No Witness But the Moon

by Suzanne Chazin

  “I can’t lie about what I don’t feel.”

  Delgado winked at him. “Politicians do it all the time.”

  Vega laughed. It was the first laugh he’d had since the shooting. The release felt good.

  Joy walked back into the nave, said hello to Father Delgado, and then excused herself to return some texts near the doors.

  “Shall we speak in my office?” Delgado asked Vega.

  “Thank you. That would be great.”

  The church, with its heavy stone walls, wood rafters, and stained glass could have come straight out of the fifteenth century. Delgado’s office however, was a pedestrian 1970s vintage with beige plaster walls decorated in equal parts crucifixes and Yankee memorabilia. Vega took a seat in a well-worn leather chair. Delgado took another chair across from him rather than choosing to sit behind his desk. Vega appreciated the priest’s desire to make this visit as informal as possible.

  “Father.” Vega ran a hand through his black wavy hair. He wasn’t sure how to begin. “You knew my mother well. Did you also know the man who was—” Own it, damn you. “The man I killed? Hector Ponce?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Was he a member of the church?”

  “His family attends St. Raymond’s. He was also friends with our church custodian. The man you just met.”

  That explained the probing look the janitor had given him. Delgado frowned and shifted in his seat. “Are you asking out of personal curiosity? I would assume, given the uh—situation—you aren’t asking as a police officer.”

  “No, no,” Vega assured him. “I have no police powers here. I’m asking because I read that Ponce was the super in my mother’s apartment building.”

  “Yes. He was,” said Delgado evenly.

  “He was also the first person to come across my mother after she was beaten.” Vega held the priest’s gaze. “You were the second.”

  “Yes. Hector called me. I gave your mother last rites.”

  “You gave her CPR,” said Vega. “And I never thanked you.”

  “I expect no thanks for being where God intended me to be.”

  “I wish God had put you there a little sooner.”

  Delgado took a deep breath. He looked genuinely pained. “I wish the same. Believe me.”

  “I went back through the time frame of the crime,” said Vega. “It appears that Hector Ponce waited a full seventeen minutes before he dialed nine-one-one.”

  The priest put a hand on his knee and leaned forward. “Jimmy—may I call you that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your mother, God rest her soul, has been dead almost two years. Why are you revisiting this now? Do you honestly believe that Hector had something to do with your mother’s death?”

  “I don’t know. But those seventeen minutes are giving me pause.”

  “I’ve known Hector many, many years—longer than I’ve known my church custodian even. He was a good man. A flawed man, perhaps. But a good man.”

  “What do you mean ‘flawed’?”

  Delgado shook his head. “I’m a priest, Jimmy. I will not speak against the dead. I can tell you this however: if he made any bad choices, they were done out of love and loyalty—never in hatred or anger.”

  “But—seventeen minutes,” Vega repeated.

  “Surely you must realize that given Hector’s—immi-gration status—he was panicked about speaking to the police.”

  “And you think that’s all it was?”

  Delgado didn’t answer. Vega tried a different tack.

  “There’s a picture the press has been circulating.” Vega took out his cell phone and scrolled through it until he came to the photograph. “Ponce had this snapshot in his hand when he was—when I shot him,” said Vega. “Have you seen it?”

  “I’m trying to hold myself back from all the details of this case right now,” said Delgado.

  “I understand. But it would be helpful if you could tell me anything about the picture.”

  Delgado squinted at the screen. He pointed to the man standing on the right. “That’s definitely Hector when he was younger. I know he had a younger brother and son who died a long time ago. That could be them.” Delgado handed back the phone. “I’m guessing you aren’t allowed to speak to the family.”

  “I’m not even allowed to do what I’m doing now,” Vega confessed. “I’m just trying to see if there’s a connection. You’re telling me Ponce was a good man. Yet he broke into a celebrity’s house and tried to rob him. And my mother was beaten to death and robbed in the same building where he was the super. What would you think if you were me?”

  “I would ask the same questions,” said Delgado. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any answers. We’re all capable of great deeds and terrible sins. Hector loved his two sons by Alma very much. And yet he abandoned his other children in Honduras. It went against everything he believed in. And yet he did it. Why? I don’t know.”

  “If he could do that,” said Vega, “maybe he did this, too.” Vega rubbed his sweaty palms along his thighs. The adrenaline from last night had worn off but he still felt like a meth addict in withdrawal. He broke out in a sweat easily. He couldn’t sit still for long. He got up and paced the room.

  “It’s tearing me up to think Ponce was right in my mother’s building—all this time—and I never questioned him,” said Vega. “I’m sorry to bring this to you but I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  “You always have a place to go,” said Delgado. He spread his palms and gazed up at the brown water stains on the acoustical tile ceiling. “God is listening, Jimmy. Make your peace with Him. Ask for His guidance and forgiveness.” Delgado rose and made the sign of the cross.

  “How can I just make my peace with God when I don’t know who killed her?”

  “The peace you need to make has nothing to do with your mother’s life, Jimmy. It has to do with your own.”

  In the narthex, Vega found Joy texting. “Let’s go home,” he said to her. The Bronx felt too weighted with memory.

  Joy glanced up from her cell phone. Her eyes traveled past her father to the front doors of the church. Her jaw muscles had a clenched look to them.

  “Did you know that Ruben Tate-Rivera just finished holding a press conference at Lita’s building? With Hector Ponce’s widow?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “He wants the district attorney to put you on trial.”

  “He wants the DA to convene a grand jury, Joy. Not a trial. Not yet, anyway. Can we talk about this on the way home?” Vega zipped up his jacket. Joy stayed rooted in place.

  “Dad? He’s calling on his supporters to march in protest.”

  “Okay, so they’re marching. That’s their choice.”

  “The march just kicked off from Lita’s building. That’s right around the corner from where we parked.”

  Chapter 11

  “Okay. Stay here. In the church. With Father Delgado,” Vega told Joy. “You’re safe in the church. I’ll get my truck and come back for you—”

  “But I want to come with you,” said Joy. She sounded so young all of a sudden. All that charcoal eyeliner—even her rose tattoo—did nothing to hide the little girl she still was beneath.

  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, chispita. Surely you can stay here by yourself for twenty minutes?”

  “Why can’t I come with you?”

  “Because you can’t!”

  Vega hated the harsh tone he had to use with his daughter. But Joy had never seen how quickly a crowd could turn into a mob. She’d never witnessed the venom people could unleash when they knew they’d never be held accountable. He had. In uniform, he’d broken up brawls that started out directed at the brawlers and ended up directed at him. It was scary, all that anger. Like a wall of water coming at you. He didn’t want to chance an encounter like that with his daughter by his side. He didn’t want to alarm her, either.

  “Look—” Vega put his hands on her shoulders. He spoke in a calm and measur
ed voice. “Everything’s going to be fine. It’s just easier for me if you stay here and I come back for you.”

  “But you’ll be okay? You’ll keep your phone on?”

  “Of course. I’ll call you when I get to my truck.”

  He slipped back into his sunglasses and baseball cap. Disguise or no disguise, if anyone in that crowd had taken a good look at his personnel photo on TV or on any one of hundreds of Internet websites, he might as well be trailing a spotlight.

  He left the church by a side exit. If he turned south and walked a couple of blocks before heading north, there’d be less of a chance he’d meet up with the protestors. He knew the neighborhood at least. He knew the pawnshops and check cashing joints with their brightly colored awnings and flashing neon signs in the windows. He knew the bodegas with their racks of cigarettes and forty-ounce malt liquors by the registers. He knew the narrow walkways along the sides of buildings that could sometimes take him from one street to another. If he could just avoid being recognized . . .

  The cold helped. People didn’t hang around in the cold. Vega turned left and then right. All the blocks in this area looked pretty much the same. Each side of the street was walled off by five- or six-story buildings the color of sand or mud with fire escapes zigzagging down their fronts like slashes of graffiti. In the windows, Vega could see air conditioning units and crosshatched metal gates, many strung with Christmas lights, some of them already aglow in the fading afternoon light. A few of the buildings had marble embellishments around their entrances attesting to a much grander past. But most looked liked their residents—sturdy and long-suffering. Along the curbs, dented sedans, some with faded and mismatched paint jobs, were parked nearly end-to-end. Fire hydrants, lampposts, and spindly trees sprouted from the pavements—all gunmetal gray this time of year.

  His phone rang in his pocket. Adele’s name was on the caller ID. He didn’t want to pick up and let her know where he was. On the other hand, he didn’t want her to worry if he didn’t answer.

  “Hey,” he said breathlessly. “Can I call you back? I’m sort of busy right now.”

  “Whatever it is can wait.”

  Vega hoped the mob would be so accommodating. They were a block ahead of him, marching along the Grand Concourse. He saw raised fists and homemade signs. “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” they chanted. It was a large group—much larger than a simple press conference would suggest. Vega wondered if they’d picked up supporters along the way.

  “Look, Adele—”

  She cut him off. “We have to talk. Not in an hour or two. Right now. Dave Lindsey came by to see me this morning. He wants me to use my keynote speech at Fordham tomorrow night to call for a grand jury investigation into the shooting.”

  Vega felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. “Sure. Why not?” he asked icily. “Why bother with all the niceties like due process, when it’s so much more fun to string me up by my cojones right now.”

  “Jimmy, don’t get defensive. I told him it was a bad idea.”

  “But you didn’t refuse.”

  “I will refuse. But he’s technically my boss. I have to have a reason.”

  “A reason? How about the fact that the ME hasn’t conducted the autopsy yet? How about the fact that ballistics and forensics haven’t weighed in? If I were one of your damned clients, would you and your zealot friends be calling for my head right now?”

  Vega scanned the crowd one block over. He was close enough to read the signs. I CAN’T BREATHE! NO MORE FER-GUSONS! IS MY SON NEXT? Worse than the words—at least for him—was the fact that his departmental photo was plastered on great big two-by-four signs. So if anybody had forgotten what he looked like, all they had to do was look up.

  The crowd had grown, too. They were easily ten people across. And every one of them looked personally affronted, as if Vega were to blame for every slight in their lives. How come all these protesters only came out when they were angry with the police? Where were the marches against the gangs and drug dealers in the neighborhood? Against the proliferation of guns? Where was the political will to make the schools better? The projects safer? The parks cleaner for children?

  “Do you think I want to be in this position?” asked Adele. “We’re talking about the first step to possibly putting you on trial.”

  “I know what a grand jury is, Adele. You don’t have to educate me.” His nose was starting to run with the cold. He wiped it. He hoped he didn’t sound like he was sniffling. “So . . . are you?”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” said Adele. “I’m hoping you can give me the ammunition to dissuade Dave and the rest of the board.”

  “You know I can’t talk about the shooting.”

  “Well, you damn well did last night!” she yelled. “I spoke to my friend, Myrna Acevedo, in the DA’s office this morning. The Wickford cops are saying you joked about the shooting right after it happened.”

  “I what?” Vega ducked into a walkway on the side of a building. He didn’t want to be having this conversation out in public.

  “An officer by the name of Drew Franklin said that you stated in the presence of him and his partner that you blow people’s brains out for the fun of it.”

  Vega’s words came back to him now. Stupid, careless words. Muttered under his breath in a moment of panic and desperation. He couldn’t even remember the two officers anymore, apart from the fact that one was a man shaped like a torpedo and the other was a woman with dandelion hair. He felt like some stray that had wandered into the middle of the Cross Bronx Expressway. He was about to be run over no matter which way he turned.

  “Jimmy,” said Adele. “Ruben Tate-Rivera has a copy of that interview. He’s going to make it public if he hasn’t already. If it’s not true, you need to say something.”

  Vega kicked at some broken glass beneath his feet. The narrow passage smelled of rotting garbage. He closed his eyes. It was true. And either way, there was nothing he could say. He started walking again. He had to find a way past the gauntlet to his car. Maybe north? The mob on the boulevard just seemed to grow and grow.

  “Where are you?” asked Adele.

  “Running some errands,” he lied.

  “Look,” she said. “Words are just words. I don’t care what you said. I know you were under stress last night. I’m more concerned about this witness.”

  “Witness? What witness?”

  “Hasn’t your lawyer made you aware that a witness is about to come forward?”

  Vega thought about the text he’d received an hour and a half ago from Isadora Jenkins, asking him to call her right away. He’d been at his mother’s grave at the time. He’d thought it could wait.

  “Jimmy—the DA is speaking to someone who claims to have seen you shoot Hector Ponce last night at point-blank range.”

  Vega’s breath seized in his lungs. The sounds and smells of the Bronx pressed in on him. Diesel fumes. The squeal of brakes. Fast food wrappers. Babies crying from open windows. Car sirens. Police sirens. Or was that an ambulance? Vega used to be able to tell the difference when he was a boy. But he’d grown soft and out of touch with the sharp edges of city life.

  “One of the bullets you shot apparently hit the underside of Ponce’s chin,” said Adele. “Your own department verified that. If what this witness is saying is true, the only way you could have made such a shot is if you—if you—”

  “If I executed him,” said Vega flatly, finishing her thought. Something burned in his nasal passages. The silence between them felt as deep and wide as the North Atlantic.

  “It’s not true, is it?” Adele’s voice was almost a whisper.

  Vega felt like he was being kneed in the gut with his hands tied behind his back. “Adele, please—”

  “If you tell me it’s not true, I’ll back you all the way. No matter what. Even if it costs me my job. But you need to give me something.”

  “Anything I say could get you subpoenaed. You want that?”

  “I want to be able to
back you with a clear conscience.”

  “Nena, you know me.”

  “I used to.”

  Vega heard the brittle frozen edges of doubt creeping into her voice. He couldn’t do or say anything to change that.

  Silence. He waited. She waited.

  “I gotta go, Adele.” He hung up.

  He shoved his phone in his back pocket, cursing himself for even answering it. He had enough to worry about right now. He turned the corner, hoping his luck might change.

  It did. It got worse.

  Chapter 12

  On the sidewalk, Vega found himself face-to-face with three young Latinos leaning in through the passenger-side window of a faded silver Nissan Sentra. The men were all wearing baggy jeans and hoodies. They straightened at the sight of Vega. Their hands shot out of their pockets. Their eyes tracked him while their heads pretended not to. Vega had been an undercover narc for five years. He knew instantly that he’d stumbled into a drug buy. He cursed under his breath and crossed to the other side of the street.

  The biggest, heftiest of the three shoved something into the waistband of his jeans. He straightened and stepped back from the vehicle. Vega could tell just by the young man’s stiff posture and the challenge in his eyes that the thing he’d just shoved into his waistband was a gun.

  Vega was alone. He had no weapon. He had his badge, but showing it in a jurisdiction that wasn’t his would only make things worse. He kept moving. He was no match for three armed gangbangers and God–knew-how-many-others inside the tinted-windowed sedan. The problem was, just as he could recognize a deal going down, they were equally good at knowing that aviator shades and a short, quasi-military haircut meant that he was a cop—unshaven or not. And not just any cop, but a cop who was trying to avoid them. That turned him from predator to prey in an instant.

  The thug with the gun and one of the others crossed the street and began tailing him from a distance. The third guy broke away and headed up the opposite side. Some kid he’d never even seen before popped out of a doorway. Vega felt like he was being set up. Or maybe they were just playing mind games with him—scaring him off their block. He couldn’t be sure. He kept walking. He heard one of the thugs behind him mutter, “Five-O.” Yep, they’d made him. He decided not to engage. But then he felt their footsteps getting closer. The kid in the doorway began approaching from the other direction. Vega had to get control of the situation. If he didn’t they might take it as a sign of weakness—which could turn out worse in the end.