What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “This is unexpected,” Bill said as I walked through the door of his basement apartment, his eyes locked on the bags in my hands. “Smells wonderful.”

  “We’ll see soon enough.”

  We were well into the meal and our second glasses of red wine before Bill asked the inevitable question: “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, boyo?”

  “Two things.”

  “The first?”

  I wiped my fingers, reached into my shirt pocket, noted my wrist was still tender, and pulled out the yellowed newspaper clipping I’d found in Mikel’s room at the Paragon. I handed it to Bill. He stared at it, one eyebrow raised.

  “I understand Latin, speak some Spanish, some Vietnamese and Thai, but I haven’t a clue at Russian.”

  “But you do know some people who would be able to read it?” I said. “I don’t need a verbatim translation. Just who the guy in the photo is and what the piece is about.”

  “I suppose I do know someone who could help. Yes, I will have a chat with Brother Vassily. And what is second, may I ask?”

  I didn’t answer directly. “I was just over in Bellport.”

  “I can see that,” he said pointing at the Spicy’s bag. “The food is grand, by the way. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Late lunch was a by-product of my being in Bellport already.”

  “So you’ve said. I take it this is where I am to ask about your reasons for being in Bellport in the first place.”

  “I was as Kevin and Victoria Spears’s house. They were Linh Trang’s parents.”

  Bill frowned but didn’t speak.

  “I had a long talk with Spears’s other granddaughter, Abby. Do you know Micah’s family?”

  “Not at all, I’m afraid. I know only Micah, and not intimately, at least not in the way you might expect. So what did the girl have to say?”

  “Look, Bill, my list of debts to you is a long one. Don’t bother denying or deflecting. I owe you, and that’s that. So when you introduced me to this man who needed my help, in spite of his being a rude prick and trying to bribe and manipulate me by playing the dead-son card, I agreed. I figured it was part of the debt I owed you. And I guess I can’t deny that at the moment he pulled those two checks out of his pocket, the thought of keeping John’s name alive even for ten minutes longer got to me.”

  “But . . .”

  “But after my talk with Abby, Micah Spears’s grieving-grandpa routine rings like a papier-mâché bell. According to Abby, Micah Spears is estranged from his family. His son won’t talk to him and his daughter-in-law can barely stand sharing the same area code with the man. Abby’s relationship with him is so limited and secretive that she couldn’t bring herself to do more than whisper Micah’s name to me, even though no one else was in the house. The photo he showed us on his cell phone, the one from Linh Trang’s graduation, was sent to him by Abby.

  “Now, here’s the weird thing, Bill. Abby says her parents won’t talk about why they’re estranged from Spears. They just say stuff about Micah being a bad man or that he’s a man who’s done bad things. They warned Abby against having anything to do with him, but they absolutely forbade Linh Trang to have any contact with him. In my family, believe me, there were long-standing feuds. There was a whole branch of his family my dad would have nothing to do with because of some petty bullshit over a forty-square-foot parcel of land back in Ireland. As stupid as it was, at least we knew what it was about. Do you know what the deal is?”

  Bill looked as if the food he had just eaten had turned rotten in his belly.

  “You said to me not two minutes ago that you took this on because in your eyes you owe me a debt. I might be inclined to argue the debt you say you owe to me you actually owe to Christ, that I was his instrument in saving your life and the girl’s. And that I was only his messenger when I comforted your family after your lad’s passing.” Bill waved his bony hands at me. “I know you’re not a believer, Gus, and this isn’t me preaching. I’m beyond preaching to you and you’re beyond hearing . . . for now, anyway. But if you feel you owe me that debt, then don’t ask me about Micah and do as you promised. Do his bidding on my account, for I owe him an old debt, one that goes back to my days in Vietnam.”

  “Can you give me something, Bill? Anything more than that?”

  He thought about it, tapping a single finger to the tip of his nose.

  “I’ll say this. Whatever godliness lives within me now had its roots in my meeting Micah Spears all those years ago. After I lost my faith, my dealings with Micah in those days sustained me for many years until God’s love reawakened in me.”

  Of course there were a thousand more questions I had for Bill, and of course I wouldn’t ask them. One of the first things Bill—he was Father Bill then—ever discussed with me was the loss of faith, his and mine. I had lost mine many years before losing John Jr. His death only cemented what I had long held as fact: We were alone and here but once. There was no Heavenly Father waiting in judgment, to guide us, to watch over us, to pull this lever or that. For me, it was the drip, drip, drip of being on the job that diminished my faith. The daily grind and the senselessness of crime and poverty. Police work has a polarizing effect on a person when it comes to God. It drives you to his bosom, to the bottle, or straight into disbelief.

  It hadn’t been that simple for Bill. As a chaplain in Vietnam, he’d been forced to pick up an M16 and kill a fifteen-year-old girl who was tossing grenades into the surgical tent at an Army field hospital. That was enough to shake anybody’s faith. And as Bill had confessed to me, the incident had vanished his faith, which he claimed had always been powerful in him.

  “Gus, I tell you, as the girl collapsed, the grenade in her hand blowing her body apart, so too was my faith in all things holy blown apart. So it is no wonder to me that you’ve no belief in a God who punishes the seemingly innocent and places unfair burdens on the likes of you, Annie, and Krissy.”

  Bill had never run away or tried to deny his loss of faith with me. It was what had bonded us together. The reason he had continued to act as a priest for a cause and a God he no longer had faith in, those he had always kept to himself. Now I knew it had something to do with Micah Spears, but what? That’s what I was thinking about as I headed back to the Paragon.

  17

  (MONDAY EVENING, EARLY)

  Magdalena hadn’t yet seen the Mustang, and since she was partially the motivation behind my purchasing it, I stopped at a car wash on the way back from Bill’s and bought the platinum package. The car wasn’t particularly dirty, but there was something about what had gone on over the last few days that made me feel like it needed a wash. Would getting the rugs vacuumed and a coat of wax over the paint get the image of Goran being executed out of my head? Was it going to take the ache out of my wrist? Was it going to answer any of my questions about Micah Spears or Rondo Salazar or Bill Kilkenny? No. But it still made me feel better when I slipped the detail guy two fives and drove away, the smell of artificial vanilla filling my head. That and the image of Maggie’s exquisite body next to mine.

  The mental reverie lasted until I walked through the Paragon’s front entrance. I winked hello to Felix. He didn’t wink back, but rather shook his head at me, then tilted his brow at the coffee shop.

  “What is it, Felix?”

  “In the coffee shop, two police detectives from New York City.”

  “When did they get here?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “Men?”

  “A man about your age and a younger woman. They warned me not to call you or I would have. I am sorry, Gus, but—”

  I reached across the front desk and patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, Felix. I’ll handle it.”

  “Is it trouble?”

  “Your favorite question.” I laughed. “When the cops are involved it’s always trouble for somebody. R
elax.”

  I was still laughing as I walked toward the coffee shop. But I think Felix knew my confidence and laugh were just me pumping myself up. In the end, there was nothing the cops could do to me, even if they had me on video at the crime scene in Coney Island. I hadn’t killed Goran. I never discharged my weapon. The worst they could do was bust my balls for being a retired cop who didn’t report what he had seen. I could live with that. I wasn’t the first person, retired cop or ordinary schmo, who didn’t want to get involved. What concerned me was the chance of anyone connecting me to Slava and Slava to the murder. Outside of the job, I had been a bad liar, but testifying in court teaches you how to deal with difficult questions. Stick as close to the truth as possible without telling too much of it. Don’t answer questions that aren’t asked. Don’t expound and elaborate. “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and “I can’t recall” are your best allies.

  There was a fair amount of activity in the coffee shop at that hour, as all the Paragon offered in terms of dining choices was the coffee shop. But no one had to point out the NYPD detectives to me. They were seated at a booth facing the stupid Great Moments in Aviation mural, their expressions a mixture of wary curiosity and false weariness. The fact that they were the only man and woman seated together kind of helped me pick them out. There was just no fooling Gus Murphy. The man looked like a hard-ass. He was a squatty Hispanic dude in his mid-forties with salt-and-pepper hair and a crooked nose. The woman detective, thirty-five, maybe younger, had short, mousy brown hair and pale, freckled skin. She was cute in an Irish sort of way, but her face was more difficult to read than her partner’s.

  “Front desk says you’re looking for me,” I said, walking up to the edge of their wingtip-shaped table. “Should I sit, or you guys want to go talk somewhere else?”

  “You John Murphy?” the guy asked.

  I nodded. “Gus Murphy. Everybody calls me Gus.”

  The woman scooched over to make room for me. Her partner didn’t like it.

  I sat down.

  They showed me their gold-and-blue-enamel NYPD detective shields.

  “I’m Detective Narvaez. She’s Detective Dwyer. We’re from Brooklyn South Homicide.”

  I figured to play dumb for as long as I could. “Homicide, huh? What’s this got to do with me?”

  “Cut the shit, Murphy,” Narvaez said. “We know you used to be on the job, even if it was just jerking off in Suffolk fucking County.”

  Suffolk cops are used to getting our horns busted about our salaries and benefits, which are better than in most departments. The disparity between NYPD and SCPD salaries used to be enormous. It was still pretty sizable, though less so than in the past. No matter. City cops resented the shit out of us.

  I turned to Dwyer, who was fighting back a smile. “Your partner always this diplomatic?”

  “Only when he’s in a good mood,” she said. “Usually, he just growls and foams at the mouth.”

  “So,” I suggested, “should we start over, or is this just going to go downhill from here?”

  Narvaez snorted, but Dwyer opened up her notepad.

  “Do you own a blue 2010 Mustang coupe?”

  “Yes.” I almost asked why, but stopped myself. Only answer what’s asked.

  Dwyer nodded. “That’s something. This past Sunday evening, April fifth, was your Mustang parked on West Twenty-first Street between Neptune Avenue and Mermaid Avenue in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn?”

  “Maybe.”

  Narvaez really didn’t like that answer. “What the fuck kind of answer is that, Murphy? Your car was either there or it wasn’t. Where’s there room for ‘maybe’ in that?”

  I tried not to laugh or antagonize them, because in the end it wasn’t in my self-interest, but Narvaez wasn’t making it easy.

  “There’s plenty of room for maybe. How about if I loaned my car to a friend? Then I wouldn’t know if the car was there or not, would I? So my only truthful answer would be maybe.”

  “Well, did you?” Narvaez asked.

  “Did I what, Detective Narvaez?”

  “Did you lend your car to a friend?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  Narvaez turned red and pounded his fist on the table.

  “Relax, Detective, I was only giving you shit. Now let me ask you guys this again. Can we start over? And maybe a good place for you to start would be with telling me why you’re here and why you’re talking to me. ’Cause otherwise you’re gonna hear a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘I can’t recalls’ and then I’ll have you talk to me through my lawyer. And please don’t give me any nonsense about how only guilty people lawyer up. Smart people lawyer up, guilty or not.”

  Dwyer smiled. “Fair enough.” She looked back down at her notepad. “At eight thirty-seven p.m. on April fifth, nine-one-one received several calls from residents of West Twenty-first Street in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. The responding units from the Sixtieth Precinct discovered the body of a fifty-five-year-old male Caucasian identified as Goran Ivanovich. Mr. Ivanovich had been shot multiple times, including twice in the head at very close range. It was an execution. Ballistics reports confirm eyewitness accounts that the weapon used was a forty-caliber semiautomatic handgun.”

  I sat there impassively, aware that Narvaez was eyeballing me to gauge my reactions.

  “Eyewitnesses also agree on the shooter wearing a black fabric mask that covered his entire face and that he was dressed in what some described as dark military garb and one described as a ninja-like outfit. Now, here’s the interesting part, Mr. Murphy,” she said, looking up from her pad. “At least two of the witnesses describe a man fitting your physical description approaching the shooter. This man, the one who matches your description, was carrying a handgun as he approached. Several witnesses say that the shooter noticed the man fitting your description and fired two rounds at him. Ballistics and crime scene evidence bears this out. Not thirty seconds after those shots were fired, a blue Mustang was seen pulling out of a parking spot on West Twenty-first Street, backing down the block, and turning onto Neptune Avenue. One of the witnesses got a partial plate number, and that’s why we’re sitting here together today. Any comment?”

  “No.”

  Narvaez laughed in frustration. It was a staccato, barking laugh. “Can you believe this fucking guy?” he said to Dwyer. He turned to me. “Listen, Murphy, what were you doing there? What’s your connection to Goran Ivanovich? And why didn’t you come forward?”

  I sat back. “Let me answer that second question for you. I had no connection whatsoever to this Ivanovich guy. I’ve never heard his name before your partner just mentioned it.” It was only half a lie. Slava had never mentioned Goran’s last name.

  Dwyer jumped at that. “But you’re not denying that you were there and that our witness statements are inaccurate?”

  “Let me answer you this way, Detective Dwyer. If I would have been inclined to be in Coney Island that night, it would have been because I just purchased my Mustang and hadn’t really gotten a chance to drive it. Why Coney Island?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because I like how the neon lights look in the rain. And if I was on West Twenty-first Street, and I’m not saying I was, it might’ve been because I don’t know the area that well once I get off Surf Avenue.”

  “And the rest of it, Murphy?” Narvaez said, his voice unexpectedly calm.

  “Like your witnesses say, the shooter had on a dark balaclava and black clothing. So even if I had been there, I couldn’t give you a better description than what you already have. And if I had been shot at, but wasn’t hit, what could I add?”

  Dwyer smiled a cool smile. “Maybe you caught a tag number or saw the shooter’s escape route. Who knows what information you might have?”

  I agreed. “Yes, who knows?”

  “Why are you being such an asshole, Murphy?” Dwyer wante
d to know. “We checked you out. You were a really good cop.”

  “You mean for a Suffolk PD jerk-off, right?”

  Narvaez was barking his machine-gun laugh. Dwyer wasn’t laughing.

  “Look,” I said, “if you checked me out, then you know I’ve gotten a lot of ink lately about some bad shit that went down out here. The guys who got killed . . . most people think they got what was coming to them, but there are some who still admire them. I didn’t need that stuff in my life, but it landed on my doorstep. I’ve had enough turmoil in the last few years to last me a lifetime.”

  Dwyer stared at me. I could feel her eyes on the side of my face like the summer sun through a car window. “Yeah, we heard about your son. Tough.”

  “‘Tough’ doesn’t begin to describe it. So do me a favor, read between the lines of what I said to you. If I had been there and there was something I thought I could give you that would help, I would.”

  “If you were there?” Narvaez repeated.

  “Exactly.”

  Dwyer and Narvaez gave each other a little nod. They were done with me.

  “Okay, Gus,” Narvaez said, suddenly friendly, standing up. “That’s all for now.”

  I slid out of the booth to let Dwyer out. She stood and was taller than I expected, but just as hard to read as she was when I first saw her. They handed me their textured white business cards, their shields embossed on the left side of the card. The address of their unit was printed beneath the shield, contact info on the opposite end of the card.