by A. E. Roman
When Carlos lost his job driving a cab for Fat-Fat Taxi and his drinking and hitting got worse, Nicky’s mom decided that it would be better for Nicky’s health to go live at St. Mary’s. That’s how Nicky got there. Not ’cause his mom didn’t love ’im but because she loved him and Carlos more than she loved herself. Some women are like that.
Nicky got to the top of the stairs and banged on the metal door. Carlos came out, face scratched, wearing a bright African dashiki with blood spatter. Nicky knew that the living room was full of velvet prints of African landscapes, of white hunters with guns taking down an elephant, of shirtless African men in white loincloths, and even a painting of Carlos himself as an African king. But all he could see then was the red blood on the dashiki. His mother’s blood. And all his father could say was, “May I help you, nigger?”
And every ghost and scream and demon, every slap, every kick Nicky ever took from his father and witnessed his mother take, trembled and shook in the arms and shoulders and fists of a fifteen-year-old kid, already over six feet, almost two hundred pounds, muscular, who was training his body for the Golden Gloves championship.
Carlos was too drunk and high to realize that it wasn’t the six-year-old kid who stood at the door facing his abusive father that day. This kid was dangerous. Carlos stood there, beer in his hand, grinning with white teeth, and Dorothy’s blood on his dashiki. And Nicky lost it.
When the police came, the Jewish landlord Mr. Schwartz told them a simple story, which his tenant Mrs. Hernandez also repeated. Carlos came back crazy from Vietnam. He was drunk and had gotten into a fight with his wife, Dorothy. After beating her bloody, still drunk, he fell down three flights of stairs, shattered both arms, legs, and spinal column, and broke his neck.
The police never came for Nicky, because Carlos was dead and no one missed him.
Case closed.
Nicky came back to St. Mary’s that night, packed a bag, and hit the road. He ran off to Manhattan at first, lied about his age, found a job as a bouncer, then a security guard, then took the G.E.D. test and enrolled in John Jay College. The Golden Gloves never happened. Nicky “The Hammer” Brown never stepped into the ring again.
At St. Mary’s Home for Boys in the Bronx, it was Nicky, four years older than me, who took me under his wing. It was Nicky who taught me how to punch, how to kick, to run, to learn, to hunger, to roll with the punches. It was Nicky who introduced me to John Coltrane and Charlie Chaplin, to Billie Holiday and the Marx Brothers, to Frank Sinatra and Red Foxx, Bessie Smith and Lenny Bruce. It was Nicky who got me, before he ran off to hitchhike through America, my first security job at the Metropolitan Museum, where I met Ramona in the African Art wing, where she sat reading The Lover in French. It was Nicky who had taken me into his apartment in Harlem when I left St. Mary’s and had no place to live. It was Nicky who talked me into going to John Jay College.
After my father died and my mother lost it and dropped off the face of the earth, before Ramona, it was Nicky. It was always Nicky. He was the only man I ever knew who I could forgive for trifling with the sixth commandment: Thou shalt not kill.
I looked over at Mimi and then at my soiled fingers caked with bright orange grease and food coloring.
Mimi walked back toward me and reached over the counter, grabbed my hands, and wiped my fingers with the end of her blue apron in a concerned and motherly fashion.
She smelled my fingers, raised an eyebrow and said, “Smoking?”
“Rough day.”
Mimi was the only person who came visiting when I went under for six months. She came by with tins and plastic containers full of food and drink. For six months, with palm tree and coconut stories, almost every day, she came.
“Ramona?” asked Mimi, releasing my forgers and grabbing a rag hanging from her pocket.
“I don’t want to talk about Ramona.”
She began wiping the counter. “Advice?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Follow your heart,” she said.
“Your advice really helps me. You should be a detective.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Chico!” She stopped wiping the counter. “Respect! You are a very bad boy.”
“I try.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I was a little girl in San German and this flying saucer—”
“Yes.”
“And the time Fajardo came home with a goat and—”
“You told me.”
“And did I tell you, you need a haircut?”
“And new shoes.”
She touched my hair. “I can cut it for you. I went to Wilfred Beauty Academy for two weeks, you know?”
“No gracias,” I said.
“When are we going bowling?” Mimi asked.
“Soon,” I said.
“What happen?” asked Mimi, grabbing my hand again and massaging my fingers.
“You know the rules,” I said. “I don’t ask what you put in your mofongo, you don’t question me about my cases.”
“Is it a girl?”
I hesitated, stared at her snub nose, wide mouth, freckled face, and eager eyes glowing under thick black eyelashes. “Let me ask you something.”
“You’re too young for me, Chico,” she said, dropping my hand.
“Okay. That’s disgusting,” I groaned. “Check, please.”
Mimi laughed loud, her belly and breasts shaking, grabbed my newspaper and slapped me on the head with it, and then picked up a ketchup bottle as if that was next.
I rubbed my forehead and said, “If I tell you about my case? Will you do something for me?”
“Yes,” she said with a gap-toothed smile, dropped the paper and the ketchup and leaned over the counter.
“A girl is missing,” I said in a whisper. “I have to find her.”
“Why do you look for her?”
“It’s my job.”
“Is that all?”
“Another girl is dead,” I said.
“Dead!” said Mimi, straightening up, her hand at her throat. “When? Where? Who?”
“Last night in Astoria. I think she was pushed off a roof.”
“Chico! Jesus!” said Mimi and clapped her hands together with worry and crossed herself.
The dark Spanish men at the other end of the counter stopped chattering and turned to look at us. Mimi waved, signaling that everything was bueno. They went back to their arguing about money and poverty, American statehood versus independence for Puerto Rico, boxing and Yankee baseball. Mimi turned on the TV that sat on top of the soda cooler. She walked from behind the counter and sat on the stool beside me.
“If you want to help,” I whispered, “I need you to stay calm.”
Mimi nodded and leaned in, hands clasped together. “This girl who is dead, she is a bad girl?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Do you want to help me?”
“Depends,” Mimi said, leaning back on her stool.
“It’s simple. I’m hired by Albert, you remember Albert from St. Mary’s?”
“Alberto?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “This creep Albert works for asked me to find a missing girl and I follow a second girl and my second girl gets dead.”
“Que necesitas?”
“Do you know any Brazilians working in Astoria, Queens?”
“I know one girl,” said Mimi. “Yolanda. She takes care of two boys in Astoria. But she lives over La Valencia Bakery across the street from here. Yolanda knows everybody.”
Laughter burst from the men at the other end of the counter. We ignored it.
“Could you ask,” I said, “if Yolanda or anybody she knows knew a Pilar Menendez who lived on Ditmars and worked as a waitress on a boat in City Island and was friends with a short, husky, bald Greek who loves drinking ouzo. And ask Yolanda if she might know or have ever heard of a girl named Tiffany or Olga or a guy named Irving. Chinese or Cuban or both.”
Mimi wrote the names and
details down on her check pad and said, “Why do I want to know this information?”
“Tell her that Pilar won some lottery money and we’re trying to find any family she might have left behind in Astoria. Tell Yolanda there’s a reward.”
“Cuánto?”
“Fifty dollars.”
Mimi made a face. “Yolanda has a little girl with asthma.”
“Tell her it’s negotiable,” I said, rising.
Mimi blew me another kiss and said bendición. I got up, stretched, repeated bendición, and tried to drop a tip on the counter. Mimi sucked her teeth and handed it back. I never pay at Mimi’s.
“See you soon,” I said, pocketing the money.
“God willing,” Mimi said. “God willing.”
FIVE
Pelham Bay. Going home finally, I saw a familiar Mustang parked outside the two-family redbrick house across the street from mine. I walked past a leafless tree and went down into my basement studio apartment. The overhead light was knocked out, and the hall was dark. I stopped at my door when I heard a loud, angry voice thunder from inside:
“Hey, Salvatore! What the hell are you doing in there?”
I tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked.
I took a deep breath, pushed it open and calmly went in.
My stuff was scattered all over my apartment. A tall, skinny figure wearing a black leather trench coat turned. I saw the gun.
“Don’t move!”
“Don’t worry,” I said, with my arms raised.
Private Investigator Oscar Pena. The only Puerto Rican kid I ever knew who grew up on Arthur Avenue, a tiny Italian section, a couple of blocks really, in the North Bronx. He was also the only Puerto Rican I knew who honestly hated Puerto Ricans and hated blacks even more. Oscar and I went to John Jay together, just like Officer Samantha Rodriguez. But our relationship had been even longer and more painful. Oscar came to my first criminal psychology class wearing a suede sports jacket, a tan cashmere overcoat, and a yellow ascot. It was summer. Right away, I hated this kid and he hated me right back.
Oscar Pena, blondish hair, pale face, heavy lidded eyes like a frog, was standing near my mattress on the concrete floor, pointing an enormous .357 Magnum.
“Yo, Salvatore!” yelled Oscar and banged on the door to my bathroom, directly behind him.
A putrid stink, a cross between sweat, rotten eggs, and raw sewage came into the room, as solid and real as me or Oscar. A smell that walked and talked and told stories about the Old Country. A Sicilian story, I thought, as I heard my toilet flush.
“Jesus,” Oscar said, waving his left hand in front of his nose.
A hulking Salvatore Fiorelli, black beard, black hair, also wearing a black trench coat, and a Yankee baseball cap, came out of my tiny bathroom, and stood behind Oscar, blushing.
Sal was a good old Italian boy, also from Arthur Avenue, also went to John Jay. Oscar and Sal ran with a group called Talent Unlimited Investigations on Hunts Point.
It was them that night in Astoria, Oscar and Sal, creeping around, Sal leaning on the parked Mustang, Oscar pacing and pretending to be on his cell phone, both waiting and watching me and Pilar outside her building.
“Get his gun,” said Oscar.
“I don’t carry a gun,” I said. I hate guns.
Sal walked toward me, got behind me, lifted my coat, and felt around.
“What?” I said, looking back at Sal and dropping my arms. “No roses? No candy? Just the old manhandle?”
“He’s clean,” Sal announced.
“Of course I’m clean,” I said. “You never know when you’ll be frisked in your own home and it’s better to smell safe than sorry.”
“Shut up, spic!” Oscar said, still pointing the .357 at me.
“Shut up yourself,” I said. “Refresh my memory. Did I invite you two over for some of my delicious Bustelo coffee or is this just an ordinary home invasion?”
“We need ya to come with us, chief,” Sal said.
“I would love to go riding around with you, paisan. Only I got a beauty salon appointment. I hear the Jheri-curl’s coming back and I wanna be the first on line. Also, I get car sick when I’m not the driver.”
“We’ll roll down the windahs,” said Sal and laughed.
Oscar stood there smirking and went into his coat pocket and pulled a yellow banana. He tossed it at me.
“Our anniversary,” I said, catching the banana and looking Oscar in the eye. “I totally forgot, honey. I am so thoughtless. Perdon. Forgive me.”
“For the trip,” Oscar said. “I thought you might get hungry. Bananas, that is what monkeys eat, right, spico?
I peeled the banana, bit it, and chewed.
“Ah, just like Mami used to make.”
“You gotta come wit us,” Sal repeated.
“Can’t do it, fellas,” I said. “Wish I could go with you, though. Sounds fun. But I could maybe change my mind if you told me who we were going to see and why. And don’t say Santa, because somebody told me just yesterday that he don’t exist.”
“We’re not asking you to come with us, nigger,” Oscar said. “We’re telling you.”
It was then I thought how some people might deserve to die.
Something heavy sat in my throat, in my tiny underground studio, flanked by two men with guns. I don’t like having guns pointed at me. It makes me mad. I’ve never been shot, so the pain of being shot, like death, is an abstraction. And I’m not one of those people afraid of abstractions. Sure, I’ve seen guys shot. Shot good or shot dead. My old man was shot dead. But I am not afraid of and I am not impressed by guns. Especially not guns held by Oscar and Salvatore. And if I was gonna go anywhere, I wanted some information first.
So I sat down on my only chair, which was next to the refrigerator, and said, “Look, boys, you could both go home to Arthur Avenue, buy yourself some nice sausage or fresh pasta, cook, drink Chianti, and think about what you almost did here today. Or you could tell me who’s knocking and why they’re knocking and we can get going.”
“You know,” said Sal. “Pilar Menendez. The girl we saw you wit last night in Astoria.”
“You’re gonna give our employer what Pilar Menendez gave to you.”
“I’m not even gonna touch that one,” I said. “What is this about?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m not playing,” I said. “Ask any of my old math teachers.”
“Get up!” Oscar yelled.
“Now, now, Oscar,” I said, looking him in those cold froggy eyes again. “Pilar Menendez was just a friend. I’m allowed to have friends. This relationship ain’t gonna work if you keep trying to monopolize my time.”
Oscar kicked my chair. I jumped up and almost belted ’im. Control, Chico. Play it cool and you may just get outta this one with no missing teeth or bullet holes.
“Be more polite, Oscar,” said Salvatore. “Ya catch more flies wit sugar.”
“This is no fly,” said Oscar. “It’s a cockroach.”
“Tell me what this is about,” I said. “Or get outta my apartment before I call the cops, have you arrested for breaking and entering, trespassing, and stinking up the joint without a license.”
Oscar took off his coat. Under the black trench, he was wearing two gun holsters, one empty and the other bulging with a second gun, a Glock. He threw his trench and his guns down on my mattress and began rolling up his shirtsleeves.
“Okay, funny man,” Oscar said. “We asked you nice to come with us. You brought this on yourself.”
I almost laughed at the sight of Oscar’s skinny arms as he took a weak and wobbly boxing stance, hands low, chin out. I could take Oscar out, no problem. I’ve had my share of fights in gyms and on street corners, been beaten black and blue, had my teeth rattled and chipped, seen my own blood on the sidewalks of the Bronx and beyond. I’ve given and I’ve gotten. But it was Salvatore had me worried, standing there like an Italian brick house. I took no pleasure in imagining his meat slab
of a bicep clenched around my throat if I didn’t work fast. I was feeling rusty. Neither my kicks nor my combinations were strong.
I raised my open hands. “I don’t wanna fight, Oscar. Just tell me who you’re working for and what they want and then we’ll go. What’s so hard?”
“Do you think it’s that easy, spico?” Oscar said, coming forward. “It’s not! I’m going to beat you silly, nigger! I’m going to smash that nigger face of yours! I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. I never liked you, spico, not in school, not now. I’m gonna break you in two.”
Oscar let loose a soft but clean shot that missed and connected with my refrigerator door. He recovered quickly and came at me again. I deflected Oscar’s punch with a sweep of my hand. His punch connected with the wall. I considered using a wrist-lock but he made me mad, so I knocked him off his feet with a good old-fashioned uppercut to the jaw instead. I felt his teeth shake as his body went soft and he hit the concrete floor like a dead stone.
Salvatore stepped between me and Oscar, yelling, “Okay, fellas!”
“No!” Oscar yelled back. “Lucky punch!”
“This guy gets any more lucky,” Sal said, “you might wind up brain dead.”
Oscar got up off the floor. He went to his trench coat on my mattress. He picked up his German Glock and pointed it at me.
“What the fuck, Oscar?” yelled Salvatore.
Oscar came at me, a murderous flash in his eyes. He pressed the gun into my chest and said, “One less black spic in the world.”
“Oscar?” Salvatore yelled again. There was fear in his voice. “Don’t bust my balls. Put da gun down.”
Oscar just stood there, gun at my chest, trembling with rage, his eyes biting into my face, until finally I said, “Do it or drop the gun and let’s get going. I wanna be back before American Idol.”
Oscar pushed the gun into my chest.
“Fine. Do it.”