Sean told Alicia he had received threats from Conor Hagan?”

  “Oh yeah, for sure.”

  Dehan held her hand tight. “Tita, have you got anything, letters, emails, a computer, a cell phone, anything from back then that might have something on it that we can use…”

  “You mean like proof?” She shrugged and shook her head. “No, Cielito, I ain’t got nothing. She never had no computer, and her phone disappear with her. That day, she go to the church like always, and she never come back.”

  She insisted we have coffee; we talked some more without making any progress, and finally made our way back to the car. I leaned on the roof and sighed. The morning was bright and optimistic, but I wasn’t.

  Dehan opened her door, stopped, and leaned opposite me. We stared at each other. She said, “Everything confirms the same hypothesis. It’s simple and logical. Maybe we’re over-thinking it.”

  “Maybe, but some concrete evidence would be nice. And I still don’t like Sean in a dumpster and Alicia vanishing without a trace. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s see if the tech guys got anything from Sean’s computer, and let’s have a look through his papers. You never know, there might be something. I’d like to have a little more than theories and hearsay before I confront Hagan.”

  She nodded and we got in.

  SEVEN

  Spring is real ugly and depressing when it’s on the other side of the glass and you’re sitting, wading through twelve-year-old legal notes about people getting evicted from their homes.

  The only thing the tech guys were able to tell me at that stage was what I already suspected, the hard drive had been wiped clean. They were working on trying to recover some of the files, but they didn’t want to make any promises. Twelve years was a long time.

  Most of the physical files he had stored in two large sports bags in his wardrobe, and most of them related to cases from the previous year. Hard as we looked, we could barely find a single reference to Tiffany Street, Conor Hagan, or squatters. Dehan spoke absently as she leafed slowly through a notebook.

  “It’s negative, but even that is pointing in the same direction. They killed him and Alicia, then they went and took his files and wiped his PC.”

  I took the last file from the bag. I had seen several like it. It was about Carolina, a child of thirteen. Her dad was unknown; her mother was a prostitute and a junkie. Her nationality was unknown and she apparently had no Social Security number. Cristina, twelve, wasn’t sure where her mother was. Sean was trying to get them both taken into care. He was also trying to get the authorities to recognize there was a crisis with this kind of child in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Father O’Neil was providing somewhere to sleep and somewhere to eat, and Alicia was providing lessons in basic literacy and numeracy.

  I threw the file on the desk and rubbed my face with my hands.

  “What am I not seeing, Dehan? What am I missing? Everything is perfect. We should just be looking for hard evidence, witnesses, forensics—but there is something missing.”

  She nodded. “I agree.”

  “What the hell did they do with Alicia, and for what purpose?” I stood and walked to the window, looking out resentfully at April having fun out there, budding all the almond trees. “Sean and Alicia… No, just Sean, who became a pain in Hagan’s ass. Alicia wasn’t. As far as we know, Dehan, Hagan doesn’t even know Alicia exists, and so he has a couple of his guys wait for Sean. They bundle him in the back of a car and take him to a building site or a warehouse. They put him on his knees and they shoot him.”

  I paused, running through it again in my mind. Dehan closed the file she was reading and turned her chair so she could see me. I went on.

  “So far it is a bog-standard, textbook gangland hit. But then, for some reason, they take all his clothes off, dress him up as a tramp, take him to their own dumpster and throw him in.”

  Dehan sighed. “It’s a reach, Stone, but maybe Hagan wanted the locals to know about it, but, like we said before, he wanted it to go cold for the cops.”

  I nodded. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense for now, but you’re right, it’s a reach.” I wandered back to my chair and stood looking down at the file on the desk, thinking of Alicia, and Carolina and Cristina and their junkie mom. “And then, for no apparent reason, they go and find Alicia, kill her, and dispose of the body in such a way that nobody will ever find it.” I turned and stared at her. “What the hell for?”

  “As a warning?”

  “To whom? Alicia was no threat to anybody. And you heard yourself, whatever else Hagan was, he also liked to play benefactor to the community, surely he would want to encourage people like Alicia, not kill them.” I shook my head. “No, he had a very particular reason to kill her, and to make her disappear.”

  She thought about it.

  “That’s a pretty strong statement, Sensei.”

  “But it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  She sighed and threw her own file on the desk. “Well, we are going to have to find some evidence pretty soon, Stone, because we are hitting one dead end after another.” She stretched, arching her back over the back of the chair till I heard the vertebrae crack. “Maybe you should talk to Hagan.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to. It’s too soon. That guy is going to be tough and cool. I need something concrete before I go up against him.”

  I picked up the empty bag off the floor, dumped it on the desk, and put a handful of files back in it. The weight was badly distributed; it overbalanced and slid to the floor. Dehan snorted and grinned. “One of those days.”

  I bent and retrieved the bag. The files slid to the end. I put the bag back with more care. The base was soft, floppy, that was why it had overbalanced and slid off the desk. But there was something odd about it. I picked it up again by the handles and lowered it
gently onto the edge of the desk. It buckled. I raised it and lowered it again, but a bit further along. It didn’t buckle. I took the files out and dropped them on the floor. Then tipped the bag back and forth in a seesaw motion. Dehan was watching me like she thought I had finally lost it and was ready for sectioning.

  I said, “Listen…” I tipped the bag again. There was a slithering sound. “There is something in there.”

  I put it back on the table, pulled my penknife from my pocket and gently cut away the bottom of the bag. And there it was, a thick, A4 file.

  “Holy shit, Stone.”

  I threw the bag on the floor. She stood and came to stand beside me. I put the file on the desk and opened it and there were thirteen color photographs. A4 size. The first was a group of twelve kids, they were in a large room that was hard to identify. It had a burgundy carpet and you could make out what looked like a white, wooden windowsill on the far left. The kids were standing in a group. They were all girls of varying ages, the youngest about twelve, and the oldest about fifteen. They all looked Latin American.

  I set that photograph aside and looked at the next one. My skin went cold. It was one of the girls from the group. She was nude. She was sitting on a bed, smiling, but the smile, and her eyes, showed fear. Real fear. She was smiling because she had to. I went through the rest, one photograph after another, with a black rage building inside me. Each of the kids in the group was photographed individually in the same way.

  “We have to get these copied and sent to the lab for fingerprints.”

  “What the fuck does it mean?”

  “It means Sean O’Conor was involved in more than protecting squatters’ rights.”

  She stared at me. “You think these were Sean’s pictures?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t say that. We don’t know whose they are, but what is certain is that they provide a powerful motive for murder. They provide several powerful motives for murder.”

  She walked slowly back to her chair while I copied the pictures and sealed them in a plastic envelope for the forensic lab. She sat.