“I dunno.”
“You seen him? When?”
“A while back.”
“Okay, Tino. Excuse me a minute, wouldja? I gotta make a call.”
Tino stepped back, thinking that Esposito was going to use the pay phone, but Esposito put a hand on his shoulder. He reached into Tino’s shirt pocket and took out the cellphone. The younger ones stirred—“Yo! He can’t do that!”—but Tino raised a hand to quiet them. Esposito flipped the phone open and scrolled through the directory, to K.
“Here we go. ‘Kiko.’ Gotta be him, right?”
Esposito dialed the number and held the receiver out a few inches from his mouth, so it would sound like a bad connection, and offered a low, indistinct “Yo” when it was picked up. The little Miguelitos tensed up again, and Nick took hold of his gun, wondering if Esposito would take it to the next stage—Where you at?—in front of them, in their faces. Tino tensed, too; the affront was so purposeful and public that he wouldn’t be able to contain the corner if the Miguelitos made a move, and maybe he wouldn’t try to stop them. All were relieved at the next words.
“Kiko, this is Detective Esposito…. Yeah, that one….”
Esposito spoke quickly, and there was an edge to his voice, but he never yelled. The aura of control was compelling, to Nick and everyone else who heard it on the corner.
“No, you don’t know what happened. You ran. You left your little brother there. You left your baby brother to try and shoot it out with a bunch of New York City detectives. You ran away. I chased you. He didn’t run. He was still a baby, right? He didn’t know. How could he? And you pulled him in, to kidnap a priest, to burn him with irons, las planchas. A priest whose son is a cop, a cop in the DR. I wouldn’t think about going back there, Kiko. The cops there, they don’t mess around. You know that. There is no place for you now, Kiko, not in New York City or the Dominican Republic, not on heaven or earth….
“Yeah, sure, no problem.”
Esposito nodded to Tino, and handed him back the phone.
“Kiko wants to talk to you. We gotta go.”
As they walked away, Tino began to chatter in speed-Spanish, a blur of words. The Miguelitos clustered around him, focused on the newest emergency, amazed beyond their immediate capacity for teenage rage. The detectives got into the car and drove away, without conspicuous speed. Esposito glanced out the window, but didn’t stare. The point had been made. Nick considered whether Esposito had planned the encounter, if he had withheld the plan from him. No, he thought, probably not, but they didn’t talk for a while as they drove off. He was bothered by the freelancing, by such an impulsive confrontation. In his mind, Nick had pledged allegiance to his partner, had cut off rival ties to the finger-pointers downtown. Of course, he couldn’t explain that, but that wrong didn’t offset the rightness of Nick’s complaint. What had happened to Esposito’s old partner, with his suicide? He’d meant to ask, but the moment was never apt. It was a curiosity, no more than that, but curiosity was an underestimated force in human history. Apples and whatnot. Nick shook his head, trying to convince himself that his allegiance was well placed. It was, he thought, but he was still not happy. Esposito noticed.
“Want coffee?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Here’s good. Lemme pull over.”
“I got it.”
“No, I got it, pal.”
When Esposito was back in the car, Nick ventured a comment. “You might have told me you were going to do that.”
“I would have, if I knew myself. Where do you think it gets us?”
Nick had to think about that. “One, it was very personal…. I guess there’s no way around that part of it. Two, you discouraged him from becoming an international fugitive, at least to the Dominican Republic, which is the only other place he knows. That part’s good. The bad part is, if he doesn’t become an international fugitive, he stays here. Options? Two—kill himself, kill you. Or somebody on your side, our side.”
“You, for example.”
“That would work, but I’m not worried. It would be random, whatever he could manage. Retaliation-wise. Whatever guys Kiko had before, he has less now. And I don’t think any of ’em is in a rush to die as a favor for anybody. They’re not in Gaza or Iraq. They’re not jihadis. Kiko doesn’t offer forty virgins in paradise.”
Esposito paused and considered. His qualification was not what Nick expected.
“Isn’t it seventy?”
“What?”
“Seventy virgins. Yeah, definitely, seventy.”
“What, you saw a brochure?”
“No, I just remember.”
They drove around for a while, having exhausted their immediate store of conversation. Esposito drove more slowly than usual, his ordinary impatience in abeyance, as if to spare his partner any more nervous strain. Nick noticed, and the implication of frailty got on his nerves. He’d been troubled by the stunt with Tino, irked—at the correction of trivia—more than he’d like to admit. And his mind had been fidgety since the morning’s non-meeting with IAB. Esposito noticed his mood, but he didn’t push it. Nick remembered something from earlier on and broke the silence, hoping to show he wasn’t annoyed.
“What are these plans you mentioned? For tonight?”
“I won’t tell you now. You’re mad at me.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“See?”
“You are an asshole. Now, what’s with the plans?”
“You got something lined up?”
“My father made a pot of stew. It’s not regular stew. It’s a stew for the ages, I’m told. What do you know about stew?”
“I work with him.”
Esposito was immensely pleased with his joke, and it did cut the tension. Nick smiled, in spite of himself. “Fuck you. What do you got for tonight?”
“Wait. Watch. It’ll all work out. Trust me!”
“I wish you wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Yeah, well—Whoa! Would you look at that!”
Nick never got to see whatever unique beauty had transfixed Esposito, because as the car stopped short, Nick’s coffee spilled over his shirt and tie.
“Shit!”
“Shit, sorry! Shit!”
“Shit.”
Nick spent some time examining his shirt. It had been white. The tie would also have to be cleaned. Esposito looked over, laughing and apologizing. Nick found himself peculiarly relieved, now that his previously free-floating irritation was now grounded in fact. His mood could be changed as easily as a shirt, he thought, the idea warming him like the liquid soaking through to his chest. And now he could force Esposito to drop his coyness about the evening’s plans.
“Nice work. So, is dinner on you, or just the dry cleaning?”
“It is a night out.”
“What? Who? Where?”
“Why? You got a date with Daysi?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“You gotta pick out a restaurant. On the classy side. You’re a downtown guy. You can handle that.”
“I used to be. Not classy—I mean—Are you kidding me? C’mon!”
Nick couldn’t quite believe the idea, and he was almost afraid of how happy it made him.
“Why do you like her?” asked Esposito in a teasing tone, as if he were hosting a talent show. “What do you know about her?”
“Not much.”
“I do. She’s divorced, one child. Her birthday is in November. She loves museums. Her favorite painter is a guy named van Goo, something about sunflowers. She’s tired of assholes looking to hit on her just because she’s sexy and because she has money. She doesn’t meet the guys she wants to meet, where she is. She just wants someone, she says, someone she can talk to. I think she’s full of shit, in a cute way. But so am I.”
Nick had to think for a while. He still hadn’t taken it in. He didn’t feel as old anymore, or maybe he just didn’t mind. Van Goo?
That didn’t matter. Nick needed to be clear. “ ‘Ortega Florist. Daysi Ortega, proprietor.’ ”
“Sí, amigo.”
“You called her. For me, not for yourself?”
“Of course. I’m a happily married man. You? You need to get laid. You’re lucky you saw her first.”
“You called her, for tonight, for me. And she said yes?”
Nick was touched, deeply, by the first thing, then the second, so much so that the trespass did not bother him as it otherwise would have.
“So, where do you want to take her? She’s in midtown now. You just have to tell her where. Seven o’clock.”
“That’s an hour and change…. Where my wife was the other night looked good.”
“There’s an endorsement. I wouldn’t bring it up at dinner. What kind of food?”
“French, I think.”
“Perfect. Continental, you might call it. What’s the name of the restaurant again? Where is it?”
Nick told him, and Esposito flipped open his cellphone, to call Daysi.
“Hey, Daysi, day’s eye, this is your detective friend. One of them, you’re right. Nick’s picked a place…. No, I never been there. If you don’t like it, call me and we’ll ditch him, find a joint, just you and me…. Well, you never know, do you? See you.”
The click of his phone when he hung up had a decisive sound, of clean closure. That should have been his call, Nick thought, but then again, he should have made it yesterday.
“Hey, Espo? Thanks.”
“You need a little push sometimes, Nicky boy.”
“What I need is a clean shirt.”
“Whaddaya wanna do?”
“Let’s swing by the apartment.”
“Must be nice, having everything here, all in one place.”
When they pulled up outside the building, Nick stepped out of the car and told Esposito he’d be back in a minute. It brought unexpected protests. “You’re kidding me! You won’t invite me into your house? For an Italian, this is like spitting in my face!”
“Yeah? For a non-Italian, it’s a little weird, like you’re trying to hustle your way inside at the end of a first date.”
“Yeah, but it isn’t our first date! How long have we been working together? You don’t want me to meet your family?”
“My family is my father. You never saw an old Irishman before? Rent The Quiet Man. You’ll get the idea.”
“What, are you ashamed of him? I’m not the one being a little weird here, Nick.”
And he was right. Esposito had a way of getting close to him with sudden gestures, straightening his collar, brushing a crumb from his chin, that bothered Nick at each first instance, struck him as intrusive. Sometimes it was that kind of primate intimacy, picking nits from a pal; at others, the interference was different, like with Daysi, because Esposito knew better, and wanted to know more. And he was right about this, Nick knew. It was not as if Nick were ashamed of his father, as such; it was more the general circumstances of how Nick found himself, at this moment. He had to think, were there still Little League trophies in his room? No, they were in boxes, in the closet, along with the other tokens of meager and remote accomplishment. Or tucked safely beneath the bunk bed. Had he made the bed? His father would have. He did that; he had time. To bring a friend over had a nightmare quality, as if he’d slipped back into an iteration, a film loop of childhood. Would his father offer cookies? Would Esposito expect them? And yet a visitor would give his father something to talk about, to mull over; it would open up a brand-new conversational line. Nick couldn’t deny him that.
“Relax. Come on in, if it means that much to you.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard. This is why Irish hospitality is famous, the world over.”
As they walked through the lobby, Nick noticed how much it was like the places they went to at work. It was better than many, in that it was clean, but its worn linoleum and chipped plaster columns placed it square in that category, that class. At least Jamie Barry wasn’t nodding off in the corner. A lot of cops came from places like this, but most didn’t stay. There was a great pride in poverty, or at least in lack of privilege, as long as it was in the past. More cops came from stolid brick two-families in Queens, or little ranches and colonials out on Long Island, or in the upstate counties, reaching increasingly north. The cops from upstate and the Island descended from blue-collar refugees who set out in the sixties and seventies, prompted by a fear of crime and a fetish for mowing lawns, as if the possession of that patch of grass were a truer proof of American arrival than any paper handed out at Ellis Island. On one of the lobby walls, Nick noticed for the first time a Magic Marker scrawl: “Nagle Ave is pussys and fags.” Tell that to the Cole brothers, kid! Tell it to their faces! Ah, to be home.
Nick knocked first before unlocking the door—“Daa, it’s me!” The same bare hall, the bare table in the kitchen, the threadbare couch in the living room, across from the television Nick had given him, the first color set, ten years ago. He was in his beloved black vinyl recliner in the corner, and the footrest receded as he pulled a lever on the side. He stood and approached, intensely curious.
“Hello, Nick! Hello?”
“Da, this is Espo, my partner.”
“Hello.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Meehan.”
“Likewise … Espo?”
“It’s short for ‘Esposito.’ ”
“Ah! Italian, is it?”
He pronounced it “Eye-talian,” as if he had grown up with that pronunciation, though Nick couldn’t conceive of any occasion when he would have had to say the word at all, on the little Meehan farm in Roscommon. The particularity of Nick’s father’s interest couldn’t have anything to do with novelty—there were Italians in New York, they were not new and not few—and yet it seemed to intrigue him, as if Esposito had claimed to be a Navajo chief. Nick realized how few people his father spoke to, and he delayed his trip to the bedroom to change his shirt.
“Yeah, Mr. Meehan. I’m Italian, both sides.”
“Both sides, are you? Is that how many sides people have, two?”
The younger men could not decide if the question required an answer. The old man settled the issue with a bit of nothing. “Well, how about that …”
Esposito smiled, and pointedly avoided Nick’s anxious glance. Whether Nick’s father would impress Nick next with some insight, or embarrass him with some off-kilter retrograde remark, Esposito stood to enjoy it. As the next conversational blank awaited filling, Nick shifted his stance, and a floorboard groaned beneath him. Here it comes.
“Quite a few Italian plumbers, I understand. You’re not a plumber, are you?”
“No, I’m not, Mr. Meehan.”
“Please, call me Sean. Not a master plumber, I mean. You wouldn’t be a policeman had you a money trade like that. But even a few years of apprenticeship? No?”
“No. I mean, I know the basics. I have a house. You need to be handy with things. What’s the problem?”
“Ah, yer the man! It’s the toilet, the water flow or some such. It’s become fierce lately. You haven’t noticed, Nick?”
“No. Da, he’s not a plumber. If we need one, we can call the super—”
“Not at all, Nick. I’d be happy to have a look at it.”
Nick had seen the toilet before, and felt no need to join them in the bathroom. He went back to his room and found a clean shirt. The toilet flushed, and a respectful silence followed. Nick could picture his father’s gaze, moving from the bowl to Esposito, awaiting his diagnosis. His face must have registered some disappointment when it came.
“Well, it looks fine to me. What’s the problem?”
Nick joined them by the bathroom, to have a look in the mirror as he tied a new tie.
“It doesn’t seem unusually high to you, the water?”
“No, not so you’d notice.”
“What is it, Da?”
“Nick, there you are. Does the water hit your balls, too? It h
its mine when I flush. It’s been happening for a while, but I only think about it at the time. I’d just gone in, when you came, and with Espo here—good man, he is—it seemed lucky. Tell me, Nick, does the water rise up on you like that when it flushes?”
“Sweet Jesus.”
Nick walked down the hall, and Esposito followed.
“We don’t need a plumber, Da. Espo, let’s get out of here.”
“What? Why not?”
“Think about it. God help me, you made me think about it, too….”
Nick couldn’t bear to turn as he headed down the hall.
“How do you mean?”
“Balls and water, Da. We’ve ruled out the water.”
“Pleased to meet you, Sean.”
“Likewise, Detective…. Good God, am I that old?”
As they crossed the lobby, Nick looked over to Esposito, who shrugged haplessly, raising both hands. It was as if he knew what Nick was thinking, and he did not want the picture in his own mind. The old man naked; the thought of his physical decay, his nearing death. And Nick could not swear as to which thought he found more horrible. Or rather, he was glad not to be asked, under oath. It was not what he should be dwelling on, en route to meeting Daysi. First dates, last rites. Why had he picked that restaurant? He hadn’t eaten there, hadn’t even gone in. The only time he’d been near, he’d lingered outside, praying for a sign about Allison. Was this the sign? Not likely, unless there were patron saints the Church didn’t talk about, go-to guys for no-fault divorce or getting a piece on the side. Live a little, Nick thought, before realizing that’s what he’d been doing—barely living, just getting by. He had to live more. It was time to get on with things, to get moving again, before the balls hit the water.
They were on the highway before they spoke. Esposito had insisted on driving him, in his own car, mentioning offhandedly that he was going to meet Audrey, the nurse from Rikers, for a drink farther downtown. Nick chafed a little, feeling like he was being dropped off for his first day of school.
“I can pick you up after dinner, if you want.”
“That’s all right.”
“I know a guy, does security at the Marriott. He can get you a room, cheap.”
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