“No, you haven’t. You’ve done it with me!” She smacks a stack of papers. “It’s been you and me for twenty years. We made it through law school together, we made it through childbirth, we made it through Alex being in and out of the hospital for six months.”
“This is different.”
“Bullshit!”
He almost jumps, hearing her curse like that.
“All of a sudden, I’m supposed to be the little woman, stay at home, keep the fires burning?” she says.
From upstairs, the chanting monks have grown quieter, as if they’d just realized the gravity of what they were singing about.
“Look, it’s not about ego,” Jake says, peering at her from behind a tall pile of grand jury transcripts. “It’s not about you or me being in control. It’s about my case. Okay? My future.”
“NO!” She sucks in her cheeks defiantly. “This isn’t just about you. It’s about us. That’s the mistake you’ve been making all along. You’ve been thinking everything is just your decision. And it’s not. It’s about our future. About the life we’ve made together. About our family. It’s not just your problem or my problem. It’s our problem. I’m mated to you for life, Jake. And I will not accept this family being torn apart. I just will not accept that.”
She starts pushing more of the papers down toward the far end of the table, so there’s more open space between them. “Maybe if you’d talked to me about this all along, we wouldn’t be in this trouble,” she says. “He was my patient, remember. I might know something about talking to him that you don’t.”
Jake is silent for a minute. He has a vision of himself as an exhausted marathon runner, collapsing in heat prostration before the finish line. He sees Dana with her thin arms and a number on her back, trying in vain to drag him the rest of the way.
“You asked me if I was still in this with you. And I am.” She stands up and goes to get dinner ready. “I’m going to fight this no matter what happened in those tunnels. You and Alex are my life.”
“So I guess you’re going,” he says, studying a whorl in the table’s wood.
“I guess I’m going.”
69
A bleak winter morning. Ice envelops the streets and sidewalks like a skin. A rusty yellow Ford van pulls up in front of an old tenement insulted by age and graffiti on West 133rd Street. John G. gets out and takes a long look at the building.
“Recognize this place?” says Ted Shakur, climbing out after him.
“It’s a crack house, right?”
A couple of junkies stumble up from the basement steps, lugging lead pipes and pieces of copper wiring, and squint into the sun like West Harlem vampires.
“You been in this one before?”
“I’m not sure.” John G. holding a hot-chocolate thermos against his chest. “But I been in a lot of other ones just like it.”
“Well, today’s gonna be different,” says Ted. “Today you’re gonna do to this house what we’re trying to do to you. You’re gonna knock it down and build it up.”
They join the five other guys in the work crew who’ve already entered the building.
Inside, the halls are dusty and the stairway makes no promises. The banister is wobbly and parts of several treads are missing. On the top floor, the walls are covered with several generations of wild style spray painting. Half the apartments are padlocked and spike-nailed shut with signs on the doors that say WARNING: DO NOT ENTER. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Of the ones that are unlocked, most are filthy and unkempt, and the floors are severely burned in places. Crackheads falling asleep with lit matches, thinks John G. A trick he’s done a few times himself.
Ted hands him a sledgehammer and taps a drywall between two bedrooms.
“This has gotta come down,” he says.
“Okay.”
“But be careful. Just looking at it, I can tell there’s a lot of de-bris inside.”
“I’m not scared of debris.” John G. studies a dark spot where it looks as if the wall has been sweating.
“Well, you should be,” says Ted. “Don’t pick up anything you can’t see with your eyes. Use a shovel. Otherwise, you’re liable to get stuck with some old junkies’ needle.”
John G. looks at the hammer in his hands. Something about being in this place makes him blue. The nearness of death again. He doesn’t want it anymore. But he’s not sure if he’s ready to go back and join the working people of the world either. He wonders how much those junkies are getting for the copper they stripped off the basement pipes.
“Well, go ahead, hit it,” says Ted, bringing him back to reality. “Put some rhythm into it.”
John G. tests the weight of the hammer in his palm. It doesn’t seem strong enough to do the job. He swings it once and hears a dull crunch. The wall is unimpressed. He swings it a second time and hits a wooden strut solidly. The vibrating hammer hurts the joints in his hand.
“Give it one more shot.”
Using both hands, John hits the wall a third time. A little piece of light appears.
“There you go.” Ted pats him on the butt and walks away. “Just make sure you don’t bring the whole thing down on top of your head.”
By midafternoon, John G. has found that rhythm. He takes down four walls and two doorways. He’d forgotten how much he liked working. The regularity, the satisfying ache in his muscles, the feeling of seeing a thing through to the end. It reminds him of making the last stop of the day at 241st Street.
But in another way, he’s just going through the motions. Why should he get to live and get better? The light in his mind turns green. Shar waves. He’s as hollow inside as the wall he’s destroying.
“Yo, John G.!” He hears Ted calling to him from downstairs.
He ignores the voice and keeps hammering at a rotted baseboard.
“Yo, John G.!” Ted is coming up the stairs. “Someone’s here to see you!”
He puts the hammer down and feels an anxious twinge in the back of his neck. He suddenly flashes on the men with baseball bats who attacked him that night in the tunnel. How have they found him again?
But then he looks through the scrim of brown dust and sees a familiar blonde woman standing next to Ted in the doorway. Snow melts on her fur collar and he notices how thin and lovely her legs look even though she’s wearing boots, instead of high heels.
“This your pa-role officer?” asks Ted, looking up since he’s a couple of inches shorter than the woman.
“No.” John G. glances at her and then turns back to the hole he’s been making. “This is somebody else.”
Ms. Schiff shivers with embarrassment and tries to manage a smile.
“Well then, you don’t have to talk to her.”
WHAP! He snaps the cheap wainscoting in two. “It’s all right,” he says.
“Okay, take five minutes.” Ted starts to go back downstairs. “But let me know if it’s gonna be any longer. I need the extra man today.”
70
Jake walks into a bar called Alpha on Mulberry Street, blind from the white snow and bright sun outside. In the brief seconds before his eyes adjust to the light indoors, he’s aware of someone moving around behind the counter.
“Miss Perrara?” he says.
“Yeah?” A heavy middle-aged woman’s voice, sodden with booze and disappointment.
“I think my associate Mr. Goodman mentioned I’d be coming by to see you today.”
Gradually, she comes into focus. The damp rag in her hand. Her slumped shoulders. The hennaed curly hair around her head. And that face.
Rolando said that Philip beat her literally within an inch of her life in that warehouse twenty years ago, but Jake hadn’t really prepared himself to see what was left. Isabel Perrara’s left eye is about a quarter-inch higher than her right eye and doesn’t open all the way. Her mouth is crooked too and a thin white scar runs along the length of her jawline. The right side of her face has a smooth angular cheekbone, hinting that she might have once been attractive. B
ut that has nothing to do with the left side, which is pale and puffy with the texture of curdled butter.
“What do you want from me?” she asks.
“I wanted to talk to you about Philip Cardi.”
She looks down the length of the zinc-topped bar. It’s three in the afternoon and the place is empty, except for two withered old men sitting at a table in the corner, talking quietly and drinking scotch. Everything is painted black—the tables, the chairs, and the walls. There are mirrors on the ceiling and Boyz II Men on the stereo. It’s one of those borderline places that could be SoHo chic or totally mobbed up.
“Who told you I knew him?” she asks.
“I heard it around the old neighborhood.”
The aunt, Mrs. Vogliano, made Rolando promise he wouldn’t give her up. She’d said Philip picked up her niece Isabel off Eighty-sixth Street and then drove her to a warehouse near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he broke six bones in her face. She needed to use her fingers to chew her food for years afterwards. Charges were filed and then mysteriously dropped. The aunt intimated that some uncle of Philip’s, a mob capo from Staten Island, had bought the family off and given the girl a job at a bar he owned in Little Italy.
So here she is twenty years later. Barely able to see straight. She takes her rag and starts to swab out the inside of a highball glass.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Jake takes a deep breath. “I know it’s hard to talk about these things. But I need your help.”
If he can get her to testify, he can show that Philip lied to the prosecutors in his plea agreement by not mentioning all his previous crimes. It won’t just undermine his credibility; it will establish once and for all what a crazy sonovabitch he is.
“I know what Philip did to you,” he says. “I know how he hurt you.”
“I’m not interested in talking.”
She moves down the bar and picks up another glass. The cheap silver charms on her necklace make a tinkling sound. He’s going to have to work to get through to her. This is someone who’s spent the last two decades giving up on life.
“Look, Miss Perrara,” he says, following her down the bar. “I’m a lawyer. I’ve been around a little. I know there are different ways to hurt people. You can hurt them on the outside by breaking their bones. Or you can hurt them on the inside by treating them badly and making them think there’s nothing they can do about it.”
She stops polishing her glass and looks at him skeptically. “Yeah? So what are you gonna do for me?”
“I’m not saying I can fix your body. But maybe there’s some other way I can help.”
He realizes he may be misleading her by making himself sound like a personal injury lawyer. But what the hell. He’s desperate to get her to tell her story. An exigency. That’s what Bob Berger would call it.
She steps back for a second to turn down the stereo. Yes! She’s going to talk to him.
He’s so happy he could almost buy the old guys in the corner a round. But then she tilts back her asymmetrical chin and half closes her one good eye. “Philip!” she calls out.
A door opens next to the icebox behind the counter and Philip walks out like a bull entering a ring. He stands next to Miss Perrara and gives Jake a murderous look. And in Jake’s head, that train sound begins to rumble again.
71
You may wanna be careful walking around this room.” John G. turns and paces away from Dana, not meeting her eyes. “Some of the floors are kinda old and burned in places. You take a wrong step, you might end up falling through the boards and breaking your neck.”
She watches the little circling motions he’s making with the hammer in his right hand and wonders if he’s trying to give her a warning.
“I had a hard time finding you,” she says. ‘They gave me the address of three other work sites at your shelter. I had to keep calling them back from pay phones on the corner.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to find me.”
He stares at the hole he’s been making and his tongue pushes hard against the left side of his mouth.
“You seem much better,” she says. “I guess you’re taking your medication again.”
“What the hell do you want from me?”
She hears the whine of a buzz saw from downstairs and the sounds of men arguing.
Tread lightly, she reminds herself. She takes a step toward him and the floorboard creaks under her boot.
“Well,” she says. “I actually need your help. My husband is involved in a criminal case and—”
“Fuck you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, Tuck you.’ You got that?” His green eyes glare through the dust. “You were supposed to help me.”
“I realize our treatment plan never quite got off the ground. . .”
“FUCK YOU TWICE!” he shouts. “You tried to have me put away.”
She sees the hammer in his hand is shaking. She takes another step, and this time the floorboard actually seems to bend a little.
“I understand you have reasons to be angry.”
“I have reasons?” He slaps the head of the hammer into his left palm. “Oh, thank you very much.”
She holds her head up. “I just wanted to see if you remembered anything that happened that night you saw my husband and those other men in the tunnels.”
“Jesus Christ, lady! I don’t want to remember! I just want to do my little job and take my medication. All right? Let’s make a deal. I’ll leave you alone and you leave me alone.”
If only he’d made that offer four months ago. He reaches under his grime-smeared sweatshirt and scratches himself.
“Why d’you wanna talk about this anyway?” he asks.
“My husband’s been charged with killing your friend.”
“Yeah, well, life’s full of tough breaks, isn’t it?” He turns back to the wall and starts banging on some white trim.
“Is that what happened?” she asks.
“Why do you wanna know?”
The look he gives her freezes the breath in her chest. She realizes she’s afraid to hear the answer.
“I want to know if you saw my husband kill that man.”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“What’s it worth?”
“Yeah, what would you pay me to say he didn’t kill Abraham?”
“Just tell me, goddamn it!”
Her voice sounds raw and unfamiliar to her.
“What’s the matter?” he asks. “He didn’t tell you?”
She starts to back off. She’s shown him too much of what’s churning inside her.
“It would be better to hear it from somebody else.”
The back of her head tightens. She takes another step back and a small piece of floorboard drops away.
“You must have some marriage.” John G. tosses the hammer from hand to hand.
It’s enough. He’s just playing with her. She starts fixing her scarf and buttoning up her overcoat. Trying to figure out what she’s going to do with the rest of her life. It was foolish to come here today. Jake is going to prison and her heart is going to break. Nothing can change that.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she says.
“ ‘C’mon Philip, gimme the bat’ ”
He’s looking down at that hole in the floor.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Give it up,’ and then he tried to get between Abraham and the other guy.”
“And this is my husband you’re talking about?” Don’t sound too eager, Dana cautions herself. Don’t put words in his mouth.
“Well, the guy I always see you with.”
“And you saw him say this and try to stop that other man from killing your friend?”
She has to resist the urge to run over and throw her arms around his neck.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I guess you can tell the judge that’s what I saw.”
“But can you tell the judge that yourself?”
“You want me to go into a courtroom and testify?”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“You gotta be kidding.” He draws back as if he’d just touched a live wire.
“No, I need you to do that...”
“Okay, I think I’ve heard about enough. I’ve gotta work now. All right? So I’ll see you. Good luck and everything.”
He turns back to the wall and starts banging it with his sledgehammer.
“You have to tell the judge what you saw ...”
“You gotta go, you gotta go.” He keeps pounding without looking at her.
“Because otherwise my husband could go to jail...”
“Gotta go, gotta go.” His banging drowning out her rising anxious voice. “Can’t stay, can’t stay.”
“And that would be a tragic mistake ...”
“Can’t stay! Gotta go, gotta go!”
The wall is starting to come apart and he’s stuck on the same phrases like a needle on an old phonograph record. “Can’t stay! Gotta go!” And her nervousness is just making him talk faster and bang the wall harder. Has she pushed him too far? “Can’t stay! Gotta go!”
A huge chunk of wall falls away and light streams in from the next room.
“Mr. Gates, please calm down!” she half shrieks.
The echo of her voice hushes both of them for a moment. She hears tiny timbers crackling and snapping under her feet.
“Why can’t you just let me be?” he says. “You want me to help you, I can’t even help myself.” He wiggles one of his loose lower molars with his tongue.
“I just want you to say what happened.”
“Oh yeah, sure, right, that’ll be a breeze.” He sputters. “Talking to a bunch of lawyers and a judge.” He raises his hand. “ T stipulate the defendant has to stop taking drugs. I stipulate the defendant has to turn over his assets. I stipulate the defendant has to give up his freedom. I stipulate the defendant has to go back to a shelter.’ ”
“I understand if you’re reluctant.”
“Reluctant?” He almost starts laughing. “Lady, these people are going to rip my fucking head off.”
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