“Where’s the Boy Wonder?” I asked.
“Running errands. I don’t wanna get any on my shoes while you two are pissing on each other. And another thing, I heard about your performance down at the deli. No more of that shit.”
“Yeah, Purvis gave me the message,” I said.
“I want you to hear it from me. Any more bullshit like that and I cut you out of the loop.”
I blew on my coffee. “Whatcha got?”
“We understand each other?”
“All right,” I said.
“Tell me we understand each other,” he said.
“We understand each other. Now, what’ve you got?”
He raised his hands in caution. “Nothing huge, but something. I gotta ask you some questions first. I want answers, real answers, no ‘I hate Daddy’ bullshit.” He stared at me, I guess to prove he was serious. “Be an adult.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can behave.”
“Did your father’s interest in sports extend beyond football?”
He was trying to lead me, but I knew where he was going. I’d taken the same thoughts and basically the same question to Fontana’s doorstep only hours before. Unfortunately, Waters would get as much info from me as I’d gotten from Fontana.
“As far as I know, he never bet on games,” I said. “He watched football religiously. Jets and Giants. Believe me, I know. I had to sit there right beside him every Sunday until I was in high school. Mass in the morning, football all afternoon. One hour for God, six for the NFL. He knew a hell of a lot about the game, like a freakishly large amount, even for an ex-player, but he was just a fan. Why?”
“Maybe too close to home,” Waters said, more to himself than to me. “Was he into anything else? Basketball? Hockey?”
“Basketball, a little bit,” I said. “I can remember the Knicks being on every now and then. Him yelling at the TV. But my mom wasn’t wild about him watching the games. His commentary had, let’s say, racial overtones my mom didn’t like.”
The hockey question made me think. Molly had been a huge hockey fan, and so, naturally, I became one. I remembered, suddenly, that in a brief experiment, I’d tried to win my father over to hockey, thinking there was enough hitting and fighting to satisfy him. And that my interest in that hitting might get him to lay off me a little bit, even if I had come to the sport by way of a girl.
We made it through a few weeks of the season, watching the Rangers on TV. He let me teach him the rules. We might’ve even talked about going to the Garden for a game. He liked the violence and the speed, but ultimately couldn’t take to a sport dominated by Canadians and Europeans. Their names were too difficult to yell at the television. “Hockey had too many foreigners for him,” I told Waters. “Even if they are white.”
“Anything else? College ball? Baseball?”
“Nah. He never watched college anything. My father hated baseball, said it was too slow. That it wasn’t a real sport, I guess because there was no violence in it. Wasn’t manly enough for him. He never understood it, though, that was the problem. The precision, the strategy, the way the possibilities of the game were always shifting.” I stopped, realizing I was drifting. I had fifteen examples to make my case at the ready and caught myself hoping Waters would want me to continue.
“You’re a fan, I take it,” Waters said.
“Big time,” I said.
“That’s nice. Let’s stick to the subject.”
“Fine,” I said, irked that he cut me off. He was the one who kept asking questions when I’d already answered the important one. So I answered it again. “My father wasn’t a gambler. He had all the normal debts a guy has, and he hated those. No way he’d risk a debt with some bookie, or some loan shark.”
Waters sighed. I could tell from the look on his face that I was telling him things he already knew. But I respected the effort.
“Like you said, he knew a lot about the game,” Waters said. “Don’t forget, I played with him. He’d change the coaches’ plays on the field. Nine times out of ten, he was right.” He paused. “I always thought he’d have made a good coach, if it wasn’t for that temper of his.”
“A lot might be different,” I said, “if not for that temper.”
“Your father never did let go of his football career,” Waters said, his tone apologetic. “I thought maybe he found a way to stay in it. A lot of ex-athletes, they can never let go of that adrenaline and develop some bad habits trying to hang on to it. Your mother’s gone; you and Julia are out of the house. He had a lot of voids to fill. Your grandfather was a gambler.”
I thought of Waters, and his career, maybe a few bad habits developed in the decades he’d spent wearing a uniform and playing defense for the City of New York. He had his own voids to fill. Weird that my father, the selfish bastard, got the family with the nice house, and Waters, who seemed on the whole a pretty all right guy, ended up with nothing. It just seemed to be the way things had always gone with them.
“Sorry,” I said. Waters pushed because he wanted whatever ideas he had to match the facts. Here he was trying hard to prove my father was a degenerate gambler, and all I felt was guilty for disappointing him. I raised my empty hands. “My father was a big-time drunk. That one bad habit took up all his time. He knew what gambling did to his old man.”
“Let’s finish this outside,” Waters said. He threw some money on the table.
I reached for my wallet. He tried to talk me out of it, but I threw a ten on the table anyway. “Toward the tip. Karma.”
We stopped at the counter for coffee to go.
“Give,” I said, when we got back to the street.
“We found a witness. Guy called us today.”
“You got someone there who actually saw it?” I asked.
“Saw a little bit,” Waters said. “Seems there was a line inside the store that morning. This guy was at the end of it as a particularly attractive member of the female persuasion walked by, heading toward the train station. He was leaning back, looking out the door at her when the car pulled up. He got a pretty good look at the car, caught a glimpse of the guy. We got partial descriptions of both.”
“That’s not a whole lot,” I said. “The girl?” She would’ve turned at the shot, had a view of the license plate.
“Disappeared,” Waters said. “But, listen, any particulars help. We got build, race, and clothing on the guy. Last night, we picked up the car.”
That caught my attention. “Where?”
“South Beach parking lot. It was stolen. Couple of kids called in a torch job. There was enough left to give us a pretty solid ID on the vehicle.” He stopped, looked down at his shoes.
“But?”
Waters sighed, rubbed his temples. “But not enough to get us closer to who was driving it.” He looked at me. “Not yet, anyway.”
I took a hard drag on my cigarette, a long drink of coffee. I was pissed, and disappointed. The coffee was awful, and cold. After all that suspense, despite his warning, I really thought Waters had news about an arrest, or at least a warrant. Something solid. I wanted the whole picture and all I kept getting were bits and pieces. Nobody, it seemed, including people who were there and people paid to find out, knew much more about my father’s demise than I did.
“You wanna tell me about the car?” I asked. “The kids who called it in?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ve got the murder weapon,” I said.
“This ain’t TV,” Waters said. “The gun doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“But it could if you could trace it,” I said. “Learn its history.”
“Stop it, Junior.”
“Tell me about the girl,” I said. “I might have better luck than you digging her up.”
Waters snorted. “Yeah, right. Why don’t I give you a little tin badge and your gun back? That’d work out great. You showed some real skill at the deli.”
“Well, it is my gun,” I said.
“Ju
st stop,” Waters said. “Stay out of it. You said we understood each other.”
“Forget I asked,” I said, waving my free hand in the air. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“You’re sure?” Waters asked. “About the gambling?” He laced his fingers together in front of his face. “I know there was no love lost, but blood does funny things.”
“Positive,” I said. “My father didn’t like owing anyone. Learned it from his father. Debt made him crazy. My mother explained it to me often. I had no idea they were even making book out of that place, and I’m sure he didn’t, either.”
“We never thought so,” Waters said. “But we were gonna start looking, if your father had been gambling there.” He shook his head. “I knew it was bullshit. Who does hits in their own front yard?”
Waters glanced over my shoulder. I turned and spotted Purvis’s car idling at a red light a couple of blocks away. I wondered if he’d ever worked up the nerve to tell Waters the whole truth about him and Julia. Maybe I should take care of it myself, I thought. Just to be sure. It was probably best to do it with all three of us together.
“You know, Purvis was at the house this afternoon,” I said. “Preening and posing on the front lawn for Julia, making like there’d been a big break in the case. But he didn’t tell me any of this.” I turned to Waters. “I’m telling you, he’s fucking with the wrong guy. He keeps trying to be a hero for my sister and it’s getting on my nerves.”
“Relax,” Waters said. “The badge gets to his head sometimes, and good-looking women always do, but he doesn’t know anything I just told you. I sent him to Fontana’s while I checked out the other witness, speed things up. He didn’t even know I was meeting you here.”
“I don’t want him around us,” I said, trying to sound casual about it. “He’s too interested in other things. Julia, Molly.”
“He’s working the case with me,” Waters said. “Julia’s the daughter of the victim. Molly’s your alibi. It’s professional.”
“The hell it is. He likes to play games with what he thinks he knows.”
We watched Purvis pull the car to the curb. He came in too hard, scraping the hubcaps on the concrete. Purvis swore inside the car. I laughed. Waters just stared down into his coffee. “Every time,” he said.
Purvis sat with his hands on the wheel, trying to mask his embarrassment with a scowl. Waters rapped on the window with his knuckle. “Unlock the door, Carlo,” he said. Purvis jumped and hit the button. Waters turned to me before he reached for the door. “You give Carlo too much credit.” He opened the door and piled his bulk into the passenger seat.
I grabbed the door before Waters could close it. Waters raised his eyebrows at me, but I leaned into the car anyway. “Purvis,” I said, “you tell your boss what we talked about this afternoon?”
Purvis swallowed. “My conversations with my partner are none of your business.”
Waters turned. I knew he was giving Purvis the eyebrows now.
“You tell him you abandoned my sister to the fates in Crack Town?” I asked. “And maybe that’s why I have a problem with you.”
Purvis looked at Waters. “It’s a long story.”
Waters just stretched his arms out, gripping the dashboard and flexing his arms. He wouldn’t look at either of us.
“It was back in high school,” Purvis told him.
Waters blew out a long breath that clouded the windshield. He turned to Purvis. “Carlo and I will discuss it,” he said. He turned to me, glaring at my face, and then at my hand on the door. I let go and backed up. “As for you, Junior? Maybe you should think about how long and how hard you need to hold grudges. They only get heavier with time.” He slammed the car door but he rolled down the window. “I’ll stay in touch.”
“One more thing,” I said.
Waters leaned his elbow out the window. “What?”
I meant to ask him about his own grudges, about how often he took his own advice, but the look on his face told me he was about out of patience. “You know who won the Met game last night?”
“The Mets,” Waters said. “Delgado hit a walk-off. You still follow those jokers?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I had a bill riding on the game.”
Waters just waved as they pulled out into traffic. I watched them drive away, then walked back to my car.
An extra-inning, walk-off home run. A thing of beauty, that was. My anger at Purvis vanished. The win, and the way it happened,made me feel better than I had in days, even if I had missed it. Even if the Mets were still mired in second as the Braves ran away with the division again. What mattered was that it had happened. I stood by my car, keys in my hand, just thinking about it.
I’d seen enough of Delgado’s moon shots to imagine it well enough. The ball an aspirin-sized dot in the night sky, unstoppable, unalterable, soaring over the field, the fence, the stands, and out into the parking lot. Sheer bedlam at Shea. Ecstatic teammates leaping up the dugout steps. Delgado oblivious to it all, his cool conqueror’s glare fixed on the ball the whole way, as if the hit not only won the night’s game, but exacted some kind of primordial, private vengeance he’d sworn to reap. He hit home runs the way they ought to be hit. High and far and long, leaving no question. He took someone else’s best shot and beat a perfect, pure, victorious moment out of it, a moment when everything went right.
I unlocked the car, cheered more than any grown man with dead parents had a right to be by a day-old baseball game. I wondered if I really was losing my mind, and how much further I had to go before I got it over with. I thought maybe I was such a fan of Carlos Delgado and his team because we all took the game of baseball way too seriously.
I DROVE TO JOYCE’S, EAGER for a shot and a pint and a spot in front of the night’s Met game. Feeling a twinge of guilt for my wavering faith yesterday, I resolved to stay planted in front of the TV until the last out, regardless of the score or the time. I circled the block looking for a parking space. The first pitch was only a few minutes away. I found a spot next to the train station. I stepped out of the car and found myself staring at Scalia’s funeral home. In my haste, I’d trapped myself. Getting to the bar from here meant walking past Scalia’s, and through the murder scene. It was either that or walk around the block. Delgado’s moon shot vanished into the distant past.
I stepped into the street in front of Scalia’s. The place was dark, except for a dim light burning in the back, its glow bleeding out into the parking lot. I wondered what room it was, if it was the room my father was in. It couldn’t be. No way a room like that had windows. He’d be in the basement, underground, already down in a hole. As I stood there in the street, I envisioned my father’s huge form prone on the slab, still and silent beneath a sheet. If I knocked at the door, would the Scalias let me in? Let me see that he was really dead. Really gone.
I dragged my hands down my face. Who was I trying to kid? I wanted no part of that room or anything that happened in there. My mouth went dry and I tried to spit in the street anyway. I lit a cigarette and it made me sick. A trickle of sweat ran past my ear. I stood there, waiting.
Maybe if I stood there long enough my father would walk out that door, down the steps and meet me in the street, playing out the sick joke to the bitter end. He’d be laughing at me all the way, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up, cracking his knuckles, eyes sparking with violence. We could settle things once and for all. I cracked my knuckles, rolled my shoulders, breathed shallow.
Fresh Kills Page 14