Red on Red

by Edward Conlon

  “Yeah? What is it?” Costa asked.

  “Raul, this is over now, between us, the business part. I think that’s the first question you asked me, and I’m gonna tell you. I mean, we’re done here, so it doesn’t matter. Man-to-man, I know you’re not all bad. You weren’t bad to Grace, never roughed her up—she never said you did. I know. She tells me everything. She’s something, isn’t she? Special, that one—a little wild. Unbelievable! I mean, she can be kind of a pain in the ass, the way she insists—condoms, condoms, condoms. You’d think she owned the rubber company. Shit, is it worth it, though…. I want you to know, she’s in good hands now.”

  Nick never looked at him as he spoke, casting his eyes farther up the wall, so they seemed to envision a private bliss. A leer spread across his face, then faded; Nick wiped his brow, smiling, wise to the ways of the world. He went on. “I don’t kid myself. She picked me up when she dropped you. One day she’s gonna drop me for somebody else. Still, while it lasts … Would you look what she gave me? I asked her for a picture, and she got dressed up special, had this taken for me.”

  Nick walked over to him, holding out the picture, and Costa’s body sagged as he longingly took in the trashy image. His head sank down. When he lifted it again, his shoulders wriggled, as if he needed to extend his hands, to gingerly reach. Nick drew the picture back—Nuh-uh—to let him know that only one of them could touch. Costa began to cry. Faintly at first, struggling against it, before he surrendered to despair. He bawled and shook, blew his nose on his shoulder. Nick had sickened himself with his own performance; Costa’s brought him to the edge of vomiting. He felt cold again, as if he had the flu. Costa didn’t look at Nick when he raised his head, finding his own spot on the wall where the pictures would play for his private show, the last before the curtain went down. A pendant of drool hung from his lip, swinging back and forth.

  “You know what got me about her? All the other ones, they screamed and cried. I know they were lying, but still … Grace, she got into it. You know what she said when I left?”

  Now he looked at Nick. The drool descended, dropped.

  “After, she fixes her hair—you know how she does it—straightens her uniform. Looks at me. You know? She says, ‘All you had to do was ask.’ That’s how she got me. That’s how I knew. And she broke my heart….”

  Costa’s head went down again before he could see Nick cover his mouth, with both hands. He wanted to cover his eyes, his ears, too, like all three monkeys. The jag resumed for a while, until Costa stopped, suddenly, disgusted with himself. Now, suddenly, here was the revulsion, little and late. Nick didn’t want to guess where that small island of self-reproach might lie, if it was that; he had gone far enough, and now Costa was coming out to meet him.

  “I’ll tell what—how it was. The others, it didn’t happen like they said, what was in the papers. And Grace! That wasn’t in the papers at all! You know why? It was love … a love story. You know. They don’t care about that. I can write down what happened. Just give me a minute. Would you let me clean myself up? Leave me alone. Get these off my hands….”

  Nick nodded, stood, and walked out of the room. When he was out of sight, he rushed down the hall to the utility room and threw up in the slop sink. It felt like an exorcism, getting rid of whatever was left inside him. When he finished, he wondered how he’d arrange it, to uncuff one of Costa’s hands. If they’d been at the squad, Nick would have done that already, cuffed the weak hand to the waist-high steel bar, so he could write. He would have rewarded him with the tidbit of freedom for some minor conversational breakthrough. Not here, not alone, even though all of Costa’s defenses had been breached. If there were a fight, Nick was determined to keep it unfair. But it was over. There was no fight left in Costa. Nick wouldn’t be careless, but he could let him have his hands. He wanted the story, whatever it meant, wherever it led.

  When Nick returned to the boiler room, he told Costa to lie down on his stomach, next to the wall. Compliance came without question or protest. Nick placed Grace’s picture on the ground beside Costa’s head, so escape would not be his first thought. As Nick transferred the cuffs from Costa’s hands to an ankle and a sturdy floor-level pipe—tight, but it fit—Costa’s respiration neither sped up nor slowed. His body remained limp. He rolled over and sat on the milk crate when he was directed to do so. Nick tore out the pages that had writing on them, and handed over the pad with a pen. Costa began to write, and Nick withdrew from the room. He waited just outside the door for a moment, then went back to the slop sink to throw up again.

  Every few minutes, he’d quietly look in on Costa, who never seemed to notice or care as he wrote in rapid script, inspired. Nick washed his mouth out at the sink, felt in his pockets for a mint. The only thing he had was the lollipop he’d taken with Costa’s wallet and keys. He rinsed out the remnants of his vomit from the sink, gargled repeatedly. No message on the phone, still, and Nick and decided he had to call the desk, even 911, no matter what. He was suddenly starving, light-headed with hunger. But when he began to dial the precinct, it didn’t go through; no reception, underground in the concrete bunker. Nick didn’t think it was too risky to step upstairs for a minute, but he checked the boiler room one last time, just to be sure.

  There was Costa, hanging from the wall. Before Nick ran over to him, he put his gun on the floor, both guns—Costa’s, too—in case it was a trick, an ambush. He stopped ten feet away, half-hopeful, half-afraid. The notepad was on the floor, as was the pen. No, no tricks. The legs were in an odd knock-kneed position, the arms slack, shoelaces around his neck, affixed to another pipe. The face had a blue cast, like snow in the moonlight. Nick knelt slightly to hoist Costa up; he was heavier than expected. But when Nick slid his knee underneath Costa for support, he felt the hard-on with his thigh. That was supposed to happen with hanged men, he knew, but Nick jumped back, revolted. Costa slipped down again, went back to dying. Such an asshole. Nick lifted him up as he had before, wondering how he could cut the noose. When the shoulders twitched, Nick almost dropped him again. Costa still didn’t breathe. Nick took his keys from his pocket and sawed where the laces were frayed. Not blue, the face, more purple. A dozen scrapes with the key, but the laces did not break. Nick held Costa up, waiting for him to inhale. Face-to-face, Nick could see spit caked at the corners of Costa’s lips, a nub of brown food between the teeth. Eyes rolled back, half-open. Twenty seconds, fifty, without even a last spasm from the reptile brain. Nick held him, chest to chest, and could not feel a heartbeat other than his own, but his was a jungle drum. Resuscitation was a necessity, the last of lessening chances, but he hadn’t even cut through the shoelaces. Mouth-to-mouth was out of the question. It just wasn’t going to happen. Nick hadn’t killed Costa when he might have, he’d tried to save him when he could, but he would not kiss him back to life. Another minute, two, and Nick gently let Costa go.

  Nick moved his milk crate into the hallway and sat down. He didn’t know how long it was before Esposito appeared, running.

  “You got him?”

  Nick nodded.

  “He’s in there?”

  Again, yes.

  “That’s amazing!”

  That it was. Nick was tempted to begin explaining, but he didn’t have the heart for it, or maybe it was the absence of another organ, lower down. When Esposito saw Costa, he cocked his head to one side, then the other, in an oddly parrot-like motion, before he went into the room. Nick didn’t see or hear him for a few minutes. When Esposito returned, he began to gesture in tentative palms-up circles, reaching for explanation, until his arms dropped.

  “Nope. Nothing. I got nothing to say,” Esposito managed.

  Nick raised his hands. Comprendo, señor. Exactamente.

  Esposito collected the other milk crate and sat down beside Nick. After a while, Esposito coughed. “You wanna ask me how my day was?”

  Nick laughed at the echo of Allison’s question. It reminded him—no, another time.

  “I do, I
do want to know. How it turned out.”

  Nick’s apparent bemusement reassured Esposito, and though he began his story with a halting caution—“When you left, it took me some time, some time just to try to figure out what to do.”—soon after beginning, the momentum gathered, and there was excitement in his voice, not the old proud delight in an escapade, a feat, a win, but a humble awe at what had happened, almost as if he hadn’t been there. For a long time, he talked about looking down at Michael, to see if he moved, listening for a cry.

  “Finally, Malcolm says, ‘You gotta help me. I gotta go to the hospital.’ I look at him. ‘I gotta help you?’ ”

  Esposito blinked and made a face, less displeased than curious, looking out at some imagined distance, and did the parrot head-cock again. Nick had never seen him do that before, but he guessed it was not the second but the third time he’d done it that night. Nick hoped never to see it again. He felt cold despite the dank heat of the hallway, and though he didn’t want to speak, he knew he had to ask.

  “So where is he now?”

  “St. Luke’s,” said Esposito casually, oblivious to Nick’s trepidation. “You know, with all the shit he put me through, I was thinkin’ about taking him to a hospital in Brooklyn, the Bronx, the worst, biggest take-a-number-maybe-we’ll-get-to-you-by-Tuesday joint I could think of, and make the prick limp back home. You know that wasn’t the first time Malcolm talked to that rat? When I was huntin’ him—back before—he called IAB, said I took a shot at him. Can you believe these people, what they believe?”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Me neither. St. Luke’s is fine, and he wasn’t going to Columbia, at least not with me. Half the Detective Bureau is there, with Garelick. Had to take my own car, and he bled on the seat. Anyway, I was pretty pissed off at him, not tellin’ me that the guy had called again. They met a couple of days ago, and the guy gave him a tape recorder. Malcolm told me he didn’t tell him anything, but he figured he ought to cover his bets. Today, the guy calls, Malcolm plays it cute. ‘Maybe you should be there, when I go to meet somebody, by the bridge.’ ”

  “You don’t think he told him about the other tape, with his confession?”

  “Would you tell him about the tape?”

  Nick worked on that for a while. “No, but I’m trying to get away from the ‘What would I do if I was him’ kind of thing. Matter of fact, I gave it a try, not too long ago.”

  Nick inclined his head deliberately toward Costa, determined not to mimic the parrot head. Esposito returned to the circling palms.

  “Yeah, but—see? Nothing’s different. Malcolm made a move on me, behind my back. Fuck him, but so what? We’re both still goin’ in the same direction. It’s all the same now, and it’s done. I took the tape recorder out of his pocket. Into the river. Plus the camera. I dropped Malcolm off outside the hospital and told him to lie to the cops till tomorrow. Not to lie, just not to talk, not yet. ‘Uncooperative.’ And he’s gonna stay uncooperative until somebody asks him about Michael and the other guy. Once it’s out in the open, he breaks down, tells them the truth.”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth. Not everything! Enough though, and all true. This ain’t—They won’t ask—for some kind of … encyclopedia. Whatever, you know? I told Malcolm to say what happened. And what happened was that he went to meet the IAB guy, and his crazy brother followed him, and Michael killed the IAB guy because he thought he was killing a real cop. And there was a struggle, and Malcolm got shot, and Michael went over the edge, hit his head on a rock.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Yeah. The gun Michael killed Jamie with, that’s next to him now. Malcolm’s gonna tell ’em about that, too. So’s the other gun, that he took from the IAB guy. It’s all together.”

  “I don’t know, Espo. There’s always something you didn’t see….”

  “Yeah, Nick, I know. And no, there isn’t. I do this for a living. You, too. For one, there isn’t always something. Some cases just won’t break, no matter how good you are or how hard you try. This isn’t one of them. My phone? I paid cash for an extra one, just for Malcolm’s calls. It won’t come back, not to me. It’s in the river, too. Whoever catches this won’t be as good as me—I’m not bragging; it’s just the way it is—but I gotta expect they’re professional. Has to be. It’s a cop killing, after all. And they’re gonna solve it, almost all of it. They’re gonna find out what went down with those three guys, but the picture they get is a close-up. It leaves us out. The IAB guy must have been freelancing, too, breaking rules. They don’t do one-on-one late-night meets like that, with guys like Malcolm. It’s basic safety, basic sense. He went way over the line trying to get me, and it’ll show. Incompetent. Maybe obsessed. Will they look for more? No. I wouldn’t, honest to God. You look for more when you don’t have enough, or it doesn’t fit. This is an exceptional clearance. It’s closed.”

  “There’s always …”

  Nick couldn’t finish. He had no words left in him. Yes, he had a few, but he couldn’t speak them. There was already something that his partner didn’t know; he hadn’t factored in a major variable from the beginning, and Esposito’s predictions were less persuasive when Nick considered the past. Their shared past, the reason for it. Nearsighted of Esposito, you might say. Nick looked at Esposito, as tempted by confession now as he had been by any prior sin. Did Esposito know already, seeing or not-seeing? They were not in the friendship business, he’d been reminded before. Nick nodded, yes, then shook his head, no. He smiled, helpless. What to say? Esposito knew what to say, what had to be done.

  “Did you know his name?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy. The dead guy. You know the one I mean.”

  “No.”

  There was nothing defensive in the denial, as Nick knew it was almost a technical question, a request for specifics. The substance was already known.

  “No, never did. Never asked. Never met him, like I said. Never told him anything but the truth, until you sprung Malcolm. And I never told him anything after.”

  Nick couldn’t watch Esposito as he spoke. He was disgusted with himself, even as he was relieved by speaking. The post-purgative solace. He waited for a reaction, and when he didn’t hear one, he went on. “I was stuck where I was, in the Bronx. Pissed off and going downhill. After a real bad day, this guy I know—not a bad guy—says ‘Be a field associate, you can go back home.’ Didn’t know it was you they were looking at. Didn’t really realize till we partnered up. Couldn’t tell you after. Here we are.”

  Nick had heard the song before, from others in the interview room—the daisy chain of reasons, how the boss yelled at you when it wasn’t your fault and the bus was late and the ketchup squirted on your favorite shirt, and that was why the dog got shot. An accident, really, and mostly just a shame … Every asshole has his reasons. Nick kept his head down after he’d finished. Like choosing a blindfold before execution, he thought. The next words hit him like a pistol shot.

  “You poor guy.”

  Nick looked up. He hadn’t heard any sarcasm, but he needed to see to be sure. Esposito seemed as confused as he was, struggling to explain. The palms again, circling, head cocked.

  “If you banged my wife, I’d kill you. But if you didn’t even think about it, not once, I wouldn’t understand you. You never hurt me, Nick. You hurt yourself, trying not to. Your word is good enough for me.”

  Nick smiled and closed his eyes, tilted his head back. Waves of grievous relief passed through him, and he nearly fell asleep. Was it just because of tonight, this day and this night, that this most fundamental of betrayals appeared no worse to Esposito than a bump in the road? Nick had to think so. Last Tuesday, next Wednesday, it would have likely rated better than the fourth- or fifth-biggest surprise. Esposito cleared his throat.

  “So whaddaya wanna do with this shithead, the one on a string?”

  “Call it in. I guess I got to.”

  Nick just wanted
it to be over. Esposito shook his head, not to dissuade him but in deepening dismay, foreseeing the fallout. “Your case, your call. But this is bad, Nick. You catch a bad guy, a guy you know, you take him into a basement for a couple of hours, and he winds up dead? The DA, they’re not big on the vigilante shit. The Job? I don’t know what they’ll do, but they ain’t gonna give you a medal. Not anymore. Lawsuit, too—forget about it. You know there’s family somewhere, and they’re gonna say you killed the guy. You’ll win in the end, I know. But Nick, this is America, this is New York. They’ll put you through shit for years even if you don’t get locked up.”

  Esposito didn’t look at Nick as he spoke. Nick watched him weigh the options and consequences, spelling them out as clearly as if he had chalk and a blackboard. Something of a teacher to him, in his lesson’s belabored simplicity; something of a doctor, delivering bad news. The logic was flawless, and Nick felt his stomach tighten and sink.

  “What I done, with the Cole brothers? You could look at it two ways. You could put me in jail, or not. That’s it. I get caught, or I get away with it. No medal, no attaboy, nothing. I knew that going in. Now I wish I’d listened to you, even though it worked out, even though I still don’t see any other way I coulda done it, keeping you safe, keeping things the same. But you, you do everything exactly right, all official, by the book, except for the very end. You work your ass off, you work smart, and I don’t even know how you got him, Nick, but I know you got lucky after that. On top of that! Grand slam! A straight flush! You shouldn’t even get a medal for this, Nick. You should get a parade. And now? Now you’re fucked.”

  Esposito the philosopher, tracing the paths that had taken them to this moment, the path that led away—cause and contingency, randomness and inevitability. The convergence of choice and chance. Nick shook his head again. He didn’t know if he could bear any more wisdom, any more truth, even at the barest, coldest solid-state minimum, but his partner went on.