Closing Time

by Fusilli, Jim;

  A bare bulb burned overhead and, beneath my shoes, the old terrazzo floor was chipped and soiled. Junk mail held together by thin green rubber bands was collecting in a corner near the vestibule door.

  Hastily painted a charmless brown some time ago, the inside door had a dented knob and a lock reinforced with a steel plate. It seemed deliberately uninviting, and yet a porthole of cracked beveled glass at its center permitted a look inside. I leaned down to peer in and I put my hand against the door, and it opened. I hesitated, then left the boxlike entryway.

  A staircase stood to my left, and to my right was a door to the front apartment. There was another brown door toward the back.

  Despite the mild weather outside, a radiator supplied dry heat. It hissed low and steady, as if imitating a snake.

  I knocked on the door to my right. There was no answer. I knocked again. I could hear no one inside: no footsteps stopping suddenly, no radio or TV being eased toward silence, no labored breathing from someone waiting for whoever had knocked to disappear.

  I heard only the hissing heat.

  I went past the staircase to the apartment in the rear and knocked on the door. It swung back slowly. I hesitated, then offered a polite greeting. Then I shouted her name.

  She was in a pink robe and white socks and someone had snapped her neck. And before he’d done that, he’d punched her in the left eye and blood had flowed onto the robe, her splayed hair and the bare wood of the living-room floor.

  And all seemed to be as it had been before he had come in and crushed her orbit bones and straightened her up and snapped her neck. None of the furniture in the room had been damaged or overturned. Several books and what appeared to be a photo album rested on a low coffee table. A half-empty espresso cup sat undisturbed on the cracked and flaking table near the worn couch. The furniture, supplied by the city, the state, was cheap, and the end table didn’t match the coffee table, nor did the sofa match the lumpy chair near the old TV. But Sonia Salgado had kept the oblong room neat and clean and this is where she sipped her coffee. Until someone came in and killed her.

  I leaned down and pressed the tip of my index finger to the espresso cup. Cold.

  Before he had arrived, Sonia had been reading a book, and she’d placed it on the coffee table when he’d entered. The book lay open, words facing the ceiling.

  I squatted and put the back of my hand to her forehead. Natural warmth had left her.

  But the blood on the floorboards had yet to dry.

  And as I studied her, I saw a resemblance to the woman who claimed to be her mother: the shape of the long face; the deep, dark eyes accompanied by narrow wrinkles; a nose that was thick now but might have been altered by time, as Dorotea’s had; full, contoured lips; and the beginnings of jowls under the chin. As I stood, I saw that Sonia was tall, and her bare legs were long, thin at the ankles, round where her thighs met at her white panties.

  I decided to look around the apartment and, as I headed toward the back, I passed a small, eat-in kitchen where a faint trace of adobo, coriander and cooking oil hung in the air, wrinkled limes collected in a small wooden bowl and green bananas in a bunch rested on a counter. In the bedroom, the sagging bed had been made, and behind pale curtains, the window was open. I went around the bed and looked outside. A six-foot drop led to a concrete courtyard that funneled into an alley no more than 100 feet long. At the end of the narrow strip was a spiked fence topped with razor wire.

  I left the bedroom, stuck my head into the bathroom and found more neatness applied to the humble surroundings. The sink and bathtub were scrubbed clean, though Sonia could do little with old rust stains from her dripping faucets. The water in the toilet was a bright, unnatural blue.

  Passing the kitchen again, I returned to the front of the apartment. On a small table near the door, surrounded by candle flames in tall red jars, a black saint stood sentry, oblivious to violence, to death. She wore a silver crown and a long red cape and held a silver sword. I stepped closer and noticed a $10 bill tucked under the statue. A shot glass contained sweet dark rum.

  I pulled the cell phone from my belt.

  They arrived ten minutes later: four uniforms and a detective—Tommy Mangionella. On the way over to St. Mark’s, they let the sirens wail. In my mind’s eye, I saw the gathering crowd and imagined the buzz as they craned and strained against the fresh yellow tape strung across the front steps, angling for a look inside. A chance to ogle a dead neighbor might take someone out of his routine, at least for a few minutes. Even now.

  I was sitting in the kitchen, rolling a soft lime under my hand. Mango came in and gestured for me to lean forward, to slide my chair closer to the table. In the corridor, the uniforms, waiting for the team from the medical examiner’s, paced toward the back of the apartment. They spoke in respectful hushed tones.

  “So, Terry P.I.,” Tommy the Cop said as he sat. He took the lime from me and returned it to the bowl. “Here you are and there she is.”

  He wore a knee-length black leather coat, maybe not the best choice for a man of his short, sturdy build. As he put his hands on the table, I saw that he had on a meticulously tailored suit that may have been sharkskin. Over his thick chest he wore a white patterned shirt and a white tie.

  His silver toupee matched the color of his suit.

  “Well, it’s more like she was there and then I was here.”

  “And you got in how?” he asked. He kept his voice soft, but his phrasing retained its customary snap.

  “The door was open.”

  “You don’t climb in windows, Terry P.I.? Beneath you, maybe?”

  I said, “Nobody climbed in the window, Tommy. The guy came in the front door. She let him in.”

  “This you know how?”

  “If he came through the window and surprised her, she wouldn’t just lay the book on the table,” I answered. “She’d drop it on the floor.”

  “Or you put the book back on the table.”

  “And I made the bed.”

  “Could be you did,” he nodded.

  I shook my head and held back a smile.

  “Don’t be a pain in the ass now, Terry P.I,” he warned.

  “OK,” I replied, holding up my hands in surrender. “Whither wilt thou lead me?”

  He wasn’t amused. Tommy the Cop, the swinging dick among lawmen below Canal, apparently wasn’t a Shakespeare man.

  “Tommy, I was here for about ten seconds before I called you.”

  “And you called me why, Terry? I don’t work the East Village. You know that.”

  I knew two cops worth knowing in Manhattan. Tommy was the one who worked downtown.

  “Shorter ride,” I said finally.

  He looked at me. Then he said, “Yeah, maybe so.”

  He told me to repeat what I’d said on the phone about Dorotea Salgado, the sick grandson and the information I got from the D.A.’s.

  After I finished, he said, “So how are we going to talk to this old broad?”

  “I may have a number,” I said as he stepped away from the table. “She called the house.”

  A big red-haired uniform knocked on the door frame. He looked not much older than Bella. “Detective Mangionella, you got a minute?” he asked.

  “What is it, McDowell?”

  “Voodoo.” The young cop rocked proudly on his rounded black heels. He had small, pearl-like teeth. “The statue. By the door.”

  “Voodoo,” Mango repeated tiredly.

  McDowell’s confidence began to waver. “A sword—”

  “A ritual neck-snapping,” Mango muttered. He looked at me. “Terry?”

  “It’s Saint Barbara,” I told McDowell. “For Cubans who follow Santería, she’s kind of a front for Shango, who’s a spirit, a deity. For Catholics, she’s a saint.”

  “I’m Catholic,” McDowell huffed, “and I never heard of no Saint Barbara.”

  “They didn’t have any black saints in my parish either,” I told him.

  “This Santería.
I’ll bet it’s—”

  “It’s been around forever, as long as Roman Catholicism. Longer. It’s no cult, unless they all are.”

  “‘A spirit, deity.’ ‘Shango.’ See Terry is very smart, kid,” Mango said, “though I don’t know when somebody’s got millions in his pocket and can write books why he wants to be a cop.”

  Already deflated, McDowell now frowned in confusion.

  “Could be…” Mango shrugged. “Something.”

  With his small, firm hand, he now gestured for me to stand and then he turned to the young patrolman. “Find him a ride home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you, Terry, you get me the number of that woman who sent you here.”

  I nodded.

  He reached up and slapped me on the back as I went by.

  McDowell followed me as I walked along the corridor. In the living room, in a sleeveless white shirt under her blue overalls, a photographer snapped shots of the body as a heavyset man in thick glasses and an ill-fitting gray suit supervised.

  Rather than continue toward the door, I decided on a last look at the small room. When no one stopped me, I went in, inched past Sonia Salgado’s vacant eyes, hard lines on her sagging face. Her head lay awkwardly on the wood floor.

  “Excuse me, fella.”

  I turned to the round man. He adjusted his glasses, tugged on his belt and pointed to my bare hands.

  McDowell watched.

  “Oh, right,” I said as I tapped my pockets, as if I misplaced what I needed.

  The man squinted his face impatiently, then dug a clean pair of latex gloves from his suit jacket. He passed them to me over the prone body.

  “Thanks.” I pulled them on.

  I went to the sofa and sat to examine Salgado’s photo album and old, well-worn book. As I leaned in, I saw she’d been reading a play: Dialogue filled the pages and the lines of one part were underscored in yellow marker. I turned to the cover: Cuban Theater in the United States: A Critical Anthology.

  I returned to the page the book had been open to and reached for the album. Behind its green faux-leather cover were clippings from newspapers and magazines.

  The clips pasted to the black pages were faded and yellowed, and the tape at the corners had dried and shifted. The first and oldest clip was from a Spanish-language newspaper. The headline—TEATRO PRESENTARÁ LA EXPERIENCIA CUBANA—announced the opening of a cooperative theater, the Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda.

  I gingerly turned to the center of the album. All the clips, in English or Spanish, were about Cuban theater and Cuban playwrights. Many, if not most, were about the Avellaneda. The publicity stills in the first few clippings were almost all the same: black-and-white shots of a theater. There was one shot of a thin man in a dark suit and a long scarf. He had a pencil-thin mustache and the glow of someone who was proud of what he had done.

  I went back to the front of the album. The first clip was dated August 16, 1984, and on the next page, a feature from the old Village Voice about the cooperative carried a—

  “Terry. God damn it.” Mango slammed his hand against the door frame.

  I looked up, then eased the album back on the table. The photographer stopped her repetitive click-whirr.

  Mango had turned to McDowell. He shouted harshly, urgently, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I stood.

  McDowell managed, “I thought …”

  Mango spun and glared at the fat man from the M.E.’s. “Aaron, what is wrong with you, you let him back in like this?”

  “The kid let him—” He stopped and he tried to reason. “Tommy, now …”

  I stepped directly over the body and landed in front of Mango. He grabbed me by the arm and he held it hard by the elbow, his thumb digging into bone. I had to yank twice to get free.

  “All right, Tommy,” I said calmly. “All right.”

  The uniforms had the front door open and they’d gathered in the hall and were staring at Mango and me.

  I knew if I challenged him now, I’d lose him.

  “You’re right, Tommy. I’m out of line.”

  He glared up at me, couldn’t find anything else to say, then snapped back to the young cop.

  “McDowell, can you do what the fuck I tell you?” he roared.

  “Yes. Yes, sir,” the red-haired kid muttered.

  Mango stared up at him until he jumped.

  I said, “There are a few books missing from the bookcase.”

  “Go, Terry,” Mango seethed. “Now.”

  I went out in the narrow hallway, passing Sonia’s tribute to Saint Barbara, passing the gaggle of uniforms.

  McDowell put his hand on my back.

  “Keep going,” he said angrily.

  I spoke low. “Don’t push it, kid.”

  We went across the terrazzo tiles. In front of St. Mark’s Garden, a blue-and-white idled, its front bumper inches from a yellow hydrant.

  THREE

  His Chiclet teeth shining as he flashed an insincere smile, McDowell insisted I sit in back, behind the screen, where they put bad guys wearing cuffs, not a witness who called in the find.

  The milling crowd watched us with a curiosity that waned to boredom, and then they went back to looking at the Garden’s front door, at a window that belonged to another apartment. A stocky, crewcut news photographer who’d snapped frantically when the uniform and I started down the old concrete steps turned away and resumed negotiations with a big blond sergeant in blue who I’d bet had little tolerance for whining.

  “What’s the point of driving me through TriBeCa like I just got caught snatching a purse?”

  “Procedure.”

  Bullshit. I’d ridden shotgun with Luther Addison a dozen times. I’d even been in the front passenger seat with Mango. “No cuffs?” I asked.

  “In.”

  He pulled back the door and waited for me to slide onto vinyl. At least he didn’t put his hand on my head.

  He went around the front of the car, got in. As he backed away from the hydrant with an unnecessary squeal, he said, “I heard you got a wise mouth. You do. A wise mouth. Somebody should shut it.”

  He went to Second, where he made a sharp, squealing right.

  “You know where you’re going?” I asked.

  “Zip it, asshole.”

  His ears were bright red.

  A Volvo with Connecticut plates hung on the right side of the avenue to turn onto Houston. McDowell couldn’t wait: He pumped the siren. The woman behind the gray station wagon’s wheel jumped, froze in fear, then started to get out of the car. Doing what he could’ve all along, McDowell went around her.

  “You showed me up back there,” he said, looking in the rearview as we went west, passing Lafayette. “With that Santería bullshit.”

  I looked north on Mercer and I saw the purple flags of NYU fluttering modestly in the soft breeze. Students in frayed denim and dark hoodies, in tight blouses and funky skirts, ambled along the street, not quite moved to urgency by the pounding drums and clanking cowbells that rose from amid robust, leafless trees in Washington Square Park.

  I pulled my cell from my belt. “I’ll make it up to you, McDowell. Report back to Tommy. He’ll think you’re an ace spy.”

  I held up the small phone so he could see the number I’d punched in.

  “D.A.’s,” I told him.

  I got her answering machine, which disappointed me: Her questions might’ve solicited an answer McDowell would’ve taken back to Mango.

  “Julie,” I began, “I wanted you to know that we’re going someplace else on this,” I said. “Sonia Salgado’s dead. Tommy Mangionella is at the apartment now.”

  I looked at my watch and gave her the time as we crossed Sixth.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I added. “Thanks.”

  I put the phone away and held on as McDowell made a left onto Varick, then slid to the right to zip around the tunnel traffic. Four lanes were trying to melt into one, with the help of two Port Authority cop
s. A military transport sat closer to the tunnel’s mouth, and a guy in camouflage khakis with a sidearm kept a diligent eye on the end of the funnel.

  A graffiti-covered Strick wanted to inch its way into the crawl, but McDowell wouldn’t go for it.

  “Punch him,” I said. “See if he jumps higher than that housewife from Trumbull.”

  “Shut up,” he replied, as he grabbed the mike.

  I watched the truck driver as McDowell’s voice boomed through the speaker. The gaunt, tired man in a torn red-plaid jacket was shocked when he heard it—“Keep it moving. You. Now!”—and he slumped in disappointment as he twisted the black wheel and kept moving south. I figured it would take him 45 minutes to circle back and get in the queue to his New Jersey home.

  Meanwhile, we went easily along Canal. A pudgy old man in suspenders that kept his pants over his belly tried to cajole his bulldog to pick up the pace as they crossed gingerly on round cobblestone.

  All My Sons was playing at the Screening Room.

  “You think you’re hot shit because you’re connected,” McDowell ventured.

  I’m so connected I’m riding where the flashers and nickel-and-dimers go.

  He added, “Don’t need to know somebody to call the D.A.”

  “Maybe I should’ve told her I know you,” I said.

  “You don’t know me,” he scoffed.

  “Sure I do,” I replied. “You’re a cop but you’re not sure why. Maybe it’s the twenty-and-out. The OT at. Yankee Stadium, the easy parking with NYPD plates, the free fries at Nathan’s. Or maybe it’s the way that girl who wouldn’t go to the prom with you looks at you now when your uniform is pressed right and your hat is blocked the way it ought to be.”

  He tried to laugh it off, but I saw him stiffen.

  “You live in Queens in a neat little mother/daughter with a patch of grass out front,” I went on. “You’re proud of that house and you should be because your Mom and Dad worked hard to float you the money for the down payment. For fun you like to tool down to Atlantic City in your used Caddy, blow two hundred, two-fifty bucks on blackjack, flirt with the help, chase Chivas with good ol’ domestic beer. On the other hand, you’re thinking maybe next week you’ll go up to Fox-woods because you heard they’ll comp you if you tell them you’re on the job. How am I doing so far?”