by Tim O'Mara
“Good to see you, Jack,” I lied. “Try to stay out of trouble.” I got a few steps toward the stairs before Jack grabbed my arm.
“You still got that judging look on your face, Ray. You got no fucking idea what it’s like these days on the streets. I don’t think you ever did.”
I looked Jack in the eyes and then down at where he was squeezing my arm. “You might want to let go of me now, Jack. Unlike Julio, I will make a complaint.”
“Fucking pussy.” He threw my arm back at me. “I’m this close to getting my shield, Ray. Bet you never thought you’d see that happen. And I’m getting it on my own, not because of who my uncle is.” He made a point of looking all around the room we were in. “I’m one of the few white guys left around this house, and I’ll be damned if I let them take it all.”
It was always “us” and “them” with Jack. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“See ya, Jack.” I made my way up the stairs without looking back. If Jack had anything else to say, I didn’t hear it.
The walk up left me winded, and I had to lean against the wooden railing at the top of the steps to catch my breath. Everywhere I went these days, I was reminded of how out of shape I was. It cut deep to have it happen here, too. I swung open the gate and stepped into the detective squad. I saw Royce right away, sitting behind his desk, sipping from a huge water bottle while talking on the phone.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The question came from my left, from the police adminstrative assistant who sat behind a desk. PAAs are basically the doormen to the squad room, inquiring as to the reason for your visit, making sure the person you’re hoping to see wants to see you, answering phones, and doing other civilian stuff.
“I’m here to see Detective Royce.”
“Is he expecting you, Mister…”
“Donne.” I spelled it for him. “Not really. I have an open invite.”
“Sir?”
I gestured toward Royce, still on the phone. “Could you just tell him that Raymond Donne is here to see him?”
“Certainly.” He pressed a button on his phone, and I heard a buzz from inside the squad room. Royce looked over and squinted. It took him a few seconds, but he eventually waved me in.
“Thanks,” I said to the PAA, but he was already on the phone.
Royce’s desk was identical to the half dozen others spread out around the large room: gray and cluttered. File cabinets were lined up against the back wall, flanked by a copy machine and a large coffeemaker. The air up here was different from the air downstairs. It had a hazy quality to it, like the fog was rolling in. Most of the light came from the overhead fluorescents, but some found its way in through the almost opaque windows. When I got to his desk, Royce was still talking on the phone. He gestured for me to sit.
“Seven o’clock,” he said. “I know, but I’ll be there for the second half. She won’t even look for me until the end of the game. I do understand. That’s why I’m on my way out.” That last part was as much for me as for the person on the other end. “I love you, too. Bye.” He hung up and shook my hand. “You got kids?”
“No.”
“Married?”
“Nope.”
“Good for you, Mr. Donne.” He leaned back and picked up a carton of Chinese takeout. “I take that back. Get married. Have kids. Best two things I ever did.” He noticed my umbrella. “Change in the forecast?”
I shrugged. “Just wishing for some rain.”
Royce picked up a plastic fork and began stabbing at the remains of the carton.
“I thought detectives were required to eat Chinese food with chopsticks,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. But only when we’re having late-night meetings with beautiful assistant district attorneys who come by to show off their legs and discuss particularly tough cases they take personally.” He pulled out his fork, which had found a shrimp, and put it in his mouth. “You ever see an assistant district attorney for Kings County?”
“Not for a while now.”
“You’re not missing anything. Fucking cop shows.” He moved the noodles around a little more, didn’t see anything he liked, and dumped the rest of the carton into his wastebasket. “What can I do for you, Mr. Donne?”
I cleared my throat. “I had to drop some papers off at the district office and figured I’d swing by here and see what the latest on the Rivas case was.”
He nodded. “Just in the neighborhood, huh?”
“At the D.O. Yeah.”
“Right.” He took a sip of water. “Well, the latest on the Rivas case is that there is no latest on the Rivas case. The kids’re still missing, the father’s still lying in the morgue, and we don’t know who did it. Thanks for coming by.”
“You interviewed the family?” I asked.
“Yeah. We started doing that in murder cases about a year ago. I spent an hour with the grandmother.”
“Any other family members?”
“Junior lives most of the time with his abuela. Milagros stayed with the dad. Closer to her school. Spoke to all the cousins in the area. Nothing.”
He was talking tough to shut me up and get me to leave.
“What about his aunt upstate?” I was thinking about the photo in my pocket.
Royce gave me a confused look and then picked up a notebook from his desk. After flipping through the pages for a bit, he said, “Cousin. Anita Roberts. Wife of Rivas’s employer, John Roberts. Telephone interview on Wednesday, 1430. Hadn’t seen the vic for over a week.” He flipped the notebook shut. “Have a nice night, Mr. Donne.”
“Phone interview? You didn’t go over and see him?”
“Oh,” he said, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head. “Go over and see him? I didn’t think of that. Maybe I need to take your uncle’s course in interrogation techniques again.”
I wanted to come back with a smart retort of my own, but thought better of it.
“Of course I went over to see him. Twice. He wasn’t there. Had a couple of nice chats with his assistant. Nice-looking woman, so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time. Didn’t care much for our dead guy. Not that anyone I’ve spoken with did. Eight interviews: family, neighbors, coworkers. Not one nice word about Mr. Rivas.”
“So you settled for a phone interview with his boss?”
“Settled?” Royce leaned forward. I could smell the spicy shrimp on his breath. “I didn’t settle for shit. I got what I could and moved on. You might think about doing the same.”
Back inside for ten minutes and I got the guy annoyed with me.
“I’m sorry, Detective,” I said. “I just thought—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t just think. You come into my place of business and tell me how I should conduct my investigation?” He put his hand on top of a pile of files that was almost twelve inches high. “One of many investigations I am currently involved in.”
“That’s not why I came here, Detective.”
Royce picked up a framed photo from his desk and handed it to me. His daughter, I figured. About nine years old and the owner of a smile that could sell toothpaste.
“See that beautiful little girl?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“She’s got a soccer game tonight.” He looked at his watch. “Starts in a half hour out on Long Island. I missed the last two soccer games running around for this job. I am not going to miss tonight’s.” He moved the wastebasket with his foot. “So I shove shrimp lo mein down my throat, make a few more phone calls, and drop something off for my boss downtown. And if I don’t hit too much traffic on the Belt Parkway, I just might make it to Baldwin in time for the second half and see my little girl play soccer.”
I sat there quietly as Royce took another sip of water. When he was finished, he looked at me with a forced smile.
“You have any idea what it’s like being a black soccer dad in the middle of Nassau County?”
“No.”
“It ain’t easy,”
was the answer. “I want those folks seeing that Quinn’s got two parents that care about her. It’s important to put that out there.” He gave me a long look before asking, “You from the Island or Jersey?”
I smiled. A white ex-cop and now schoolteacher? Had to be Long Island or New Jersey. I didn’t have that Westchester County look.
“I grew up not far from Baldwin.”
“Any black friends growing up?”
“No, but there was one kid in my high school. Parents lived over in the military houses. Marines. Named him James. James Brown.”
Royce laughed. “Why do parents do that shit to their kids?”
“Got me.”
He grabbed a folder from the top of the pile and slid it into his bag.
“All right,” he said. “Sorry if I came on a little rude. It’s been a long one.”
“Forget it,” I said. “I should have called first.”
“Yeah,” he said, “you should have. But then I would have told you not to bother coming by and you would have had to come up with something better than ‘I was dropping something off at the D.O.,’ and where would we be then?”
I smiled, and pushed a little more. “You done with Roberts?”
“He’s working from home this week. He’s having some work done on it, and his wife’s pregnant with their second kid, so he’s staying up there. And no, as much as I’d love a ride up to the country, I am not planning on driving an hour and a half both ways just to see him say what I’ve heard him say over the phone. I got enough. He owns the travel agency, and Rivas was a kind of glorified gofer. Messenger, handyman around the apartments that Roberts owned, shit like that. I’ll talk more with him when he gets back to Brooklyn.”
“He say anything about Frankie and Milagros?” I touched my pocket where the photo of Roberts’s house still was. “Where they might be or might’ve gone?”
“He didn’t say.” Royce stood and picked up his bag. “You make it sound like Junior and his sis left on their own. You got something to share with me, Mr. Donne?”
“I’m just putting the possibility out there, Detective.”
“And if they did—get out of there before their dad got whacked—why haven’t they contacted anyone? Grandma, the neighbors, Roberts?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Believe me, Mr. Donne. Everything that can be done is being done. All things are being considered, and all questions are being asked. I’m good at this.”
“I wasn’t trying to imply anything to the contrary.” I stood, and with nothing much left to say, I said, “Thanks for your time.”
“Appreciate you coming by.” We shook hands. “Call next time you’re gonna be in the neighborhood. Give me a chance to get my notes in order.”
“I’ll do that,” I said and turned to leave.
“This the first time it’s getting to you, Mr. Donne?”
“Getting to me?”
“That achy feeling in your gut. That you’re not a part of this”—he made a sweeping gesture that took in the entire squad room—“anymore. Out of the loop.”
“Detective,” I said, “I just stopped by to see—”
“I’m sure I’ll be dropping by in about five years myself, Mr. Donne. Just wanting to say hi, make a little small talk. My wife’s already preparing for it.”
“Good-bye, Detective Royce.”
“We both got our jobs to do, Mr. Donne,” he said as I started to walk away. “Just remember, this here … this here is my classroom.”
“Absolutely.” When I got to the PAA’s desk, I turned back. “Good luck with your daughter’s game tonight.”
“Thanks.”
A minute later I was standing across the street, looking up at the gray, hazy sky, the picture of Cousin Anita’s house still in my pocket. Despite Royce’s assurances, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was not doing all that could be done to find Frankie and Milagros. The mountain of files on his desk proved that. I knew how things worked, how the shit just kept coming. There was a time when I lived off the juice that came from that shit piling up. The nonstop flow of other people’s problems. I’d walk into the house in my civilian clothes and come back out in blue, ready to take on whatever came my way. My gun, my shield, my radio—all just shovels to clean up other people’s shit.
I gave the precinct one last look and headed off to the subway.
Chapter 9
FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS, SINCE my sister bought a condo in Rego Park, Queens, we’ve been having dinner together on the third Thursday of each month. I’m not sure how it started, but it’s the closest thing we have to a family tradition, and we do our best to keep it going. Whatever is going on in our lives—bad breakups, job changes, missing kids—we get together. This was her month to pick up the check, so I was in her neighborhood. I found her standing in front of the restaurant, her cell phone up to her ear.
“Hey,” I said.
Rachel flipped the phone shut. “You’re late,” she said. “You’re never late.”
“Subway.” I gave her a hug. “Sorry.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, taking a step back and giving me a long look.
“Yeah. Why?”
“For starters? You look like shit.”
“It’s this lighting.” I looked up at the restaurant’s neon sign. “Fujiyama. Japanese, huh?”
“It’s a shame you left the police force, Ray. Your deductive skills…”—she snapped her fingers—“sharp as ever. But, seriously. You do look like shit.”
“It’s been a long week. I haven’t been sleeping too well.”
“You can tell me all about it over drinks and dinner.”
The way the host greeted my sister, you’d have thought she owned the place. We were escorted to a center table, and the guy pulled out Rachel’s chair and said, “Two sakes?”
“Yes, Jimmy, please. My brother needs one.”
“Brother?” Jimmy said. “Ahh. I thought maybe…” He shook his head and walked away to get our drinks.
“Have you two been close long?” I asked.
“I designed his menu and Web page,” Rachel explained. “And he’s crazy about me. So, why do you look like death?”
“It’s a shame you left the greeting-card business, Rachel.”
“I didn’t leave. I’m management now.”
“How’s that going?”
“About what I expected. More money, more headaches. Kenny was too cheap to fill my old position, so I’m doing my new job and training a series of bimbos to do research.” She raised her hand to cut me off. “Yes, big brother, greeting-card companies do research. It’s not all ‘Sorry your dog died. Here’s a card.’”
“Did you write that one?”
“Now,” she said, ignoring me, “he wants me to go to L.A. this week with one of his floozies for the annual trade show. Easier if I just killed the chick. And you?”
“Teaching’s teaching,” I said. “The year’s almost over, so it’s a lot of keeping the kids focused until graduation and getting the end-of-the-year bullshit done.”
“That’s not all, though.”
“What do you mean?”
Before she could answer, Jimmy came over with a tray that held two small, porcelain cups that looked like they came out of a five-year-old’s tea set. He placed the cups in front of us and poured sake into both. “You ready to order now?” he asked.
I reached for the menu. Rachel put her hand on mine and turned to Jimmy. “Two combination platters. Sushi and sashimi.” To me, she added, “I’ll explain the difference.”
“Very good, Miss Rachel,” Jimmy said.
“I know you, Ray,” Rachel said after Jimmy left. “You’ll look at the menu for ten minutes, get pissed off, and then ask for my opinion. I just wanted to save us some time.” She raised her glass. We clinked and drank. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d rather have a beer, though.”
“That’s what makes these nights so special. I take you to
new and exciting places, where you get to experience new and exciting tastes. You take me to get a hamburger.”
“I took you to the Polish place on Bedford Avenue last month.”
“Where I had the fabulous roast pork and pickled beets and you had a burger.”
“They make a good burger.”
“You’re getting predictable in your old age, Ray. Life is more than just Budweiser and Yankee games.” She took another sip. “You call Mom back?”
“Not yet, but that didn’t stop her from leaving a five-minute message on my machine last night. Good news about Cousin Patty.”
“Aunt Evelyn six, Mom zero. You know she’s waiting to hear from you about the memorial service, right?”
“Speaking of future grandchildren,” I said, changing the subject, “you still seeing that guy? Alan?”
“Alex,” she corrected me. “No.”
“What happened? I thought things were going well.”
“For six weeks. We’re going out less than two months, and he brings up the ‘M’ word.”
“Marriage?”
“Money. As in, ‘Can I borrow some?’”
I almost spit out my sake. “You’re kidding me.”
“I wish. Seems he and some college buddies have this great idea for a new business, and all he needs is five thousand dollars to get in. What are you smiling about?”
“You’re getting better,” I said.
“At what?”
“Two years ago you’d have been out five thousand dollars.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” she said.
“You were close. Now you just need to take a little more time before bringing them home to meet Mom.”
“Maybe if you brought someone home once in a while…”
“I’m enjoying this time of celibacy.”
“Celibacy indicates a conscious choice, Ray. You … are not getting laid.”
“Let’s not argue semantics, Rache.”
“Because you’d lose?”
“Because I’d like to have a nice dinner. Even if it is raw fish and warm rice wine.”
Of which I took another sip as Jimmy came back to our table with two oversize plates of food and another vase of sake.
“Enjoy,” he said, and he gave my little sister a smile before leaving again.