As Nick walked up the stoop to the lobby, he realized he wouldn’t have to worry about his youthful pursuer creeping up behind him. Nor would he have to try to avoid the grief-ravished old man who would thank him so kindly for his help. These were yesterday’s guilts and fears. All done. How to replace them, with what? He fumbled for his keys at the door, and his phone rang. The number was blocked. Well, at least he knew who it wasn’t.
“Hello?”
“Nick? What’s so funny? It’s so wonderful to hear you in a good mood.”
“Ah, you know, it’s just one of those days. Unbelievable at work, just getting home. I can’t … tell you how happy I am … that it’s you.”
Allison’s voice was so welcome that real pleasure filled him, masking the cracked irony.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been out in this mess.”
“I have, all day, and I’m soaked and frozen. I’m right outside the door. Do you mind if I get a shower and thaw out? Can you call back in half an hour? I’ll call you. Are you just checking in, or is there something else?”
“A little of both…. Are your teeth chattering? You poor guy! Please, go in and warm up. Call me when you’re room temperature.”
“I will.”
Inside, Nick began to tear off clothing as he walked down the hall, tossing away gun, shield, and cuffs. The picture of Grace was still inside his pocket, inside his notebook, and he took it out gingerly to put it on the kitchen table, not yet ready to look at it again. He couldn’t manage his boots yet. The laces had congealed and fused, and his hands were numb. He found himself naked with bound feet, peeled like a banana, with heaps of coveralls, pants, long johns, and underwear knotted around his ankles. He laughed and wished Allison were here, how she would laugh at the sight of him, and the thought nearly warmed him. He turned on the shower and trudged to the kitchen for a knife to cut his laces, his legs still bound by his clothes. Clambering into the tub, he liberated himself beneath the hot water. After feeling had returned to his limbs, he left the whole mess behind him in the shower, boots and all. What did Allison mean, something else? He dressed and went to the kitchen. What did he want, whiskey or tea, to set him up for the talk, the night? After he put on the kettle, he found he was out of whiskey. Best that way, he thought, to keep the head clear. Clearer, anyway. Would you look at that, he thought. He’d managed to look on the bright side. Even the idea of a woman, this one …
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Are you warmed up? What were you doing out there? Tell me!”
And so Nick told the story of Grace, as well as he could manage, starting with bits of the day and then stopping to go back, their serial encounters, how talented and sweet she was, how brave, the episode with the three boys, which made Allison recoil. He was glad he never said how Grace reminded him of Allison a little, when she was a schoolgirl, but he felt defensive at Allison’s occasional hints of disapproval. He looked at Grace’s picture on the table, knowing how much more there was to her.
“I know it’s an odd thing to say, but the nonsense with the boys, even though I wish she hadn’t done it—it kind of inoculated her against this guy, Costa. I mean, what he did was unforgivable, how he hurt her, and I don’t want to make it sound like it’s not as serious a crime to rape a slut, but think about what it would have done to … a little girl who was more sheltered.”
“It would have destroyed me,” said Allison, shuddering.
“Me, too. For her, it was like stomach flu. Awful at the time, and she’ll be more careful later. Not like that, I know—but the sight of him didn’t send her running away, screaming. She helped us, held up like a soldier the whole way through.”
“I don’t know what to say, Nick. ‘Good for her,’ doesn’t really sound right, does it? ‘Lucky’ doesn’t work, either….”
But Allison had thought both of those things, as Nick had, and he was touched and grateful to hear them. He was desperate to talk, to tell—some of it, at least—and he wished he was sitting next to her, lying next to her, now. Did he dare say that, ask or make the offer? No, not yet, and he went on with the story, Sister Agnes, the lieutenant in the cassock, the girls with the cigarette. Allison laughed and gasped, asked questions and made comments; the story flowed between them, back and forth, and Nick almost felt as if they were holding hands. He could picture the way she rolled her eyes, her version of it, a quick up and down, and he remembered the way she covered her mouth when she laughed suddenly. On to the school dismissal, Garelick’s collapse, the near recognition of Costa, the signal with the snow boot, and the fired shot. At times, it seemed to Nick that he was talking about someone else; he couldn’t believe it had happened today, and it wasn’t the half of it, not even close. Years had passed with little incident of real meaning for him; today, events of life-shaping significance had arrived with the regularity of rush hour trains. He went on to the foot chase, almost being hit by the car.
“Hold on a minute. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Your partner, is he all right?”
Nick didn’t understand the interjection. Why should she care? How could she possibly even be aware of Esposito? He didn’t want to think about what had just happened with Esposito, what might have happened since. And he started to feel a lunatic anger at the idea that Esposito might have arranged to cross paths with Allison, too, when he realized she was talking about Garelick.
“Nick?”
“Sorry. I guess the brain’s still a little frozen. He’s okay, I think. They’re still doing tests. I got confused because he’s not my regular partner. My regular partner is the one who almost ran me over. I don’t know who felt worse about it. Not that it mattered, really, who felt what, next to everything else. What was I saying?”
“Nick, I have no idea,” said Allison, laughing kindly, sympathetic and baffled, delighted to hear more. “I don’t know if you do, either. God, though, it’s good to hear. I don’t know…. All I know, right now, is that my day has been a lot less exciting.”
“What did you do?”
“Lay in bed. A snow day.”
“Ah, Allison, good for you. You make me jealous.”
Allison didn’t answer for a moment. Nick saw her resting in their old bed, maybe drifting off, both of them drifting off together, like old times. The pause was suffused with love and regret, and he waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he worried, and she must have, too, because she pushed ahead to fill the dead air.
“So … Grace. Does she know?”
“Know what?”
“That you tried?”
“Allison, what does it matter that I tried?”
Both of them were silent, struggling to hold back from obvious comment, frustrated with each other’s demonstrable and stubborn not-getting-it.
“Gimme a minute, Nick.”
“All right.”
They heard each other breathing on the phone, calming themselves.
“Nick, I love you, but you’re five kinds of idiot. Let me give you the first two. One, it does matter that she knows you tried. I know what matters most to you is getting the guy, but what matters to her is that she’s safe, she’s not alone. Where is she now? Does she know what’s happened, with all of this?”
“Is that the second one?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“ ‘No,’ means you don’t know where she is, she doesn’t know what’s going on, what to watch for? Does her family know what to look for, how they might help?”
“No.”
“So you just took a swing at it, you missed, and went home? ‘Sorry, I lost.’ And you said you grabbed this case—stole it, even. You took it for yourself. Well, fine, but isn’t there supposed to be more of a package for girls like this—social services, supports, all kinds of things?”
Nick dreaded to hear what the other three stupidities might have been. For a second, he thought she was bluffing. There could only be one more, two at most, that could be laid out so cogently. Best not to ask; these w
ere enough. At the same time, he was delighted to hear Allison talking to him like that, holding him to account, holding him tight. It was a little rough but not mean, and he liked it.
“You’re right. I should go. I should go now, straight there. Allison, thanks—I should … We …”
“Good. But hang on, Nick. You didn’t ask me how my day was.”
The comment was haggardly marital, tediously needy in a way that Allison never had been when they were together. He was unused to it, didn’t like or understand it, but he played the muffled husband in perfunctory response.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. How are you?”
“You’re scaring me. Was I ever like that? Don’t say it like that. I was kidding, almost. I didn’t have a day. I was in bed. I want to see you. I want to talk more—this was so nice. I was afraid at first! But I want to see you. Can you come down? Are you working tomorrow? It’s Saturday.”
Nick hesitated, then ventured a joke, to test her patience for him. “I just want you to know, I’m not backing down on my alimony demands. I got used to a certain standard of living, and I aim to keep it.”
“God, Nick, you can be an ass! Oh, it hurts to laugh…. I’ve got a little … back problem lately.”
Nick was so relieved to hear her reaction that his eyes teared.
“Nick?”
“No. I mean, no, I’m not working, and yes, I’ll come down. Do you want me to come down now?”
Now it was Allison who hesitated. “No, Nick. Go to the girl’s house. Take care of that. You got me so caught up with the poor thing! I’m so tired, I’m going to fall asleep soon anyway, and I think I’m going to have good dreams. Besides, the way the day’s been going for you, you’d probably hail a cab that’s in the middle of some terrorist plot.”
Nick smiled at how right she was, though she only knew half of what had happened. And he kept smiling, thinking about seeing her tomorrow.
“All right. Good night, babe. See you tomorrow.”
“I love you, Nick. Good night.”
Allison hung up quickly, afraid Nick would be too slow to say he loved her in return. So many thoughts came to his mind right then, and they seemed to align. She loved him, a day in bed, bad back, good dreams. She had something to tell him, but it had to be in person. He’d dreamt this, just two days ago. It was a delirium and a delight, a heartbreak that might make his heart whole again. Except that was just a dream, and it was with another girl. So what? To hell with Daysi. Let Esposito have her, if he wanted. No, this was so much better, if it were real. Nick was convinced that Allison was pregnant. Had it been five months? She hadn’t said much, but she couldn’t hint too heavily or he’d catch on, and if he pushed her to tell, she’d be unable to resist, and she wanted to tell him in person…. Paranoid reasoning, he knew, paranoid in reverse—a benevolent cabal, with clandestine actors and energies laboring on his behalf. Nearly six months since he’d seen Allison. Her pregnancy would show. He went back to the bathroom and washed his face. He believed it, truly felt certain. Everyone had said, everyone knew, that tonight would be his night, that his luck would change. Nick caught himself, realizing that it would kill him tomorrow if the door opened and he saw a skinny woman whom he still loved.
After he hung up the phone, Nick walked around the apartment, looking for shoes. He had shoes. He wanted boots, dry ones, but he had only the one pair, in the bathtub. What time was it? He checked his father’s closet, found a good pair that fit. Nothing had been touched, the two suits, five shirts, a few shiny ties. He had planned to give them away. Lucky for him, he’d been delusional and catatonic, incapable of dealing with minor matters of wardrobe disposal. What else might fit? No, leave it. Move on, move out. He laced up his boots, piled on a jacket, a hat. Gun, shield, and cuffs, the picture of Grace from the table. He slipped it back into the notebook, and put the notebook in his pocket.
As soon as he walked out the door, he found he couldn’t think about Allison, Jamie Barry, or even Grace, though he was headed to the Lopez house now. Yesterday’s guilt and fear, they had come back. Five men had met by the river; how many were still breathing? What would the living say, the dead tell? How to chart the congress of conspiracies? It was a bedouin saying, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This must have been why the Arabs invented algebra, just to keep track of this kind of thing. As he feared, Nick couldn’t begin to reckon this yet, couldn’t even write the equation, let alone solve it—the double crosses of Esposito by Malcolm, of Malcolm by Michael, of Nick by Esposito with Daysi, Nick triple-crossing IAB with Esposito. Was that odd or even, in the end, and did the mutuals cancel each other out? The irrational numbers preoccupied Nick because he’d have to get them down before he could do the simpler math for what had happened—one man definitely dead by the river, probably two, possibly three. Nick had been more than a bystander, fighting Michael, giving Esposito the stolen gun. And if any of that came to light, the spread could look like two-to-six, five-to-ten for Nick, depending on how much the judge wanted it to count.
The walk was not long, even in the heavy weather. When Nick entered the lobby, he realized he didn’t know which apartment Grace lived in. He’d never been inside the building, and hadn’t written a single official line about her, in any of the cases—when she’d been missing, with the boys, and with Costa. Nick had always carried her off the books, so to speak. At the mailboxes, he saw there were three Lopez families, two on the sixth floor, one on four. He’d work his way down. He hit the elevator button and listened as the machinery ground and halted, ground and halted again. Rusted gears, frayed cables, it didn’t matter; there would be no stair climbing for him today. The thought of it made him stretch his legs as he waited, the calves and hamstrings. The elevator finally opened, a narrow brass-fitted box the size of a phone booth, and it lifted him reluctantly to the sixth floor.
When Nick knocked on the first door, a gigantic-sounding man bellowed from inside, “I didn’t call no police! We don’t want no police here!” Nick was satisfied with the response. At the second door, around the corner of the U-shaped hall, no one answered. What to make of that? Nothing, yet. He expected them to be home, but it was Friday night, not a school night, and there was a better possibility they were out, alone or together. He didn’t know what Grace had told her father, if anything, and what Ivan Lopez would do if he knew. Yes, he did, at least the last part. He’d march down to the precinct and demand to see Nick. If he had, there would have been no one in the squad. They’d all be at the hospital, with Garelick. Except for Esposito. Maybe. Where was he? Nick should call, find out about both of them. One fiasco at a time.
Nick walked to the stairwell after the second apartment, and as soon as he opened the door, he heard salsa music blasting out at tooth-loosening volume from a lower floor. He felt a headache at the first note, and it flipped multiple aggravation switches in his brain. Dat, da da, dat, da da, dat—it was epilepsy with trombones. The rising irritation raised his spirits, and he was ready to let the people blasting the music have it before he visited the Lopez apartment with his canned apologies and social service referrals. But when he turned the corner of the fifth-floor landing, he saw a man waiting in the stairwell on the fourth floor, peering out through the opened door. Nick recognized Costa, even though he saw him from behind, and knew that Costa wouldn’t hear him as he approached.
At first, Nick wanted to crack him across the skull with the butt of his gun, but he decided against it. Nick needed him awake, to talk. He kicked Costa behind the knee that held his weight, and pushed the back of his head with the heel of his hand, so he’d fall forward. It worked, except for when the gun went off. Costa’s, into the linoleum, before it bounced down the hall. Nick hadn’t even seen it, but he stepped on the gun hand, put his own gun to Costa’s head. Nick began a bloodthirsty speech, telling Costa he would shoot him, that he could, before he realized that since the music had drowned out the gunshot, his rhetoric might be limited in its effect. This was the best party Nick had ev
er been to. He should call the police to complain that it wasn’t loud enough. He cuffed Costa and picked up the gun, pulled him to his feet.
Costa hadn’t seen who’d arrested him until then, and he must have assumed it was an elite squad of snipers, an armored battalion, satellite guided commandos. His disappointment at seeing Nick, alone, was so profound that Nick was tempted to tell him about the bloodhound, the manhunt, the task force. Maybe later. They walked down the stairs, into the lobby. Nick was going to call 911, to have a patrol car come, even though it would take a while—ten minutes, twenty, unless he said it was an emergency. And saying that it was an emergency would invite a lot of cops to come. Maybe even Special Victims, who would be more than happy to take Costa away from him. Nick had come too far to be satisfied with an honorable mention in the case. He hesitated before calling, hesitated even to take off his glove to dial the number, when Costa spoke first.
“God, that was loud, wasn’t it?”
Costa was casual, as if it were natural how they met, inevitable how it ended. Nick spoke in the same tone, though his was a very different sense of relief.
“What a fucking headache!”
“They’re Dominicans. They’re the worst. Try living in my neighborhood. Believe me …”
Maybe they’d both think of this as inevitable, later in life. It was an ordinary tendency to rewrite one-in-a-million crapshoots as manifest destiny. But Nick was ashamed, when he considered the actual arithmetic. Costa was at the third place on the planet where Nick knew that he had been before. They’d covered the school, where he lived, but Nick had been stumped by the complexity of counting to three. What would Costa have done with Grace? Or Ivan? Who would he have killed, who would he have kept, where would he have gone? Nick decided he ought to ask about that, later on, when they got back to the precinct. Whenever, however that happened.
And he didn’t just worry about how long it would take for a cop car to arrive. There would be the cop questions that came with the car. You did this alone? Where’s your partner? Where’s Esposito? And since Nick didn’t have an answer—there might have been two bodies to deal with, maybe three—he didn’t call 911, or the precinct desk. He called Esposito, got his voice mail without a single ring. Nick was exposed, in more than one sense. Adult male detectives shouldn’t make solitary and informal visits to underage rape victims. And he shouldn’t be waiting there, in the lobby. Grace and her father might pass through at some point, and this was not the time or place for a reunion. He walked Costa to a corner of the lobby, pushed his face against the wall, and walked away to leave an urgent out-of-earshot message with Esposito—this is the address, get here right away, with a car. “We’ll be in the basement.” He took advantage, as Esposito would have, grabbed Costa by the coat, pushed him ahead to the stairs.
Red on Red Page 49