by A. E. Roman
“Little Albert?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Little Albert. Then a girl named Pilar Menendez, just twenty-two years old, offers me money to keep Tiffany disappeared and then she’s pushed from her roof. A kid named Irving Goldberg Jones writes a story called “Chinatown Angel,” which talks about a guy being forced to overdose on heroin, and then Irving confesses he actually did what his story said. Nineteen-years old, arrested in Chinatown for something I suspect he didn’t do. Then there’s this sex tape allegedly floating around and I think it might just connect everything together. Or not.”
“Sounds complicated. Walk.”
“But it’s not that easy for me. You know why, Nicky. I’m not gonna bullshit you. It sticks to me. Every murder case. It always feels personal. Also there’s this little girl named Ting Ting. She’s in trouble.”
“What kinda trouble?” Nicky asked. His voice grew deep and dangerous.
“Bad trouble.”
“A child?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Who am I kidding, Nicky? I can’t let go of this case. Pilar was murdered and I’m the only witness and this Irving kid is sitting in jail, probably innocent and covering up for somebody. I couldn’t live with myself if I walked away now. It’s like giving up. It’s like giving in to the killers. Letting them get away with it.”
“So let it be written, so let it be done,” Nicky said through the cell loud and clear. “I now declare the case reopened. How may I be of assistance?”
TWENTY-ONE
First move. I followed her from her building in Manhattan to the Bronx. My goal was to make friendly and relax her and get her talking. Did I suspect that she killed her uncle Benjamin? No. Why would Irving take the fall for her? But why did she slap Tiffany in Chinatown? And who killed her friend Pilar? And where was the third story in Irving’s trilogy? I called Ramona. Her friend Cynthia couldn’t find it in any of the literary rags at Columbia.
Irving was still on Rikers Island, pointing fingers at himself. Tiffany made herself scarce again. Pilar was dead. Olga was the key.
It was almost closing time and the moon sat like a dead eye, white and wide and open, over the shops of Fordham Road in the Bronx.
I pushed open the glass door of the Chinatown Angel. Inside it was empty, except for one last table, two beat cops in blue uniform, wearing Glocks at their side.
The Chinatown Angel was warm and clean, with black and white checkerboard floors, pink booths and black tables. A small radio played. I recognized Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat. Ramona would have been proud. My nostrils filled with the scent of brewed tea and fried egg rolls.
The glass door was marked.
WARNING!
Premises Under Surveillance
The tape!
Hannibal Rivera the Third said he wanted me to keep my eye open for a sex tape. But it wasn’t a sex tape. It was a surveillance camera videotape.
It wasn’t marked Car. It was C-A-R: Chinatown Angel Restaurant.
I stood in the doorway and called Hank. “What was the status of the surveillance cameras at the Chinatown Angel the night of Benjamin Rivera’s death?”
Hank yawned. “Kinda late. Huh, buddy?”
“Hank, please.”
Hank went off to look at the files. He came back on. “The machine was empty.”
“What kind of machine?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Old or new?”
I heard some papers being riffled. “It was one of those old VHS recorders,” said Hank. “Says here the cameras had been off. Forensics found no tape but no strange prints on the equipment, either.”
I entered the restaurant and sat in a corner booth.
Albert saw me and scowled with fierce eyes. Then he seemed to catch himself. He smiled with those crooked teeth and walked toward me with ice water in one hand and a plastic menu in the other. He placed the glass of water on the table.
“Looks like you’re the last customer.” Albert handed me the menu. “What can I help you with?”
I held up the menu. “For an appetizer, I’ll start with friendship. Main course, I’ll have nothing but friendship.”
“If you’re looking for a friend,” said Albert, “you’re in the right place. We call him General Chow. He makes chicken.”
Albert sat and removed one black shoe. He rubbed his tired foot through the white sock. He went into his pocket, popped an aspirin, drank my water, and said, “What are you doing here?”
I looked at Albert and made a happy face.
“Oye, listen, I busted my cojones trying to find Tiffany. I’m just glad it’s over.”
The two cops, without dropping any cash on the table, put their blue hats on and got up to leave.
“Night, Rodney,” Albert said, rising. “Night, Wilfredo.”
“You mean, good morning,” one of the cops said, exiting. “Thanks for the food, Al.”
“No problem,” Albert said, bouncing to the kitchen, yelling something in what sounded like really bad Chinese.
“Jeen-tyenn, ladies,” said Albert. “Today.”
Albert stood back as a small crew of three Chinese girls in black skirts and red jackets rushed into the room from the kitchen, laughing and swearing.
One girl carried a plastic tub filled with clean silverware still hot and wet. One carried steaming metal teapots and empty sugar bowls. One carried glasses and white stem vases.
There was a crash.
“Oh, shit!”
Albert looked at me. “You wanna meet Olga? She got here just a few minutes before you walked in.”
“Small world,” I said. “Where is she?”
Albert pointed and I could only see the top of her hair as she bent over behind the counter.
She came up and waved at me, holding what was left of the soy sauce bottle she had just dropped and shattered. She had a Cuban face with a great big splash of Chinese features. The same Olga Rivera who slapped Tiffany silly in Chinatown. Olga with her boy’s haircut and thick glasses over her almond-shaped eyes.
“Hun bow-chyen,” Olga said, lowering her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Olga ran off into the kitchen to get a mop as the three waitresses shook their heads.
I looked at Albert and said, “Why is Olga here?”
Albert shrugged, “She’s like you, she wants to be near me all the time now. Got real depressed about Pilar and now Irving. Not every day the police find a friend of hers plastered in a dirty alley in Astoria, another in her runaway sister’s Chinatown apartment confessing to having killed her uncle. But enough about that. That’s my quota for tonight.”
“Chico!”
I turned my head and saw Uncle Dee entering from the kitchen with Olga at his side.
“Uncle Dee!” I shouted. I had not seen him since I had officially turned in my resignation at the HMD mail room.
Uncle Dee wore a sports jacket and black slacks, spotless and freshly pressed. He took a shot of rum from his silver flask, then he went and fiddled with the small radio on the counter until the sound came out smooth and clear, Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
“What’re you doing here, Uncle?” I asked him.
“He practically lives here,” said Albert, “when he’s not at home watching Sábado Gigante or in Atlantic City or working at the bank.”
Uncle Dee added, “Used to play cards with Benjamin and Marcos and Albert and Samuel here for years before that terrible thing happened. But let us not talk about tragedy, let us talk of happier times.” Uncle Dee crossed himself, gave me a thumbs up, turned, grabbed Olga, danced and twirled her and yelled, “Ahora!”
Olga rolled her eyes, looked at me, and said, “Help!”
“Vaya!” Uncle Dee sang and danced across the room with Olga.
Uncle Dee, still dancing, said, “Olga here does not believe in God or the Kennedys, Ronald Reagan or the Pope. This is America, a free country. But look at that face, she does not even believe in Duke Ellington!”
> “I prefer Charlie Parker,” Olga said.
Uncle Dee twirled Olga. “Charlie Parker es noise, es crap!”
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” Olga said.
Uncle Dee dipped Olga. “What do you think, Chico?”
“Leave ’im alone,” Albert said. “It’s too late to start arguing.”
Uncle Dee pulled Olga up, and dramatically grabbed Albert’s hand. “Shall we dance?”
“No!”
The Chinese girls stopped their work and watched Uncle Dee pull Albert up. Uncle Dee and Albert began to dance.
“You guys are loco in the coco,” one waitress said.
“Be of good cheer,” Uncle Dee said, dancing. “What does it matter? Learn to laugh at yourself!”
Then Uncle Dee pressed Olga close to Albert and they slow-danced to someone singing a bluesy rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” I watched as Olga hung on to Albert, her head on his shoulder, tears in her eyes. Tears? Why tears? Happy tears? Oh, she was hooked.
_____
Next move. Central Park. Night. Albert was in Sheep Meadow shooting two naked trees and a moving shot of the open space that was supposed to be the surface of Planet X in another galaxy. I was standing behind Albert and the cameraman, leaning against a fence. The Serbian cameraman, Boris Popovic, who was almost seven feet tall, wore a loose suit and a pair of Adidas sneakers. They were dirty and and torn in places. Like their owner, they had seen better days.
Olga was standing twenty feet behind me, outside the fence, next to the lowered gates of the brick-faced Sheep Meadow Cafe. She stood beside a tall pretty brunette actress with pale green eyes. The actress was playing an alien. She was covered in green face and body makeup, shivering in a long silvery coat with a fur collar and nothing on under but a silvery bikini and silvery shoes with glass heels.
It was twenty below and after midnight when Kirk Atlas came swaggering up the stone path cut between the meadow and the café in silvery ski boots and a red, white, and blue leather motorcycle jacket. He was bare-chested, wearing only suspenders and baggy silvery pants with a glittery NASA logo just below the crotch.
Albert yelled, “Cut!”
Boris Popovic put down the digital video camera, lit up a Marlboro, and drank from a thermos as Albert stared at Kirk Atlas.
“You’re late!” Albert yelled at Atlas.
Atlas stepped into the meadow, removing his large dark sunglasses. “All hail, spic Lee!”
“We said midnight,” said Albert. “It’s twelve-thirty.”
I walked toward them, away from the fence and the girls, into the center of the field. Atlas checked his Rolex watch. “Sorry?”
Atlas looked at Albert Garcia, at his crooked teeth, hooked nose, barbed-wire hair, rumpled shirt, polyester pants, white sports socks, and black-leather waiter shoes. He stared at the wannabe director, short, sloppy, fake Orson Welles, who lived with his grandfather. It was his first feature film. Kirk Atlas was giving him an opportunity, and he was giving Kirk Atlas shit. That was the look.
Kirk Atlas looked at me and winked. “Good work flushing out Tiffany, my man. More where that came from. We’ll talk.”
“We have a very tight schedule, Marcos,” said Albert through gritted teeth.
“Dude,” Atlas said. “It’s our final scene. Relax.”
Albert looked back at the actress who was shivering patiently by the shuttered café and whispered, “I’m not doing the blow-job shot.”
Atlas threw up his arms. “Why not?”
“Stick to the original idea,” said Albert. “We need a romantic ending.”
Atlas grabbed Albert’s wrist.
“We have to do the blow job,” whispered Atlas. “I know it sounds crazy, but there has never been a blow job in a science fiction movie. We’ll make history.”
Boris Popovic looked back at the pretty actress, grabbed the camera again, and whispered, “I think we need blow job.”
I looked back at the green-eyed brunette in the silvery bikini, standing next to Olga. Taking all the conspiratorial whispering into consideration, I guessed that she knew nothing about Atlas’s new and probably last-minute blockbuster idea.
“No!” yelled Albert.
“I’m the producer,” Atlas whispered. It’s my money. It’s my film. If I say we do the blow job, we do the blow job.”
“Good!” said Boris.
Albert pointed his finger at Boris. “No!”
Boris pointed at Atlas. “He is producer, not you!”
“I’m the director,” said Albert. “Kubrick—”
“You no fucking Kubrick!” said Boris.
Albert turned his back on them and walked out of the meadow. “We’re not doing it! Boris, pick up the camera, and follow me!”
Boris scowled but followed. “Is too much. I am no your slave, Albert. You can no just press a button when you want something.”
Albert went toward Olga and the brunette. He stopped and stared at the lowered gates of the café and just stood there saying nothing. Then suddenly he ran and punched and kicked the metal gates with all his might. A loud BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM reverberated through Central Park as if someone was throwing sticks of dynamite.
“Is this filmmaking?” I asked Olga, as I went and stood next to her.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Looks like fun.”
Next move. Four days later. Pilar Menendez was dead and the funeral was next week, Irving Goldberg Jones was still in prison, Tiffany was reportedly with her aunt Josephine, and Kirk Atlas was throwing a party. Tiffany was not scheduled to attend the party because she was still torn up about Irving. That’s what Albert said. Other than that, no comment. I tried getting into Josephine Rivera’s building on Fifth Avenue. The Arcadia East. Albert was wrong about that joint. It was tighter than Fort Knox. The doormen looked at you funny for just walking past the marble hallway.
My cell phone rang. I answered, a few feet from the elevators.
“Hello?”
“Hey, chief. It’s Salvatore.”
“Oh,” I said, fingering the End button. “Hi, Sal.”
“How are you, Cochese?”
“I’m okay, paisan. You?”
“Listen, Oscar’s outta the office, so I thought we could talk. Do you have time?”
“No.”
“It’ll just take a few minutes.”
“Okay. How about no, is no good for you?”
“Look, Hannibal Rivera heard about you still hanging around his son Marcos—Kirk Atlas—even after he paid you and told you not to.”
“Tell him I’m just spending time with an old friend. I’m a social animal. Nice talkin’ with you, Sal.”
“Is all this trouble really necessary, Chico?”
“No, I just like trouble. My mother was trouble. My father was trouble. It’s a family tradition.”
“Listen, spico!” It was Oscar on the phone now. “How much is Hannibal Rivera offering you to chase me off?”
“Enough to put your black ass in a body bag,” Oscar spit out.
My finger still hovered over the End button of my cell phone. “I don’t like your tone, young man.”
“Chico! Chico!” Salvatore came back on. “That’s not right what Oscar said. I mean, look, let’s have a beer, just you and me, someplace we can talk, man to man.”
“I don’t like appointments. If you want me, you might find me tipsy on Saturday night at Rudy’s in Hell’s Kitchen. Wear something nice. And bring your own quarters for the jukebox. Some blues. Some jazz. Some rap. Some country. No techno.”
“Right.” Salvatore laughed. “Listen, chief. Can we keep this phone call between you and me and Oscar? I mean, you know how the agency is about stuff. Protective and all.”
“They wouldn’t like you making side deals with Hannibal Rivera, huh?”
“No, chief, c’mon! Nobody’s cheating the agency. They got their fee. This is ours. You and me we go way back, we have a relationship. Do you report everything to S
t. James and Company? Of course not. Better off we keep this Rivera stuff between old friends, you know?”
“I don’t need any more old friends, Sal. You missed the deadline. I got all I can stand.”
I ended the call and walked into the huge living room in SoHo. A live DJ was spinning Tupac Shakur’s hip-hop loud and without mercy.
The music pounded at my eardrums. It was so loud, I imagined shock waves pulsing down from the condo, past the marble lobby and its waterfall, through the laundry room and gym, past the pool and sauna, down through the private underground parking garage, past the building’s foundations, down through the earth’s surface, all the way to its core.
I swam through the twenty-something, young and rowdy, mostly white crowd, bouncing proud in their expensive designer outfits and shoes. Young and successful painters in jeans, fashion models in silk, working actors in leather jackets, and hip Wall Street suits crowded the bone-white halls of Marcos’s cavernous penthouse. The wraparound terrace that looked out over West Side Drive, which sparkled like a sheet of black tar in the moonlight, was full of midnight smokers. Several bars were operating at full speed. Tuxedos were everywhere: taking coats, serving food on silver trays, passing buckets full of Cristal champagne.
The huge living room was now dominated by a giant Doomsday movie poster of Kirk Atlas posing triumphant in his red, white, and blue leather motorcycle jacket, the green actress in the silvery bikini on her knees before him, and a background of shooting stars and comets and other space junk with the planet earth in the distance. It was a bright and colorful poster, a cross between Van Gogh and Star Trek.
This was not just the home of Marcos Rivera, it was the fortress of Kirk Atlas, and these were his people dancing and drinking, sniffing powders and dropping pills in dark corners. His cronies wanted a party, and Kirk Atlas was giving them one.
I saw Renata, thick, drunk, in a tight leather blouse and black leather pants, gyrating under the flashing lights, surrounded by drunk young white boys in untucked shirts and dark blazers. The boys were groping her breasts, her bottom, pulling her this way by the hair, pushing her that way by the back of the head, her arms pulled around their waists, her bottom pulled into their crotches, laughing, everyone drunk and laughing, Renata, too. Samantha’s background check on Renata had turned up nothing but a couple of bounced checks.