Speak of the Devil

by Richard Hawke

  “Or the grave.”

  “Right.” He took a sip of his green tea. “The final restraining order.”

  I told the lawyer what I was looking for. Angel. I didn’t tell him why, only that I needed to track down Diaz’s former colleague. Jennings caught on immediately.

  “You think this Angel guy was involved?”

  “I don’t know if he was. I can only tell you it’s important that I locate him. I was hoping maybe you could help. But I’m guessing Diaz didn’t call in a gangbanger like Angel as a character witness at his trial.”

  “That would be a good guess.”

  “What about the woman? The one Diaz brought to your office, with the rose tattoo. Gabriella told me she and Diaz were an item. She also said she’s obliterated the woman’s name from her mind. She doesn’t want to remember it.”

  Jennings smirked. “You mean the hot tamale? I had her called as a witness in Diaz’s assault on me. As I’m sure you can imagine, she was not too cooperative.”

  “Hostile witness?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” He rifled through the papers in his file folder. “Here we are. Donna Bia. Ah, that’s right. The lovely Miss Bia. How could I have forgotten?”

  I wrote the name down. “Have you got an address?” He did. It was in Brooklyn, not far over the bridge. I wrote that down as well. “Job?”

  “The official term is ‘no visible means of support.’ Except take one look at this one, and the means of support is pretty damn visible. Miss Bia was a hustler from the word go. I’m not going to use the term ‘arm candy,’ but I could.”

  “Candies like that usually prefer their arms to have some money,” I said. “Diaz sounds a little short in that department.”

  Jennings shrugged. “Drugs are candy, too, and our Miss Bia had herself a big appetite. I’m pretty certain Diaz was into some low-level dealing. Aside from the candy itself, dealing lets you flash a decent-sized bankroll now and then.”

  “How good do you think this address is?”

  “Who can say? She might have made it up on the stand.”

  I flipped my notebook closed. “At least Bia isn’t a dime-a-dozen name. I’ll find her.”

  Jennings smirked again. “When you find this one, your fripping eyes are going to pop out. She’s a twenty-something wearing dresses built for a ten-year-old. Seriously, you’ll think she paints it on. I guess a person is supposed to lead with their strengths. This hellcat’s got ’em in spades.”

  “Oh boy,” I said. “I can’t wait.”

  Jennings sipped his tea. His gaze went deep into the liquid. “Hellcat,” he murmured again.

  I TOOK A CAB OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. HELL OF A PIECE OF work, that bridge, with its towering cathedral-window supports and the swooping rows of cables. There’s a story that Annie Oakley and Diamond Jim Brady threw a big party on the roof of a bar down on Water Street in 1883, the night the Brooklyn Bridge was officially inaugurated. Legend has Miss Oakley shooting the hat off one of the attending officials as he came down from the bridge and was heading into the bar. The thing is, you read up on Annie Oakley, you get about a thousand shot-the-hat-off stories. Put me in her day, and I’d have simply removed my chapeau whenever I was in the woman’s presence. The way a gentleman is supposed to, anyway.

  The address Jennings had given me for Donna Bia was just off Atlantic Avenue, near the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They call it BAM. Margo’s a big BAM fan. I’ve probably logged a dozen shows there with her. I saw one there once that featured a chunky man dancing in a wool skirt. That one didn’t exactly top my entertainment list for the year, but generally speaking most of the offerings are quality goods.

  I stood on a warped porch and tried to shoo a cat away from my leg as I waited for someone to respond to my knocking. The cat had a bald spot near its tail and a mustache like Hitler’s. The house was pale green. Two stories, the second one sagging a bit. There was a red glider couch on the porch, losing a battle to rust.

  Donna Bia didn’t live here. Not anymore. A plumber named Ray lived here. He answered my knock in jeans and bare feet, pulling on a dirty white T-shirt. The vibe he put out was that I was interrupting something and he was eager to get back to it. I asked him about Donna Bia, and he told me that he and his wife had bought the house from a family named Bia nearly eight years before. I showed him my PI license and told him it was a matter of life and death that I locate the Bias. He didn’t seem impressed, but he told me to hold on. He shut the door. The cat and I looked at each other for two minutes, then the door opened again and Ray handed me a piece of paper with an address on it. “The Bias called me a couple of years ago to replace an elbow joint.”

  A woman had drifted into sight in the dark hallway behind him. She was in a fuzzy bathrobe, smoking a cigarette. I thanked Ray and accidentally kicked the cat as I turned to leave.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Ray said. “The cat’s a menace.”

  The Bia family had moved to an apartment building on Eastern Parkway, only a few miles from their old home. Specifically, Mr. and Mrs. Bia had moved there once the last kid had moved out of the house. I learned this from Mrs. Bia, Donna’s mother. She was a frowning square-shaped woman wearing a faded pale blue apron. Nothing about her suggested a hellcat had sprung from her loins. She said she had not laid eyes on her daughter in over three months. The name Roberto Diaz meant nothing to her. I told her that it was very important I speak with her daughter. She shrugged, then stepped into the kitchen, emerging a moment later holding a piece of paper. Today seemed to be piece-of-paper day. She handed it to me. “This is where she lives.”

  I looked at the piece of paper, which bore a phone number: 917 exchange. Cell phone.

  Mrs. Bia went on, “I had to give Donna a hundred dollars to give me this number. I told her if her father or me die one day, maybe it would be nice if she got a phone call. This is my own daughter. I have no idea where she lives. I don’t think maybe she lives anywhere. All the time Donna is growing up, she is beautiful, and people tell her she is beautiful, and they tell me what a good future she will have. But you have to make good decisions to have a good future. Donna is nothing but bad decisions. So now? As far as I’m concerned, she gets what she deserves. We gave her a pretty face and a nice home. What more can we do?”

  I thanked her for her time and gave her my card. “If you hear from her.”

  She slipped the card into her apron pocket. “I am not holding my breath.”

  From the hallway, I tried the number. I was spilled into a voice mailbox. The recorded voice was yelling to be heard above a background din. “This is Donna! Not here. Leave a message and I’ll call you!”

  I was tempted to leave her a message to call her mother. But I restrained myself.

  THE MOVING COMPANY WHERE DIAZ HAD WORKED OFF-AND-ON WAS called U-Move. It was located in a cinder-block building off Fourth Street. A light-skinned black man shaped like a cheeseburger heard me out. His name was Rodney. He sat at a gray metal desk in a small cement room with a buzzing fluorescent light hanging overhead. A half-naked woman in gold boots glowered angrily from the calendar on the wall behind Rodney’s desk.

  Rodney was working on a medium-sized pizza and a bucket of Pepsi. He offered me a slice of the pizza and seemed relieved when I turned it down. Rodney’s job seemed to be to answer the phone and put the caller immediately on hold. He did it as easy as breathing.

  I didn’t exactly ask, but he explained how U-Move operated.

  “We hire out a crew chief and a driver, that’s all. Crew of two. We figure out from talking to the customers how much stuff we’re gonna be moving. If it’s a big job, gonna take more than two, we pick up extra manpower. We call them cash crew.” Rodney plugged the hole in his face with a large bite of pizza, chased by a hefty splash of Pepsi. He continued, chewing as he talked. “Crew chief and driver are on the payroll. The extra manpower gets theirs in cash. Off the books. Less paperwork.”

  This last statement was borne out by Rodney�
��s office. The only paper I spotted, other than the napkins on his desk, were the calendar pages below the half-naked woman.

  Rodney folded a slice of pizza in on itself, lengthwise. I feared he would inhale the whole thing at once, but he didn’t. He chomped down on it.

  I asked him about Roberto Diaz. Rodney remembered him.

  “Sure, we used him sometimes. What a jerk, huh? Shooting up the parade like that? I had no idea the guy was like that. We’ve been sweating it they don’t find out and put the company’s name in the paper. That wouldn’t be so cool with the customers.”

  “Did he work here on a regular basis?”

  The fat man shook his head. “He was never on payroll. He was strictly cash crew.”

  “How does that work? The cash crew. You just keep a list of available names?”

  “Not really. We’ve got some, but that’s mostly up to the crew chief to hire out. They got friends or people they know. We tell them not to hire garbage, but a good crew chief isn’t going to hire garbage anyway. He’s the one who’s got to work with the guy.”

  “You didn’t consider Diaz garbage?”

  Rodney licked his index finger. It looked like he was licking a small sausage. “Nah. I mean, I didn’t really know the guy. Saw him a couple times. He came in here once and put his feet up on my desk. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t pull a gun when I told him to take them off. But he seemed okay. Nobody called in any complaints about him. Past that, I don’t care.”

  “Let me tell you who I’m actually looking for,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of Diaz’s. A guy named Angel. You wouldn’t know anything about him?”

  Rodney answered immediately. “Shit, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”

  My heart hiccupped. “Is that right? You know Angel?”

  Rodney nodded. “Bastard robbed one of our customers, better believe I know him. Son of a bitch walked off with a box of jewelry and a box of booze. The woman we were moving caught him red-handed. He was stashing them away in his car. All sorts of hell, believe me. This woman busted Angel, and he called her a cunt to her face. Sweet, huh? Her kid was right there. We had to do the whole damn move for free to keep from being taken to court.”

  I asked, “How long ago was this?”

  Rodney chased some pizza dust off his face. “I don’t know. Two years? It’s been a while. Maybe longer. Three years.”

  “I’m guessing Angel was cash crew?”

  “Totally. Guy like that?”

  “You wouldn’t have an address for him, would you?” I asked.

  Rodney shook his head. “I told you. No paperwork.”

  “How about a last name?”

  “Angel? Sure. Ramos. Angel Ramos. What’s up? Is he in some kind of trouble? He call someone else a cunt?”

  “He stole something.”

  “Yeah? What’d he steal?”

  “A person.”

  “Shit. How do you steal a person?”

  “Usually with violence.”

  The phone rang. Rodney strangled a napkin between his hands and picked up the phone. “U-Move. Hold on.” He said to me, “So you’re trying to find Ramos?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hold on.” He jerked open a side drawer on his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. Finally, some paperwork. “Eight oh seven President. That’s in the Slope.”

  “What about it?”

  “We’re moving a family out of there today. Started at ten.” He checked his watch. “They should still be loading.”

  “What’s that got to do with Angel Ramos?”

  Rodney was finished with his pizza. He pulled a pack of Rolos from his shirt pocket and began picking expertly at the foil. “Angel’s brother is a crew chief. That’s how we got Angel in the first place. He’s running the job in Park Slope.”

  My heart did another one of those hiccups. “Angel’s brother?”

  “Yeah. Victor. He’s a good dude. Nothing like his brother, except…” Rodney loosened the top Rolo from the pack and popped it into his mouth. “They’re twins. Creepy as hell, man. They look completely alike.”

  24

  VICTOR RAMOS HAD AN ANGRY RESTING FACE. SMOOTH. NO CREASES, with eyes that were like a simmering python’s. Pale, like Gabriella Montero had said. A pale swamp green. He was seated on the front steps of 807 President, staring into space, when I came up the walk. Despite the cool temperature, he was dressed in a muscle T-shirt. A glaze of perspiration covered his skin. He wore a pair of canvas work gloves and looked like he probably stood six-one or so. His chest was broad, his biceps the size of small pigs.

  As it turned out, the angry resting face was simply genetics. When I gave him my name and told him that Rodney at U-Move had said I would find him here, he cracked an easy smile. “Rodney. You bribe him with food?”

  “He seemed to have that area covered,” I said. I pulled out one of my business cards and handed it to him. The smile dropped away.

  “You’re looking for Angel.”

  “How do you know that?

  “Because I haven’t done anything wrong. What is it this time?”

  “When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked.

  The reptilian eyes rested on me a moment. “Last time was right before the last time he went to jail. Next time could be never, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “When did he go to jail?”

  “This last time? About a year ago. Before that, a couple of years.”

  “Your brother go to jail a lot?”

  “My brother’s a fuckup. Yeah, he’s got the prison thing down. He goes in for a little vacation, he gets to hook up with a whole new set of losers, then they let him out too early. Some system, huh?”

  “What kind of things does he go in for?”

  Ramos ran a tongue over his front teeth. “Pimping’s a big thing. Angel don’t treat women good, I can tell you that. But they come in useful for him. He goes in for all sorts of stupid shit. He’s been hit for robbery, car theft, aggravated assault. Kid stuff for Angel. They’ve never nailed him on anything really big.”

  “But he’s done big?”

  “What am I going to tell you? You’re the investigator. I guess you’re investigating.”

  The door to the brownstone opened, and two men appeared, carrying a couch wrapped in a quilted moving blanket. Ramos sprang to his feet.

  “Excuse me.” He placed a hand on my chest and moved me aside as if I were a leaf. The two movers came down the stairs and carried the couch up a metal ramp into the moving van. “I can’t talk,” Ramos said. “That was my break. It’s over.”

  “I need to find Angel.”

  “Last time I saw him, I tried to take his head off. Son of a bitch was trying to recruit my son for his street crap. His own damn nephew. Boy wasn’t even ten years old.”

  “What do you mean, ‘street crap’?”

  “What do you think I mean? Drugs. He tried to get Ricky to be one of his delivery boys. It’s a good thing I don’t have a daughter or he’d a been trying to draw her in, too. He strings those girls of his out on his dope, then pimps ’em out so they can pay up. Last I heard, he was running a whole racket. Angel’s nasty, man. What can I say?” He smiled again. “We both got the good looks, but I got the brains. Or maybe I married brains. My wife comes from just over there, Boerum Hill. That’s where we’re raising our family. We’ve got another kid on the way. I never told my wife about Angel trying to hook Ricky into his scene. That’s me and my boy’s secret. We talked it out.”

  The two movers emerged from the truck. The shorter one said to Ramos, “Fucking chest of drawers up there’s made of lead.”

  “Save it,” Ramos replied.

  “Like to fucking chop it into pieces, what I’d like to do.”

  The two went back into the building. Ramos turned to me. “I can’t help you. I mean it. I swore off Angel a couple of years ago. Far as I’m concerned, he’s a dead man. I got my family. I got this job, which he almost lost for
me once.”

  “How about a name?” I said. “Someone he’s tight with. Your brother must have a main man.”

  Ramos grinned. “Main man. Listen to you. Only main man Angel ever had took a cop’s bullet in the head when we was all ten. Angel saw it happen. He was right there. Been mister bad boy ever since. No redemption, no return, you hear what I’m saying?”

  I heard what he was saying. I heard it clearly. Ramos picked up a weight lifter’s belt from the steps and strapped it around his waist.

  “What can you tell me about Angel and a convent up in Riverdale?” I asked. “The Holy Order of the Sisters of Good Shepherd.”

  “Convent? I don’t know, man. You mean like nuns?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hey, if any of them are young and pretty, that’s about all I can think. Angel’s got no time for religion.”

  “You just used the word ‘redemption.’ ”

  “Yeah, well, that’s me, not Angel. Our mother took us to church when we were kids. Tried to, anyway. Angel’d take a handful from the collection plate when it came around. That’s about how religious he gets. That and his name. Our parents sure wasted a good name on that one. They thought ‘Victor’ and ‘Angel’ would get us both off in the right direction. Our mother died when Angel was doing one of his stretches. The old man refused to let them bring him out for the funeral. He won’t even talk about him anymore.”

  “This friend of Angel’s who was killed by a cop. What was his name?”

  “Willy. Willy Padilla. They were tight, man. Blood brothers. Willy was a good kid, too. One of those kids who could always crack you up. Always goofing. That little kid could’ve gotten away with anything. Angel and I had an older sister used to say that Willy Padilla was going to grow up and really make the girls cry.” He shook his head. “It was a really fucked-up thing.”