Nasty Cutter

by Tim O'Mara

  ‘Oh. I was on my way down.’ He offered me his hand. ‘I’m Vincent Robles. Vinnie. Hector’s father.’

  I shook his hand. ‘Raymond,’ I said.

  He nodded and held the door open for me. ‘Thanks for what you did for Hector. Getting him into the program, I mean. He’s learning a lot.’ He paused and then added, ‘Too bad about Mr Stover. It’s got Hector all shook up.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. If he was annoyed or embarrassed that his wife had called in another man to help out with his son, he did a good job hiding it. ‘I guess he needs a little teacher time.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to come.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I gotta go. My ride’s meeting me at the corner.’

  I shook his hand again. ‘Nice to have met you.’

  ‘Same here. Thanks again.’

  I watched as he made his way to the corner, then I went inside.

  I had walked up two flights when a door opened, and I saw Mrs Robles step halfway into the hallway. She was about forty, and this morning she looked every year of it. What I remembered of her parent-teacher-meeting smile was missing, replaced by a look of frustration. She also looked like she’d been crying and needed about four good nights of sleep. She held the apartment door open with her right foot.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said, the exasperation in her voice dripping like a leaky faucet. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ I said. What else was I going to say? ‘I’m not sure exactly what I can do to help, but let’s give it a shot.’

  ‘Please come in.’ She stepped aside to let me do so and then shut the door behind us. She slid the chain lock back into place and said, ‘Can I get you something? Coffee?’

  ‘I’m good,’ I said. ‘I’ve already had my two cups.’

  I looked around the small apartment. We were standing in the kitchen, which had a four-person dining table in the corner. To my right, I could see through an arched doorway into the living room. A young girl was sitting on the floor watching – from the sounds of it – a Saturday morning cartoon. I did a one-eighty and saw two doors that must have led to the bedrooms. Unless someone slept in the living room, Hector shared a bedroom with his little sister.

  ‘Is Hector in his room?’

  She sighed, walked over to the door on the right, knocked, and waited. When she got no response, she knocked again. I wasn’t sure she had a third knock in her.

  ‘Hector,’ she said, her lips practically touching the door. ‘Mr Donne is here. Please come out.’

  She stepped back and waited. I’d been working with middle school kids for the better part of a decade. If there was one thing they could do, it was make the grown-ups in their lives wait. It was hard-wired into their brains.

  I stepped over to Hector’s door and got Mrs Robles’s nod of approval to give it a shot. I wrapped on his door with my knuckle.

  ‘Hector,’ I said, half-schoolteacher/half-friendly. ‘It’s Mr Donne. Your mom called me. Just like you asked her to. I know you’re upset about Mr Stover. I am, too. Come on out and let’s talk about it.’

  As Mrs Robles and I exchanged glances, I heard the door unlock. Five seconds later it opened, and Hector stood on the other side. It was clear he’d been crying, and it looked as if he was going to start up again. He just stood there with his shoulders slumped as if he were trying to make himself smaller. He was actually just about my height and had a slight eighth-grade teenage mustache thing going. I stepped back to let him come out. He took his time, but he eventually made his exit.

  ‘Come, Hector,’ his mother said. ‘Sit at the table. I was just about to get Mr Donne a cup of coffee.’ She turned to me and winked, the coffee an obvious ploy to get us to the table. ‘How do you take it?’

  ‘With a little milk,’ I said. ‘No sugar. Thanks.’

  I went over to the table and took a seat. Hector did the same without making eye contact with me. I got the feeling he thought if he looked directly at me, he’d start crying again. And no kid wants to do that in front of a teacher. Actually, I was a dean again this year, but the same rule held true. Never let a teacher see you cry.

  We sat there in silence until his mother came back with a cup of coffee for me, one for herself, and a glass of water for her son. She sat down across the table from me and wrapped her hands around her coffee cup.

  ‘I told Mr Donne how upset you are, Hector. He came here to help.’

  Hector remained quiet.

  ‘I was there last night,’ I said. ‘At the benefit.’

  That got Hector’s attention. ‘You were?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. My family and Mr Stover’s family go way back. I think I told you when we signed you up for the program, my father worked with him many years ago.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. You did tell me that. You got an uncle works with him, too, right?’

  I smiled. ‘Not quite. My Uncle Ray is a sponsor of the program, and he gets a lot of his cop friends to help out.’

  ‘Right,’ Hector said. ‘Your uncle’s a big man with the five-oh. I forgot.’

  ‘Chief of Detectives,’ I said, trying to impress the kid.

  ‘So.’ Hector now looked me square in the eyes. ‘Your uncle gonna catch the guy who did this to Mr Stover?’

  ‘He’s going to do everything he can to make that happen, yes. He’s got a lot of good detectives working for him. They’ll get whoever was responsible.’

  ‘You promise?’

  That’s another thing middle schoolers were good at: putting grown-ups on the spot. I wasn’t in a position to promise much of anything.

  ‘I promise you they’ll do their best, Hector. They’re very good at their job.’

  ‘When it comes to white people they are.’

  Mrs Robles slammed her hand on the table. ‘Hector!’ she said. ‘You don’t talk like that, especially to Mr Donne. I know you’re upset, but you show some respect.’

  ‘I’m not trying to disrespect Mr Donne, Mom, but I know what happens when a rich, white guy gets killed compared to someone else.’ He looked at me again. ‘Tell me I’m wrong, Mr D. Tell me the cops ain’t gonna work harder on Mr Stover’s case.’

  I hadn’t come all the way over here to debate with a fourteen-year-old, especially one as sharp as Hector. I chose my next words very carefully.

  ‘The cops I know work hard on every case,’ I said. ‘If you read the newspapers and watch TV, you mostly hear about the times when things go wrong. But that’s why those stories make the news, Hector, because they make better stories. You don’t hear about all the times the cops do exactly what they’re supposed to. Those stories don’t make good TV.’

  As he thought about that, he took a sip of water. I did the same with my coffee. At least he was talking now, I thought. As my sister was fond of saying – quoting her therapist – ‘It’s better than not talking.’

  ‘Are the cops gonna talk to me?’ he asked.

  That question took me by surprise. ‘Should they?’ I said, keeping my voice calm. ‘Do you know something the detectives should know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  His mother reached over and put her hand on top of his. ‘Is that why you were so upset, baby? Do you know something?’

  Hector took his hand back and dropped his head. I had a feeling he’d said more than he wanted and was about to shut down again. Then again, he did ask for me to come over, knowing full well I used to be a cop. And as for that part about forgetting who my uncle was, maybe that wasn’t the complete truth. I decided to push it a little before he disappeared back to his room.

  ‘What do you know, Hector?’

  Still looking down at his lap, he said, ‘I didn’t say I knew anything, Mr D.’

  ‘OK.’ I paused and took a breath. ‘What do you think you might know?’ This was like last night’s interview with Maeve, the coat check girl. ‘When was the last time you saw Mr Stover?’

  He thought about that. At least that�
��s what I hoped he was thinking about. It was hard to tell by looking at the top of his head.

  ‘Mr Donne asked you a question,’ Mrs Robles said. ‘He came all the way over here on a Saturday because—’

  ‘Tuesday,’ he blurted out and then looked up. ‘I saw him Tuesday. He came by Mr Stern’s shop when I was there.’

  The details were coming back to me now. Hector was assigned, through Bridges, to work with a family twice a week – the Sterns – who owned an art supply warehouse or something like that in the neighborhood. Once a week, Tuesdays, he worked a few hours with Mr Stern learning to catalogue and process orders. On the Sabbath, he worked with Mr Stern’s father, an elderly man who needed a Shabbos goy for a few hours on Saturdays. Like today.

  Orthodox Jews, which Williamsburg had plenty of along with the slightly stricter Hassidim, are not supposed to use technology on Saturdays, their Sabbath. Many of them hired local non-Jews to perform simple tasks for them, mostly anything involving electricity. God forbids even turning on the lights. My understanding was that this was a fading practice, but the elder Mr Stern was old school. Literally. From what Hector had told me, the elder Mr Stern was quite the Torah scholar.

  ‘Did Mr Stover do that often?’ I asked. ‘Come by the warehouse?’

  ‘It’s not a warehouse, Mr D. They do art supplies and photography equipment.’

  ‘OK. So did he come by often?’

  ‘No,’ Hector said. ‘This was only the second time I knew of. The first was when he introduced me to Mr Stern a few months ago, and then on Thursday.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why he dropped by?’

  Hector didn’t answer right away. I got the feeling he was trying to choose his words as carefully as I had before. Why would a fourteen-year-old have to do that?

  ‘He spoke to me for a bit,’ he finally said. ‘He wanted to know how I was doing. Said he was proud of me. Then he and Mr Stern went into the office. I don’t know what they were talking about, but they were loud. They both sounded pissed. I mean mad.’

  ‘And you have no idea why?’

  ‘I couldn’t hear them. Just, you know, their voices.’

  ‘So this is why you were so upset this morning,’ I said. ‘You heard about Mr Stover being killed and remembered the argument he had with Mr Stern on Thursday?’

  He gave a weak nod. ‘Is that important?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s important enough to tell the police, Hector.’

  Mrs Robles said, ‘Do you really think so, Mr Donne?’ She touched her son’s hand again. ‘I mean, it was just an argument. He didn’t even hear what it was about.’

  Her boy was not the only one in the family who didn’t quite trust the police. With all the stuff in the news lately about police interactions with minority groups, who could blame them?

  ‘It may be nothing,’ I said. ‘It probably is. But I think Hector needs to tell the detectives what he knows and let them decide what to do with that information.’

  ‘And how do we do that? We just call up the cops and … what?’

  I nodded. ‘I can call my Uncle Ray. He’ll put the detective in charge of the case in touch with you and set up a time to talk. And don’t worry,’ I said, knowing that’s exactly what she was doing. ‘You can be there when they talk to Hector. Or his father can. I met him on the way out, by the way. I guess he was running off to work?’

  I realized I had no idea what the guy did for a living or what hours he kept.

  ‘No, no,’ Mrs Robles said. ‘He had to go run some errands. We’re trying to give the kids a little more privacy in their room, so a friend with a car is taking him into Queens to one of the big stores to get some supplies.’ She shook her head. ‘Plywood, sheetrock. I don’t know. I let him handle the man stuff.’

  I nodded as if I knew all about ‘man stuff.’ As far as my home improvement skills went, I could swing a hammer and turn a screwdriver. I’ve even been known to use a paintbrush from time to time. Anything else, I called the super or landlord.

  ‘Well, listen,’ I said to both Hector and his mother. ‘Today’s Saturday and you’re expected to show up at Mr Stern’s house, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hector said. ‘But with what happened last night. …’

  ‘That doesn’t involve Mr Stern, Hector. He still needs you. It’s Saturday, and it’s your responsibility to show up. That’s part of what the program teaches.’

  It also, I wanted to say, will help keep your mind off of Marty Stover’s murder. I caught Mrs Robles’s eye and she read my thoughts.

  ‘Mr Donne is right, Hector,’ she said. ‘You have an obligation to show up even when you don’t feel like it. Especially with someone as elderly as Mr Stern.’

  ‘He’s got his family in the building.’

  ‘And the whole family observes the Sabbath, just like Mr Stern. They need you there whether you like it or not.’

  ‘You gotta go over there,’ I said.

  I could tell that thought didn’t sit well with Hector. Too bad. That’s how you learn. By doing things you don’t want to do, following through on your commitments. If I shut my mouth and listened more closely, I could probably hear my father’s voice trapped in the back of my head. I decided to keep talking instead.

  ‘If you want,’ I said, ‘I’ll walk you over. It’s pretty close, right?’

  ‘A few blocks,’ he said. ‘You’d do that? Walk me over there?’

  ‘Sure. I wouldn’t mind meeting the old guy anyway. It must be pretty cool working with someone so … learned.’

  Hector shrugged. ‘I guess. He talks a lot about the Torah and the Old Testament. He even talks about the Holocaust sometimes, but that’s mostly when he gets tired or has a little too much wine.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re getting a free history lesson every time you go there. Maybe we can get him to come by school and talk to your class.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr D. He’s really old.’

  I laughed. According to most middle school kids, I was pretty old. ‘I guess I’ll see for myself. Go get dressed.’

  He got up and headed into his room. Mrs Robles gave me a big smile.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mr Donne,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean for you to go through all this trouble. I just wanted you to talk to him.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’ll be interesting to see where Hector’s been working and to meet Mr Stern.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  I stood up. ‘That’s what I keep telling people. Maybe you can call my sister and vouch for me.’

  ‘Anything,’ she said, her smile turning into a small laugh. ‘But I bet she knows.’

  ‘Deep down, yeah. You’re probably right. What time does Hector usually get to Mr Stern’s apartment?’

  ‘Ten o’clock. He’s going to be a little late.’

  ‘We’ll get there,’ I said.

  Hector came out of his room, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and with a book bag slung over his shoulder. He still looked upset, but at least he had something else to focus on besides Marty.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, as if I were the one keeping him waiting.

  ‘You have your phone?’ his mother asked.

  ‘Yes, Mom. I have my phone.’

  ‘Excuse me for asking.’

  ‘You always ask.’

  She went over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Because I always care,’ she said.

  ‘Bye, Mom,’ he said and headed for the door.

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Robles,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you again, Mr Donne. Maybe one day we can have you over for dinner.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ I said as I followed Hector out of his apartment. It occurred to me how often Hispanic women wanted to thank me with food.

  SEVEN

  The walk from Hector’s building to Mr Stern’s was quick, less than ten minutes. It was one of the things that continued to fascinate me about Williamsburg. Where Hector’s block was completely residential and racially mixed, Mr Ste
rn lived on the part of Harrison Avenue that was mostly commercial and Jewish. The Orthodox and Hassidim didn’t mix much with the other communities in their neighborhood. They sent their kids to different schools, shopped mostly at different stores, and didn’t allow their kids to play or hang out on the streets. Many of their apartment buildings had immense window guards that served not only as protection but as makeshift backyards. They put fake grass up there, a few chairs, and presto! – instant mini-suburbia. Some of these window guards went up six or seven flights, as if the residents had a fear of flying home invaders.

  When you saw a new building go up in this part of the Willy B, with its bright exteriors and manufacturers’ stickers on the windows, it more than likely was not going to house people who looked like my students. In fact, many of my kids referred to these new buildings by a not-very-politically-correct nickname.

  The Jew Houses.

  In a way, this was very much in line with the history of the neighborhood. When the Williamsburg Bridge was built in the early part of the last century, it was called ‘The Jew Bridge’ because it allowed the Jews who lived and worked on the Lower East Side – the other side of the East River – to find homes in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, while continuing to work in Manhattan. To this day, many of the local Jews walk to and from their jobs across the bridge.

  As we stood in front of Mr Stern’s building, I thought that it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the building had been in his family for many years, going back before the Holocaust. Probably even World War One.

  The signs in the window of the ‘shop’ Hector spoke about announced they sold photo equipment, small appliances, and also provided local artists with everything from brushes to frames. The store was closed today, of course, for the Jewish Sabbath.

  As I was reading the signs, I heard the jangle of keys. I watched as Hector reached into his bag and pulled out a key ring. He fumbled a bit, but after finding the one he was looking for, he slid it into the lock and turned.

  ‘They gave you keys to the building?’ I asked.

  ‘They had to, Mr D,’ he said. ‘Mr Stern’s not allowed to use the buzzer to let me in. That’s kinda why I’m here?’