She stopped herself short. What a fuckup! She realized the second she said it. Nell Benson had Rommie’s ear, had already complained about her once today. Nell had a pipeline to Rommie, who had a pipeline to Bernadette. Of all the cases she could’ve gone after, she had to pick one with insane politics.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted hastily. “I didn’t—”
“No, no, it’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Relax. Look, I know Nell gave you a hard time today. That’s part of why I’m here.”
“It is?”
“Yeah, she sent me to apologize. Nell’s a complicated woman, and she’s completely blown away by what happened. She might have come on strong. But she meant well, really she did. She wanted me to let you know she felt bad about the way she acted.”
“Huh. Okay,” Melanie said skeptically.
“Seriously. She has a tough shell sometimes, but that’s only because she’s had a hard life.”
“Nell?”
“I know, she comes across as the lady of the manor, doesn’t she? But she had a miserable childhood. Abusive mother, alcoholic father, the whole nine yards. Then she married Jed and thought she found peace, and look what happens.”
A proprietary quality in Rommie’s voice when he spoke of Nell caught Melanie’s attention. She felt suddenly worried on Bernadette’s behalf. Nell would be quite a catch for someone like Rommie. Great looks, all that money. Poor Bernadette. But no, Melanie was imagining things, wasn’t she? Projecting her own problems onto everybody else? Her experience with Steve had her thinking everybody cheated. Then again, Rommie had a reputation, and he had a track record. Here he was involved with Bernadette while he was still in the middle of a divorce from his second wife.
“Bernadette told me to back off and give the family some space,” she said.
“That would be nice,” Rommie said. “I know Nell would appreciate it.”
“Okay, so that’s what I’ll do.”
“Amanda was a messed-up kid before all this even happened.”
“So Nell said.”
“Besides, you got plenty of other leads to follow. Do like I said, check out Delvis Diaz.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll start tonight. I’ll go down to the file room and hunt through the old boxes.”
“You do that. And interview Diaz, too. Meanwhile, I’ll dig up some informants who can give him to you on a silver platter.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, guys from his organization willing to testify that he maintained contacts on the outside, that sort of thing.”
“Gee, okay. Any help you can give, I would really appreciate.”
He smiled, reaching out and patting her arm. “You’re a good kid, you know? I can tell, you’re gonna go places.”
“Ha, right. I’m not going anyplace tonight but the file room.”
What the hell, Melanie thought as she watched Rommie’s departing back. He was really a decent guy. And maybe he was right about the Delvis Diaz revenge angle. She’d follow through on her promise. After she finished with all the boxes littering her floor, she would go to the file room and hunt through twenty or thirty more. The night was still young.
14
THE ICE-BLUE NEON SIGN IN THE STOREFRONT window flashed on and off like a blinking eye. ENVIOS, LLAMADAS, BIPERES. Come in and wire your cash, call your connect back home without the feds listening, grab a new beeper for your important deals. On this gritty stretch of Corona Avenue, everybody needed the storefront’s services. The place would normally be hopping at nine o’clock, but it was pouring out tonight.
Dan O’Reilly pulled up parallel to the plate-glass window and idled the engine, peering through the rain to check who was working. A stocky guy with a shaved head stood behind the cash register. Pepe, the owner. Good. He trusted Pepe enough to do the meet here. Dan drove north and west several blocks before he found an obscure enough parking space, then sprinted back toward the beeper store, holding the Daily News over his head in the downpour. He didn’t own an umbrella. That kind of concession to the weather, like protecting himself from anything, seemed weak to him. He was the sort to beat his head bloody against a brick wall, then step back, assess the damage, and beat it harder. Take what life hands you, keep your mouth shut, keep going—that was how a man behaved. You got your reward in heaven.
He ran through the alleyway behind the store and slid, cursing, down the slippery cement steps to the basement. Dank and foul, it was lit by a single naked bulb dangling in the middle of the room. He ignored the scurrying noises in the dim corners and raced through it, head down. Unfortunately, walking in the front door was not an option. Three generations of cop showed in his face, in his height, in the way he moved, like he was carrying a gun even when he wasn’t. In this neighborhood, people toted all that up in a single glance. If they spotted him going in the front, Pepe’s business would be dead by morning. Pepe would be dead by morning, for that matter.
Dan crept up the stairs to the ground floor, stopping to search through his overloaded key ring in the semidarkness at the top. He hit the right key on the third try, emerged into a large back office that ran the length of the store. The office doubled as a storage room for electronics. Open cartons and gadgets in various states of disrepair crammed every inch of space. A metal desk shoved into a corner groaned under a slag heap of invoices and paperwork. He maneuvered through the debris to the door opposite, which led to the storefront.
Cracking the door open an inch, he spied Pepe sitting on a stool, his back to Dan, behind a glass counter that held cell phones and beepers. The naked lady tattooed on the back of Pepe’s neck gyrated over thick rolls of fat as he watched a Spanish-language game show on a small TV and scarfed something from a foil container held under his chin. The food smelled good. Dan was starving, but not much he could do about it right now. Maybe they’d get this over with quick and he could grab something on his way out. He only had a couple of bucks in his pocket after paying for Rosario’s room service back at the hotel, but around here you could eat decent for that.
Just because nobody stood at the counter waiting didn’t mean the phone booths were empty. He hadn’t watched for long enough to be sure. So he opened the door cautiously and pitched his voice in a whisper.
“Yo, Pep.”
Pepe whirled, stumbling off the stool and reaching for his waistband as the food clattered to the floor.
“Jesus, man, you fuckin’ scared me! I almost pull my piece out and heat you up!”
“Sorry.”
“You be damn sorry if you dead, man. Fuck! Look at my fucking empanada!” He pulled some paper towels from a drawer and began mopping at the mess on the floor, shaking his head. “Jesus fucking Christ, that’s my whole dinner right there!”
“Hey, don’t bust my balls. I fuckin’ beep you to give you a heads-up, and you don’t call me back! What the fuck kind of cooperation is that?”
Pepe knew better than to ignore that edge of violence in Dan’s voice. Dan wasn’t crazy like some of them, but he’d do what was necessary to maintain command of a situation. Pepe didn’t need any trouble.
“Yo, chill out, man, we cool, we cool. I’m a little wired is all. We had a few stickups on the block. You here for the room?”
“Yeah, I need it for a coupla hours maybe.”
“Sure, no problem. Who’m I waitin’ on?”
“Puerto Rican guy, heavyset. Wears his hair in dreads tied up in a do-rag.”
“Got it.”
Dan closed the door, walked over, and sat down in the beat-up leather swivel chair behind the metal desk. He hunkered against the hard seat, hoarding his body heat, trying to warm up a little. His jeans and shirt were soaked through. He ran his hands through his wet hair to shake out the excess water. He’d chucked the sodden News in a Dumpster on the way in, so he had nothing to read while he waited. But he didn’t mind. Obsessive thoughts had pursued him like hounds from hell all day long. He gave in to t
hem now, relieved to surrender.
This woman he’d met, he just sat there and thought about her. What she looked like, her voice, things she’d said. How she smelled. That perfume she wore smelled like spicy roses. When they were waiting for the elevator before, he caught himself about to lean over and sniff her hair. He laughed aloud in the empty room at the memory. Pathetic, what a fucking idiot he was. The second he met her, he went wow, just from how she looked. Those dark-haired Spanish girls were the most beautiful. They scared him, but they knocked him out. Then he read the diplomas hanging on her wall and listened to her talk, and he was a goner. Man, she was smart.
This never happened to him. Women chased him, but mostly, since Diane, he felt more comfortable alone. Hit the gym, walk the dog, work like a fucking maniac—that pretty much summed up his routine. Every once in a while, he got drunk and wound up in bed with some girl he met in a pub. He’d get so depressed afterward he couldn’t even look her in the face. And if she tracked him down, if she called, he’d freeze her out before it ever went anywhere. He couldn’t help it somehow. He was beginning to think he’d be alone forever, even though he imagined himself with a nice wife and a houseful of kids somewhere, Jersey maybe, or Rockland.
Then, out of left field, he meets her. He’d only known her for a day, and already he was thinking up excuses to spend extra time with her. Was she working late tonight? Could he swing by after this, maybe say he was checking if the wiretap boxes showed up okay? He knew it was crazy. She was married with a baby, for Chrissakes. Even if he hadn’t been to church since the divorce, he was still a Catholic in his heart. He oughta act like one, try harder to resist. But he just didn’t think he could. It wasn’t only her looks or her smarts—there was something else to it that he wasn’t strong enough to fight. Something in her eyes he recognized when they met, like the loneliness he saw in his own every time he looked in the mirror. That feeling like she needed him, was what had him hooked.
He sat there thinking about Melanie Vargas, not even trying to discipline himself, that’s how bad it was already, that’s how much it’d taken over. By the time he looked at his watch, he knew this asshole wasn’t showing up. He sighed and dug a damp scrap of paper from his pocket, moving some folders out of the way to uncover the phone on the desk. He dialed the pager number written on the paper, then punched in the callback number of the beeper store, followed by his personal code and 911. Much to his surprise, in a few minutes the phone rang. He reached for the receiver.
“Yo, Bigga,” he said, “where the fuck you at?”
15
THEY GONNA SEE HOW HE GET DOWN WHEN HE MAD, and it ain’t pretty. He ain’t like the way shit was unfolding. Sitting in a fucking closet in a fucking hotel in Jersey. He trying to be real calm about it, but he starting to get pissed. He feel it building, that humming inside his blood. He take that energy and put it to use. He always feel that way before he do something.
First off, his concentration got interrupted. He hate that more than anything. That weaselly little motherfucker call him before with the location on the maid, all worried she be telling, when he right in the middle of scoping somebody else. As if he already ain’t screwed things up enough by arguing last night and bringing police down. That motherfucker got to go. Yeah, sure, he worried the maid be telling, too, but one thing at a time. Everybody be telling on this job—that’s why he got to kill them all. No reason to interrupt what you doing. No reason to break your stride. You get nervous, you jump the gun, you make mistakes. He shoulda just stayed where he at, took care of the other one first. That other Chinese bitch, the architect. Ain’t never bodied no Chinese bitch before that he could remember. He did that girl China, but she Colombian, they just call her that because she got them scrunchy little eyes. No, he definitely ain’t bodied no Chinese bitch before, and now it look like he doing two in one night. When it rains it pours. Ha, he make himself laugh.
The rain. That another thing got him real pissed off. Rain make him sad. And it bad for planning, too. All them scary movies fucked up when they show the killing happen on some night with a big storm. Ain’t no serious killer like to work in the rain. Slows you down, just like it slow down anybody doing regular shit. How you gonna stand outside and scope when it pouring like that? He sitting for a while in between the Dumpsters out in the parking lot. Good spot, too. The place real deserted, he stick his head up and scope what going on with her window. But then it start to rain so hard he getting wet. Couldn’t even light a cigarette. The drops blowing on him. So he find a door in the back unlocked before he was really ready to go inside. Rain force your hand. Not to mention he gonna have to drive back from fucking Jersey in it. He hated to drive in it.
So he go in the stairwell for a while, but that wasn’t no good. Too open. Whole fucking place deserted, but they still got some cleaning ladies and shit. He find a closet on the same floor as the mark, and he sitting there for a long time in the dark, waiting. He know her door taken care of, but he still worried about the bitch making noise. If he can’t see her window, he can’t know if she sleeping. He gonna have to wait real late if he want to get the jump on her. It better that way in a place like this, so nobody hear. He ain’t come this far by taking foolish chances.
He don’t believe in no wristwatch. Tell time by his head, and he always right. He smart with shit like that—not just time, but like how far one thing be from another, which window you got to go in to get to which apartment. His brain built for this work. So he know he got maybe another hour to wait before she be asleep. The lock been handled, so it wasn’t no problem for him, and his eyes be all adjusted to the dark. No guns this time. Too loud. He like his knife best anyway. He lifted up his pants and took it out of the holster on his leg. He like to feel it in his hand. Maybe it catching the light from the crack under the door, because even in the dark closet, it shine real nice.
ROSARIO WAS SURE SHE’D FALLEN ASLEEP WITH the TV on, but she must be wrong. It was off now, as she awoke from a vivid, pill-induced dream, mouth dry, body heavy to the point of paralysis. She had no sense of how long she’d been sleeping. In her dream she was back home. The strong sunlight and the bright colors lingered on her eyes, radiating circles of blue light out into the pitch-dark hotel room.
Her eyes quickly adjusted to the blackness, but her mind was foggy and sluggish from the painkillers. She knew the shape looming over her bed was important, so she struggled to decipher its meaning. It slowly came back to her why she was here in this room. The horrors of the night before, the blood and the fire. Suddenly she understood what the shape was. She opened her mouth to scream at the exact instant his hand shot out, fast as a bullet, to grab her by the hair. She listened as if from far away to the guttural, bubbling sound that emerged, not from her mouth, but from her slit throat.
16
MELANIE COULDN’T DECIDE WHICH PART OF HER job she loved best—the courtroom or the investigating. She was crazy for the courtroom. Standing up there in front of the jury, all eyes on her, she felt like a movie star. But discovering a smoking gun in a hot investigation—that was a huge thrill, too. Smoking gun. What a great phrase. It made her think of finding a murder weapon in the bushes when everybody else had missed it. That’s how she felt tonight, like she’d picked up a gun with smoke rising from the barrel, held it in her hand. Only the gun was a cassette tape.
She kept a tape recorder in her bottom drawer. They’d stopped issuing them to prosecutors when wiretaps went digital. Now you could listen to recorded calls on your computer speakers. She’d meant to turn her recorder in to Supply, but who had time for administrative details these days? Lucky she hadn’t, or she would’ve had to wait until morning to hear the tape. The C-Trout Blades wiretap was old style; the calls were all stored on cassette. She was so giddy with discovery she couldn’t have stood the delay.
The animal-torture photos led her to it. When she saw the pictures of the black dog training to kill at Jasmine Cruz’s apartment, she knew Slice had been there. Not only b
een there but hung out there, maybe even lived there, treated the place like his own anyway. You don’t teach your dog to kill in an environment you don’t control. And if he spent a lot of time there, no matter how careful he was, Slice must’ve talked on that phone. She would read every transcript in every box, if that’s what it took to find it.
The task turned out to be easier than it looked, precisely because Slice was so careful. The regular players openly used Jasmine Cruz’s phone every day. The wiretap monitors quickly learned their voices and labeled the transcripts of their calls with their names. The call she was looking for, she quickly realized, would stand out because it wouldn’t bear the name of a regular player. Slice would be called “UM”—unidentified male. It would be a slip up, a one-shot deal, made in an emergency or in anger. Once she figured that out, things moved quickly.
She recognized it the instant she found it. The monitor had marked it as non-pertinent because they weren’t discussing drugs. Maybe it wasn’t pertinent to their investigation back then, but it was sure as hell pertinent to hers. She read along on the transcript as she listened to the tape, sure in her gut the “UM” was Slice. Who else would have that voice—low and urgent and dangerous?
(Incoming from cell phone)
JULIO ONE-EYE:
Yo.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE:
Yo, son.
JULIO ONE-EYE:
What up?
UM:
Put Jasmine on.
JULIO ONE-EYE:
She sleeping.
UM:
I said put her on! Wake her up, then. Fucking bitch, sleep all day!
JULIO ONE-EYE:
Yo, awright.
(Pause)
JASMINE:
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