by S. J. Rozan
I had the cab drop me a block south of the address I was looking for. The Pakistani cabbie had argued with the idea of coming up here in the first place, but I wouldn’t get out of his cab. He burned rubber leaving, racing by a man and woman trying to flag him to a stop.
I stood on the corner, looking up Broadway, where the fire escape—draped fronts of five-story brick apartment buildings stared each other down across the dry brown dirt of the traffic islands in the center of the street. Here and there, a wizened bush or tree or patch of ivy too cussed to die stood defiantly in one of those islands, waving in the slipstream of the passing cars.
The aroma of frying fish from a Jamaican fast-food place reminded me of how long it had been since I’d eaten. I stopped at the sidewalk window, bought a fried-haddock sandwich and a ginger beer, ate and drank leaning on the counter. Then I walked north, threading my way along the hot, crowded sidewalk.
Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be on the street, talking, playing cards, trying to find some relief from the heat. Women in cotton housedresses fanned themselves with folded newspapers as they sat on stoops, watching little boys race by on bicycles and little girls skip rope. Three middle-aged men in sweat-soaked T-shirts smoked cigars and played a slow game of dominoes to a Latin beat from a tinny radio. On the corner, as I turned down 142nd Street, a bigger, booming radio was surrounded by five young men and a red-lipped young woman. She was giving one of the young men hell in rapid-fire Spanish, poking him in the chest with a crimson fingernail while he pretended he didn’t care and his buddies smirked.
Not many stoop-sitters seemed to have chosen 142nd Street over the avenues that crossed it, and it was easy to see why. The block was dotted with abandoned buildings, dented tin covering their windows, front steps crumbling. In the center of the block, four tenements had been knocked down. The empty lot was knee-deep with garbage I could smell from across the street, outside the storefront at number 157.
The storefront glass was painted with a red, black, and green flag below an arch of gold letters reading, STRENGTH THROUGH JOBS/JOBS THROUGH STRENGTH. I still thought it was catchy. The pale streetlight in front of the empty lot across the street wasn’t close enough to illuminate the storefront, only to help whatever was inside cast deeper shadows into the darkness. I couldn’t see anything; I knocked anyway.
I waited; nothing happened; I knocked harder.
A light came on as I lifted my fist to pound again. It glowed grudgingly, uninterested, like the man who emerged through a door in the shadowed rear wall and ambled unhurriedly toward me.
The door swung open, but not far. A black man about my own height, with a sharp nose and a short beard, held it open about a foot, stared at me. “Who the hell you?”
“You’re Chester Hamilton?” I asked.
“Yeah, and I already knew that. Who the hell you?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Well, seeing as I already asked you the same one twice and I ain’t heard no answer, you can take yours and shove ’em.” He started to close the door.
I planted my foot on his side of the threshhold, said, “Bill Smith.”
Hamilton looked down at my foot, then up at my face again. “Well, whoop-dee-damn-doo. What you want with me?”
“I have a situation I think you can help me with.”
He made a show of looking behind me, up and down the street. “Hmmm,” he said. “You was a cop, you’d come here in a car. With another cop. I mean, this bein’ a bad neighborhood and all. So whatever your problem be, it ain’t on behalf of the NYPD.”
“That’s true.”
“So why the fuck I’m supposed to care?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
He paused, tilted his head a fraction of an inch, as though to see me differently. “What kind of proposition?”
“One that could make you some money. But I don’t want to discuss it out here on the street.”
He stared at me in silence for a few moments, greed battling wariness in his eyes.
Greed won.
Hamilton stepped back, pulled the door half open, just enough for me to move past him into the room.
The Strength Through Jobs/Jobs Through Strength office consisted of a battered desk, a phone, and six mismatched chairs around a card table, an arrangement that suggested strategy sessions, or poker. The peeling paint on the walls was partly obscured by posters: a large tattered one of Malcolm X and a faded four-color glossy proclaiming a Pan-Africa Day Rally on a Sunday in 1993. Bugs had laid down and died inside the globe of the weak overhead light, and the soft, heavy smell of years of grime and take-out food was so thick it was almost visible.
“Okay.” Hamilton closed the door behind me. He moved to the card table, sprawled himself in a chair. I sat across from him as he said, “Now tell me what the hell you talking about.”
“I want you to do for me what you did this morning,” I said.
“This morning,” he said with a smirk, “I got a haircut. Got my beard trimmed all nice, nice hot towels, too. That what you interested in?”
“I’m interested in fifty men rioting on a construction site.”
He shook his head. “Sound like a terrible thing.”
“Depends who you are. Could be a useful thing.”
“How’s that?”
“In the same way it was this morning.”
“You keep talking in riddles, we gonna get nowhere.”
“You keep pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s not going to be much better.”
“What the hell you want? You from some union, got a deal to make?”
“I want to make you the same deal you had this morning.”
“I can’t recall no deal I had this morning. You want to lay it out for me?”
All right, I thought. We’ll play Let’s Pretend. “I want a couple of busloads of men to shut down a construction site.”
His eyes widened theatrically. “You shittin’ me.”
“That idea never occurred to you before?”
“Well…” he said, with oratorical emphasis. “Well, naturally, a lot of peoples round here, they filled with righteous anger about the way they been treated, about the discrimination they suffered in they lives. Peoples got to have a outlet for expressin’ that anger. Sometime, when the system just ain’t respondin’ to peaceful means—”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I want.”
“Exactly what?”
“Exactly what you did this morning.”
“Man, you keep singing the same song, ‘this morning, this morning.’ Maybe—”
“Two thousand dollars.”
He stopped. “Say what?”
“That’s what he said he paid you.”
I had no idea who I was talking about, or even if I was right. I waited to see Hamilton’s response.
He waited too. Finally, he slowly said, “Who?”
“The man who hired you to come to the Armstrong site this morning. I don’t know his name; we met in a bar. I only know him as Lefty.”
A grin spread itself across Hamilton’s face. “Lefty?” He snorted with amused derision. “He callin’ hisself Lefty?”
Sure, I thought. And he was drinking with Sleepy and Dopey.
“Can we make a deal, then?” I said. “Like you had with him?”
Hamilton paused, then nodded. “I’ma tell you what: ’Cause you a friend of Lefty’s, here’s a idea—”
I never got to know what that idea might be.
The explosive rattle of the first round of shots was lost in the crash as glass from the storefront window blew across the room. I hit the ground. Shards rained down around me like razor-sharp rain. Plaster dust filled the air as bullets smashed into walls. The hammering roar of the second round came as I yanked my .38 from my side. I fired through the gaping, jagged hole where the window had been, the report jarring my elbow into the hard floor; but by then no one was there, no answering shots,
just a screech of tires as a car tore down the street, away from here.
I rolled over, crawled to the door, yanked it open from a crouching position. Nothing. I looked up and down the street, across, then stood. Empty, everywhere. I stuck my gun into my shoulder rig and turned back into the room.
Chester Hamilton lay on his back on the grimy floor, a circle of blood on his chest, a spreading dark pool under him. His folding chair was tangled with his legs. I looked at him, his wide eyes and open mouth. I crouched and felt the artery at his neck. His body, the table, the floor, were covered with glittering splinters of broken glass. They crunched under my feet as I turned and left.
fifteen
i called 911 anonymously from a subway pay phone, in case no one else had done that yet. I called Lydia from my apartment after I’d poured a flood of Maker’s Mark over ice and gone through about half of it.
“Is everything okay?” she asked when she knew it was me. Behind her I heard the electronic chatter of the living-room TV fade as she closed her door. “It’s late for you to be calling.”
“No,” I said. “Just talk to me a little.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Give me a minute.” I took another drink.
“Bill?” When I didn’t answer, her words quickened. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
“I’m home,” I said. “I’m okay. I just … I’ll tell you in a minute.” I lit a cigarette, listened to her breathing softly on the other end of the phone, felt bourbon and the presence of Lydia slowing my racing blood. I drew in smoke, told her, “I went to see a guy. Someone shot him.”
“Shot him? When? Who?”
“When I was there. I don’t know who.” I told her about Hamilton, about how I’d gotten to him, about the deal we’d almost made, and the shards of glass.
“Oh my God,” she said softly. “Are you okay? Do you want me to come over?”
I lit another cigarette off the end of the first. Yes, I thought. “No,” I said. “No, it’s late. Talking about it is good. That’s what I wanted.”
“Bill?” Her voice was tentative. “The police …”
“I didn’t see the guy,” I said. “What I know about Hamilton might help them figure out who killed him, but not because I was there.”
“But you’re not telling them what you know.”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
It was time to tell her now. “Because of Chuck.”
“Mr. DeMattis?” she said. She hesitated, then asked, “Why? What about him?”
She sounded as though she wanted to hear what I had in mind; but she didn’t sound surprised.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But something’s not right. Something hasn’t been right from the beginning. I saw him tonight, too.”
“You saw Mr. DeMattis? When?”
Through another cigarette and another bourbon, I told Lydia about the Vault.
“But you don’t believe him,” she said softly, when I’d gotten to the end. “You don’t believe his reason for keeping us there is in case we can turn up something that will protect that project and the jobs of all those men.”
“Honest to God,” I said, turning off the lamp I was sitting near, “I don’t know.” The light still on, the one by the piano, cast long shadows down the room, crossing the shadows the streetlights threw in. “That would be like Chuck, something he’d do. But from the beginning, there’s been something strange … or maybe not. I don’t know.” I reached for the cigarettes, made myself pull my hand back. I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t know,” I said again, my words cloudy with liquor, smoke, and uncertainty. I thought about Chuck, about the plane cutting through the clear sky above the river out his office window, about watching through the Vault’s black glass as he walked away, just a few hours ago.
“Tell me why,” Lydia said calmly.
I was almost startled when she spoke; exhaustion and bourbon had been carrying me elsewhere, into a place where shapes moved in the darkness and the cool wind brought echoes of sounds that were not words.
I took another swallow, brought myself back. “From the beginning,” I repeated, trying to make the shapes take form for her, reaching for something solid in the darkness; “and you saw it too. He turned the case over to us too fast. Remember, you said you never met a cop who didn’t want to know? And I said he wasn’t a cop anymore.”
“He said he had other cases he was working on.”
“Then why take this one and then farm it out, give it to us and say he didn’t want to know? Why not just send Crowell to someone else? Me—if he thought I was the right guy for the job—or someone else?”
“He said he saw them as a repeat client he didn’t want to lose just because he’s too busy to deal with them now.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see it, appreciating what she was doing. She probably didn’t believe a word she was saying, but she was forcing me to look past whatever theory I had going. When we worked together, it was what we always did.
“Maybe,” I said. “But there’s the Pelligrini thing.”
“Pelligrini?” she asked. “What about him?”
“Sal Maggio told me Pelligrini was involved with some mob guy. Louie Falco. Falco’s connected to Chuck somehow. From the old neighborhood.”
“He is? How do you know that?”
“Doherty told me.”
Lydia was silent for a few moments. “This is what you haven’t been telling me.”
I pried off my shoes, lay back on the couch, eyes closed, phone to my ear. I didn’t ask how she’d known there was something, didn’t try to pretend there wasn’t. “I’m sorry,” I said. I expected an outburst, anger, a jabbing reminder that this wasn’t the way our partnership worked. I deserved it, but that’s not what happened.
“Not telling me,” she said softly; “that was a way to make it not true, right?”
I moved on the couch, felt my back and shoulders relax into the comfort of the cushions.
“If I didn’t talk about it,” I said, “I didn’t have to think about it.”
“But now you do.”
“Leaving Hamilton,” I said, “being there when he was killed, and leaving … I had to be sure I wanted to do that.”
“It could make a big problem for you,” she said. “If the police find out you were there.”
“And it could be dangerous for other people, if what I know could help them find his killer and I’m keeping it back.”
“But you’re doing that,” she said, “for the same reason Mr. DeMattis says he wants us to stay on the site. You want to protect him, unless you’re sure, the same way he wants to protect Crowell.”
“Yes,” I said into the warm, dim room, grateful for a partner whose thoughts moved along with mine, who understood. “Because the question is the same. If he’s mixed up through this guy Falco in whatever the hell is going on on that site, why did he bring us in in the first place?”
She waited, then asked, “What are you going to do?”
The next question, the next step. I didn’t know the answer.
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m exhausted. I can’t think. But I want to go back to work tomorrow, up there. At least one more day. Are you with me?”
“You know I am.” In the darkness, her voice smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, and we said good night.
I turned over on the couch, settled in, too tired to try for the bedroom. As the night sounds moved in the room around me and the colors began to float behind my eyes, I thought I sensed the freesia scent of Lydia’s hair. I started to reach for the phone, to call her again, to tell her something important; but my arm was heavy, too heavy to lift. I felt as though I were piled with weight, much more than my own body, too much weight to carry, even to move under. I couldn’t pick up the phone; the weight kept me from Lydia. It kept me here, in the place where I’d lived for years, the place where I’d come, almost by accident, when things went bad, the place where I
’d been so long that the place and I were part of each other now. From the darkness outside me, where the weight was, I heard the sounds, traffic and my own breathing and the ticking of a clock, that I knew I’d hear. I smelled the bourbon and sweat and cigarettes I’d put in the air. From the darkness inside me, I heard, softly, other sounds: dim voices, some I knew and some I didn’t; a long, thin scream, that could have been from years ago, or from this morning; and the crunch of broken glass under my own feet as I turned and walked away.
sixteen
i was stiff in the morning, hurting all over, from the fight and the bourbon and the night on the couch. My dreams had been troubled but not clear, and I woke with the Scriabin études in my head, phrases from one piece calling up another, nothing finishing; the connections that would make the pieces make sense for me, elusive and ahead.
I put up coffee and I showered. Dry, shaved, and half dressed, I threw back the first cup standing at the counter. Before I could pour myself more, the phone rang.
It stopped immediately; that meant my service had gotten it, which is what they’ll do unless I check in with them and tell them to go off duty for a while. Lydia scoffs at me for using the service instead of a machine, but I started with them eighteen years ago, in the days when people—clients—didn’t believe an investigator wasn’t just a fly-by-night operation if he didn’t have a secretary. As soon as a human voice answers the phone, people conjure up images of waiting rooms, inner offices, file cabinets, carpeting, and conference tables. It’s never been more than my apartment, me, and whomever I take on to work a particular case with me, but I’ve gotten used to hearing a human voice at the other end of my phone, too.
I let them take it, finished the coffee. Then I called in.
“Good morning,” a cheerful young man wished me. This was Tommy, one of the underemployed actors who irregularly staffed the place. “You’re up early. Phone wake you?”
“Just about,” I told him. “I was mainlining my coffee.”