It seemed the thing that scared Myers the most was the possibility that Spook was truly alone in this. Dropped his security apparatus and did a fade-out with the whole bag. The money came and went. Spook opened four businesses, four bank accounts. He purchased four pieces of property, all in the South Bronx, each and every one the ratty kind of riot-gate shop stinking of rotted wood and empty shelves. These were his supposed investments in the scheme. He seemingly fronted the money from his own pocket, though looking at these pathetic properties it was unlikely he spent much. This was his goodwill tactic, promising these people not only a front for floating money but four locations in the South Bronx they could use for whatever purposes pleased them. This probably excited them, a home base with Manhattan just twenty minutes away on the 5 train. We were still getting down to the nitty-gritty of how Spook pulled the swipe, but it was clear the terrorists got sold four ramshackle properties in the South Bronx for ten million bucks. It was all they walked away with. The money had already passed through by the time the feds arrested the four losers left holding the bank accounts. Of the four, two were from Spook’s family of regulars. Outer-fringers, Spook must have pulled them from a hat. He paid them each eight thousand dollars. Just another small business banking its money, right? They saw the money come and they saw the money go. Afterwards they still had eight thousand dollars in the bank. They also had federal agents asking them WHERE IS IT?
The other two were foreigners. Spook banked four million with them in separate joint accounts. They didn’t even have eight thousand after it was over. They had expired visas, few documents, and fake Social Security numbers. They claimed to be Saudi Arabian students with very wealthy parents who had just gotten swindled big time. They were young, a little scruffy, and somehow accustomed to interrogations. Myers took me to see them at an FBI office downtown. They sure looked Puerto Rican to me in that way Arabs sometimes do. The two Spook regulars were pretty freaked out by the feds and were relieved to see me, a compa’i who could speak their Spanglish. They were a torrent of words, nothing to hide, talked volumes. They knew nada about the money or where it came from.
“And you believed them?”
“That’s right,” I told Myers. “People who don’t know can’t talk.”
“So you’re saying he likes to involve civilians, innocent types, people who don’t know. Is that right?”
I didn’t really get where this was going until later, when he and I were blowing down a couple of slices in my car. We were a few blocks from the precinct, going down the list of Spook people. Myers had his own list, drawn I imagine from his bread truck tricks, his electronic toys. Even with all that, he didn’t have a knowledge of cuevitas, those little holes they go scurrying into when trouble comes, those loose lines of contact with the normal folk in the community who don’t get picked up by bread trucks. I gave him my information. Maybe he would take it and go away. He was pushing for big raids. He didn’t understand about the big splash and how it always causes a stink. You make a splash in one place and everybody else you don’t nab will head into cuevitas so deep … could spend months looking and nobody on the street is going to tell you, not after a splash. Nobody likes so much noise. Sources dry up, the streets stop talking. There were times when it could do the precinct some good to be “seen” making raids, the sign of an active police force doing its thing. In most cases these raids were stage managed with the care of a Broadway production. Myers didn’t know about that. His was a boyish enthusiasm that soon played itself out. I felt him pushing me. I sensed he was trying to get underneath me, lead me to make some admission. When I insisted this was a Spook solo number, he wanted to know how I knew, how I could be so sure. And yet we had spent the past day and a half looking up the people who guard Spook. Myers knew as well as I that none of them were with the man.
“But would that make sense to you? That he would swipe ten million bucks off some goons, then run off without his team to protect him?”
“The team wasn’t in on it.”
“But if he has no security?”
“How secure would you feel surrounded by a pack of hot-headed South Bronx gunboys? Would you tell them you have ten million dollars?”
My words slowed him down a bit. He seemed to launch countless little offensives, but once blunted, would lapse into moody silence. There was a lack of air. We had long ago finished our slices. I rolled down a window and lit two cigarettes. There was the tender touch of rain droplets appearing on the windshield like blisters.
“He probably figured it was easier for him to ditch the gang.” I was blowing out smoke, relishing the warm harsh. “He can hole out someplace safe while the gang takes the blame, and maybe gets the bullets. Maybe we’re playing into his hands.”
“But you still think we can find him?”
“Yes.”
“What about his brother?”
My stomach was churning bad.
“He’s not always helpful.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means sometimes he doesn’t know.”
“But what if he knows this time?”
I pinched my eyes shut. I could feel the next Myers offensive coming, that relentless assault of words. I felt tired just looking at him.
“I told you, he’s clean.”
“Clean. Exactly the type his brother utilizes to perfection. What better place to stash the money?”
“What worse place. His brother’s? Didn’t you just come up with it? How much of a stretch could it be?”
“His brother could be a front for the entire operation.”
“David Rosario has never been involved in criminal activity. He wouldn’t swipe a paper clip.”
“He bailed Spook out of jail.”
“That’s right, a couple of times.”
“Sounds like involvement to me.”
“Hey, don’t you have any brothers or sisters? He sometimes takes care of his wayward little brother. But not crime. He won’t break the law.”
“How about the fact that Spook shows up at his apartment? He was there three times last week. Why is it that, if we watch David, we get Spook?”
Some cold wind blowing from him. Somehow, some way my blood was turning to ice. I was burning and freezing at the same time.
“So you’ve been watching him,” I said.
That’s the thing about feds, Jack told me. They might know things but they won’t tell you. Maybe not right off, maybe only when they want to use the information to make you do something. You don’t have the information. In many cases you don’t even see it. I expected Myers would get as cryptic as the Book of Revelations, but that wasn’t what was coming.
“That’s right,” he said. “I don’t have a big team, you know that. Three weeks ago I managed to place somebody with David Rosario.”
“An operative?”
I was sucking on that cigarette too fast, or something else was making the surroundings shrink, all pressing in toward me.
“Let’s just say a good friend.”
“So if you have the information David has it, why are you chasing Spook?”
“I don’t have the information that it’s at David’s. But I know it’s the two of them. It’s between them somehow and I’m going to find it.”
His insistence, pressing against my temples, my neck. I started the car.
“You told me you wanted to trace the money to its source, to follow it on its journey through those terrorist arteries. To know who’s who—who fills the trough and who feeds at it. You told me that just talking to Spook could give you valuable information. Now all you’re talking about is the money. So what do you want? Is it the money, or is it Spook?”
He rubbed his eyes. “One leads to the other, that’s right.”
“So you want Spook to hand over the money?”
“The money’s course has been interrupted.” It was a night voice, a horror-movie narration. “The flow has to be reestablished. A lot of people went to a lot of trouble to s
et this up. A lot rides on this. There has to be a way to salvage this, to set the money back on its course.” Black mask, red parted lips, and some tongue-flicking like in that Marilyn Manson video.
“Sounds like you just want to give it back,” I muttered, more to my cigarette. “Is that right? Do you think you’re going to get Spook to give it back?”
“The important thing is that we find him, and find him first … before the others do.”
Who says Myers had to be wrong about David and Spook? The two of them could be in perfect touch, symbiotic, instinctive. And what about those “others” who are after him? Good guys bad guys? Arab terrorists running around on American streets? See the first Back to the Future, also the ’80s classic Into the Night, with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum. Could imagine talking to people on South Bronx streets: Seen any Arabs around here lately? So many Arabs look like Puerto Ricans. All they have to do is learn some Spanglish.
“They don’t have to be Arabs,” Myers said, sick of my jokes. “They could hire anybody to do the job—anybody.”
The feds working to retrieve money stolen from a group of terrorists? This was not a plot twist I wanted to deal with. My wife rented the Coen brothers. Blood Simple: how one simple mistake leads to another simple mistake, and after that, does it matter how it began? I was on my fifth cigarette that day. Some days it’s only two or three. Some days you hit five without thinking.
The 5 train is another South Bronx rhythm, cutting across the middle of the borough. Goes underground through Manhattan, all the way into Brooklyn before turning back. Climbs out to open air on elevated tracks just after that other Third Avenue station at 149th Street. It clatters past small shops, a post office, and the running track, before its first outdoor stop by the tall projects. The Jackson Avenue station looks more like a worn-out house suspended over traffic. The round bulby lamps along the platform glow at night like fiery lemon drops. The 5 train runs all the way down Westchester Avenue until it hits Southern Boulevard. Makes that sharp turn right after the Freeman Street station. Trains howl when they hit that curve, even though they hit it slow. It is an animal sound, dogs crying, flutes wailing, a sound that has always been and will ever be. I remember it when I was a little kid and subway cars were black and boxy. I remember walking with my father toward Hunts Point. I must have been seven or eight. I was holding his hand, and looked back at that wailing sound to see those train cars up on elevated tracks all lit up like a string of jewels and Southern Boulevard all covered in flashing lights and Christmas wreaths that hung across the street over traffic. These things have not changed. Christmas wreaths still hang over traffic during the holiday season, and the trains still play their melancholic pipes. The trains are silvery smooth now, hydraulic systems adding a rising whine to the clatter of a passing train. A different song for a new generation to learn. A straight line from past to present, the one true continuity in a place where the landscape changes constantly. The South Bronx has become more like a city rebuilt after a war than the old town whose stories are etched in jagged tenement brick. Change comes. Change kills the past.
On the third day, Myers excused himself. “It’s not like I don’t love you, but I have to meet with the FBI. They’re trying to horn in.” He had this habit of calling on the cell phone. “Where are you?” he would ask. I was driving under the 5 train. Spook had a million cousins. One of them told me he had just gotten a visit from him where she lived on Fordham Road, so I headed out there. I knew Spook had a place he used to rent on White Plains Road. I had barely scraped the door with my fist when it swung open. I quickly pulled out my gun, moving into the apartment carefully. The place was a mess. Drawers pulled out, clothes thrown everywhere, a floor lamp tipped over. Too late. I got on the horn and called Jack. I was too late. Cop cars under the el. Lieutenant Jack and I smoking cigarettes on the stoop.
“Did you tell Myers?”
“I left him a message,” I said. “He’s downtown.”
“What do you think?”
I couldn’t put the uneasy feeling into words. The door was open but the lock wasn’t busted. The place was ransacked, gone through, searched. A broken lamp, kicked-over table and chair, the general disarray of a fist fight.
“I think they took him,” I said, now thinking about what Myers said, about “others” out there also in on the hunt. If there were “others,” they must be well-informed, because who knew about this place? How could some outsider sneak into town, find Spook unguarded, and take him? We questioned neighbors, street people, bodegueros. Nobody saw or heard anything. Lieutenant Jack and I snapped into rhythm. It was almost the old days again. I took the opportunity during another cigarette break to fill him in on everything—clearance or not, I didn’t give a damn because it was cop business and I wanted him in on it, I wanted him knowing. It was a calm cigarette moment for us.
“You really think this guy did it,” Jack asked, “swiped all that cash?”
“Sure he did,” I said. It was mostly the cigarette talking. “He took it and hid it.”
“So the feds are looking for it?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Isn’t that a kick?”
“Good thing I don’t know anything about it,” Jack said. We both laughed like two small town cops making fun of the ways of the big boys. We laughed until the coughing came, some cigarette gone the wrong way. Too deep an inhale. A wet-eyed sting.
“They should pin a medal on him for ripping off some creeps, instead of chasing him like a rat,” I said.
“Maybe they would,” Jack said, “if they could find him.”
I called Jaco, Wiggie, and Quique, three of Spook’s district chiefs. I told them I had reason to believe Spook got grabbed, but after leaving messages and talking to Jaco, all I got was the feeling that they didn’t know shit, either about what Spook had been doing or where he would be now. Spook had the habit of clearing out. He would go underground for weeks. He was not the type people would file a missing-person report on.
When Myers appeared, he seemed glum. He kept his hands in his pockets and seconded my feeling.
“They took him,” he said. “We need to search some of his other places. Did you contact his brother?”
“I left a couple of messages,” I said. “He hasn’t gotten back to me.”
Myers pulled out his flip-pad. “What can you tell me about a guy named Santo Romas?”
Memory bursts. Quick flick and there was a cigarette. Like I was back on home turf. Click. Flash. Light.
“Santo Romas, a.k.a., Sancho P., a.k.a., Smooth, real name Louis Santo Romas. Fenced stolen goods, forged documents. Credit card fraud. Caught him a year ago when Spook tried to turn some ready cash into jewelry.”
“Jewelry?”
“Diamonds, stones. Fine-cut shit. When cash needs to be shrunk portable size.”
“Well, some flunky just arrested this character at Kennedy Airport last night. He had ten thousand bucks on him. Fresh bank stuff. He should’ve turned it into stones! The ATF thinks it’s a drug case, but I think … a definite person of interest in this case.”
I was feeling a funny tremor. A low, thumping bass note.
“Where was he going?” The cigarette was making me sick.
“Mallorca.”
“Excuse me?”
“Miami,” Myers said. “Looks like the guy thought it was retirement time. Maybe you should come with me downtown tomorrow to talk to him.”
The headache was back, hammers pounding a spot right between my eyes. I stared at Jack across the street laughing with some cops. I felt suddenly cut off from him, from them, from an old life.
“We have a record of Spook calling him. Looks like they did business recently.”
“You know that? You bugged Spook’s phone?”
Myers smiled smug, a bit of confidence through the glumness.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s what led me to David Rosario. Every person he has had contact with, done business with. How could I not get on his b
rother? For a guy who isn’t involved in the business, he sure did a lot of phone time with Spook recently.”
Why was he talking about David again?
“Everything leaves a trail.” He nodded significantly.
“And how long have you been bugging David’s phone?”
Myers took a moment to answer. “This investigation is almost a month old.”
The nausea was coming back. Fucking cigarettes. I puffed away.
“It would take me that long just to get permission from a court to use a wiretap,” I said.
“Yes, my friend, we’re all aware of cop speed. My motto has always been, Once you have the equipment, use it. Obviously, a lot of the material gathered would not be admissable in court due to methods used to acquire it. But who says we’ll ever need to go before a court? We’re moving at federal speed here, Sanchez. No reason legality has to become a speed bump.”
Maybe a migraine. Lights too bright. The bad taste in my mouth made me spit. I ditched the cigarette, saying to myself now, Yeah, for sure I will quit. A Puerto Rican with ten thousand in cash will never make it past Customs.
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