Red on Red

by Edward Conlon

  “That’s about all we got.”

  “That’s about all you could ask for,” said Esposito. “Law of gravity is not in my jurisdiction. Any reaction from the inmates?”

  “A petition for carpeting on the stairs.”

  “Any contact info? Next of kin?”

  “No, not a name, not a number, not a thing. I bet ‘Miguel Mendoza’ isn’t even a real name. He’ll wind up in Potter’s Field.”

  Captain Smolev left them at gun storage with two more punishing handshakes. They’d spent an hour on this, which was more than Nick had wanted, but it had needed to be done. An hour on a fatality wasn’t at all bad. They knew what had happened here, or at least they knew what hadn’t. Law of gravity, and too many variables for anyone to plan—a puddle of soapy water, a distracting shout, a spur of metal on the rail, a few seconds with the lights out. A false step, literally, with none of that three-card monte of impossible conjecture—Did he jump? Did he slip? Was he pushed? There was proof he’d been alone, for anyone susceptible to rational belief. And those who clung to faith in deeper forces, hidden causes, would not be swayed by any picture, hours old, always fresh, fixed somewhere in digital heaven, of a man bleeding in the dark, the colors of Ellegua, the black and the red.

  There was much to plan, but Nick’s mind was scattered. Esposito had resolved to go to the wake, at least to watch it from a rooftop, and Nick knew that once they got there, he’d have a hard time getting Esposito to leave. It had the feel of a long night. A camera had been set up outside the funeral home, and someone would watch the monitor with Kiko’s mug shot taped up beside it. But it wouldn’t be the same; no one knew Kiko like Esposito did, how he walked and gestured, which way he was likely to run. Detectives always complained about not getting enough help on their cases, and then they complained about the help. Still, it was better to do it themselves. And worse—no one should get too close to the funeral, least of all the cops who’d caused it. If Nick and Esposito spotted Kiko, they’d call it in, have him collared a few blocks away. Esposito talked even as he turned up the radio in the car. Noise within, noise without.

  On the drive back, Nick only half-listened as Esposito told about how when he was a new cop in the precinct, someone called in to say that a baby had been left in a sack in the park. A young couple stood beside it, watching something inside kick weakly, afraid to touch. Turns out it was a Santeria thing, a chicken in a pillow case…. It was a good enough story, but Nick was trying to think about his father, whether he should worry about him, whether he should worry more. Memories of Daysi from last night kept popping up—the restaurant, the museum, bed, how they’d shushed each other like teenagers, the fear of getting caught adding to the thrill. He was about to tell Esposito about the Galway vacation, when they were diverted by the sight of two blue-and-white harbor patrol launches in the Harlem River, cops from each raking the turbid water between them with long-poled gaffs. A body, maybe, but since the boats were on the Bronx side of the river, it looked to be someone else’s problem. Esposito began to tell about a floater he once had, but Nick’s eye was caught by a pigeon flying beside the car, at eye level, at the exact same speed, for nearly a mile. “Synchronous,” was that the word? No, it wasn’t.

  At the precinct, Esposito went behind the desk to let the sergeant know about the funeral, so he could make an announcement at the four-to-twelve roll call to be aware of its hot-spot potential. Nick steered clear of a delegation of Africans in the front hall, five or six men in lacy skullcaps, a few women in bundled head scarves, all of them in florid flowing robes, with determined looks. One of the men was negotiating unsuccessfully with a gaunt older black cop for the release of a female prisoner. If the cop had been assigned to handle them out of a presumed affinity, it was misguided. He might have been intrigued by the dilemma—the African spoke on behalf of a friend whose two wives had had a slugfest, and the winner was in a holding cell—but he was resistant to the proposed remedy. “If you please, you will let her go home to eat, and one of us will wait in her place? Her return will be guaranteed.”

  The cop began to wave them out, his arms a little stiff, saying “These people …” without caring who heard. When Garelick walked past them, coming in the front door, one of the African women tapped his shoulder.

  “Excuse me, do you work here?”

  “Depends on who you ask,” he said, without stopping. The burnout Zen of the comment would have provided Nick a few minutes of keen contemplation, but he was distracted by an outburst from the dozen prisoners a Narcotics team had brought in, lined up against the opposite wall. They would be strip-searched in the bathroom, one by one, before being put into the cells. One of the cops called out for a female cop to search the one female prisoner, and a woman walking in for her meal break obliged. She took a pair of latex gloves and led the prisoner into the ladies’ room. The perp was kind of cute; the cop, less so. Both of them popped back out of the bathroom in seconds, the cop shoving the prisoner ahead.

  “You gotta be kidding me!” barked the female cop angrily.

  “You didn’t ask! Besides, I don’t gotta say!” whined the perp, though she didn’t seem entirely displeased, even as one of the Narcotics cops grabbed her arm.

  “What is it? She have something on her? What did she have, a needle?”

  “Outdoor plumbing.”

  “What?”

  “She don’t play on my team, guy. She’s yours,” said the female cop, tossing off her gloves as she walked away. The Narcotics cop looked the prisoner up and down, the full breasts and the slim hips.

  “You’re shitting me!”

  “That’s extra,” said the prisoner, demurely, to a murmur of surprise on the prisoner line. It built in seconds to mixed shouts, of laughter and disgust. “Yo!” “No!” “No shit!” “No way!” “I knew it! The faggot! Yo, the cop’s a faggot, too!”

  When Esposito finished with his instructions to the sergeant, he and Nick headed upstairs as another cop shoved the last commentator against the wall, saying, “You talk shit now, bro, but I saw you ask for her number when you was in the back of the van. You get more than her number back there? I wasn’t watchin’ the whole time …”

  Nick was glad to have the closing door muffle the chorus behind them as they headed upstairs. The catch of the day—fractious polygamists, a transvestite amid a miscellany of buyers and sellers of crack, dope, weed. What would people say in ten years, a hundred, about how all of this was handled? Those people really got it about sex and drugs. They had it figured out perfectly. Nick doubted it, couldn’t even guess what the cops would make of it after the shift ended. The trannie would be the take-out anecdote for the Narcotics cops, later on, in the kitchen or in bed, but he didn’t know if it would be cast as a comic throwaway or as a fable of the sinful city, whether the “That’s extra” line would make the home version. Nick wouldn’t tell his father, of course, but he would have told Allison, in their better days, if the mood had been right. It would be a long night, for all of them. Noise within, noise without.

  As they walked into the squad, there were more cold calls, hustles and stumbles, miscues and hurried comebacks, missed signals and meaningful static.

  “Ms. Santiago? I need to talk to your son, Enrique…. Do me a favor, Ms. Santiago, turn down the music…. Good, thank you. Okay. Now do me another favor. Finish chewing your food…. I know, I’m sure it’s good, but finish, please….”

  “I don’t care if Detective McCann told you just not to do it again. It’s my case, and you have to come in and talk to me about it….”

  “What’s your name, ma’am? I’m looking for Mr. Cooper. Is he your husband? Is he around? … You’re Mr. Cooper? Sorry, I’m real sorry. We get some electrical interference on the phone lines here, makes the voices come in a little high sometimes….”

  Nick was about to sit down at his desk when he got a call on his cell, saw the blocked number on his phone. He abruptly turned around and went back downstairs, to step outside the precinc
t for privacy. He wouldn’t dodge IAB calls anymore, he’d resolved. He was steeling himself to this new course and conflict when his wife greeted him. What had they come to, he thought, when he was disappointed it was not the mystery prick?

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  The same worn fondness was in both their voices, but Nick thought he caught something else in hers, a sense of impending accusation or confession, news painfully withheld. Whatever else had gone, they still retained their intimate surveillance systems, all the receptors alert to micro-fine shifts in texture and temperature. Allison misinterpreted the pause.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Missed you the other night. Shame you couldn’t make it.”

  There it was again, the cue of ambush in the landscape, as if the birds in the forest had all fallen silent. New for him, this brand of fear, not of being hurt but of getting caught. He liked it even less than the old one. But he could not think of a better night than last night, with Daysi. At least not in a long time.

  “Yeah, I missed you, too. How was it? Same-old, same-old?”

  “Yeah. No, it was nice, better than usual. I picked the restaurant. I go now and then. I like it. I thought it would be your kind of place, old-fashioned, and we could go there together sometime.”

  “Yeah, maybe …”

  Come on, Nick thought, come out with it.

  “You’re not gonna believe who I saw the other night.”

  “All right. Who?”

  “You.”

  “Really.”

  “Really. At the restaurant. Outside.”

  Though she had been clear in saying she had seen him the other night—not last night—outside the restaurant—not inside—the plain words did not immediately register in his jangled mind. He’d been caught, and at first he thought she’d caught him with Daysi. No, it was when he’d been alone, shamefully alone. That was better, but still not good. Nick really wished it had been the mystery prick who had called. He wouldn’t have had an answer for him, but he might have had an attitude.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t, either. I thought I saw you out there, and when I went out, you were walking back to the subway. I almost cried.”

  That was the end of the noise, and Nick was finally able to concentrate.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, we have to get together, Nick, sometime soon. I’m not going to play games. I can’t…. What we’re doing, it isn’t right. It isn’t fair to either of us.”

  There was an hour to kill before heading to the funeral home, but Nick wanted to get out of the precinct, to do something, to leave the last thought behind. He didn’t know whether it was cowardice or courage that Daysi had inspired in him, but the break with Allison was now imminent, and not awful to contemplate. He was living a little more. Look, look at all of it—his wife and his lover, his father and his partner, his would-be IAB keeper and his maybe wannabe killer. A full house. How long ago had he woken up alone in his dank bunk bed, dithering and cranky, half-craving attention from voices in the water pipes? He’d been an old overcoat in a secondhand shop, waiting for someone to pick him up and try him on. Now all of the customers were pulling at his sleeves. Silly bastard. Enjoy it while you can. It’s all about you. Whose voice was that, and did he really need to know?

  “Hey, Espo, let’s take a ride.”

  “Hang on. Can you give me a minute?”

  “Yeah.”

  Esposito caught the note of urgency, and looked up. “It’s important?”

  “What is?”

  Nick smiled—What is important? Deep question, that Esposito thought that he was caught up in some grim philosophy, and got up to leave with Nick, to nip the mood in the bud. He tapped his pocket, making sure the keys were there, and collected binoculars, a flashlight, and a radio from the desk drawer. The one thing, then the other. They drove uptown along Broadway, but Esposito turned on Dyckman Street to avoid the Irish neighborhood, the apartment, recollections of balls in the water, junkies in the lobby, looming threats on the stoop. No associations. He didn’t know what had set Nick to thinking wrong. Then east, up the hill toward Yeshiva University, which would bring no allusion to the recent past. Another world here—a Moorish-Gothic castle with copper minarets; on the street, young men with black suits, new beards, young men without either, finding their way by the old wisdom, stopping at crosswalks, waiting for the lights. A few blocks south, and they had left old Vilnius for Santo Domingo, shtetl for barrio—two teenagers in a chin-up contest, hanging on fire escape ladders on opposite ends of an alley; an old man buffing his ancient black Buick to a resplendent gleam with a machine plugged into the jimmied base of a streetlamp. Nobody leaves it all behind, Nick thought. There are no clean breaks. And then the landscape answered—on Broadway and 175th, the Palace Cathedral, one of the last great movie theaters from the end of the silent-film age; lavish and slightly ludicrous, it belonged in the pictures, in a cockeyed epic of Nineveh, old Cathay. It was rescued from dereliction by Reverend Ike, who preached the prosperity gospel, his own foremost: The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them. He lectured on Thinkonomics and sold prayer cloth to rub on lottery tickets, betting slips; he had weekly Blessings of the Cadillacs. The marquee said, COME ON IN, OR SMILE AS YOU PASS.

  When Nick smiled, Esposito did, too, relieved. Nick told him about the talk he’d had with Allison, and how he was sad about it but he figured it was right, it was time. The night with Daysi had reminded him what life was like, what it could be like, and he wanted it. Esposito’s reaction surprised him. “Nick, not for nothing, but you’ve known her, what—three days? Four? One dinner and one night in bed? It was a great night out, I believe you, but are you gonna bet everything on it, forever? Half the world is women. Look around! And not for nothing, but you’re married. I know you don’t got kids to worry about, and obviously, you and her got problems. But you hear how half the guys in the office talk to their wives, talk about their wives, the bitching and bullshit. You don’t say much about your wife, but you don’t run her down. I’m not telling you what to do, but I’d hate to see you throw it all away just because you got laid. I’m not against getting laid—you might have noticed—but I know what’s what, who’s who, and where I go at the end of the day.”

  This was not what Nick had expected to hear. Safety tips from one who danced on the high wire, laughing at the idea of a net; a defense of marriage from a playboy who played like he’d just broken out of prison. It was hard to take at face value. Esposito hardly spoke from bitter experience; in fact, he could only testify to the upside of risky lust, lusty risk. But when Nick looked over at his face, it was the image of compassion and concern, and he felt the wisecrack nearly die in his throat.

  “I’m not gonna propose. At least not for a week.”

  Esposito looked sick; Nick laughed. Esposito did, too, then, but less heartily.

  “I had you, Espo…. C’mon, relax! Don’t be so serious!”

  Esposito shook his head, more at ease, though his worried aspect had not entirely left him. “This is a switch—you telling me to lighten up.”

  “And you telling me to be careful.”

  “All right, all right. You’re a little happy now, enjoy it. What I’m gonna do, since we got work to do, is drop you off to see Daysi for a minute. See how she looks the day after, worse or better. Maybe she’s in a bathrobe and curlers, fartin’ up a storm, all the flowers are dead. Maybe not. These are the things you gotta look into, the next day. She left before you woke up, right? You never know, until you know.”

  Nick did want to see Daysi, to see if she looked at him the way he wanted to look at her. Just a few blocks to 181st, and then they made the turn. Just past the shop, Esposito pulled over. Nick was starting to leave the car, when Esposito took hold of his shoulder. Nick was mildly annoyed, until he saw Esposito’s fretful and affectionate expression. Was he going to offer a twenty-
dollar bill, a condom, a breath mint?

  “Hang on,” he said. “Check yourself. Take a minute.”

  Esposito pointed to the mirror, and when Nick looked, he did seem wild-eyed, unkempt, a collar point sticking up. Esposito handed him a water bottle from the backseat like a valet, and inclined Nick forward, so he wouldn’t spill on himself when he dampened and dried his face, flattened his hair. Nick was grateful for the attention, and he turned to see if he required any more correction. Esposito raised his hands, breathing slowly to inspire Nick to follow.

  “Just this, brother. Maybe you two got a life together. God bless and good luck if you do. But you haven’t had the same day. She left her bed this morning happy, maybe as happy as you were, maybe more. Maybe she don’t got a problem in the world. But you, look what you did today, what you had—a lunatic outside your house, fighting your old junkie buddy from next door. After, you go to jail for an hour, and then you decide to get divorced. Nick, I got a more exciting life than most people, but today I slept in. And Daysi? Pretty flowers, that’s what she is! That’s what she does! Do I make sense? Am I right? Put it this way: Does she got a good life you want to be a part of? Or do you got a shit life you want to drag her into? And do you want to talk about all of this now, or do you just wanna say ‘Hi!’?”

  “Hi!”

  “Attaboy! Let’s hear it again, like you walked off the tennis court!”

  “Hi! Hey, baby!”