by Alaric Hunt
“How much did they get?” Guthrie asked.
The cashier shrugged. “Few hundred. It was early on a Tuesday. That’s usually our worst day.”
“That ain’t sounding right. How many were there?”
“Four white guys in ski masks. One watched the door.”
“Okay, I guess that’s better. But they didn’t know the good day?”
“They’re crooks. They’re stupid,” Donovan said. “Or maybe they were high.” He frowned. “I was ringing up when they came inside. Usually I look up, but I was counting, and then two were at the counter.”
“Four?” Guthrie seemed surprised.
“Yeah, I know. How many dumbasses does it take to rob a bodega? Two came to the counter with their guns out, one stayed at the door, and one went to the back. They didn’t say much. I pulled the money from the register. The last one comes from the back, pushing our kid along with his gun—that used to work here.”
“So how’d the crazy part start?”
“I dunno. One of them said, ‘Wallets!’ and the one with the bag goes around. Nobody made a fuss. The one from the back put up his gun and pulled a bat. After the old lady handed over her wallet, he snatched her by the jacket collar and tapped her on the head. She drooped down onto her knees, and he hit her again. The one at the door, the other two, they didn’t say a thing. The bagman kept after the wallets.
“He was a little guy. Maybe he had a complex or something. He just started nailing everybody. I couldn’t believe it. They got their bag, but now he wanted to beat everybody’s ass. The kid made a break for it, but the little guy was quick. He creamed Alonzo into the potato chips. When he came back to the counter, he didn’t even seem excited. He came behind the counter and hemmed me up. I shouted in his face the whole time, but I don’t think he noticed.”
“How many times did he hit you?”
“I dunno. He was fast, like something out of a movie—Jet Li with a stick. I had lumps on my head and knots on my arms. I couldn’t straighten my left elbow out for two weeks.”
Guthrie nodded. “How many times did he hit the old woman?”
“Twice.” Donovan frowned. “I couldn’t believe she was dead.”
“Ms. Linney was pretty old, I think,” the little detective said. “Did you remember her from any other time? She shopped here?”
“A few times. I’m okay with faces. She wasn’t here every week, maybe only every month or so.”
“I want you to do something for me,” Guthrie said. “Show me how he hit Ms. Linney, the old woman who died.”
The cashier looked dubious, and Guthrie slid him another fifty. The bodega had only two customers, and both were more interested in the conversation than in their shopping lists. Donovan came from behind the counter, dusted his hands on his apron, and used Guthrie to demonstrate how the robber had gripped Althea Linney’s jacket collar, close to the left shoulder. Vasquez watched. Donovan mimed a blow and tugged the little detective until he thought he was in the same position on his knees. Donovan frowned in concentration, shifting his feet until he was partly behind him, then mimed another blow. Vasquez moved to the other side, then made him do it again.
After he went back behind the counter, Donovan said, “I didn’t see it like that before. Maybe he hit her on the back of the neck.”
* * *
The first time Guthrie appeared at the door of her parents’ tenement apartment on Henry Street to offer her a job as a private detective, Vasquez thought that would mean puzzling from clues who did what to whom. After they left the bodega in Unionport, they drove down to the city. They sat in La Borinqueña in Spanish Harlem, ate chips and chiles rellenos, and played connect the dots in the Olsen case, without enough dots to make a picture. Like watching videos and sitting in parks, trying to see a solution without enough to work from wasn’t what she had imagined.
Guthrie squashed the notion of returning to the Bronx to question Philip Linney again. He thought they’d pushed the man too far already. He had grown up around veterans. Bad things happened fast when they were stirred. So they sat and thought about it, making outlines on their palmtops of places they’d gone, people they’d seen, and things they’d done, hoping that something would suddenly match. Guthrie showed Vasquez the electronic trail he’d found connecting Amanda Hearst to Peiper’s newfound fortune, a ten-thousand-dollar spike that matched the date Peiper paid off his credit cards. For the little detective, the money was a smoking gun, but he hadn’t decided what to do about it. The café was tranquil around them, a mix of quiet Spanish conversation and soft guitar music on the radio.
Late in the afternoon, Black-haired John called. The call was too short for Guthrie to be sure if the drifter wanted to meet immediately, because he only named a place. The little detective figured he meant later that afternoon, because now he was probably hooking cans with his family.
Guthrie couldn’t be sure of what John might want. Sometimes the drifter worried about the police and wanted someone from the everyday world to reassure him he wasn’t in trouble. Other times, he found something that he couldn’t deal with. Once, he found a car abandoned. Its doors were open and there was a load of groceries inside. Black-haired John wasn’t a drunk. He worried that someone had run away and left their groceries—the car was of no interest to him because his family couldn’t fit inside it to sleep.
After Guthrie and Vasquez finished eating, they drove up to the north end of Highbridge Park. Vasquez cut the engine. The afternoon was roasting hot and muggy. Before they could begin walking, Little Tony jogged up to the Ford. Tony was the eldest kid in John’s family, a seventeen-year-old black kid small enough to pass for a twelve-year-old. Usually he was lookout or scout, because he had a smooth voice and no one thought he was up to something if he suddenly started singing. At night, he could be almost invisible, since he was extremely dark; even during the daylight, the dark clothes he wore made him seem like a patch of shadows. He led them along one of the footpaths into the park. Past the end of a retaining wall, he turned uphill and they had to slog. Leaf litter and old sticks rattled off like firecrackers.
The kids were scattered around the top of the hill. They stared at Guthrie and Vasquez as they passed. Black-haired John was sitting at a charcoal fire with Cindy, roasting marshmallows on coat hangers. That was the first time Vasquez had ever seen him being still, but he stood as soon as he noticed the detectives. Each time he made a revolution around the fire, the late-afternoon sunshine caught his eyes and they flashed icy bright.
“Ghost Eddy is dead,” Black-haired John said.
The night before, a rumor had surfaced on the north end of the city that the big gray-bearded drifter had been shot to death. Black-haired John asked around after he heard that, and discovered the source of the rumor was Stoop-O. He was traveling everywhere he could reach, telling anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. Stoop-O was glad to be the herald of Eddy’s death, because the big man had punched out his teeth. Black-haired John had three thoughts upon hearing the news. Stoop-O might be saying what he hoped was true, or saying it because people were asking about Eddy but might stop if they thought he was dead. Stoop-O was enough of a crab to beg a man he hated and feared for liquor. Then, also, it could be true.
Black-haired John decided to hear it directly from Stoop-O. Being lazy and stupid, the drunk was easy to find. Men besides Guthrie had asked about Ghost Eddy on the street, but they were less friendly. They didn’t listen when somebody said “I don’t know.” They squeezed until an answer popped out, a finger pointed at someone to ask, or a place to go. They almost seemed to be following Guthrie. A few drifters took car rides until they ran out of things to talk about and places to go, then got rolled from the car without the courtesy of a stop. They were white men with foreign accents, maybe Russians, though Black-haired John refused to say that for sure. His family was lucky. No one was grabbed, because all of that started after they stopped looking for Eddy and were lying low.
Busy w
alking around the fire, the drifter didn’t notice Vasquez fuming. Her face was almost as red as her windbreaker. Cindy offered her a coat hanger and some marshmallows. Once the young Puerto Rican settled by the fire, Cindy tried unsuccessfully to tuck her hanging lock of hair behind her ear. Vasquez shrugged. She toasted marshmallows while Black-haired John continued.
They’d found Stoop-O on 137th Street a few hours after midday, bragging sloppily through his broken teeth. He was drunk. His lies were polished with repetition, and he cycled through them like a jukebox each time he caught a laugh or some encouragement. One version was that Stoop-O had helped the killers find Ghost Eddy to get even, while another was that the gray-bearded drifter had been too stupid to heed Stoop-O’s warnings about stealing from dangerous men. The searchers caught up with Eddy in the underground and shot him as he fled. Stoop-O’s lies made Black-haired John doubt him on details, even though the men stopped searching for Ghost Eddy. Plainly, he was dead, or they had given up on finding him.
“I say he’s dead, John,” the little detective said. “You gotta be careful for a while.”
Black-haired John paused in mid-stride, smiled, and then kept moving. He was a mutt that didn’t need advice on when to scratch or lie still. “You know something, huh?” he prodded.
“They were Russians,” Guthrie replied. “A pair tried to shut us up yesterday.”
The drifter threw a sharp glance at Vasquez, who was sitting with a wire hanger in hand. “Don’t matter. I didn’t ask Stoop-O. I only nodded and smiled to keep him lying, then hooked right up the street.”
As the sun sank lower, the campsite atop the hill under the scrub trees cooled. The little charcoal fire was like a sharp needle requiring careful movement to avoid. Cindy hung cans to heat water and fry slices of turkey in butter. Kids drifted up to crowd the top of the hill. Guthrie and Vasquez walked back down in silence. The little detective counted on his fingers, reciting to himself the number of people he’d told about Ghost Eddy, then cursed quietly that he had told anyone at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In front of Vasquez’s tenement, Henry Street was quiet and still. On a usual summer afternoon while the day cooled, kids played football and music blared from parked cars: muchachos swaggered on the sidewalk, spitting bad raps or worse, piropos. Quiet didn’t exist on a summer afternoon. Above the street, the old people sat watching from the fire escapes, like usual. Faint tinny music from their old radios floated down onto the street like tired confetti. Across the street from the stoop, a chromed-out lowrider sat silently like a brooding tarantula. Four muchachos inside the car dangled cigarette hands out over piles of spent butts. They watched without interest as Guthrie’s old Ford glided up to the tenement and Vasquez climbed out. The young Puerto Rican detective paused on the stoop, giving the street a once-over puzzled scan. Down the block in both directions, life was normal.
A note waited on the refrigerator in the empty apartment. Her parents were gone to sit with Maria Lopez, whose husband had died. Friends were taking turns to help while the relatives were gathered. Martin Lopez and Papì had been old friends. The note finished by saying they wouldn’t be back until late and that she should heat the beans left over from two nights ago and roll them in a tortilla.
Vasquez wasn’t hungry. She took a shower, cleaned the bathroom, and tried to decide what to do about her hair. She was full of nervous energy. She walked from room to room, pausing to look from the windows. She tired of tucking her hair behind her ear, and let it hang. The apartment seemed small. She would rather have been driving. When the streetlights lit outside, Miguel came home.
Vasquez’s youngest brother was the shortest but most powerfully built of her three brothers. Papì joked, when he watched the Giants play on TV, that Roberto would be quarterback, Indio a tight end, and Miguel would be stuck as fullback. Miguel had a neat chin beard, with tattoos on cinnamon skin that he could hide beneath long sleeves when he wanted. He smiled when he saw her, like always, being her favorite brother, but then he darkened with anger. That caught Vasquez by surprise.
Miguel stalked into the kitchen. His anger drew questions from Vasquez like a magnet. While he made coffee, rattling the jars in the refrigerator door to get an apple, their voices amplified from a quiet beginning to a thunder that filled the empty apartment.
“Don’t play you ain’t seen our riders outside, or notice we cleared the street. You’re the smart one! You ain’t supposed to be doing this shit. A shoot-out with the mob? Those ain’t kids, Rachel. We ain’t worried about a drive-by. We worried they gonna come right up in here and get you. What the fuck you think you doing?”
“I’m doing my job!”
“Indio should be talking to you,” Miguel growled. “He’s better at this. You piss me off, then I want to pull your hair like I did when we were little. Make you holler for Papì.”
“What about Indio? Three months ago this was mucho, now this?”
“That old man knew shit was coming! That’s why he got you the pistolita,” Miguel said. “Damn, we got an easier way of doing this.”
“Easier way of what? You think you can beat that old man up? I ain’t in school no more! You think you’re gonna keep doing that shit to me my whole life? You ain’t!”
Miguel grinned. “What are you gonna do, holler for Papì?”
“I ain’t hollering for nobody,” Vasquez spat.
An old plug-in clock sat on the counter behind her. She yanked it from the outlet, stepped forward, and hit Miguel over the head with it. He was frozen with surprise. The clock was tough; his head didn’t do much to it. A thread of blood raced down his nose, and he tried to grab the clock.
Vasquez was quick. She hit him again. Unable to catch the clock, he grabbed her. They slammed into the table. The blood on his face made her decide to abandon the clock. She dropped it, grabbed him, and bit his shoulder. He shouted while they crashed around the kitchen, but she wouldn’t let go.
“Fucking let go!” he shouted. He caught her ponytail and started yanking. She growled curses, dug her feet into the floor, and bit harder. He slammed her against the counter. Dishes showered onto the floor from the sink drainboard. Glass crunched beneath them. Punches flailed.
“Stop! I’m bleeding, damn it!” Miguel shouted. “I quit!” He let go of her and held up his hands like a beaten criminal. She let go and jumped back, spitting out the taste of his shirt. They were both breathing fast and wearing spots and streaks of blood like Christmas trees flaunt tinsel.
“Damn! You’re crazy,” Miguel panted. The kitchen was a mess around them. The table blocked the doorway to the living room.
“You ain’t gonna fuck with me no more, Miguel. You or Indio. You should’ve known that when I wouldn’t listen to Papì. I’m done with that shit.”
“Look at you—you look like an animal or something.”
“Me?” She shook her head. “You’re still bleeding. Go to the bathroom.” He pulled the table out of the doorway, then pulled off his shirt as he walked. He craned his neck to examine the bite mark on his shoulder. Blood oozed from an egg-size mark. He swore softly. Vasquez pressed clean rags to his scalp in the bathroom and stopped the bleeding from the shallow cuts. He held a pad of gauze to his shoulder.
A few times while they cleaned up, they started to say something, but only shook fingers or snorted instead. They didn’t want to start fighting again. She went back out to straighten the mess in the kitchen. After he changed, he came back to sit at the table and watch her. She poured him a cup of coffee to drink while she finished. They watched each other, piecing together what they wanted to say. After the kitchen was reassembled, Vasquez sat down again.
“You ain’t never done anything like that before,” Miguel said finally.
“I ain’t never been this serious.”
They sat at the table and stared at each other over their cups of coffee. The apartment seemed too quiet. The traffic was distant and faint. Outside the windows, darkness suggested the city was
gone, and they were all alone.
“You know I’d do anything for you, right?” Miguel asked. “But what you’re doing is crazy. You can’t be doing stuff that brings shit down on Mamì.”
“What’re you saying? I’m not supposed to do this because I’m a girl? If I was another brother, I could be a criminal and you wouldn’t say nothing.”
“I wouldn’t tell a man not to be a man,” Miguel said. “But you’re my sister. There ain’t but one of you. Me and Indio were finished from the beginning. We always knew it didn’t matter. You’re the one gonna go somewhere for us.”
“You’re wrong,” she said softly. Her brothers had always picked on her about school, joking that she had an alien brain. She called them stupid, even after she discovered they knew answers they pretended they didn’t. They failed classes because they cut and clowned, not because they couldn’t do it. They were loco. More firmly, she continued: “You’re wrong, Miguel. You could’ve done whatever you wanted. You don’t get to make me do something by pretending you can’t. I get to do what I want, too. I like this job.”
“You want to run out and get yourself killed. We ain’t got no other sisters.”
“That’s what makes it okay for you and Indio? Mamì would still have Roberto? You want me to be like Roberto? He’s full of shit.”
“Okay, nobody likes Roberto! He’s an ass, but you don’t got to be like him that way. You know I’m talking about the big-time desk job, the suburbs—and get away from this.”
He gestured, a casual flip of the hand that could’ve meant the kitchen and its faded wallpaper, Henry Street’s long row of tenements, or the entire city.