by Baxter Clare
Frank nodded.
"It's the largest public housing project in Manhattan. Got twenty-four hundred apartments."
"I know."
"How do you—? Don't tell me you lived in Baruch, too."
"Last two years of high school."
"Where else?"
"That's all. East Village, to Masaryk, to Baruch."
Annie went quiet and Frank liked it that way. Her eyes skimmed the skyline, refusing to dip to street level. Even after Annie parked Frank averted her gaze.
"What?"
"What, what?" Frank countered.
"Whaddaya lookin' for up there?"
"Nothin'." Frank got out. She let Annie lead the way even though nothing had changed in twenty-seven years.
A man in torn clothes started toward the detectives. Recognizing the car and making them for cops he retreated. The women climbed to the fourth floor and found the apartment they wanted.
"You okay?"
"Peachy."
Annie shrugged and rapped hard on the metal door.
"Who is it?"
"Police."
"Police?"
"NYPD. Open the door."
There was grumbling but after a series of locks tripped, a thin, ashen-skinned woman opened the door. Unkempt and red-eyed, she bounced in her own skin. A crackhead.
Holding her ID out, Annie asked, "Rosalia Calderon?"
"She ain't here."
"Are you Flora Alvarez?"
"Yeah."
"Can we come in a minute?"
"For what?"
"We'd like to ask you some questions."
"I ain't done nothin'!"
"Not about you. About an old homicide, when you would have been about five."
"Five?" came the shouted reply. "Don't know nothin' 'bout no homicide when I be five."
"You might be surprised how much you remember. Can we come in?"
"I don't know." The woman looked over her shoulder, pulling at a twist of hair. From inside the apartment a television and a radio blared.
"I promise we'll only be a minute."
Flora pulled the door open.
"Do you live here?"
"Don't it look like it?"
As Frank took in the blankets on the couch, empty Rheingold cans and full ashtray, Annie asked, "How long have you lived here, Miss Alvarez?"
Flora raised a hand over the floor. "Since I was dis big."
"Would you have been livin' here in nineteen sixty-nine?"
Struggling to make the calculations, Flora finally agreed, "Yeah, I'd a been here."
"Who else was living here then?"
"My mother. My father was dead. He was a electrician. He got shocked to death when I was four. My brothers woulda been here." She scowled, reaching for a cigarette. "Pablo woulda still been here. Maybe. No," she decided, lighting her smoke and inhaling deeply. "He be gone by then. I remember he left in winter."
"Who's Pablo?"
"My brother."
"How many brothers do you have?"
"Two. Well, three, maybe. I don't know."
"You don't know how many brothers you have?"
Alvarez scratched under her hairline. "Pablo he took off in 'sixty-nine and we ain't seen him since."
"Why'd he take off?"
Alvarez shrugged. "Berto said a dealer be lookin' for him and he had to go. Owed the man lotta money is the story I always heard."
"Who's Berto?"
"Roberto. Roberto and Edmundo my brothers."
"You're sure Pablo took off in 'sixty-nine?"
"Yeah."
"And it was winter?"
Alvarez bobbed her head without hesitation. "Pablo had his own bed and when he left, I got one of his blankets."
Annie and Frank looked at each other.
"And no one's heard from him since?"
Alvarez blew smoke. "That boy prob'ly been dead a long time now."
"Why do you say that?"
"He a junkie," the woman stated wistfully. "A junkie ain't long for this world."
Alvarez's foot bounced and between drags she beat a steady tap-tap-tap with her cigarette on the ashtray.
Frank told her, "Describe Pablo for us. The last time you saw him."
"That was a long time ago," Alvarez answered, gazing back into the past.
"Try. How tall was he?"
"Taller than Berto, by a little. Skinny. He was always skinny but he got skinnier after the junk. He wunt light like me. He was dark, like our daddy. And handsome, too. Before the junk, I remember dat. He used to swing me 'round 'til I be dizzy. He made me laugh. He made me a doll once. Outta wood. He liked to carve things. I remember dat. He be always carving some'tin'. He was nice. I liked Pablo."
"How much older than you was he?"
The question confounded Alvarez. Her face frizzled up. "I don't know. Maybe twelve, t'irteen years."
"Did he use for a long time?"
"All my life."
"Any of his friends still around? Anybody he woulda used with?"
"I don't know." Alvarez jumped up and started pacing. "Why all dese questions? Why you wanna know 'bout Pablo? You t'ink he done somet'in'?"
"We think he mighta seen somethin'," Annie said.
"Well, he be dead now. I tell you. What he seen, only God know now."
"What was your brother's full name?"
"His full name?" Alvarez struggled again. "Pablo. Maybe he have middle name. I don't know."
"Pablo Cammayo?"
Alvarez bobbed her head. Loosing another cigarette from the pack she lit it off her stub.
Annie asked where her mother was.
"To my aunt's." Flora pointed with her chin. "She in da next buildin' over."
Done with Flora, the women crossed to the next building in the complex. Rather than take their chances in a project elevator, they climbed eight flights to the aunt's apartment. Both were breathing hard when they got to the landing.
"All that ice cream," Annie gasped, but Frank didn't answer. She was trying hard to ignore the smell of frying onions and old piss, the drone of music and noticias and babies, the scrawled graffiti and stripped light fixtures.
She'd lived two floors below. Sixth floor. Below the bug line so mosquitoes and flies still found her on sweltering summer nights.
"Ready?" she asked Annie.
Annie nodded and they knocked. The apartment number was painted on the door in glitter and Frank's hand came away speckled in gold.
A broad woman, her gray hair in cornrows, opened up. Annie flashed and asked for Rosalia Calderon.
"Rosa," the woman called without taking her eyes off the cops, "look like your girl in trouble again."
CHAPTER 39
Rosalia Calderon confirmed what her daughter had said. She had, might have, didn't know, a son named Pablo Arturo Cammayo, born in 1949 in Panama. She and her husband moved from Panama to New York in 1956. She did laundry and ironing, he took day labor. She eventually got secretarial work and he found electrical jobs. He died when Pablo was twelve.
"Hard times for everyone," she remarked, a quiet woman with sullen eyes. "I lose my husband. I lose my son. Soon my daughter..."
Annie said, "You have two other sons. Tell us about them."
"Edmundo, he's a mechanic for Ford. He's a good son. Given me t'ree grandbabies. And Roberto, he's a priest. That bwoy." She nodded with grave solemnity. "He was called. He always knew he was gwan be a man of the Lord. Even from a teeny bean of a bwoy."
Annie and Frank shared a glance.
"Always?" Annie asked.
"Always" the mother insisted.
"Didn't decide it later in life, in his teens?"
"No. Always he knew. My second husband, he called him Padrito, Little Fat'er."
"How was Roberto after Pablo disappeared?"
"He was always a quiet bwoy. Not joking all the time like Pablo and his father. Berto's more like me. He knows there's much pain in the world. He missed his brother, anyone can see that, but he just prayed more.
All the time, Berto was prayin'."
"Did Roberto ever use drugs?"
Calderon looked disgusted. "Never. Not him. Not once. I tell you, he was a man of the Lord, even from a small bwoy."
"How did you find out Pablo was gone?"
"Berto. He said Pablo come to him in the night. That he was in trouble wit' a man over drugs. That the man wanted to kill him and he had to leave for a while. Bobo told me he stole money from my purse for him. I cried more for the money than that bwoy, I can tell you. I long since used up all my tears for that bwoy. My firstborn."
"Who's Bobo?"
A faraway smile flitted over Calderon's face. "Berto. When Flora was small she couldn't say Roberto. It came out Bobobo. We called him Bobo back then."
"Thank you, Mrs. Calderon."
Frank stood quickly.
Walking downstairs Annie smirked, "Still leavin' Monday?"
Eyes straight on the step in front of her Frank gave a joyless smile.
"Well," Annie said, "I think we better talk to the Father again."
"Let me ask you something. Can you be objective, Cammayo being a priest and all?"
Annie whirled. She lifted the ID around her neck. "I didn't get this sellin' Girl Scout cookies, Frank. You askin' whether I can do my job or not?"
"I just need to know."
"You just worry 'bout yourself, cookie, and keep outta my way." Annie brushed past and Frank let her stomp ahead.
Back in the car, Annie gunned into traffic.
Frank explained, "It's just you being Catholic and him being a priest, it made me wonder."
"Yeah, well, don't wonder no more. You maybe let your personal life interfere with your work. Me? I got twenty-six years on the Job. You don't think I've ever worked a priest before? I could work the Pope if I hadda, cookie, so don't you worry about a chump like Cammayo."
"All right. Sorry."
Annie shook her head and grumbled. She fished through her purse and chomped on espresso beans. "It's Sunday, you know. I could be home, but what am I doin'? Runnin' around chasin' down a cold one for you, that's what I'm doin'. And what do I get for it? 'Annie, can you interview a priest?' No, this I do not need."
Staring out her window, Frank let Annie rant.
Annie parked at the precinct and Frank followed her upstairs. Annie flipped on her computer. Frank sat and watched.
"Think you could make coffee while I work?"
"You runnin' Pablo Cammayo?"
"Yeah. Wanna tell me how to do it?"
Frank bit off a smile and made the coffee.
After she brought Annie a "regular," meaning with a regular amount of cream and two sugars, Annie told the monitor, " 'Fraid we ain't gonna get much, this being 'sixty-nine and prior. Got somethin', though."
She hit the print button and Frank retrieved the paper. Lifting a brow she read, "Nineteen seventy. Busted in Kansas. Armed robbery. Did half a nickel in Leavenworth. Paroled early."
Annie scrolled and typed. Her coffee got cold. At last she sat back, whipping off her reading glasses. "After that, nothin'. Probably shot a hot load and is pushin' up daisies in a Podunk Potter's Field. You know that's the odds, right?"
"Yeah," Frank agreed. "I still want to talk to Cammayo."
"He's got a five o'clock mass. It's one thirty. Ya already ruined my Sunday. Wanna ride to Brooklyn?"
"Thought you'd never ask."
CHAPTER 40
Father Cammayo was at Our Lady Queen of the Angels. Obviously dismayed to see the women, he checked his watch. "Sunday's a busy day for me."
"It's my day off," Annie countered. "Surely you can spare ten minutes."
Cammayo looked at his watch again. "No more."
"Good. You tell us the truth, Father, and it shouldn't even take that."
"What truth might that be?"
"We talked to your sister Flora this mornin'. And your mother. Very nice women, both of 'em. Very helpful. Very fond of you. Very respectful of how you've always wanted to be a priest. How you had the callin' since you were this high," Annie said with her hand over the floor. "So enough already with Franco's murder and your sudden epiphany. And tell ya the trut'," Annie confided, "your story wasn't that good the first time ya told it."
"What else did they tell you?"
"You're pressed for time, Father. We don't need to go into that. So tell us again why you're still takin' flowers to this man's grave."
"They wouldn't understand," he told his folded hands. "It was an epiphany. A vision, if you will. I'd always known I would be a priest, yes, in my head. But standing on the sidewalk that morning I knew it in my heart. That was when I truly felt touched by God, when Christ became real for me, a man of flesh and blood as I was, who suffered. But as I admitted, I was weak. I didn't want to suffer like Christ—choosing to follow a life of the spirit seemed less a trial than following a life of the flesh. And that morning I felt as if God had touched me personally, had approved my choice and offered His grace even though I felt it was a coward's way out. So it was an epiphany. And I still am grateful after all this time."
Frank clapped. "Nice, Father. Maybe it'll play in the pulpit but I'm not buying it."
"That's your choice," he conceded. Looking at his wrist again, he added, "Now I really must go."
Frank looked at her watch too. "Aw, you said ten minutes, Father. Don't tell me you're not a man of your word."
"If you don't believe me what else can I say?"
"Well," Annie responded. "You could tell us about Pablo."
Cammayo blinked. "Pablo."
"Yeah. Pablo."
"What about him?"
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"Nineteen sixty-nine."
"Yeah, winter, right?" Aiming in the dark, Annie added, "The night of February twelfth, to be precise. What happened that night?"
Cammayo's Adam's apple rose and fell. "I don't know where my brother is."
Annie shot an eyebrow up. "I didn't ask ya that. I asked what happened that night."
"It was a long time ago. I was young. I don't remember."
Annie was crestfallen. "No disrespect, Father, but you're killin' me here. All my life a Cat'lic, and here's a Father lyin' to me. You're breakin' my heart here."
Frank interrupted. "Thing I wanna know is, how'd you know Franco died for three dollars?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You distinctly said yesterday that it was a shame a man had to die for three dollars. How would you know how much the killer took from him? You couldn't unless you were the killer or the killer told you, right? So how do you know that?"
Cammayo stood like a marble statue.
Frank stepped forward. She pulled her ID. "Do you remember my name?"
"No. I can't recall."
"You know it," Frank urged.
"I don't think I do."
"Sure you do." Frank lifted the plastic holder. "Franco. Just like my daddy."
She let that sink in while Cammayo read her face.
"I was there that night and matter of fact he did have three dollars. I know 'cause we'd just got groceries. The bill was sixteen and change. He paid with a twenty. Got three bucks back. Just like you said." Frank stepped closer to the priest. She put her hand on his chest and he stiffened. She leaned into him, speaking softly. "I know you got a heart in here. I know you lost your daddy. You and me, we both know how that feels. Know how I know you got a heart? Because you bring flowers to a dead man. A man dead thirty-six years. Only a man with a heart would do that." She patted his chest. "Not only did you lose your father, you lost a brother, too. And if Pablo was my brother, I'd do everything I could to protect him. And you've done that, Berto. But it's over. You did the best you could all this time and now it's over. You don't have to keep a secret for a dead man. I hate to say that, but you and I both know, being the junkie he was, Pablo's probably dead. You're lying for a dead man. Lying in front of your God and for what? How's he gonna feel about that come Judgment Day? Is he gonna be p
leased with you, Berto?"
She plied his weakness with the tender family diminutive.
"I don't know much about God but even I gotta think he's not gonna be too happy with you. But it's not too late, right? You can come clean. To us, and more importantly, to yourself and your God. It's time, Berto. None of us are gettin' any younger. It's time to tell the truth and put the past behind us, to bury it and let it go. What happened that night, Berto? It's time to tell. You're safe now. We don't care what happened after the fact. All we care about is seeing this through. For thirty-six years, you, me, even the taxpayers of New York been carryin' this corpse around. Let's bury it. Right here. Right now. Let Pablo go with full honors. He deserved that. You deserve that. Tell us what happened that night, Berto."
Cammayo broke away and turned his back to her.
Frank went around him. "Go ahead," she whispered the demand. "Tell the truth. You've protected Pablo long enough. It was a good hard fight but it's over. You did your best. Now finish it. Cleanly and with grace. Truly. For God's sake."
She could tell from the way Cammayo slowly wagged his head that he was breaking, that he was fighting the telling. And she knew that great secrets were hard to tell. The greater the secret, the fewer the words for it.
"It's okay," Frank urged. "It's not a secret anymore. It's time to let it go."
When Cammayo spoke he was barely audible. "He was sick. He needed to score. I was afraid he was going to wake everybody up and scare the little ones. He was my oldest brother. Pablo. You'd have had to known him before the dope. He was kind and funny and he took care of us. He'd discipline us when we needed it and he'd protect us when we needed that. And I guess it was too much for a boy. He shouldered all the responsibilities of a man and at some point it became too much for him. I can understand that. After he left it was my turn to bear the load. But I was older then. And I had God to turn to. Pablo never had that. All he had was that false god in the needle. I tried to get him off it. Sometimes he'd be clean for months at a time but he'd always go back to it. He was scared that night. Scared like I'd never seen him. He made me scared. He thought he'd killed a cop. He said he needed the money. He had to fix and get out of town. I scrounged up what I could for him and he left. I never saw him again. Never heard from him. I heard the talk next morning, and later, in the paper, there was a paragraph about a man that had been robbed and killed in the East Village that night. There was no suspect. Anyone with information was asked to contact the police."