by A. E. Roman
“Shut da fuck up, Chico!” Salvatore yelled.
Oscar just stood there, gun in my chest. It was stupid to say “do it.” I knew better than that. But I was angry. And anger can make you do stupid things. I thought about Nicky’s father, Carlos. Anger can kill you. What the hell, Santana?
I looked at Oscar and said, “I’d like to cancel my last order.”
Salvatore inched toward us, slow, like a feather trying to make its way through syrup. And slow he removed the gun from Oscar’s hand and slow Oscar relaxed, and slow he dropped his arms, and slow everyone let out a breath of air, relieved. No one more than me.
“Let’s motivate,” Salvatore said, grabbing my arm. “Basta! No more dickin’ around.”
“Do I have time to change my underwear?” I said.
We walked out to Salvatore’s rusty red Mustang and he unlocked it.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stopped. I turned.
Oscar paused, looked down at his shoes, sagged his head.
“Maybe Sal’s right,” Oscar said.
He put out his left hand. We shook and I turned again to get into the Mustang.
The last thing I remembered was Salvatore yelling, “C’mon, guys, hop in,” when I felt the metal object hit the left side of my skull, a connection of such force that there was not only a shock of pain but an explosion that made the world go white and fall sideways.
And then everything went black and there was no pain, nothing, and I saw myself rising above the cold streets of Pelham Bay. And all my past, my old thoughts, my old problems and theories, my old ideas and that picture I had of myself as a failure in love and work and family, left me. Just a Bronx orphan kid, a wandering, basement-dwelling, chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, coffee-swilling detective with a dead junkie doctor for a father and nut-job for a mother. The marriage, the lying, the messing around, all of it, it all left me. And I felt as though I were flying upward, without fear, everything bad vanishing from my sight as I went up. . . .
SIX
I awoke in a large, cinder-block room with one small but thick and gated soundproof window and a metal chair. My head ached like a busted drum. They had taken my shoes and the room was freezing cold.
I got up and looked out the window and saw a sea of docked trucks being loaded and unloaded with bags and boxes and crates. The mechanical Goliaths that caught my eye were marked:
HMD
MEAT & DAIRY
I was being held prisoner in a locked room in some refrigerated warehouse in the Hunts Point Meat Market. As kids we used to come to the market to try and hustle chump change loading and unloading trucks before anybody asked how old we were and if we were in the union. If they found out you weren’t in the union, it was no money for the movies that night.
I was still standing at the window staring at a white stretch limousine parked near the entrance to the market when the door to my prison was unlocked and locked again. I turned and saw a man standing with a little Asian girl at his side. The man wore a white silk suit, a red handkerchief in the pocket, and expensive shoes. He was holding an unlit cigar and a copy of The Wall Street Journal. He was tall and athletic with a pale face, dark goatee, and green eyes.
“Have a seat, young man,” he said and pointed at the metal chair.
Sweet. A kidnapper and a gentleman.
“I’ll stand,” I said. “But thanks.”
“Do you like children, Mr. Santana?” he said, patting the little girl’s head.
“Only if by children, you mean my inner child,” I said. “No. My wife’s the one who likes kids.”
“You’re married?” he asked.
“Separated at the moment,” I said. “You’re the host. How do we do this dance?”
“Gingerly,” he said. “My name is Hannibal Rivera. The Third. I am Marcos Rivera’s father. You may know him as Kirk Atlas.”
Hannibal Rivera the Third. He smiled proudly when he said it. Except for the dark goatee, he looked exactly like the passport photo I had of his brother Samuel Rivera. They could have been identical twins. The child with him was about eight or nine years old, a pretty little girl with large almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair. She wore little heels, black stockings, and a little black dress under her winter coat. Her lips were painted red, her cheeks rosy, and she filled the room with perfume. She didn’t look like a child at all, but a child made to look like a woman. And we were nowhere near Halloween. The idea of what could be going on made me sick in my gut.
“This is my goddaughter,” said Mr. Hannibal Rivera the Third, as he put his arm around the girl. “Her parents are old friends and good employees, Chinese, hard workers.”
He bent down and whispered, “Go, Ting Ting,” handed her a red lollipop, and motioned for her to sit on the metal chair. Ting Ting sat, staring at the floor, sucking on her lollipop.
“Hablas espanol?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’m stuck with English. But if you talk real slow I can understand most of it—except for the nouns and the verbs.”
“Do you play?”
“Excuse me?”
Rivera held up his newspaper. “The market.”
“Not my racket,” I said. “I’m more of a bowler.”
I took a deep breath and went into my pitch-slash-bluff. “Okay, Mr. Rivera. I’ll forget all about this. The break-in. The aggravated assault. The kidnapping. Your wearing white after Labor Day. If.”
“If?”
“If,” I repeated, “you answer some questions. I ask the questions. You answer them.”
Mr. Rivera plopped his cigar into his mouth and talked while he chewed on it. “Pena and Fiorelli warned me that you were a bit unorthodox. So am I. But what if I told you to go to hell?”
“I have nothing against New Jersey.”
Mr. Hannibal Rivera offered his hand. I took it. Rivera nodded and said, “You’re the boss.”
I doubted it.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“Your friend Pilar.”
“I just met her,” I said. “What about her?”
“She’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Did you know she was a blackmailer?”
“We didn’t talk much about her hobbies.”
“A week ago, Pilar came to us and told us that our son Marcos has an unhealthy obsession. Finding his cousin Tiffany. She also told us that she knew of a videotape that would be extremely detrimental to our family. Do you have the videotape? We can pay.”
“We?” I said.
“My wife and I,” he said. “Josephine. We are only trying to protect our son.”
“Pilar was blackmailing you. Pilar is dead. So you’re worried about Marcos, is that it?”
“By God,” he said. “You are a detective.”
“Don’t be glib,” I said. “That’s my job. How does Marcos feel about all this? He didn’t seem afraid of Pilar at all.”
“He doesn’t know about Pilar’s videotape. My son is a fuckup, Mr. Santana. Just an overfed college drop-out with a regular monthly allowance. A series of fortunate accidents have made him more independent than he deserves. His mother is worried. She makes me worry.”
“So Marcos is a momma’s boy?”
“My wife is a bit older than most women with sons his age. She’s not well. She has not left the house in three years. First, this upsetting business with Tiffany and the videotape and now, Pilar, who had been working for him, who was blackmailing us, commits suicide in Astoria. My wife suffers. When she suffers, I suffer. I don’t like suffering, Mr. Santana. It plays havoc with my golf swing.”
I noticed that Hannibal Rivera wore no wedding band, and that the shade of skin on the wedding band finger was even with the rest of his hand.
Hannibal Rivera held up his hand. “Your staring is making me nervous, Mr. Santana.”
Ting Ting made a whining noise and pointed.
Mr. Hannibal Rivera took the little girl by the hand and went to the thick window. He lifted
her up so she could look out.
“Mr. Santana,” Rivera said, holding the girl, arms trembling. “My wife has a weakness. An Achilles heel. She loves her son and I love my peace of mind. I want to keep this trouble with Marcos in the circle of close family and friends.”
“What trouble?”
“Tiffany running off. Pilar. The videotape. The blackmail. This suicide in Queens.”
Mr. Rivera put the girl down again. “We want Marcos protected from himself, quietly. After Pilar Menendez came to us with talk about some videotape, we hired Mr. Fiorelli and Mr. Pena to keep an eye on Marcos and Pilar.”
“Where is Tiffany?”
“I have no idea,” said Hannibal Rivera. “And, frankly, I don’t care. The girl is a lunatic. Her father tells me she believes in fairies or some such nonsense.”
“What was Pilar blackmailing you and your wife about? What was on the videotape?”
“You’re terribly demanding,” said Hannibal Rivera. “For a man with no shoes.”
I looked down at my socks. He had a point.
“I didn’t hire detectives to locate Tiffany, Mr. Santana, but to keep an eye on Marcos and Pilar and report back any sign of trouble. Suicide would go under the heading of trouble.”
“I understand,” I said. “So what do you want from me? Recommendation for a better detective agency?”
“No,” Mr. Rivera said. “You work for Marcos.”
“Seems like it.”
“I would like you to come and work for me.”
“What about your son?”
“You can still pretend to be working exclusively for Kirk Atlas.”
“Sounds like a double cross,” I said. “Why would I do that?”
“I thought perhaps you were, like Pilar, interested in bettering your financial future.”
“Right now,” I said, pointing at my socks, “I’m just interested in shoes. Black Rockports. Size twelve.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Mr. Rivera said. “My instructions were to bring you here for our little talk. I didn’t ask for any unnecessary roughness. I was very clear about that.”
“Why did your hired goons search my apartment?”
“They were looking for the VHS cassette.”
“The one that Pilar was blackmailing you about?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I want you to stay close to Marcos and recover this VHS cassette if you should come across it. I’m willing to pay generously.”
“Who has this tape?” I asked.
“We thought Pilar. Then we thought she may have given it to you. We don’t know. But we do suspect that someone close to Marcos may be in possession of it.”
“What’s on this VHS cassette?”
He grinned at me. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“I’d rather not look for something you’d rather not talk about.”
“It’s of a sexual nature,” said Mr. Rivera.
“How will I know if I find it?”
“The tape will be clearly marked ‘Car.’”
“Car? Why?”
“I’m not sure,” said Rivera. “It’s an old tape. Black with a white label. We gave Pilar a ten-thousand-dollar down payment, but she never got a chance to turn over the tape.”
“Is there any connection between this tape and Pilar’s death?”
Hannibal Rivera coughed and cleared his throat. “Certainly not.”
“Good,” I said. “I don’t need that kinda trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The sort,” I said, “where the person who pushes a girl off a roof tries to do an encore performance using me as a stand-in. How much you willing to pay?”
“If you find the tape,” said Hannibal Rivera the Third, “and you return it, without reviewing it, on your word of honor, you will never have to work another day in your life.”
“How much exactly are you willing to pay for my services in the present tense?”
“One thousand dollars a day.”
“You have a fine sense of humor,” I said. “But I got troubles, pain, and heartache that need more love than that.”
“How much love?”
“Crazy love,” I said. “I’m a doughnut and coffee man, but I’ve heard that caviar is quite tasty. I’d like to spoil myself.”
“One thousand per day, plus expenses?”
The more I played Hannibal Rivera into believing I was just another greedy punk looking for a big payday and the more he kept upping my price, the more I knew that this wasn’t just about a runaway niece, baby-sitting, and damage control for a wannabe celebrity.
“I like you,” said Rivera.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s been going around lately. I’m a real likeable guy. Especially when my belly’s full of expensive caviar. But you keep making offers for the cheap kind. Just how much do you want to protect your son, Mr. Rivera? I’d be more than just eyes. I’d be eyes, ears, nose, and throat. That’s not cheap.”
“Understood.”
“But first.” I eyeballed him like I meant business. “My shoes.”
Mr. Hannibal Rivera the Third guided me to the door. He knocked. The door was unlocked from the outside. A man dressed in a black chauffeur’s uniform entered, and without words or eye contact, he handed me my shoes and walked out.
I slipped on my Rockports and waved goodbye to little Ting Ting. She smiled and waved, too. I’ll be back for you, honey, don’t you worry.
Mr. Hannibal Rivera went into his breast pocket and came out with a white envelope.
He handed it to me.
“I always like to know what kind of man I’m doing business with,” he said. “Now I know.”
When I looked inside the envelope, and counted, I almost self-combusted. Twenty-five thousand dollars.
SEVEN
It was bright, cold, and the wind was blowing as I wandered past cement trucks and scrap metal yards, the Bronx River on my right, seagulls cawing overhead. Except for a few cars and trucks, the streets were deserted. The infamous hookers of Hunts Point weren’t out yet and I felt like a man on death row reprieved from some undeserved doom. I walked away from the Hunts Point Market, away from that cinder-block room, away from Hannibal Rivera the Third and Ting Ting.
I thought about Mr. Chang. What would Mr. Chang do about Hannibal Rivera and Ting Ting?
Bruce Lee was the man who introduced me to movie martial arts, Mr. Chang was the man who tried to teach it to me in real life. Mr. Chang owned Chang Sporting Goods on Fordham Road and Tiger Chang’s above it. I hung around the store with Nicky, who was working there after school peddling sneakers and training in the studio on weekends. One day, when everybody was at lunch, just me and Mr. Chang in the store, three teenage punks strolled in and picked up baseball bats, one shouting, “My kung fu is stronger than your kung fu!” Mr. Chang came from behind the counter, arms folded, and smiled, calm as a tree trunk, motionless as a rock. This was a thin, short, fifty-year-old-man who looked thirty. He wore simple khaki pants and white dress shirts. He had glasses. Mr. Chang looked more like an accountant than like a man who swam in the ocean in December and broke bricks with a dirty look. After studying the suspiciously calm Mr. Chang and his tiny smile for a bit, one by one the three knuckleheads got scared and threw down the baseball bats, cursing, “Ah, fuck you, Ching Chong. Charlie Chan. Ching-Chong-King-Kong!” After they left, Mr. Chang just nodded and I put the baseball bats back in their stands. When Nicky found out what had happened, we secretly tracked the punks down and proved our kung fu was stronger. When we told Mr. Chang what we had done, he fired us both, saying only, “You have not heard me.” Walking back to St. Mary’s, Nicky could only shake his head. “Either he don’t understand or we don’t.”
I’m still trying to figure out which. . . .
I felt for the twenty-five grand stuffed inside my coat pocket. Still there. I turned left on Edgewater Road. I had not slept in days and my head was sore and welted from that knock-knock joke Oscar told
with the end of his gun. But it was lunchtime and I was still sober. Not a bad day, Santana, I thought, as I walked and started daydreaming about Ramona. I could probably find her among the stacks at her job in the Brooklyn Public Library. We could be happy again. Take her out to a movie. Coffee and flan after at Mimi’s. Maybe think big and go off with her to the Dominican Republic. Haiti? No. Puerto Rico? No. Barcelona? The mountains and the ocean are so beautiful. That’s what Nicky said.
No.
Humoring rich eccentric jerks. That’s part of the job. I’m used to it. Helping out an old childhood friend. I stand by that. But when Pilar Menendez was killed, that changed everything. One minute, she’s alive and warm in my arms. Next minute . . . That’s when I knew I’d do whatever I had to do to make things right.
I flipped open my cell phone and made the call.
“Hello, boss lady,” I said into the phone.
Joy made a growling noise. “About time.”
Joy St. James had been one of the first black female detectives on the NYPD. When she retired, she became a professor at John Jay College, where I’d been her star pupil. But that was years ago. Joy owned and operated, along with her husband, Hank, a retired Irish homicide detective, St. James and Company, a private investigation group with close ties to law enforcement. I was, until six months ago, one of nine independent contractors with St. James and Company.
“Did you miss me?”
“Not really,” she said. “Six months you been gone. What’ve you been up to?”
“Sitting around eating bon bons. Watching Oprah. You know. Working on myself.”
“You fill out that application for the gun permit?”
“Yeah. Thanks. Guns are good. I got six. One a month. One more and I get a free toaster.”
“Smart-ass.”
I crossed at Longfellow Avenue under pale sunlight, wind blowing cold, and repeated my mantra. “I’m not law enforcement. I don’t wanna be law enforcement. My job is to gather information or find people, not kill them. I hate guns.”
“Well, the bad guys are rather fond of them, Santini. Remember what happened to you on that crazy mailman case?”