Myles had arrived with Hansen, who wore a leather coat, an olive drab suit that did not have a wrinkle in it and polished brown shoes with thick shoe-repair-shop soles. Hansen took a couple of resigned steps over to the boxes, ripped the top off one and began poking inside. Myles, holding the handkerchief to his face, went up to the box and reached past Hansen. Myles brought out a black plastic bag, inside of which was a foot. He dropped the foot back into the box and began to breathe evenly so he would not gag.
Initial Investigation
At about 0810 hours the undersigned responded to rear yard of 747 Whittier Avenue Bronx due to a report of bodies in a bag. Upon arriving, the undersigned observed 3 boxes which upon examination were found to contain 2 bodies. Box #1 contained the body of Gumersindo Torres, aka NeNe, which had been cut up in the following fashion: the head had been severed as had the legs from the torso apparently to make it easier to put it in the bag. It was also observed that his genitals had been cut off and there were apparent gunshot wounds in the face. Body #2, that of Pedro Torres, was severed at the belt line and the lower torso was placed in bag #2 and the upper torso was placed in bag #3. All of the aforementioned bodies were first placed in black plastic bags and then placed in cardboard boxes which were taped and tied. The boxes bore the name of the Mayaguez Express Company, 311 Bruckner Blvd. 261-5300. Box size 18 x 18 x 30.
Ptl. M. Crofton
In the precinct, there were now files for eight fresh homicides and it took no particular poring over them by Martin to decide that they were probably related and undoubtedly motivated by drugs. Even the most immoral woman he ever had heard of, and he had heard of many, could not cause this much carnage in so short a time, he declared. While these people of grease always will fight one battle over a woman, Martin believed they could not possibly have enough sperm boiling inside them to conduct a full war. And today’s homicides, Martin snarled, bodies left cut up like chops, was the worst he ever had seen in his career. For his listeners in the squad room he recalled a case he once had on the West Side, where he arrived to find a man who had cut up his wife. The man was standing placidly in the kitchen, cooking his wife’s vagina in a frying pan. “Cooking up her thing,” Martin said. Of course Martin had not looked at the frying vagina, but remembered instead the man standing there and pouring frying oil into the frying pan and the pale yellow oil dripping off the oil bottle spout.
On the day they found the cut-up bodies, Myles and Hansen worked until 1:00 A.M. At 11:30 P.M., they drove up to Whittier Street to interview a man who said he had seen a couple of men carrying Mayaguez boxes into the lot behind the apartments.
“One of them was dressed up in a wedding suit,” the man said.
“What do you mean, wedding suit?”
The man’s wife cut in. “Oh, yes, I see this man dressed like this. A very beautiful blue jacket and black pants. He was carrying this big box.”
The detectives’ work chart had Myles and Hansen starting a day tour at 8:00 A.M. the next morning. Eyes flecked with red, they drove to the Mayaguez offices and the manager who had been on duty when Teenager arrived to take the boxes said that he could not possibly remember any single person in wedding clothes on any Saturday because there were so many people going to weddings in the Bronx who stopped at his place to send presents to Puerto Rico.
“If the wedding is in the Bronx, then why are they sending presents to Puerto Rico?” Myles asked.
“Because that is what they do,” the manager said.
The manager rode with them to the precinct, where a pile of pictures was placed on a desk. As each picture of a known Puerto Rican killer in the Bronx was shown to the warehouse manager, he took a great amount of time with the picture, biting his lip in an attempt to remember, then sorrowfully handing the picture back to Myles and Hansen. The manager took exactly the same amount of time with the picture of Teenager as he did with the others. He did not allow his blood pressure to rise even a point as he stared at Teenager’s face, bit his lip, and then gave this picture, too, to Crofton. The manager’s hand went out for the next picture.
In the afternoon, Myles and Hansen pulled up across the street from Ana’s Bar. Luisa Maria stepped out of the bar once, wearing a low-cut summer dress and high heels. When she saw Myles and Hansen, she then went inside quickly.
“Right to the phone,” Hansen said.
Twenty minutes later, Santos Rivera walked along the street, looked at Myles’ car and kept going.
“Now they got two witnesses say we’re here,” Hansen said.
“I feel like going inside,” Myles said.
“Sitting here bothers them enough,” Hansen said.
They were off for seventy-two hours. On the first day back, Hansen had to go to the firing range and Myles was drawn for special duty at the United Nations, where a demonstration in support of the Palestine Liberation Organization took place. It wasn’t until the following Saturday at 1:00 A.M. that their tour resumed. They drove immediately to Ana’s and saw only three people sitting listlessly at the bar.
“Out partying someplace,” Hansen said. He put the car into motion.
24
AT 1:30, TEENAGER STEPPED OUT of his car in front of the Aguaserra, waved his arm for Pancha to see him from the apartment across the street and walked past the window shining with grease and into the stand.
A girl in a tight black blouse and flowered apron stood behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and listening to the juke box.
“Who are you?” Teenager said.
“Doris. I am here only five days.” She took a deep breath so that her already large chest would become as pronounced as possible.
“That is too long for you to be here,” Teenager said. “You are too beautiful for this place.”
He walked to the end of the counter, stepped through an opening and picked up the last tray of yellow rice on the steam table. Under it was a .38 Ruger with a black barrel and brown handle. He took the gun and went to the rear of the store, pulled open the trap door, by now unlocked for him, and went down the metal steps into the cellar. A thin man in a rainhat and Flex-a-Lite mask stood at a small table and cut brown heroin with mannite.
“Junior told me to do this here,” the one in the rainhat said. “Someone is to pick it up. Junior said he was going out to have fun.”
The table was alongside a generator that served the Aguaserra’s refrigerators. The generator was covered with thick grease. The guy in the rainhat brushed his elbow against the generator, placing a large black grease smear on his elbow. He rubbed the grease off his elbow with his hand, wiped the hand on his pants and resumed cutting the heroin.
Teenager stepped through a door into a long narrow room where Benny Velez sprawled in a chair and Nesterline, still in his best powder blue suit, and two young guys who had wisps of hair on their chins sat on the edge of a studio bed. A television set was at one end of the room, a statue of a black Madonna at the other.
“I am busy,” Teenager said. “Be fast.”
“They owe thirty-five hundred,” Nesterline said.
“So give me thirty-five hundred,” Teenager said.
“They only gave me seventeen hundred,” Nesterline said.
“What am I supposed to do?” Teenager said. “I want my money. If I do not get it, I will shoot you first and then these two with you.”
Nesterline stood up in disbelief. “How could you say this fucking thing about me, man?”
“Because you don’t pay, why should he care about you?” Benny asked.
“Shoot them,” Teenager said. He handed Benny the .38 Ruger.
“You’re wrong, man!” Nesterline yelled. Benny was standing up with the gun pointed at Nesterline and the two on the couch.
“You don’t give us the money,” Benny said.
“Give me everything you have,” Teenager said.
He looked at the watch Nesterline was wearing.
“Give it to me,” he said.
“It’s nothing, man,�
� Nesterline said.
“Give it to me,” Teenager said.
Nesterline handed him the watch, a four hundred dollar Rolex steel watch. Teenager looked at it, then handed it to Benny. “This is yours,” he said. Benny dropped it into his pocket.
“You wear my watch?” Nesterline said.
“Later I will,” Benny said, “when you’re dead under this basement.”
Nesterline looked at Teenager. “You just made me do a whole baptism for you.”
I should shoot Nesterline right now, Teenager said to himself, for even mentioning this baptism that nobody should ever think of. But if he shot Nesterline right away, then he never would have a chance to get the money. The thought of lost money caused Teenager’s eyes to crinkle and his insides to boil.
“It is not our fault that we owe this money,” Nesterline said. “We give these half los to this guy down the street and we go to get the money and he said to us yesterday, “Oh, I went to Benny and I said to him that here is the money I owe.’ We said, ‘All right, if you give this money to Benny then Benny has it and everything is all right. We believe this guy. Then we come here tonight and we say, well, we owe Benny seventeen hundred and we have our money with us. I say to Benny, here, and Benny says to me he wants all the money. He says we must pay to him the money this guy down the street lied to us about.”
“What does this guy have to do with me?” Teenager asked. “I do not even know this guy. I just know thirty-five hundred dollars you owe me. You go over to this guy down the street and show him what happens for money he does not pay.”
Teenager threw the .38 Ruger on the daybed. Nesterline, the sweat causing fresh dark circles under the arms of his red sweatshirt, picked up the gun as if it were a religious object.
“Is it a good gun?” Nesterline asked.
“If I give it to you, it is good,” Teenager said.
Nesterline aimed the pistol at the wall over the statue of the black Madonna. When he fired, the two young guys on the daybed jumped. The slug caused another hole in the pattern of holes in the wall over the statue.
“If you do not get the other eighteen hundred, then you take the guy down the street off the count,” Teenager said. “If you do not do that, then I will come back here and take the three of you off the count tonight.”
Teenager left the room, climbed the basement stairs and went out into the night to his Mercedes, which catapulted down the street toward his playground. This time, he felt properly dressed: a new medallion, Santa Barbara on one side, Changó on the other, was inlaid with red and white stones and had cost twenty-two thousand dollars. On his left wrist, the yellow bracelet now had “Teenager” inlaid in diamonds. He wore two rings, a gold wedding band with diamonds, and on his right hand, the largest ring in the South Bronx, gold studded with diamonds, a ring as heavy as a paperweight.
He went to the La Barca first. After two drinks he went into the kitchen and did up lines of cocaine on the table and snorted them up. Twenty minutes later, he picked up the phone in the bar and found the Aguaserra line was busy. He dialed continuously until he got through.
The countergirl at the Aguaserra answered. Teenager could hear that Benny had picked up the extension downstairs.
“I want Benny,” Teenager said. The countergirl hung up.
“Why is this phone so busy?” Teenager said.
“Because many people are calling here,” Benny said.
“Girls call you,” Teenager said.
“What should I do, tell them not to call me?” Benny said.
“I do not care about them. I want to know about those three. Did they bring you money yet?”
“I am waiting for them,” Benny said.
“I thought they said this guy lives just around the corner.”
“I am waiting,” Benny said.
“If they don’t bring you the money, or they don’t shoot this guy, then I will come back and they will get a banking lesson. Nesterline will learn that you pay your banker on time or your banker will get mad at you.”
For an hour, as Teenager drank in the bar and Benny waited in the Aguaserra cellar, Nesterline and the two young guys with him had been sitting in the dark in the apartment of the guy who owed eighteen hundred dollars. He lived on the third floor of a six-story attached building on Faile Street, a morose block which began outside the locked back door of the Aguaserra and, alongside, the open back door of Flores’ bar, and then ran perpendicularly into the darkness. Most of the buildings on Faile Street had windows covered with tin and insides shelled by fire. Nesterline and the two had entered the guy’s three-room apartment by breaking the window at the fire escape. Nesterline sat on a chair facing the door, listening to footsteps out in the hall. One set of footsteps stopped at the apartment door. Keys jangled. Nesterline held out the gun.
“Don’t move your hands,” Nesterline said as the guy walked into the apartment.
“What do you have that for?” the guy said, sneering at the gun.
“You lie to us,” Nesterline said. “You say to us that you pay Benny eighteen hundred dollar and you never give to Benny anything.”
“I swear to you that I pay Benny,” the guy said.
“When?”
“I just saw him this afternoon and gave to him the money.”
“Who was Benny with?”
“With Teenager. Teenager kissed me for giving the money. They said they will do a big business with me.”
“Give me the money now,” Nesterline said.
“I told you I gave the money to Benny and Teenager already.”
“They just told me that you never pay them,” Nesterline said.
“They tell you lies,” he said. “They just want to collect twice.”
“Give me eighteen hundred,” Nesterline said.
“I have no money. I gave it to Benny and Teen—”
Nesterline started shooting. They were all standing so close in the living room that the blood got over Nesterline and the two with him. When the gun was empty, Nesterline stood for a moment in awe of what he had done. Then there was a shout on the night street outside the building. Nesterline and the two scrambled out the window and went down the fire escape.
In the 43rd Precinct, there was a report of shots fired at 1155 Faile Street.
“We ought to take a look,” Hansen said, as it came over the radio.
Myles put his hand on the horn and Hansen had the roof light attached and blinking as they went under the Bruckner Expressway, careened onto Southern Boulevard, dived into the darkness of the street running behind the Aguaserra and stopped at the crowd in front of the apartment building on Faile Street.
A patrolman was upstairs already, looking down at the body of a guy, who was on his back with the front of his yellow shirt covered with blood. His eyes were fixed in a cringe.
A squat man in a baseball cap stood in the doorway with a woman.
“She see them go away.”
“When?” Myles said.
“Five minutes,” the man said.
“Where did they go?” Myles said.
The woman chattered in Spanish.
“She say they go straight up the block to the back of the bar. Three of them.”
Myles and Hansen left the patrolman and backed the car up the street until they nearly were inside Flore’s Bar. The barred windows of the back of the Aguaserra were next to the open back door of the bar. Myles and Hansen walked into the bar, which was crowded. At the front of the bar, by the door to the street, the owner sat on a high stool. He looked straight ahead and chewed gum and jiggled a baseball bat between his knees. Without seeming to notice Myles and Hansen, the owner’s thumb jerked in the direction of the Aguaserra, next door.
Myles had his gun out as he wheeled into the grease smell of the Aguaserra’s front door. Three frightened faces looked at him. The fronts of their jackets were covered with blood.
“Police! Freeze!” Myles said.
Hansen was behind him.
“H
e did the shooting,” one of them said, his head indicating Nesterline.
“I kill you too,” Nesterline said to the one.
Myles said nothing. He couldn’t wait to get handcuffs on them so he could write down in his pad what he had just heard.
It was two in the morning before Benny felt safe to climb out of the cellar of the Aguaserra and look for Teenager. He found him at the La Barca.
“Pancha saw them coming out,” Benny told Teenager. “He says one of the cops is the same guy was around before. He says it is the cop with the long face.”
“And he arrested Nesterline and those other two?”
“I just told you yes.”
Teenager slapped Benny in the face. “Don’t talk to me like that when I’m thinking.” He was thinking of Nesterline and the baptism. He wondered if there was a way that he could kill Nesterline in the police station.
“You are sure that this cop is the same guy?” he said finally.
“Pancha saw him from the window. Pancha can tell Americans from each other,” Benny said.
“Why does this one cop bother us so much?” Teenager said. “This guy tonight was a bad guy that lied about business. Why should the cops care about him? Why should they bother us? I am only doing business. I don’t hurt anybody legitimate. Let them worry about these niggers mugging legitimate people.”
Q. I am Patrolman Myles Crofton, badge number 76324. Would you state your name for the record, please?
A. Herman Carvallo.
Q. Are you known by any other name?
A. Nesterline.
Q. How old are you?
A. Twenty-six.
Q. Have you been a resident of Bronx County?
A. Yes.
Q. And you realize that you have been arrested for the crime of homicide in Bronx County?
A. Yes.
Q. You are talking to me of your own free will, is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you been advised that you could have a lawyer?
A. Yes.
Q. And you still wish to talk to me?
A. Yes.
Q. Did I do anything to force you into talking to me?
A. No.
Q. Did I promise you anything?
Forsaking All Others Page 32