Close Pursuit

by Carsten Stroud

  People did what they could with what they had, and like most of the people in New York, they lived good lives and had good kids. There were worse places to be than Queens or Brooklyn.

  “Olvera’s place is around here somewhere, isn’t it?” Robinson was pulling over to the curb.

  “Yeah. The guys from the One-Oh-Four have already checked out his home address. It’s just up the road here. What do you have in mind?”

  Robinson shrugged. “Maybe he’s homesick? Maybe he wants to come back to get a fresh shirt? Let’s give his place a toss.”

  Salvador Tinto Olvera had obviously cleared out of his apartment over the shoe store on Myrtle. The door was standing open at the top of the rickety wooden stairs leading up from a littered back lot. They went up carefully nevertheless. Life was full of surprises.

  Although the place showed signs of occupancy—nails in the walls where pictures had hung, and a greasy smear on a wall above a rectangle of dust—it was obviously empty now. The whole apartment had been painted white, and it still appeared strangely antiseptic in the earthy riot of Brooklyn. There was nothing in the cupboards, nothing on the floors in any of the closets. Nothing anywhere.

  Down in the back lot a shopworn terrier watched them with morose disapproval as they poked around in the bags and boxes. Robinson managed to do this without ever touching anything with his hands. His fear of insects was under control but palpable. Kennedy straightened up with a thin white cardboard box in his hand. Inside there were four Styrofoam cups and a wad of dirty tissues. The outside of the box had some lettering, half-obscured by muddy water. THE DUCKY DONUT SHOP.

  “Coincidence?” Robinson did not take the box from Kennedy. Kennedy smiled at him.

  “Probably, but let’s go see this place anyway.”

  The Ducky Donut Shop was in a decent little block around Myrtle and Palmetto. They parked a hundred yards from it, near Wyckoff.

  “Busy little concern, hah, Frank? Who looks more like a lawyer? You or me?”

  Robinson laughed. “Nobody in this block is going to believe in a black lawyer. You go.”

  The Ducky Donut Shop was clean, friendly, and full of chatter as Kennedy pushed open the greasy glass door. A group of black kids in the corner gave him a glance and then went back to their sodas. A young Latino male was standing behind the counter, polishing a carafe. Kennedy cleared his throat to get the boy’s attention.

  “Good afternoon. My name is Woodruff. Here’s my card. I wonder if you can help me?”

  The boy took a while to work through the text on the business card, and when he did he still looked skeptical.

  “Yeah, wha’ you wan’?”

  “Well, we’re having some trouble locating a …” He made a major production out of checking in his pockets for a slip of paper, meanwhile smiling at the counterboy in a nervous way. “So hot, don’t you think? Yes, here we are. My Spanish is a little rusty, but his name is Salvador Olvera? Do you know this name?”

  There had been no flicker of recognition on the boy’s placid face. “You call before? This morning?”

  Kennedy managed to look perky. “Yes, that’s right. I know someone from our office was supposed to call.”

  “Wha you wan’ him for?”

  “Well … it’s a matter of some importance, of a private nature. I’m sure you understand?”

  The face shut down. “I don’ know him. You got the wrong place. Maybe is someplace else. You wan’ a donut?”

  Kennedy twisted one hand in the other.

  “You have no idea who he is? I’ve been misled, I suppose. Pastor Robles, at the mission—he said that I should look here.”

  “You from Pastor Robles?”

  “No. I mean, he sent us, but … You see, we’re acting for the New York State Lottery Division? That’s all I can tell you. But it certainly would be to Mr. Olvera’s advantage if he could contact our office. Can I leave the number with you?”

  “No, you don’ have to. I didn’ know who you was talkin’ about for a minute. You lookin’ for Tinto—he’s stayin’ with his mother.”

  There had been no listing for any relative of Salvador Olvera in the CATCH and NYSIIS records. Kennedy raised his eyebrows and his face brightened. “He is? Do you happen to have that address? Or I could have you call her?”

  “No, I got it. Jus’ a minute.” He disappeared through a back door. Shit, thought Kennedy. He’s rabbited. But the boy was back in a short while, holding a scrap of paper.

  “I can’ read the writin’ … eighty-five somethin’.”

  Kennedy took the scrap of paper. It was an address in Woodhaven. Close. He took his card off the counter.

  “I certainly want to thank you. You’ve been very helpful. If Mr. Olvera comes in, will you give him this number? Please tell him to ask for Dennison Woodruff.” He waited while the boy wrote out the number, suppressing his impatience. The boy looked up when he had finished and smiled at Kennedy. Quite a friendly smile.

  “You thin’ there is a re-war’, a rewar’ for findin’ him? You tell him, when you spea’ to him, i’ was Paco, at the Ducky Donut Shop, who give you the number. Maybe he wan’ to give me somethin’ for helpin’ you?”

  “Certainly,” said Kennedy, pushing the door open. “I’ll be sure to tell him that. It’ll mean a lot to him.”

  Sometimes it comes together just like that. Most people aren’t good at running. They leave a trail of paper notes, credit card slips—sometimes they even give their friends a forwarding address. It’s denial, that glitch in the medulla that keeps telling them that everything is going to be all right and that there’s no way they’ll ever get caught. You’re doing fine. Cancer can be beaten. Forget your troubles, come on get happy. It’s not that they never see it coming. They just don’t believe it.

  When Kennedy got back into the car, Robinson had received a call from Farrell. The Lincoln Town Car had been found, abandoned but otherwise in good shape, in a bus-terminal lot at Merrick and Jamaica Avenue. Brooklyn Auto Squad had spotted the plate and fired the notice right in to the Task Force.

  Kennedy hadn’t been to Brooklyn in a while. Robinson reminded him. “Eddie, that’s where the BMT bus line stops, isn’t it? By the terminal, at a Hundred-Sixty-eighth Street?”

  “Yeah, so …?”

  “So, Eddie, the BMT line practically runs right through that street.”

  “This street?” Kennedy held up the scrap of paper.

  Robinson smiled indulgently upon him, full of forgiveness and Christian tolerance.

  “Yes, Edward, my son. Through that street.”

  “Holy shit,” said Kennedy.

  “Don’t blaspheme, my son,” said Robinson.

  Woodhaven is a lush and sleepy little village shaded by fine old trees, pushing up against the southern border of the Forest Park Golf Course and Cypress Hills Cemetery. It’s a well-settled neighborhood of small brick or wood-frame houses on rising slopes leading up to the green hills of the parkland. Many of the houses have brightly colored aluminum awnings and tiny green squares of trimmed lawn, set off by slanted bricks and populated by plaster horse-holders and garden gnomes.

  They pulled up in front of a neat little house in a row of neat little houses. Geraniums and alyssum lined the flagstone walkway. A rococo soffit in shell-pink echoed the carved shutters. The awning above the porch was pink and maroon. You could have shot billiards on the front lawn. The place dreamed in the afternoon light and the air was rich with the scents of new-cut grass and barbecued steaks. A steamy humidity lay over everything, thick and cloying, a Louisiana Delta afternoon, with cicadas whirring in the leafy oaks and bees nodding in the blossoms.

  They got out quietly. Robinson walked down the white gravel driveway toward the back of the house. Kennedy climbed the front stairs. A chipped Fiesta ware cup filled with black liquid sat in a pattern of rings on the porch railing, next to a rusting lawn chair. Kennedy put a hand over the cup. He could feel heat rising out of it. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and knocked
on the screen door. It clattered in the frame. The heat boiled up around him.

  A curtain twitched in the broad front window. A mushroom face, puffy with ill will, peered out at him, small black eyes set deep into unhealthy flesh. Kennedy knocked again, less politely.

  The inner door was wrenched open and a massively fat woman filled the space from molding to door lock, blocking the interior darkness. A tiger-striped tabby kitten popped out from behind her and skittered down the steps. The woman looked at Kennedy for a long moment, as if to blame him for the escape of her pet. Her head was covered with the wispy remnants of gray hairs; her eyes were dull black stones pushed into the doughy material of her face. Her body beneath the huge print dress pushed everywhere, and folds of flesh rolled at her wrists and her ankles. She kept her hand on the doorknob and spoke in clear unaccented English.

  “Yes. What is it you want?”

  Kennedy showed her his badge. “We’d like to talk to your son, ma’am. We know he’s here.”

  “And who might that be? I have no son.” A scent was coming from around the woman as the cool air from the house leaked away. It was the smell of a cage or a pit.

  “Salvador Olvera. We have information that says he is staying at this address. May we come in, ma’am?”

  Her control wavered a millimeter, showing in a slight loss of her clear English pronunciation. “I wou’ li’—I would like to see a search warran’, if you have one.”

  “Never mind, Eddie.” Robinson spoke from the driveway. He had a short fat man in handcuffs, a sagging bag of a man in a powder-blue safari suit, pouting and defiant and utterly defeated, looking up at Kennedy.

  Kennedy stepped backward away from the doorway, not taking his eyes off the woman. Just because she was old and fat didn’t mean she was harmless. “Come on out into the light, lady. Where was he, Frank?”

  “On his way over the back fence with his Adidas bag and a ham sandwich. And guess what’s in the garage, only now it’s just half blue?”

  The old woman was coming down the front steps, her lips tightening into a crevice in her floury face. She caught the kitten by a flowerpot and lifted it up to her throat. Kennedy walked over to Robinson and looked down at Tinto Olvera. He looked like a pharmacist, or somebody who specialized in estate planning; there was a soft tan cloudiness to him, as if he had no real borders, no solid reality, but was only a notion of a person, dimly perceived, always on the brink of dissolution.

  Robinson was beaming with delight. Sometimes it was that easy. Kennedy looked across the lawn to where the woman was standing, a fleshy pile of reproach and denial.

  “Book ’im, Danno.”

  Hours later, working through the traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge, Lower Manhattan black and shining in the evening sky, Kennedy turned around to look at Tinto, sweating and shrunken in cuffs, staring out at the city. Bags of his clothing and possessions were sealed and tagged in the trunk. “So, tell me, Tinto. Was it good for you? Was it fun?”

  Tinto’s eyes were wet and empty. He said nothing.

  “Why’d you do it, Tinto? For what?”

  “Hey, Eddie. Whatever he says, it’s not going to answer a question like that. They do it because they like to. The rest is bullshit.”

  CHAPTER 13

  FRIDAY

  Kennedy’s hometown sits on a range of hills and slopes, separated from the island of Manhattan by the Harlem River, which cuts westward through the peninsula and links up with the broad reaches of the Hudson at a place called Spuyten Duyvil. In the early days of the settlement, crossing the river at this point involved a fair amount of risk. The Dutch said that to cross it was to spite the devil. The name remains. So does the risk.

  Along the eastern shores of the Bronx, the East River curves away toward Long Island Sound, widening as it rolls past the surburban villages of New Rochelle, Larchmont, and Rye. By the time it has reached the Connecticut border it’s a shoreless expanse of salt water. Beyond that the Atlantic booms and swells into infinity.

  To the west, the Hudson River reaches all the way inland to the valleys and mountains of New York State, following a fold in the green hide of the earth between the Catskills and the Berkshires. It flows fast and deep from Albany and Troy, where a canal runs west to the Great Lakes, and another reaches Lake Champlain, along the Vermont border. On a map, it looks as if that whole slice of America, the vast horn east of the Adirondacks, is resting on one spearpoint of land: the rocky headland of the Bronx.

  It’s a very pretty place, if you know where to look. The north is best, above Van Cortlandt Park South and Gun Hill Road. Up there it’s all parks and suburbs. Some of the original forest that once covered the whole archipelago, oaks as old as New York money—which is as old as sin itself—shelter some of the most impressive mansions in the state along the banks of the Hudson or in the hills above it, behind walls of tended poplars and cedar, fifty-room Tudors and Palladian Revivals, with a view across the river to the Palisades and the suburbs of New Jersey.

  This is the country where the limousines and the BMWs spend the night, tended by corporate drivers, polished by hand with butternut chamois cloths and rinsed in fresh cold water that beads up on the coachwork and splashes onto the quartz-and-limestone gravel. There’s usually a breeze from the broad stretch of the river. At sundown the light on the water sways and shimmers like a field of autumn wheat.

  Below Gun Hill Road it changes, and the farther south you go—riding the East Side IRT twenty feet above Jerome Avenue, in a gritty, paint-splattered car with a Coke can rolling from side to side and a sulphurous light coming in through the greasy glass—the worse it gets.

  The arteries running south are Jerome, the Grand Concourse, Webster, and Third Avenue. They converge as they go south, entering a dense tangled grid of hills, cross streets, scrub parks, vacant lots, stone-gray high-rises and projects, and block after block of tenements that seem always in one stage or another of the renovation waltz. They decline through the classes, until the wage earners move out and the welfare families move in, as well as the criminals that feed off that group. The tenement shows signs of wear. Windows don’t get fixed. The stairs get used as urinals. The wallpaper peels away, and the plaster rots beneath it. Addicts and hookers transact in the lobbies. A fire burns unattended in a trash can out back. The building dies and the city takes it over, stripping it down and bricking it up. They put clever trompe l’oeil panels over rotted empty windows—aluminum sheets with painted cats sitting on a nonexistent ledge, between painted drapes; a fat black pot of posies; fake mullions. They cover the collapsed interior like copper coins on a dead man’s eyes.

  At Fordham Road the wreckers are taking down a block of tenements. An asphalt crew tears up the street outside the RKO Fordham Quad. Spray paint is everywhere. The schools have turned into compounds, with armed security guards in the yards. The sidewalks are crowded with aimless men, black, white, Latins, Chinese, Vietnamese, leaning on the walls of shuttered factories, cooking soup in cans over small fires in a lot full of masonry and bent iron rods. Children clamber around in the ruined buildings, lighting fires for entertainment, sniffing butane in the basement, dashing through the traffic and the crowds, skinny, vital, as fast and canny as jackals, in packs and singly, living without supervision in a landscape not much different from Beirut or Mexico City. Under the elevated, on Jerome, it’s always late afternoon. People are everywhere, on the corners, in the shops and stores, cruising up and down in dented Camaros or glittering Eldorados. A fine white dust floats in the air and settles over everything: on the plate glass, on the paintwork and the bricks, and in the yards. Every few minutes the IRT literally thunders overhead on the tracks, cutting off the talk, muting the music from the record stores and the bars, and the hard-packed clay vibrates and rumbles with the force of it. This is Kennedy’s hometown.

  Kennedy likes to tell the story of how he made the choice between cop and wiseguy, up in the Bronx, back in the fifties. It had been a different Bronx then, in the days whe
n Fordham Road was the best thing in the Bronx. There was a lobster house by the Aqueduct, a big rambling wooden house where people came from all over town to savor the best brutes from Maine and the Sound. The Aqueduct beside it was a place for strolling couples, an avenue of shade trees lined with green wooden benches, moonlit in the summer nights, with faint music coming from the restaurant and the lights gleaming all the way along Fordham, the shops and stores busy with families and kids. He had a job at the lobster house, working as a busboy, and for some reason he was very late that night. His father, a bulldog Irish with a fine tenor and a taste for sentimental songs about the Troubles, ran the Kennedy home with a ruthless rod.

  So Eddie recalls running home under the oaks along the Aqueduct, worrying about his reception, running in his old shoes, saving his good black leather loafers under his arm, a five-minute dash to his apartment building. There was a blue-and-white squad car parked at the curb. He didn’t stop to look it over. He took the stairs two at a time, four flights, arriving out of breath and flushed at the polished wooden door of his apartment. As he reached for the knob, a gray-haired uniformed policeman came down the flight of stairs just behind him, nodding politely as he rounded the landing. The door was tugged open in a sweeping gesture. Kennedy’s father stood in the frame, in his pleated slacks and suspenders, his business shirt still crisp and white, collarless, with the copper studs glinting at his neck and sleeves, in his slippers, looking like thunder and lightning.