The phone rang eleven times before anyone picked it up. A woman’s voice, deep and slightly accented: “So, yes?”
Kennedy knew the voice. Stokovich’s wife called often and the lieutenant always took the call. Years ago, when Bruno Stokovich had been a patrolman, he’d refused a call from his mother. He had found her when he got home around four in the morning. She had been dead for several hours, lying in the hall with a broken hip, bleeding inside. Stokovich could always be reached by his family, no matter what was happening on the job. “They’ll still be dead in the morning,” he would say, picking up the call, softening visibly as he did so.
“Mrs. Stokovich, it’s Detective Kennedy. Is the lieutenant around?”
“Yess, Edward. How are you? It goes well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you are still with … Trudy?”
“Ah, no, ma’am. Trudy and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”
“Sso! Too bad! You treated her bad, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Where the hell was Bruno?
He was on the line. “Thanks, Geli. Kennedy, you there?”
“Sir, you wanted me to call?”
“Yeah. How’s it goin’ with the thing this morning?”
He spoke elliptically. Mrs. Stokovich knew nothing about his work. He kept her apart from it. It was a common thing in the NYPD.
“Got an ID. Marcuse did the autopsy. Cause of death is a knife wound. Gunshot, large caliber. Needle marks too.”
“Junkie?”
Kennedy thought it over. Stokovich breathed into the phone, wheezing faintly. He’s been playing with his boys, Kennedy thought. He could see him up there in the suburbs, pounding down a slope of fresh-cut lawn, shirt off, calling out to his kid: “Pass, pass, this way, kid.” Something about this scene made Kennedy tight and sad. He ignored it.
“Yes, I’d say. Kid had hepatitis too. But I’d say he was recent. Toxicology will be in tomorrow. Something else too … I think he had coffee grains in his cuffs.”
Stokovich snorted. “Coffee? Like in ‘coffee to fuck up the sniffers’? Like in coke or heroin trafficking?”
“Well, he may have been a stock boy at Los Hermanos so the coffee may mean nothing, but—”
“Los Hermanos? How’d we get there?”
There it was again. The secret reaction, the inside track. The lieutenant had frozen over.
“Well, sir, we have a probable ID—MP filed this morning. Lady named Ruiz says her son’s been missing since yesterday and he was a stock boy there. Picture fits too.”
“Who’ve you got on it?”
“Maksins is helping out. I’m taking him over to see the mother in a minute.”
“Maksins? Where’s Robinson? And Farrell?”
“Robinson got a line on the Gypsies. He’s out with Fratelli now. Farrell is here. You want him?”
“Farrell? Fuck, no. Look, you doing a canvass on this?”
“Yes, sir, I have one lined up for nineteen hundred hours. We’ll grid the block and do some stop-and-frisk. Farrell set it up with the Eighth.”
“You’re on overtime now, right?”
This stopped Kennedy for a second.
“Yes—yeah, I am. I mean, I will be …”
“Look Eddie, forget the canvass. After you’ve—”
“Forget the canvass! Lieutenant, why the—”
“Hey, Kennedy! I said fuck the canvass. A canvass is definitely contraindicated now and …”
Contraindicated! Where in the name of God had Bruno rooted out a word like contraindicated?
“… and I do not want a canvass done this tour. That’s the name of that game, Eddie! I don’t want a bunch of hairbags from the Eighth stepping all over the territory and fucking things up!”
“What things, Lieutenant?” Not a wise question, but this case had its hook in Kennedy. He could feel it with his tongue.
“What? Well, you know, just generally jerking it over. You been on since oh-six-hundred hours. I say you get a statement from the kid’s mother and then you go home. You get anywhere with the Adeline Muro case?”
Kennedy supressed a snarl. How the hell could he get anywhere with the Adeline Muro rape-homicide when Stokovich had hammered him into this recent thing and kept him at it all day?
“Not a lot, sir. You put me on to this one. I put a citywide out on her husband’s cousin, the kid they were calling Mokie? But so far zip. I figure we’ll have to go on the street for him. I’d like to shake The Ratboy on this one. He owes us. But I haven’t gotten on to him yet.”
“Excuses, Eddie. I’m hearing excuses. That’s not like you, buddy. You running down or what? You just haul ass over to mama’s and get something definite going about your little stiffie this morning. Com-pren-day, amigo?”
Yeah, thought Kennedy. I comprende just fine.
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that. See you tomorrow. Sir.”
A street crew was playing a game of slam-dunk on Avenue D when Kennedy and Maksins pulled into the block off Houston Street. A runner who’d been sitting on the steps of the Scorpio Tavern at Houston and C kept ahead of them all the way into Alphabet City, jinking and zagging off the right fender of the Chrysler, his wiry black body pumping away at the pedals of a Blue Max BMX bicycle, the slanting sun catching lights in his afro. Every now and then he’d turn around and flash a mouth full of large white teeth in their direction. Maksins smiled back at him. Nothing bothered Maksins.
Maksins had only one problem, and there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about that: his dubious sergeant’s rank. It left him in a kind of no man’s land inside the NYPD. How do you act like a sergeant, providing leadership, using your rank, when some judge at State might take the whole thing away from you without notice? Then where are you? The whole concept of a sergeant who wasn’t a sergeant even though he’d earned his rank made Wolfgar Maksins’ teeth hurt. It also made him hate the blacks just a little bit more than usual. Kennedy could feel him smiling at the small black child riding dangerously close to the detective’s car. He could see the way the smile tugged at Wolfgar’s cheeks but failed to get into his eyes. Maybe it was just as well Kennedy was at the wheel.
The Jacob Riis Houses stood in a windblown lot pegged with spindly elms, set off from the potholed street and the shattered sidewalks by a low wire fence. The project was a large one, a massive mud-colored brick pile about seventeen stories high. Most of the lower floors had bars or chicken wire over the windows. The doorway and the lobby were covered with pitted white tile, to make it easier to clean off the spray paint. The double-glass doors had three locks, all broken. One of the heavy glass panels had been kicked in again. It was now covered with plywood.
About a hundred people of all ages, blacks and Hispanics mostly, were strolling or loitering on the block. Few of them gave any sign at all that they recognized the squad car, and no one missed their arrival. A few young black males emerged from a low burned-out building in the middle of the block opposite the project. They took up positions along the graffiticoated walls, folding their heavy arms, talking softly among themselves, closing up their faces, and missing nothing.
Kennedy parked the car right in front of the walkway and let Central know where they were. He reached under the dash to flick the carburetor shut-off, triggered the alarm system, and felt for his ankle gun out of habit. It was there, a smooth little Smith & Wesson Bodyguard Airweight with a shrouded hammer. A friend of Kennedy’s, a retired detective by the name of Eddie Condon, now running a bar called Metropolitan Improvement next to the Headquarters building, had once snagged his ankle gun on a sock during a hostage incident. The snag had almost killed him. Kennedy had bought the Airweight the day after he heard this story.
Wolfgar Maksins extricated himself from the passenger seat, keeping an eye on the far side of the street. Somebody called out something and Maksins raised his right hand, middle finger upright, and hooked his balls with his left hand.
“Goddamit, Wolf, don’t do that shit! I’
ve had a long day.”
Maksins completed the gesture and turned to face Kennedy, baring a row of even white teeth in a humorless grin and looking past Kennedy to the project door.
“Fuck the jigs, Eddie. Fuck them all.”
“Thank you, Wolf. Thank you for your constructive attitude. Shall we?”
Maksins walked a little behind Kennedy, to his left. His suit jacket was unbuttoned. Nothing would have made Wolf Maksins happier than to have one of the citizens standing nearby flash a weapon and make an ugly face. Maksins was an International Practical Shooting Competitions champion, a machinelike executioner up at Rodman’s Neck. His off-duty gun was a Browning. Kennedy had seen him put nine rounds into the ten ring at fifty yards in under six seconds. Tell the truth, Kennedy found Maksins just a little scary.
The lobby emptied out as the detectives walked in. Young girls in sprayed-on tank tops stared boldly at them and hit hard on their heels as they walked by, making their heavy breasts bounce under the fabric, calling them assholes in soft Cuban Spanish, calling them faggots in black Swain talk. The elevator, miraculously, was working. Kennedy didn’t like elevators. Cops had died in elevators. Gang kids in Harlem liked to ride on top of the cars. Now and then a couple of patrolmen would look up and find a sawed-off shotgun sticking down through the trapdoor, somebody laughing behind it, strung out on speed or blacktar heroin, giving the cops a few seconds to savor the moment before he fired. Once, in the Bronx, it had been a Molotov cocktail. In a way Kennedy was glad when the dented panel slid back and they saw the fresh pile of human shit steaming in the left rear corner. They took the stairs up to Mrs. Ruiz’s apartment on the fifth floor.
The hallway smelled of spices, grass, urine, and stale overheated air. All the light bulbs were guarded by little mesh screens. The walls were marked up and scuffed. Gang codes were sprayed over everything, even the doors. Yet there was music coming from some of the places. Al Roker’s voice was booming out of a TV from behind one of the doors. Storm Field was talking down the hall. Television was stitching the nation back together again this afternoon. Kennedy stood in front of number 556 for ten seconds, resisting a wave of fatigue.
Maksins watched him for a moment; his brush-cut spikes scraped a light bulb overhead, and his pale-blue eyes were empty. He looks like somebody, thought Kennedy. Who?
His arms and legs were leaden. All he wanted was sleep. Rutger Hauer’s name came to Kennedy as he rang the bell.
Esmerelda Ruiz couldn’t have been older than thirty. She had the oval face and black coral eyes of a South American Indian, long shining black hair and a narrow waist above well-thought-out hips and strong muscular legs. Her breasts were heavy under the frilly purple party dress. It took Kennedy a few seconds to realize that Mrs. Ruiz had dressed for them, for company. Her eyes were flat and dry, her lips tightly held, little cut-lines and creases marking the flesh. A pair of votive candles was burning on a table behind her, in front of an icon of the Virgin of Guadaloupe. White feathers were scattered around the candles. She stood in the doorway while the hot air poured out around her hips, fluttered her skirt, and rolled over Kennedy’s wrists and hands. Music was coming from somewhere in a back room, and there was the sound of soft, desolate crying, the catch-and-gasp crying of a small child who hopes that pity will be felt and the punishment softened. Bare pieces of furniture stood here and there in the appearance of order. The floor had been swept. An aged man sat in an emerald-green crushed-velvet wing-back with his hands crossed over his sunken lap. His baggy black trousers had caught on the velvet when he had sat down, exposing a pair of twiglike calves coated in black hair. He had no socks on, but his heavy black shoes were gleaming and his head was up, showing emaciated features cut out of a rough block of teak by a blunt instrument in a skilled hand. He wore a guayabera shirt of pale green. In his hand he held a portrait, framed in cheap lacquered wood, of Porfirio Magdalena Ruiz. Esmerelda Ruiz did not cry then, although from time to time her deep-set eyes would shine more clearly in the afternoon light, and it would appear to Kennedy that the ridges and creases around her mouth would soften and waver, as if something insubstantial but palpable had been drawn across her skin by an invisible hand.
Perhaps because there was nothing in the hot little room that looked strong enough to take his weight, Maksins moved quietly across it to the window and put a hip against the ledge. His face was closed and set, expecting lies. The old man paid him no attention at all, but there was something other than grief in the room: a guardedness, a reserve.
Kennedy put his badge away and set his face into sympathetic lines. Leaning forward, he held the photo that Stradazzi had given him. Mrs. Ruiz did not watch his hand until the snapshot flipped upright about a yard from her face. Then only her eyes moved, as if to move anything else would tear something delicate.
“Ma’am, you were into the station asking after your boy? Porfirio? That right?”
Her head came forward and back, once, in slow time.
“And this is a picture of that boy? Your boy?”
“Si.” Her voice was soft and high.
“Ma’am, have you got someone in the building who can come and take care of things for you for a while? I think I’m going to have to ask you to come uptown for a bit. I think you’re going to have to be pretty strong about this, ma’am. We think your boy may have gotten into some very bad trouble.”
“Salto is dead, yes?”
Maksins sighed from the window and Kennedy gave him a hard look, softening as he turned back to Mrs. Ruiz. What the hell could he do?
“It looks as if that may be, ma’am. I hope it isn’t your boy, but we do have someone who looks very much like him. Is there someone around who can take care of things?”
The old man in the wingback spoke up in a clear unwavering voice. “She will not go with you. I will do that. There is no need for her to see this. ’Stá bien, niña?”
“Bien, papá. Señor, this boy you have, it is ver’ bad, the way he looks? It is bad?”
Kennedy didn’t look over at Wolf. Before he could answer her, Maksins stepped away from the window.
“Ma’am, you have any idea where your boy has been in the past couple of days? When was the last time you saw him? Who was he with?”
“I tell them this at the station, señor.”
Kennedy interrupted. “Yes, ma’am. But we need to go over it again. We understand he was a stock boy at the grocery? Los Hermanos? Was he working there Sunday?”
“Yes, señor. He was suppose’ to be helping them with a truck. But he was goin’ to church first.”
“So the last you saw him, he was going to the church? Which one was that, ma’am?”
“Mission Evangelica y Bautista. On East Eighth Street?”
“We know the one, ma’am. Did he go alone? Did he usually meet anyone? Did someone go with him?”
There was a long silent moment here. Her control was solid and deep. There would be no scene in front of the policía. But the softness left her face and there was a colder light coming from her. She looked down at her hands. Kennedy got the feeling that she was fighting an emotion other than grief. He guessed it was shame.
“Ma’am, did he go to the mission? Was he telling you the truth? Is that where he went?”
“No. He was with that puta. The whore.”
Puta was said in a breathy explosion. Her face closed up tighter.
“He went with a puta, ma’am? A girl? Do you know this girl’s name?”
“Si. She is a locita from Salvador. Papá—Aiuda me! La nombre, favor?”
“Wangermann y Buentella. Nadine, una caballera negra.”
Kennedy was taking this down. “You say her name is Wangermann y Buentella? Long black hair? You know where she lives, sir?” This was directed at the grandfather.
The man started to say something, but his daughter broke in, leaning forward out of the chair, looking down at the floor, throwing a rosary at her feet.
“A cuestas, señor! A cuestas!”
“Si, señora. Lo siento. But where does she live on her back? Do you know?”
“In the street, señor. And I have seen her at the Caamanos.” She got up then, and stood for a moment in the center of the room, passing through levels of grief and rage, twisting on the spike of it. The old man sat and watched her like an obsidian idol, with no kindness in his face. She walked over to him and took the framed picture out of his arthritic hands easily, although he tried to keep it.
She came back to Kennedy and dropped the picture at his feet.
Carefully, with deliberation, she put a foot on the picture, a small bare brown foot with a hard callused ridge on the edge, her toes spread out over her son’s face.
“Diablito, señor. Drugs and putas. Does he have a small … lágrima … you know what I mean?”
“A tear? Yes, ma’am. On his cheek. A tattoo.”
“Una lágrima. Si. So I don’ give him another one, okay?”
She put her weight forward onto the glass, cracking it and crushing the picture beneath.
Formal identifications at the Medical Examiner’s office on the East Side are usually done in a special room. Few people want to stand in the same room with what may be left of a father or a lover. Arturo Rimbaldo waited in silence before the glass wall in the elevator room, a short frail packet of dry wood inside his starched guayabera shirt, waiting without expectancy, saying nothing to Kennedy while the attendant downstairs prepared the corpse of Porfirio Ruiz. An elevator motor whined. The body rose into view.
Kennedy watched Esmerelda Ruiz’s father as he studied the image behind the glass. Two full minutes passed in this way, the old man quietly studying the face of his grandson, thinking God-knew-what behind that absolutely immobile face. Kennedy looked over the man’s head at the face on the other side. Marcuse had done a decent job of reshaping the basic features, but there was something slightly out of register about it, a wrongness to it. Kennedy finally realized that the wrongness came from the fact that although the face was the same, the act of shaping it with fingers could never make it the same as a face showing real emotion, even the open blank shock that Kennedy saw from time to time, the face that came to a victim when he realized he was dying, that it was over.
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