Red on Red

by Edward Conlon

  “Nothin’.”

  “No, not nothing.”

  “Like I said before, he don’t visit, and I can’t.”

  “What do you hear?”

  “That he wants to kill y’all.”

  “Us? Me and my partner? Or any cop?”

  “I can’t say.” He shrugged. “My guess, he has his preference, but he’d settle.”

  “Your brother could get killed for that, Malcolm.”

  Malcolm nodded, pulling on his lower lip; the gesture seemed more playful than pensive. “You know, that would bother me, and I’m sure it’d bother you both, him bein’ so young….”

  Malcolm paused and looked at them, one then the other, as if they might want to take advantage of the break to offer condolences after his dry little elegy. He smiled when they said nothing, having put their pretensions to rest. “But it wouldn’t bother Michael. It would not bother Michael one bit.”

  “He get religion?”

  “He’s playin’ with it, I hear.”

  “Is he talking to anybody? Arabs? Is he connected to anything? Is he getting money?”

  Malcolm laughed. “Like I said, I don’t know. How am I gonna, in here? In here, somebody says they’re Muslim, they don’t go to court on Friday. Then they go back to Jesus when there’s bacon Sunday morning. Muslim, Spider-Man, he just wants to be somebody else. My sister says he’s on the Internet, lookin’ up shit. When she comes in the room, he screams like he got caught jerkin’ off, but he ain’t. He don’t go out much, barely at all. You know, the Dominicans, they only got to see him to kill him. Only, he got no place else to go.

  “Anyway, the only Muslims I know, the Africans down the hall in the apartment building, all the girls got the sheets on their heads, all of that, they don’t talk to nobody but other Africans. And Nation of Islam people, ’cross the way—You know them, right?—they got chased out, when they set up a fish restaurant and everybody got sick. And there’s a guy on the corner sometimes, what’s his name—Papa Israel, yeah—he’s crazy. He says we’re a lost tribe. He go down to the Deuce to scream at white folk, now and then. The Deuce, Forty-second Street, you know what I’m talkin’ about? Yeah. I dunno if he says we’re Jews or Muslims. I think maybe both. Even crazy Michael knows he’s crazy. He wouldn’t talk to him, not like that. But Michael—he’s his own lost tribe. Who can say what’s goin’ on there, outside? People get funny ideas.”

  “What’s your ideas, Malcolm? Are they funny?”

  “Nothin’ funny about jail. I think about gettin’ out.”

  “That’s good to think about. You will get out.”

  “When I’m old.”

  “Not too old.”

  “Old.”

  Malcolm had talked his way back from under the table to the other side of it; he was a partner again.

  “I’m a convicted felon with a murder beef. What you gonna do for me, get me eighteen instead of twenty? Or you gonna pull strings on the inside, hook me up with double scoops of mashed potatoes? Get me to the front of the line, pizza night?”

  “You talk about pizza and mashed potatoes. Then you talk about two years like it’s nothing,” offered Esposito, knitting his fingers, then gripping the sides of his chair, sliding it closer. “I never talked about years, about numbers. What are we talking about, Malcolm? What are you looking for? You want us to keep working together? You want to keep talking to me?”

  Malcolm slid closer, too, on his own chair. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.” “Can you control your brother?”

  Malcolm raised his hands, slid back, and smiled. “Yeah. But I couldn’t even try, in here.”

  “What you thinkin’, Mal?”

  That might not have been his nickname, but Esposito had decided to make it one, his own. A new name, for the new circumstance. Again, there was no pretense of friendship, but neither was there anger in the question.

  “Are you thinkin’, or just playin’ games?” Esposito asked.

  “I think. I got time to think. I do it better now. All I needed was the practice!”

  Malcolm backed up in his chair and examined his fingernails. The detectives waited for him to finish. “My lawyer said all you got against me is the tape, with my confession.”

  “Your lawyer might be right.”

  “He said if you didn’t have the tape, I’d be a free man.”

  “Your lawyer might be right.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Like the country music says, freedom ain’t free.”

  “Don’t piss me off with country shit, Espo. I know you don’t listen to it, either. I see you as, what, a Sinatra guy?”

  “Everybody loves Sinatra.”

  “Not me.”

  Esposito and Malcolm leaned in close together, and spoke in hushed tones. Nick stood up and walked around, mumbling what he remembered from the song. “I got the world on a string …”

  “You want me to kill my own brother?”

  That stopped Nick’s breath, and his memory of the rest of the song went with it. He reached for the next few lines. “Sittin’ on a rainbow …” No. This was not right. Another song. “Fly me to the moon, let me—Da!—upon the stars, something, something, something, Jupiter and Mars … In other words, hold my hand …”

  “I could never ask anybody for that, Mal. But if you was to get out, it would be to take care of him. Take care of this. If all it takes is talking, talk. Think about it. Practice—for a week! That’s the next court date, right? Maybe the tape can get lost. But lost things can always be found, if I gotta look. And I can make sure that they’re found, even if me or Nick aren’t around to do it. Especially if we’re not, me or him.”

  Esposito extended his hand, and Malcolm took it. Esposito held on.

  “Malcolm, I want you to know that I’m taking a risk.”

  Nick began to sing louder, in fear of hidden recorders, but also in disbelief of hearing what was being said. “In other words, darling, kiss me …”

  “Me, too. I’m taking a risk,” Malcolm said.

  “No. You’re not. You’re an inmate lookin’ at freedom. I’m a cop lookin’ at jail. Not the same, not even close. It’s the opposite. I want this on top. Look at this as the interest, or look at it as a show of good faith. Gimme three more, three more homicides, guys who got bodies we don’t know nothin’ about. Find out, work it. I know you can. I believe in you.”

  Esposito started to release his hand, but now Malcolm held on.

  “Jail ain’t all I’m looking at. Every time I talk to you, my ass is on the line. I could wake up with my balls cut off, somebody sees me. Forget about what they hear. Somebody hears, it’s over. I don’t wake up. That’s snitching on strangers. Friends is worse. For that, they’d have some kinda party. I’d be the food. A brother? I don’t think they invented what they’d do to me. So I’m glad you believe in me, and we got a deal, but don’t give me any bullshit about risk.”

  In other words, please be true.

  There was no singing on the way back, not much talking, either. Nick hadn’t asked for this, and would have had no part in it, had he known how it would end. Did he know how it would end? Of course not, no. It had just begun. They had just leapt from the cliff. The bottom was far enough away for anything to happen. The law of gravity could be repealed before they were halfway down. It had been repealed. It was as if Esposito had cut the ground from beneath them and they’d been tossed loose from the earth, riding a meteor. Nick played the day in reverse. They should have stayed in the bar. They should have never gone in. He should have checked for gum on the seat. Should he have told Esposito about Michael? Of course, he’d had to tell him. What had he asked for? Nick had prayed for something to happen, a wish cast upon the waters. The prayers had been answered by the wrong god. Ellegua, maybe. He was known for playing tricks. It had been a while since he’d been in touch.

  Nick knew Esposito meant to deliver on his promise, knew that this mad gambit had been undertaken on his behalf. He also knew that his partner
was not entirely altruistic in his motives. He had been sidelined for months, and he wanted to get back into the game, to play it as it had never been played. He wanted to impress himself—Nick, too, as an audience of one—in full knowledge that the story could never be shared, the subject never discussed. That was the sad part, for Esposito, that this olympiad would be entirely underground, and if there were tokens of victory in any sheen—bronze, silver, gold—they would be buried in order of importance, deep, deeper, deepest.

  “How’s the kids?”

  “Good. Great. They ask about you all the time. I lie to them, say you’re doing fine.”

  Esposito saw through the ploy, and he didn’t even try to ally Nick to his present course. He didn’t need reminding that he had children—three of them, all alive—that he knew were bound to him, in whatever choice he made, in the near or far consequences of this hour. He took joy in this life, in the burdens and risks, joy that Nick might never know. Nick’s own lost tribe, the three little girls, splashed in the shallows of the soft gray waters of limbo.

  “How would you get the tapes?”

  “They don’t even make extra copies, unless somebody asks. The original’s in storage. Maybe the defense lawyer has one, but he’s not gonna give it up. I asked for one because of my well-known dedication and professionalism. So I have one, too. That’s not a problem. It’s insurance.”

  “It is a problem.”

  “Nah, it happens. C’mon. It happened last week! Didja read the papers—with the dentist’s wife, the hit man? You know how this goes. Two or three more times, they’ll make a new procedure. ‘Hey, why not make extra copies!’ ”

  “It’s a problem.”

  “Try harder. Tell me another one.”

  Esposito warmed to the challenge as they fell into their old roles, devil’s advocate and—what? Nick didn’t want to think about that. He had to think. This was not the adversarial system, not as he was accustomed to it. Not the friendship business, either, not one in which he was ready to invest. Malcolm would have said anything to stay out of jail. He’d already tried. How would it shake up Esposito, if he knew that Malcolm had called IAB, had said Esposito had tried to kill him, once upon a time? But there was no way for Nick to say that, without revealing how he knew.

  “You’re already on the radar with IAB—more than that. They’re gunning for you. A homicide case goes south, in a shady way. You don’t think that won’t bring attention, won’t make ’em try harder? Won’t they see something going on?”

  Esposito laughed, too loudly.

  “Number one, I’m the only reason Malcolm got locked up. It was never much of a case, and without me, it woulda never got this far. Why would I be the one to wreck it? Number two, it’s a ghetto homicide, perp-on-perp, and nobody gives a shit. Three, it’ll look like the DA’s mistake, not the cops’, and the DA and the cops are not gonna cooperate when they can point fingers at each other. Four, if IAB ever had anything on me, anything close to something, I’d be in a rubber-gun squad somewhere already, delivering the baloney sandwiches at Central Booking. The Job doesn’t have to be fair, doesn’t even have to pretend to be. I don’t know why the rats have it in for me, whoever it is at IAB, but I bet he never caught a real bad guy before, and he ain’t gonna catch me. Because I’m not the bad guy! What else you got, Nick? C’mon, bring it on!”

  Nick resolved not to let his jaw go slack at the summation, shrewd and rousing at once, the tack-sharp point-by-point rejoinder of fact, and the canny, roving, worldly-wise grasp of the politics at the far end of the island. Wasn’t Lena the lawyer in the family? Didn’t Nick have something to contribute here? Maybe a care package, with warm mittens and homemade cookies, vitamins, for his best friend, who was heading upstate, farther north than his usual destination. And who was inviting him to come along with him.

  “Witnesses. Two witnesses to the statement.”

  “Try harder, Nick. The video guy won’t remember. He’s done a hundred of these since. He turns on the camera and thinks about lunch. The DA maybe, maybe not. This one practically had pneumonia. She barely remembered her name. And lawyers don’t like to put their own people on the stand. Yeah, they could put me on the stand, and I’d say what Malcolm said. It wouldn’t mean shit. Try harder, Nick! Records of visits here, to Rikers? I talk to everybody who’ll talk to me, every bad guy who might do us some good. I didn’t create the situation, but I will take advantage. That’s my job. Yours, too!

  “But with the tape gone, the case is down the toilet,” Esposito continued. “The whole thing would stink to a jury. Either we look like mongoloids or it’s all some kind of superconspiracy, Elvis lives and 9/11 and Area 51 all wrapped up into one. It won’t float. Us—the DA—we lose cases all the time, even when we’re trying our hardest, when we think we got everything nailed tight. Let’s let the system break down to our advantage, for once.”

  “Breakdown,” that was the word, Nick thought. Michael had saved him, in a way, and now Esposito might ruin him. He had been used to being part of the system; he hadn’t thought of himself as such, a cog on a wheel, but he was a semi-significant functionary of a massive governmental organization. In the past, he had been frustrated by what it couldn’t accomplish. What would it be like to fear what it could? He was not ready to learn. After he shook his head, Esposito continued soothingly.

  “You weren’t wrong to hold back and wait for me, Nick. Nothing could have happened to Michael aside from an interview, if you’d called it in right then. What does he say? ‘Fuck you and goodbye.’ And you woulda been gone, from your house. You know that. They woulda asked Allison if you lived with her, and she woulda said no, and you woulda been ‘Out of residence during sick leave.’ Guys get twenty-, thirty-day hits for that. ‘Failure to report change of residence,’ another ten days. You know why? The brass have to do something. They have to act like they did. And they pick the problem they can solve. The precinct, too. They’d never let you stay. Maybe you’ll land back at the old place in the Bronx, where your old sergeant stole your best case for his buddy. Either that or they’d take your gun and send you to Psych Services, for not reporting it right away. The government, the police department, is not your friend. I am.”

  Esposito was his friend. He knew that. Nick hadn’t betrayed him, even in a friendship born of betrayal, arranged in advance. Nick wouldn’t go to hell for what he’d done so far. Not for that, not that circle, the lowest one, where the traitor Judas was locked in ice. Judas was a suicide, too, the one unforgivable sin. Which stop was on Judas’s ticket, suicide or betrayal, when he took the downtown line to the terminal station? Enough, enough. Nick wanted to get off the train. He’d been assigned to Esposito because someone was convinced of his textbook corruption, the classic dirty cop stuff of finger wagging editorials. A disgrace to the badge. And even though Nick had witnessed vanity and arrogance, raw appetites and rough hands, nothing had come close to a real crime until Nick had inspired him to commit one.

  “Don’t do it, Espo. Not for me, not at all.”

  Esposito’s tone was calming and adult, with a kind of bemused understanding—the bedtime story was frightening, yes, but he’d be in the next room if Nick had a bad dream. “Worse guys than Malcolm have gotten bigger breaks. Look what the Feds do for mob rats. Sammy the Bull. What was it, nineteen murders? And he did less than five years. Malcolm’s done a couple of months already. I’m not waiting for somebody to die—me or you, especially—while the lawyers hash it out. Don’t worry. Don’t think about it. I got this.”

  Esposito laughed and patted him on the shoulder. The emptiness of whatever objection Nick might make was plain to both of them. Nick couldn’t play father to the child, refusing to sign a permission slip for a school trip to an amusement park. Nick could do nothing to stop him. Esposito would have fun. Nick had been troubled lately by the sense that his life was not in his hands, and he had played with the idea of giving up, giving in. The sidewalk potshot had ended the game, had made real the possibility of
extinction, and Nick had tightened his grip. He was not ready to cede control to an ad hoc committee of his partner and the Cole brothers. He didn’t need his life to be that interesting.

  It wasn’t late when they got back, but Esposito drove straight to the apartment, slowing down a moment, then circling the block again. He pulled over and looked at the opposite side of the street, scanning the roofline, and waited for Nick to get inside before driving away. It was an escort’s gesture; even on bad dates, Nick would walk the girl in, making sure she got home safe. The other detectives must have signed them out at the end of the shift, believing that they were out on the town, having the fine time that had been expected, ordered even, by the lieutenant. No one at the squad had called them back in, so Nick had to assume that the night had been quiet in their part of town. It was Valentine’s Day, after all. Daysi must have been as busy as hell.