“Yeah. He did four years, right?”
“Would you care to speculate as to the identity of his teenage victim in that case?”
I got that sick feeling again. “You’re kidding me.”
“Esmeralda Marie Sutanto of Goshen, New York-Esme. I spoke with the DA that prosecuted the case. Tillman was working a home improvement scam in Goshen when he met the Sutantos, a divorced mom with a teenage daughter. The mother and Tillman started seeing one another. While the mom was at work, Tillman would stop over and keep young Esme company after she came home from high school. The mom caught wind of it and went to the local police.”
“Let me guess,” I said, “Esme refused to testify against Tillman.”
“The DA says that they claimed to be in love and he believed them, but with the mother pushing him and an election that year, he had no choice but to prosecute and go for the maximum. When Esme graduated from high school, she left home. Would you like to guess the identity of Tillman’s only regular visitor during his years in Bedford Hills? His only visitor? I had a training officer who told me when I first got on the job that only fools ignore the obvious.”
“So bring her in. I’ll call in a tip from a pay phone and you can get a warrant.”
“Too late,” he said.
“She’s gone?”
“With the wind. I paid her apartment a visit yesterday evening. She took only a bag with some of her things and did not bother with her furniture. No matter, we gave her time to destroy any evidence she had not already gotten rid of. I fear my training officer was right. I am a fool.”
And with that, the sky opened up on us. Two fools in the rain.
FORTY-EIGHT
There were at least two sleepless men in the borough of Brooklyn that night. I didn’t know what Fuqua was doing about his insomnia, though I was tempted to call and ask. Me, I had no intentions of staring up at the ceiling. I’d tried to get to bed early as a means of escaping the various spiders in my head. I’d even stooped to taking a pill to help me drift off. Yeah, I used to get high and drop acid when I was in college and until my recent adventures through the looking glass of oncology, I drank enough scotch and red wine to float the Spanish Armada. Yet somewhere in the bizarro melange of cognitive dissonance that was my moral compass, I’d become downright puritanical about narcotics. But puritans have their breaking points too and I’d reached mine. Of course, all the damned pill did was make my head cottony and got me no closer to sleep than counting sheep.
I took a shower-my second in the last several hours if you counted the earlier drenching I got on the boardwalk-and considered doing something I hadn’t done in a very long time: driving over to the Grotto for a dish of pistachio gelato. Perhaps I’d risk a slice of mediocre pizza, I thought, as I took the ten-minute ride from my condo to 86th Street. One of the reasons for the Grotto’s continued popularity was that it stayed open late. The place was crowded as ever. There were no spots on 86th, so I drove around back and parked on West 10th Street at the foot of the entrance to the loading dock.
As I walked back around the corner, I noticed that June had pushed August back into the future where it belonged. The day’s vengeful storms had given way to cloudless, star-saturated skies and the dampness of the afternoon had been replaced by dry, gentle breezes. It smelled like June again and the temperature was very Goldilocks-just right. All this and the lingering cotton in my head were nearly enough to keep thoughts of Esmeralda Sutanto from ruining the glory of the night. Nearly.
After Fuqua and I parted, I’d tried convincing myself that he was wrong about Esme and that he was building a case out of his own demons. That he was horrified by the nakedness of his ambition and the lengths he had almost been willing to go to feed it. That his guilt over looking past Esme was driving his need for self-flagellation. While all of that may have been true, it was more true that Esme really was the perfect suspect for Alta’s murder.
I decided I’d have a slice of pizza and got on that line first. Even if I somehow managed to survive the surgery, chemo, and radiation, I knew that my days of eating whatever I wanted to eat whenever I wanted to eat it were dwindling to a precious few.
“Slice of Sicilian and a Bud,” I said to the kid at the pizza counter.
When the kid slid the tray my way and handed me my change, I asked if Nicky was around. I doubted he would be at this time of night, but I would have felt like an idiot if I hadn’t asked. Although it still bugged me a little that he’d lied to me, I owed him a thank-you for trying to help me with the case. I also wanted to let him know that it was good to reconnect. Over the years, I had shed so many friends that I felt like a snake that’d molted once too often and now had nothing left to replace its old skin.
“Sure,” he said. “He’s in back. You wanna talk to him?”
“Tell him Moe is here when you get a chance, okay? I’ll be sitting over there.” I pointed to a corner table by the railing.
I pulled the cell phone from my pocket, stared at it as if it might make the decision for me, and gave Fuqua a call. He wasn’t asleep nor was he terribly enthusiastic at hearing the sound of my voice.
“Come have a beer with me, a slice of pizza,” I said, after he got done grumbling. “I’m at the Grotto.”
“It is well after midnight.”
“You’re not gonna sleep tonight and neither am I. We can do it alone or together.”
“It would take a half hour for me to get there from Canarsie.”
“So what? We can have a beer here and then go somewhere else.”
“I am exhausted.”
“Look, I’m here. You wanna come, come. You don’t wanna come, don’t.”
I was done with my slice by the time Nick Roussis came to my table. Although the pizza lived down to its usual standard, I enjoyed it more than I had ever enjoyed any pizza. I was struck by the revelation that the menu for a condemned man’s last meal is almost beside the point. What matters in the scheme of things is that it is a last meal.
Nicky looked tired, but there was something else too. He seemed out of sorts, distracted.
“What’s up, Nick?”
“What? Oh, what’s up? You tell me,” he said. “I hear you were at the old offices today.”
“News travels fast.”
“Steve Schwartz called as a professional courtesy. Told me you was poking around.”
“Not poking around. Actually, I was coming to say thanks for the assist with the case. That’s all.”
Drumming his fingers on the table, he asked, “How’d that pan out?”
“Not like I hoped,” I said.
“That’s too bad. Listen, Moe, can you excuse me for a minute? I’ve gotta delivery comin’ in and-”
“Don’t worry about it. Go ahead. I’m gonna get a gelato.”
“Good. I’ll tell the kid to take care of you. It’s on the house.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, Moe. Just don’t go nowhere.”
“I’ll be here.”
The pistachio gelato was just how I remembered it: rich, buttery, but not too sweet. I hated things that were so sweet that the sweetness obscured the complexity of the flavor and texture. Savoring the gelato, my mind drifted off to the other food experiences that defined old Brooklyn to me: the pineapple ices at Adesso’s Bakery on Avenue X, the pastrami at Max’s Deli on Sheepshead Bay Road, the ruglach from Leon’s Bakery, the roast beef from Brennan amp; Carr on Nostrand, the french fries at Nathan’s.
“Earth to Moe. Earth to Moe.” Nicky had returned, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes had passed as if in a second. Who says time travel is impossible?
“Sorry. Just lost in the past.”
Nick sat down across from me. We chatted for a few more minutes, neither of us really saying anything. I was feeling tired at last and Nick was even more distracted than he had been earlier. We shook hands and agreed to have dinner again soon, but this time it was a h
ollow promise. My prognosis notwithstanding, it was Nick who seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion. It was a familiar story. Rekindling long-dormant friendships doesn’t usually work unless both parties are equally committed. Otherwise, it’s like a one-armed man trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I remembered thinking the very same thing twenty years before. I guess I’d been hemorrhaging friends for a very long time.
When I looked around, I noticed that most of the tables were empty and that the red and green neon Gelato Grotto sign had been shut off. Closing time. I walked back around the corner, tired but sated, my head much less foggy than it had been since I’d taken the pill. When I got back to my rented SUV, I realized that I was parked in exactly the same spot Alta Conseco had parked in the night she was killed. A lot of things were suddenly clearer to me and I stopped stone still in my tracks. It got quiet-no, not quiet, silent. Silent so the only thing I could hear were my own thoughts in between the suddenly quickening beats of my heart.
I looked at the rear of the Grotto and, sure enough, a van was backed up to the loading dock. But the van didn’t have commercial license plates and the doors were unmarked. There was no company name on the doors, no DOT number, no company logo, nothing. Anyway, who gets a food delivery after midnight? And why did the owner have to be here to take in a simple food delivery? It made no sense. Then, in a single breath, I went from clear-headed to lightheaded, as a thousand images and questions rushed to mind all at once.
I walked twenty feet back toward the corner, the spot where Alta’s blood trail began. I tried to remember details from the coroner’s report Fuqua had shown me. Alta was stabbed once in the back; the remainder of the wounds were to her right side and the front of her torso. She had many defensive wounds on her arms and hands. I returned to where I was parked, tried to time how long it might take someone running from the loading dock to catch up to someone walking around the corner. I flashed back to the night Nicky had invited me back to his office, the night we left through the prep kitchen onto the loading dock. I pictured the wall of the prep kitchen-rows of knives neatly lined up on magnetic strips.
Fuqua’s training officer had been right all along: only fools ignore the obvious. And I was the biggest fool of them all. I saw Nicky’s eagerness to reconnect, to go to dinner, to help with the case in a new light. Who had so conveniently supplied me with a witness against Delgado? Who kept calling me to see how things were progressing? What was one of the first questions out of Nicky’s mouth tonight? I thought back to Nick’s silly lie about going into the office a few days a week. I thought about what both the security guard and Steve Schwartz had said about the family business nearly going under and that sudden infusion of cash.
I laughed. It was a laugh disconnected from joy. I reached for my cell phone to call Fuqua. He would be relieved, I thought, to know that Esme might have been a blackmailing sociopath, but not a murderer, not yet anyway. I stopped laughing when I felt the cold steel press against the nape of my neck.
FORTY-NINE
My first thought was that I was going to avoid surgery after all. I smiled. My second thought was about missing Sarah’s wedding. I wasn’t smiling anymore.
“I’ll take that, asshole.”
I didn’t recognize the voice, yet there was something vaguely familiar about it. Powerful fingers grabbed the cell phone out of my hand, but I wasn’t sure the guy pressing the gun to my neck was the same guy who took the phone. I sensed there were two, maybe three of them. If I was wrong and there was only one, I still didn’t like the odds. A gun to the neck counts for a lot.
“He’s probably carrying.” This voice I knew. It belonged to Nick Roussis. Hands were patting me down; one reached under my jacket and yanked my old off-duty piece out of its holster. “Come on, let’s get him off the freakin’ street and into the van.” The headlights of a car turning the corner cast our own shadows ahead of us. “Come on, come on.”
I counted the shadows. There were three of them: Nicky and two other guys. The muzzle of the gun was pushed hard into my neck, urging me forward so that I almost tumbled head first. The car flashed past. I wasn’t hopeful that the driver would see or understand what was going on. Even if the driver had been looking right at us, it was too dark for him or her to see much. Now we were at the side door of the van. The muzzle eased off my neck. My arms were pulled backwards, my wrists pressed close, and taped behind me. I was shoved face first onto the van floor and rolled over on my back. Nick crawled in beside me and sat across from me with his back against the van wall. He was pointing my own. 38 at me. His two friends got into the front seats and we were moving.
“You just couldn’t leave it alone, could ya?” Nicky said. “When did you know?”
I didn’t answer immediately. Instead I stared at the man sitting in the passenger seat and at the driver. The guy in the passenger seat was squat, thick-necked. His hair was more salt than pepper and I couldn’t make out much of his profile except that his left cheek was scarred and pitted. I had a better angle to see the driver. He was a twitchy bastard, but he looked like a skinnier, younger version of Nick Roussis.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your brother?” I mumbled.
Gus jerked his head back at me. “Shut the fuck up or I’ll kill you right here.”
Nick screamed at his little brother in Greek and not the kind of Greek Aristotle or Socrates were known for. Gus screamed back at Nick. I didn’t fool myself that this dissention was going to help me. I didn’t let it breed any hope. They were brothers and that’s what mattered. I was being taken to die, to be shot in the back of the head and dumped in a shallow grave or thrown in the ocean for fish food. I used their distraction to work myself onto my knees and then flop back into a sitting position. Through all the screaming the passenger sat stoic and unmoving, not once turning his head.
When the brothers quieted down, Nick turned his attention back to me. “I asked you a question. When did you know?”
“About three seconds before the gun was shoved into my neck.”
Nick shook his head at me. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”
“That’s the funny thing,” I said.
“There’s something funny about this?”
“I guess I mean ironic, not funny.”
“What’s that?”
“It wasn’t me who couldn’t leave it alone. It was you, Nicky. You made a big show of giving me the security footage. You were the one who made noise about us getting together. It was you who treated me to dinner. You who served up Jorge Delgado up on a silver platter for me. If you had just shaken my hand and said goodbye that first time I stopped by the Grotto, we wouldn’t be here now.”
“I guess that was pretty dumb, huh? But I always did kinda look up to you when we were on the job and I was honestly happy to see you when you came to the Grotto that day.”
“For all the good it’s gonna do me now.”
“Sorry, Moe. I got no choice. We work for him,” he said, pointing his free hand in the direction of the passenger, “not the other way around.”
“You’re not a killer, Nicky. It’s not in your nature. That’s why you quit the job. You said it to me yourself. You couldn’t stand the bodies and the blood. You hated the smells: the piss, the shit, the decay.”
“Don’t fool yourself, Moe. I’ll do what I have to.”
“I know that. You’ll do anything to protect your family. That’s what this is all about, right? You protecting the family business, you saving your fuck-up brother. He is a fuck-up. That’s right, isn’t it, Gus?”
Gus, half-turned, one hand on the steering wheel, a Sig Sauer pointed at my head. “Keep talking, motherfucker and I’ll-”
Gus never finished his threat because the stoic passenger slapped him across the face. The sharp smack was amplified by the metal walls of the van. “Shut up mouth and drive van. Pay attention.”
Slavic accent, I thought, but not Russian.
“You’ll kill me. I
know that, Nick.” I tried sounding calm, but I wasn’t. I thought I would have been okay with dying, with avoiding the pain of surgery, of recovery, and loss of pride that was sure to come with the treatments, but I never wanted to live more than at that moment. “No, I’m talking about Alta Conseco. I know it wasn’t in you to kill a woman like that. That had to be your brother.”
Nick didn’t say a word, hanging his head in shame. That was answer enough.
“But what did Alta see that made Gus chase her down the block, stab her in the back-that was really brave of you, by the way, stabbing a defenseless, unsuspecting woman in the back-”
“That’s not how it happened!” Gus yelled, half-turning again. “I didn’t want to-”
“You didn’t want to, but what, you fucking coward? Your mommy made you stab her in the back?”
“Shut up! Just shut up, Moe!” Nick yelled, shoving the short barrel of the. 38 into my chest. “Shut up, Moe!”
“No! Let him speak,” the passenger ordered.
“Serbian?” I said. “No. Bulgarian, maybe.”
“Very good, smart man. Not idiot like Nick or moron brother. Maybe I get rid of them and keep you alive.” He had a good laugh at that. He was the only one laughing. “Go ahead vit you story. I am entertained.”
“Alta saw something or you thought she saw something she shouldn’t have, like one of these late night deliveries of yours. And I’m thinking there aren’t many things even an asshole like Gus would think was worth killing a woman over. Drugs come to mind. Heroin?”
Gus confirmed it. “That’s right, asshole.”
“Keep quiet, Gus,” Nick warned half-heartedly.
“Why? He knows we’re gonna kill him. What the fuck does it matter?”
There, he said aloud what we all knew. Don’t ask me why, but I wanted to thank him. I could deal with it now. With no hope I was less tormented, calmer. If I was about to die, though, I didn’t want to die curious.
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