The Fury (2009)
Page 19
young man. A man scared of something. Something he
felt, for some reason, I could help with.
I was a newspaper reporter. Nothing more, nothing
less. I sincerely doubted Gaines came to me because I
was his flesh and blood. He’d had years to try to reach
out. He came to me because something about my pro
fession, my line of work, could have helped him, thrown
him a lifeline.
I sat down, my butt immediately becoming stuck to
the seat by a clear substance I hadn’t seen before. The
joys of traveling on the MTA. Unfolding that morning’s
copy of the Gazette, I put all thoughts of Gaines and
Willingham out of my mind until I got home. Perhaps
good old-fashioned newspaper reporting would help
me out. Clear my mind.
But when I saw the story on page eleven, I nearly
threw up.
Man, 27, Shot to Death in His Apartment
A photo accompanied the article. I recognized the
man in the shot. I’d seen him just recently.
It was the guy whose briefcase I’d stolen. He was
found last night, murdered, shot twice in the back of the
head.
23
I couldn’t think of any words. My mouth was dry, my
head throbbing. Amanda and I were sitting in a cold
room in the Twenty-eighth Precinct on Eighth Avenue
between 122d and 123d streets. On the table in front of
us were several items: an empty briefcase, several
thousand dollars’ worth of various types of narcotics;
and one cell phone.
The man’s name was Hector Guardado. He was
twenty-seven years old. Lived alone in Spanish Harlem.
According to police reports, Hector had less than a
thousand dollars in his bank account. But upon search
ing his apartment, they found nearly fifty thousand
dollars in cash stuffed underneath a fake floorboard in
his kitchen.
Hector was not some young kid with no education
dealing to make ends meet. He had an MBA. A freaking
business degree. Yet despite the degree, despite the
hundred thousand dollars he spent to attain it, Hector
Guardado had not been able to find employment since
returning to New York City, his hometown.
The other day I’d stolen Hector’s briefcase to learn
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more about his dealings, to learn more about this group
of misfits that my brother may or may not have been a
part of. And now the man was dead, murdered in cold
blood. Another young man killed like a piece of meat,
shot twice in the back of the head, surely by someone
who knew him.
Because of that, I called Amanda the moment I got
out of the subway. Stopping at the apartment first to pick
up the briefcase and its contents, I headed straight for
the police. No more clandestine detective work. No
more hiding my hand until all the cards were dealt. A
life had been taken.
It made me sick to my stomach to think that Hector
Guardado’s life might have been taken because of his
stolen briefcase, but two days ago he was alive. Two
days ago the briefcase, along with the drugs and his cell
phone, were in his possession.
And now today he was dead, and the drugs were
in police custody. I wasn’t willing to write it off as a
coincidence.
“You okay?” Amanda asked. I didn’t nod. I wasn’t
the one on a slab somewhere, or being written about in
the newspaper. She seemed to get this, because she
didn’t ask again.
Soon the door opened and a familiar face walked in:
Detective Sevi Makhoulian.
Makhoulian sat down in a chair across from us.
Looked me over, then looked at the items on the table.
He took a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket, spread
open the black folds of the suitcase and peered in.
“This everything?”
I nodded.
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“And this was all in Guardado’s possession when
you took it from him.”
I nodded again. “You can fingerprint it,” I said. “I
never touched the stuff.” I nudged Amanda slightly with
my elbow, giving her a silent thanks for the advice.
Makhoulian sighed and leaned back in his chair. He
folded his arms behind his head as though deciding
what to watch on television. He didn’t look the least bit
concerned with anything.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Frankly,” he said, “I’m not sure yet. Unfortunately
we can’t charge you with theft, because Mr. Guardado
would have been our only witness, and frankly it would
be a waste of time. Because, though I don’t know you
that well, anytime a person willingly brings half a pound
of weed, a fourth of a kilo of cocaine and enough crack
rocks to keep Flavor Flav’s teeth chattering for a year,
they’re not the ones using it.”
“We’re not,” Amanda said. “We weren’t.”
Makhoulian nodded, then thumbed his lip. “Look,
Parker, I know you think your father is innocent. If I was
in your shoes, I’d want to do anything I could to help
him, too. And if he is innocent, he’ll be found as such
by a jury of his peers.”
“The case hasn’t even gone to the grand jury yet,”
Amanda spat.
“True, but we all know that’s a mere formality. We
have his fingerprints. We have his receipts from his trip
to New York. And we have a motive.”
“Does the name Butch Willingham ring a bell?” I
asked suddenly.
Makhoulian looked confused. Said, “No, why?”
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I believed him. “Nothing,” I said. “Just a guy who
was killed a long time ago.”
“And you bring it up, why, as a brainteaser?”
“I’m not sure why,” I said. “Just wondering if I’m the
only one who thinks there’s a lot more to this than a
simple case of a guy murdering his son. Since, you
know, another young man was just killed in the same
manner as Stephen Gaines.”
“The investigation into the death of Hector Guardado
is under way,” Sevi said. “You’re a reporter, Henry,
right? Can you tell me how many murders were com
mitted in New York City last year?”
“Not the exact number, but I believe it was under
five hundred.”
“Four hundred and ninety-two,” Makhoulian said.
His eyes were riveted on mine. This was not a history
lesson or an attempt to belittle my knowledge. “Now,
first of all, that was the lowest number of murders com
mitted in Manhattan in over forty years. First time it’s
been under five hundred since 1963, to be precise. Thing
is, even though that’s low for our standards, that’s still
an awful lot of homicides. Now, think about that word.
Homicide. These four hundred ninety-two people were
killed by someone else. They didn’t step into open
ele
vator shafts or pee on the third rail. They were killed.
Murdered. Now, you are a reporter. So it’s part of your
job to report crimes that are extraordinary. Like Sharon
Dombrowski, the elderly woman on Spring Street who
was so convinced she was being targeted by a robber
that she hooked up an electric cable to her door, so
when her poor landlord came by to check on a leak and
knocked he was electrocuted to death. Or Percy
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199
Whitmore who bought a studio in Little Italy using a
loan from his father. Only when he didn’t repay in time,
Percy’s dad came over and smacked his son across the
face so hard ol’ Percy fell and cracked his skull open on
his bookshelf. Accidental? Maybe. But homicides
nonetheless.”
“What’s your point?” I said.
“See, you write about these instances because they’re
one in a million. Like a shark attack, they’re so
gruesome and out of the ordinary that people want to
hear about them just like how they slow down when
passing a car wreck. What doesn’t get that press are the
boring murders. The two taps to the back of the head.”
Makhoulian mimicked pointing a gun to his cranium,
cocking his trigger finger twice to illustrate the shots.
“You know how many of those nearly five hundred
murders were the result of gunshot wounds? Four
hundred and twenty-eight. Now, I’m not a mathemati
cian, but that’s somewhere between eighty and ninety
percent. So you’re going to come in here and tell me,
definitively, that these two murders are the result of
some vast conspiracy that I’m too dumb to see?”
“I’m not saying you’re dumb. But Hector called my
brother that night.”
“According to Verizon, the phone call lasted eight
seconds. You know how long eight seconds is? Long
enough to realize you’ve dialed the wrong number before
you hang up. There are no other records of these two
having ever corresponded, no other calls between the
two.”
“You don’t see these killings as two pieces to—”
“Pieces my ass, you’re reading too much James
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Ellroy. Know what they teach us in the academy? The
rule of lex parsimoniae. Since I’m guessing you’re not
exactly fluent, what the Latin translates to is ‘entities
must not be multiplied beyond necessity.’ Boil down the
translation, what that means is if a man is murdered, and
the fingerprints on the gun belong to someone he
knows, who has access to him, and who has a motive
to kill him, I’d be willing to bet my badge, my wife, my
mortgage and my iPhone you put that killer in cell block
D you’ve got the right guy.”
“You said usually,” I replied. “You said eighty to
ninety percent. Well, it’s my job to find the exception
to your rule. I’ve told you everything I know. I’m hoping
when I walk out of here you do something with it, and
don’t piss it all away because of what you read in a
damn textbook. Because I find that extra few percent,
Detective. Father or not, brother or not, it’s just what I
do.”
Amanda and I stood up. Waited for Detective Sevi
Makhoulian to say something. When he didn’t, we
waved at the camera so the observers in the other room
would unlock the door. Makhoulian nodded, a click
signaled that the door was unlocked, and I left to prove
to the detective I was a man of my word.
And as I walked down the hallway, Amanda’s
unsteady hand locked in mine, I could feel the detec
tive’s eyes on my back.
24
I was dialing the number before I even left the station
house. He picked up right away, his voice not even at
tempting to hide the boredom that had no doubt settled
in over the past several months. Though I still harbored
some guilt over what had happened, every time we
spoke he’d forbid me to show any pity, either for myself
or for him. To Curt Sheffield, being wounded in the line
of duty was something to be proud of. He’d never
wanted to be anything but a cop—and he was a damn
good one at that—and he wasn’t going to let some
pissant reporter wallow in a pint over some spilt blood.
“Officer Sheffield,” he said, practically moaning.
Curt had taken a bullet in the leg last year while helping
me investigate a series of child kidnappings. The slug
had nicked an artery, and it took a few surgeries to
repair the wound. He’d probably never run in the
Olympics, but while he wouldn’t accept anyone’s pity
he had told me on several occasions the injury had done
wonders for his sex life. Guess chicks really do dig
scars. I’d have to ask Amanda if that’s why she was still
with me.
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“Hey, man, has your ass spread at all today?”
“S’up, Henry? Matter of fact I’ve been doing butt
blasts at my desk. Docs won’t let me go to the gym, but
I think it’s a trick to get me to keep coming in so they
can charge my insurance company. I swear my ass looks
like the victim of an attack of cottage cheese.”
“I don’t want to think about anything involving your
butt. What do you say to a drink after work? On me.”
“I don’t know man, I feel like I gotta lay low a little
bit. Last time I brought you in here I caught hell from
the chief of the department. You don’t have a lot of
friends around here these days, especially considering
what’s going on with your pops. At least you can be
happy you got the deep end of the Parker gene pool.”
“I’ll let that one slide. No work talk,” I said. “Just
conversation. All I ask. Okay, maybe one or two ques
tions, but that’s it.”
Curt went silent, but I could tell he was checking his
watch. Sitting behind the desk for Curt was like keeping
a racehorse stalled behind the starting gate. He was
born to walk the streets, not type up reports. That’s
likely why I felt the most guilt; it was one less great cop
protecting the city.
“Gimme one hour. Mixins.” Mixins was a cheesy
singles bar primarily frequented by law and finance
professionals who felt eight-dollar beers and weak
cosmos were part of the mating ritual. The bar had
undergone a total renovation over the last few years,
mainly due to its predilection to serving underage girls.
A friend of a friend who used to drink there said the
waitstaff would grossly undercharge young women,
naturally in the hopes of luring free-spending men to the
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bar. Soon enough the cops caught on. Though rumor
had it they didn’t so much as catch on, but an off-duty
detective saw a group of girls walk directly to the bar
once after finishing class on Friday.
The bar had been shut down, but underwent a classic
change in management, and now you’d be hard pressed
to find someone holding a glass who didn’t take home
close to six figures. Neither Curt nor I pulled in
anywhere in the universe of that salary, but Curt enjoyed
it because, in his words, finance girls were workahol
ics in every aspect of their lives. They kept their minds
and their bodies sharp, and even though he seemed to
always be in a serious relationship—sometimes several
at once—he enjoyed having nice views at the bar. When
I asked him about it, his answer was simply that I wasn’t
pretty enough to hold his attention through more than
one round of drinks.
I got to the bar before he did, took a seat and ordered
a Brooklyn Lager. The bartender, a tall, rail-thin guy
wearing a tight black T-shirt that ended right above his
veiny pelvic area, served it to me then recommenced
putting his elbows on the table and looking tortured.
The stools by the bar were never full here. It wasn’t the
kind of place one went to for a quiet drink.
A few months ago I’d gone through a rough personal
patch. When Amanda and I were separated for a while.
Being apart from her led me to drink too much and seek
out my own solitude. Losing a part of your life can be
the most accurate barometer of what matters most. If
you love something, being apart from it will haunt you.
If it doesn’t, it can’t have mattered all that much to
begin with.
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Being apart from Amanda was a miserable experi
ence. I slept at my desk at the Gazette. My personal
hygiene fell a rung below your average wino’s. I
wondered if I was simply the kind of guy who always
needed to be in a relationship. Before Amanda, I’d been
with my previous girlfriend, Mya, for several years. We
also ended badly, and after suffering brutal injuries at
the hands of a maniac, she seemed fully recovered, her
life back on track. I was happy with Amanda, and I
knew the difference between a good and a bad relation
ship. Learning it had nearly killed me, but it was worth
it.
After waiting fifteen minutes and downing half my
beer, Curt strode into the bar. He was tall, black, in
great shape, though his recent sedentary work life had
softened the edges just a bit. He was wearing a dark shirt
made of some shiny fabric. Certainly not what he wore
on the job, unless the NYPD was far more fashionable