because she looked at me with eyes that knew me, and from the first time to the last time there was no sense of needing words. She wanted to tell me. “There’s no time.” She knew my crippled, fallen state. Or she would not have said a word. No reason for her to tell me
because she worked for the killer, if that is what he is. She worked for him up until when, what moment, when did she turn? Myers clearly didn’t want to talk about her and didn’t stay to chat, but there was burn on his face, the echoes of her slap
because Roman met her in the park with David, the three of them slurping on coquitos. Roman likes to do his crimes in private and here was David, bringing an audience. She sat like she was memorizing them, playing the clingy girlfriend, somewhat hand in hand. Roman insists. He didn’t trust her then and he doesn’t trust her now.
“She could’ve lied,” he said. “First got in with David real tight. Got inside him, got inside the scam, got this Myers to bump off Spook, and then David.”
“But how did she get Myers to make the phone call?”
We were playing ASK EVERY QUESTION THAT COMES TO MIND no matter where it leads, what conspiracy theory, what magic bullet. There was that feeling of running down a long hallway.
“It was part of the deal. She’s there when they come to the apartment. She hands it over, get it?” Roman lit a cigarette with a flash. “But instead, she runs off. David gets plugged. She gets the ten million.”
Now rain now sun. Sky goes dark, then bright. A pair of cell phones clamoring for attention. Rain, sun. The witch was getting married. The 4x4 following us was a dark cloud in the rearview mirror.
“But if that’s true, why would she bring you the tape?”
My question sucked out the air. I had Roman in my car, bugged or not. Better for Myers to hear. What would he make of it, what would he think? Lies are funny things, the way they build their own traps. One must keep meticulous records.
Roman seemed to think long and hard. I felt like he was trying to build a case.
“She came to me,” he said, “because she needs you to take Myers out.”
Myers. Guilty not guilty, true hero or rogue. The insect presence in my ear. Lieutenant Jack noticed he was missing lately, wondered if maybe the guy got what he wanted and hiked his ass back to D.C. I knew better. He was a living presence, everywhere at once. I took it for granted he could hear me, see me, follow me on an illuminated map. I wasn’t going to lose him. He wasn’t going to lose me. There would soon be Anderson’s rock-hard face, maybe the personification of what was left of my conscience. He could’ve said, “Why didn’t you come to me?” He wouldn’t bother. He already knew why. That elevator-drop sensation that stone-rock Roman face, clearly having second thoughts about everything, but it was probably just resentment.
I was tired of pretending there were choices anymore. I was shooting down a path. I was growing a new face. No time for stray thoughts. No raindrop-on-windowpane moments, no need to stay sane to join the crusade or be part of the bunch. This was independence day this was the end of the collective security of the group.
The theater was just off Van Cortlandt. It still had an old marquee. Its battered face must have been the thing of postcards once. Regal, archaic, The Majestic was an old Bronx movie theater that closed down in the early ’80s. It stood alone on a block flanked by empty lots and a couple of tenements whose businesses on the ground floor were all shuttered. There were no movies playing on its big screen, the rows still standing but bereft of seats. It was an empty space, dusty and rotted. The front was cinder-blocked up, but that wasn’t the way in. A tenement next door had a small business, a funeral parlor. It shared a basement entrance. That was how Roman brought me there.
Roman ran this little operation from the top floor. Fenced goods, stolen property, a whole warehouse. Boxes, crates, car parts. One area was full of CD burners stacked in tens, jewel cases by the crate, and a complete rig for running off cheap pirate discs. There was pop and hip-hop and scores of bachata compilations that his scurrying merchants sold at five bucks a pop from every sidewalk in town. In the office, he had laminating machines, printers, two color copiers, and an entire offset printing setup. Another room: boxes of passport stamps, blank state IDs, DMV stickers, and even a box of blank credit cards. These were the money schemes Roman was into now as he slowly phased himself out of the drug trade. He was “moving on,” away from instability and danger to lucrative and less aggressive forms of quick cash. Pirate CDs, forging, stolen goods. Car parts! There were also weapons, another department he was phasing out. When the police raid this place, they will see the mixed assortment of automatic weapons, pistols, and those three grenade launchers as an arsenal for an army planning an uprising. Roman was Puerto Rican. There was no uprising. It was about making money.
The funeral parlor was a front. It was run by three old guys who probably never buried anyone in their lives. The entrance was solemn and tasteful, but once past that coffin showroom it was all warehouse. In the basement, walking past thick pipes and a boiler, what stuck in my mind was the elevator. It was steel, no walls, just a solid platform big enough to fit Roman’s 4x4. On coming in, we actually had to walk through a part of the elevator shaft. Down there, a corridor, a rusted yellow pipe. It jutted out of brick and disappeared into the floor. I lost Roman a moment, then noticed he was a floor above me, fiddling with a little yellow box on the wall.
“What are you doing?”
“The elevator’s broken,” he said. He fiddled in the box some more. There was a loud clatter boom and the platform far above my head started moving. It was a few floors up. It was coming down right at me. There was no clearance in the shaft except for that small corridor. I made for it, grateful that the big steel door was open. I barely cleared it before the platform landed. I mounted it, and rode back up to Roman.
“Very funny.”
“Accidents can happen,” he said, “even to cops.”
We rode the platform up two more floors, to the very top. A dingy skylight. A long corridor. The floor was bare planks of wood, like on a construction site. Inside a cage, piles of computer equipment. He unlocked the door and started rooting around in some boxes.
“Spook loved intricate systems, these sort of Rube Goldberg setups with people instead of cogs, each one filling a role that makes the machine work. But nobody was really aware of anything outside of their small, limited role.”
Roman seemed to be reminiscing as he thumbed through blank ID cards in one box, photostats of card faces in another.
“Safe-deposit boxes were his favorite. He loved to pull tricks with them, you know. A key that leads to a box that leads to another box with another key that leads to a box with a code word, an address, or phone number. He had scores of these little deals set up. Paid people just to hold a package, to hold it until one day someone comes to the door and says, Afghanistan banana stand.”
“Plus, he’s got a million cousins.” I thought I wasn’t smoking, but the minute Roman lit up, it was fire time.
“He must have worked this the same way. I didn’t add it together before, but when David came to me for those ID cards, I wasn’t thinking it had anything to do with the swipe. I still fell for that clean routine.”
Now he was looking through a box of plates, the masters of cards he had already made. Most pro forgers ditch this stuff, but pride in good work sometimes turns them into collectors. And sometimes Roman does refills.
I was a cop, madness, a wonderland bust, a sea of officers flooding in behind me. Once it would have been a big moment. Now it was ridiculous paltry, proceeds going to charity. I could leave it all to Lieutenant Jack. He deserved the collar for busting an operation we never bothered to fuck with.
“You think he set this shit up the same way?”
“Sure.”
“So she has a key?”
“A key. Or something leading to a key. I’m pretty sure of it. And she’ll probably use one of these cards to do it. A fake account, a letter of
authorization …”
He handed me a couple of plates. I felt a weird shudder, involuntary. A ghost tickling my elbow with a feather: The name on the card was David Romero.
Roman exhaled, as if a weight had been lifted. What else? Regret, as if deep down he felt he were helping the wrong side. I didn’t know about sides. I had reached the fork in the road, the big choice. Was that Myers on my cell phone again? I was not building a file this time. I was not walking it over to Internal Affairs this time. I saw nothing but closed faces, a huge system of tacit agreements and secret handshakes. I felt alone again, much more than before. If I tried to trust a cop, trust the turns and twists of the system, where would that get me? I was implicated. I needed to sit with Myers and find out how much. Was this what he planned? Was this his plan, her plan all along? Roman had a point: How could I be sure she wasn’t working for him still? I needed to look in her eyes again, to weigh the feeling, see if I had read her right the first time. Maybe her rebellion was my rebellion … I had to start thinking like her. “This isn’t the time to be a cop.” I could see it clearly now, that gold shield on the captain’s desk. Maybe Myers wanted me to think if I handed her over to him, the slate would be wiped clean. “It’s between us.” I have suddenly ended up working for him. I am the new recruit, the next member of the team. What could Myers possibly do for me, reinstate me as a cop? Get my respect back? Stop the death threats, the stares, the cold shoulders? What could she do? Pay me. Carry the plan through to the finish. David and Spook talked about moving the money out of the country, where the trail would get blurry and fade amongst the many varied jurisdictions. “I once dreamed of having my own island,” I’d said. The Great Escape, Steve McQueen vaulting over barbed wire on a motorcycle. “Well, maybe not your own island,” David had replied, “but …” Sun. Sand. Beach. Spanish. My wife and I have already booked a flight for our vacation. A nice hotel, Valldemossa, “The Hotel Vistamar.” An appointment in a bank in Palma de Mallorca to confirm an account, a down payment on a house in Port de Soller … ridiculous …
“You can make up your own mind then,” David added, a nice stiff payment just for looking the other way, stalling for obstruction. This was something else. Right way, wrong way. A Hitchcock movie where the good guys kill the wrong guy. There was only one way to make it work. I had passed the fork in the road. (I was fooling myself.)
Roman’s stare was empty, drained from thinking. He must have been traveling those same roads.
“You can’t do it, Sanchez … you can’t save yourself. And I can’t save the organization.” His last puff on that nib of cigarette. “You still want to find her?”
“That’s right,” I said, handing him the plates back. “How long would it take you to run off a couple of cards for me?” Roman sighed, took the plates. We went back downstairs on the elevator, to the office.
The talk came in whispers. Walking streets hunched over from breezes shaking trees. Traffic backed up. A black 4x4 circled the block. Roman was running from cueva to cueva, collecting all his nuts. He checked the windows he checked the doors. Last thing he wanted was for his boys to get a whiff of some ten million. The thought nagged at him that should some money come to him after, he would have to kiss this world goodbye. It was all toast, all glimmery ash. Something going down, the natives can smell it. Bosses heading underground, visibles scurrying into holes. Spook’s organization was falling apart. Every branch could smell a raid, a police swoop, a big bash. Someone said it was the cops who knocked off Spook, some old score that had to be settled. When the head of an organization is killed, it ripples the whole populace around and within. All sends signals all makes a statement. Even if the cops put forty-one bullets in a guy by mistake, it’s the signal, the statement: forty-one bullets.
Roman couldn’t see any way any how that he would be attached to the money. He couldn’t see any way any how that there would be a payday, a reason to risk his neck, maybe even less now that Spook was dead. He had said no then. He was still trying to say no. When I told him my plan, he was furious. There was no way he was going to set himself up like that.
“The cops are coming anyway,” I said, “and besides, it’s not you I’m setting up. You’re just the bait.”
“I’m telling you, man, I don’t like it.” We were both outside the theater, watching the traffic flow through calm purple dusk. I felt stupid, out of my league, searching for a way to convince him it was in his interest to throw in with me and not just vanish. He could do that. I could blather about accounts, Mallorca, and money to come, but I already knew that was no way to get him. It was really not the reason. In fact, he had very little reason to throw in with a crooked cop who thought he would try to make good.
“Forget it,” I said, brushing him off. I was walking to my car. “Go ahead. Disappear.”
“Hey, wait a minute.”
“No. Look, the more I think about it, the more I see this is just my personal business. I got myself into it. What I’ll have to do now is just about me. Not you. You’re right. You weren’t in this. So go, disappear. I’ll try to keep them far from your ass.”
“Hey, you hold on.”
I don’t think Roman has ever grabbed a cop, not by the collar up close like that, right up to his flaming eye. It froze me. It froze him.
“I don’t know about the money shit. I’m telling you, if you throw in with that girl expecting a payday, you’re going to get ripped. But I still want a piece of the bastards that killed Spook. They took a piece of my life with them and somebody’s gotta pay for that. After, I’ll disappear. Just don’t try to buy me.”
“I’m not.”
He released me gradual, a sense of shock. A slow coming to himself. The return of the stiff hard to his face.
“Just tell me.” Was that disgust curling his lip? “Just tell me you know this guy is the murderer.”
The spread of that hard burn from my face to the rest of my body like a heat lamp. I could phone Anderson, just to make sure Myers had been with him all this time, but what would that prove? The guy had a team. I had only ever seen two, but who knows how many more worked for him? Did people even know they were working for him?
“I know she thinks it’s him.” Roman pacing his words like a prosecutor. “I even know she wants you to think it’s him. What about you?”
“But he’s after me, don’t you see that?”
It was more than I had wanted to say but the only words I could press out. All of a sudden I couldn’t stand it. The tenement windows all lined up like a jury. The thought I was being watched the whole time, my actions framed on video, my words on spools of tape, and this asshole pushing me around on these streets that I know like every deep wound
and those stupid young smirking bastards I pushed him I pushed him choke so sudden he falling in my grip and it was ME feeling like the one-eyed freak in the country of the blind and it never occured to me that I could be king that I could be running this town—the bad closing dialogue from a Clint Eastwood film—the typical American hero taking justice into his own hands. Roman’s head made a wood sound every time it hit the wall hit the wall hit the wall. All he knew was the old script, the black-and-white scheme that kept life simple. Good guys bad guys. Some stupid shit too about standing up for what you believe in, and that’s not always flag queen country. I pushed him up against chain-link.
“Listen, don’t be grabbing me like that again, okay? Because out here I’m still a cop. You got that? You still walk two steps behind me!”
I hit him again, didn’t I hit him? He slid down chain-link, a slow sidewalk crumple. I must have kicked him. Those boys on the street, “Wattup, yo?” They know I’m a cop, they come running they want bark like dogs they want pull guns like big-time hoods they don’t do nothing just come to a skid and I look at them and I kick him again and this big curly head yells, “Hey, are you making an arrest? Are you making an arrest?” And tenement windows swirl the same like eyes the same smells the same dusky gray I remember from 199
3. “I’m still a cop,” I say, some dignity, some straightening of the suit. Some looking down. I drag him up to his wobbly feet. And they still step back, but not so far back like they used to once.
I let go of him. Roman’s eye dizzy blurred. He was trying to catch his breath after I winded him, gasping like a marathon runner. I walked away from him. I walked away and lit the next cigarette. How did so many find their way into my pockets? The pecking order of these streets and how I hate it. Better for Roman to be seen getting beat by a Dirty Harry than for them to think their boss was consorting with the enemy. The car door slam obliterates all sound. The tick ticking of no clock. The tweety chime of my cell phone.
“Where are you?”
The same buzzing insect in my ear that would not go away. A voice trapped inside of me. The part of me I created.
“I’m shooting some film at the grassy knoll,”
I said. “What do you see?”
“Three shooters,” I said.
You can wake from a dream and realize you are still trapped in someone else’s dream.
PART TWO
It is my bad luck and my supposed biggest happiness
to use things the way that I want to. How sad for the
painter who loves blond women but can’t put them in
a painting because they don’t match with the fruit
basket. In my pictures I use all the things I like.
How those things feel about it, I don’t care.
—Pablo Picasso
18.
It had always been colors. It started on canvas, unrolling outwards by itself. Contours appear. Things would take shape with no heavy mental prodding. A vague feeling, that had been enough. Desire. A handful of brushes clattering in a tin can. He would work until the acrylic got thick and it felt like he was painting with gravel. It was raw instinct, all rhumba cha-cha voodoo. Back then, every time he splashed colors, something happened. He blamed Monk for bringing him interminable concepts, these sociological undercurrents. Dry days and blank canvases immediately followed, as if trying to be specific stifled the crazy wild that led to birth.
South by South Bronx Page 15