A Dark and Broken Heart (38 page)

Madigan did as he said—made coffee, good and strong. He poured a cup for each of them and took it back into the front room.

Isabella looked worried, more so than previously.

“So what’s happening?” she said. “What’s going on? How long do I have to stay here?”

“Hopefully not that much longer,” Madigan replied. “There’s a couple of things I need to do, and if everything goes the way I want it to go then you’re going to be off the hook in the next day or two.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, and then she raised her hand. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Me off the hook means that you’re going to handle Sandià, right?”

“That’s the idea.”

She closed her eyes then. She just sat there with her hands around the coffee cup, and Madigan heard her exhale. There was something about her body language—a profound overwhelm, a shadow of defeat.

“You think I’m going to get myself killed,” Madigan said.

“Yes,” Isabella replied. “You go up against Sandià and you’re going to get yourself killed, and then where the hell will I be? In this house, completely unaware of what’s going on. Sooner or later they’ll put two and two together and they’ll do to me what they did to Maribel.”

“That is not part of the plan.”

“You know who you’re dealing with, right?”

“I do.”

“You do? Really? You know why he’s called Sandià?”

“I’ve heard the stories—”

“Stories? There’s only one story here. Only one story that gave him that name. The Watermelon Man, right? You’ve heard that story?”

“Yes, I have . . . Of course I have. Anyone who works down here, anyone who has anything to do with this man has heard the story.”

“But you didn’t know her, right?”

“Her?”

“The mother. The boy’s mother.”

Madigan shook his head. “No, I didn’t know her.”

“I did,” Isabella replied. “Eloisa, that was her name. That was her
name from before. She changed it later, of course, but back then she was called Eloisa.”

Isabella shifted back. Her face was little more than shadows.

“And you spoke to her about it?”

“I did,” Isabella replied. “I knew her. I spoke to her. I was there when she found out what he’d done. And I knew the boy as well . . .”

Madigan’s eyes visibly widened.

“Oh yes,” Isabella said before Madigan had a chance to speak. “I knew the whole family. I knew what happened, why it happened, and I know what Dario Barrantes did. And when Maribel told me that she was in love with this guy, this David Valderas, I told her to stay away from him. Don’t get involved with anyone who works with Sandià. That’s the law down here. That’s the law if you want to see tomorrow, next week, Christmas. Stay the hell away from Sandià and his people . . .”

“She didn’t listen,” Madigan said.

“Listen? When did she ever listen to me? No, she didn’t listen. Of course she didn’t listen. She was
in love
. He was a good man really . . . This is what he told her. And he loved her too, and he had some money coming to him and he was going to take her out of this life and give her the life she deserved. The same story. Always the same story from these people. Well, he gave her that life, didn’t he? He gave her exactly the life that she deserved. Short and brutal. Painful. A horror of a life. That’s what he gave her.”

Isabella’s fists clenched. The cup slid between her palms and hot coffee slopped over the rim and scalded her.

“Christ!” She stood up suddenly.

Madigan took the cup from her, set it on the floor. She shook her hand, held it for a moment.

“You okay?”

She didn’t acknowledge Madigan’s question.

She sat down again.

Madigan lit a cigarette.

Isabella asked for one.

“You don’t smoke,” he said.

“Did, then I quit, now I’m starting again.”

Madigan frowned.

“What, you worried I’m gonna die of cancer before Sandià gets to me?”

Madigan handed her the pack of cigarettes. She took one, lit it, inhaled deeply.

“Like riding a bike, right?” she said, and she smiled awkwardly. She closed her eyes, shook her head slowly. “You really know him?” she asked Madigan. “You really know the kind of man he is?”

“I think I do,” Madigan replied.

“I don’t think anyone knows what kind of man he is. Not the women he sleeps with, not the people who work for him. I think the only ones who know who Dario Barrantes really is . . . God and the devil. God because He made him, the devil because that’s who owns his soul . . .”

Madigan smiled wryly.

“You are not a religious man, are you, Vincent?”

“Can’t say that I am.”

“Our culture . . . everything is steeped in religion. Everything means something; everything is symbolic. Everything is seen by God, and everything is punishable. They love to hand you the guilt . . . They love to make you terrified for your soul, the souls of your family. Don’t do this, don’t do that . . . So when someone turns against the church, when they become a criminal, a murderer, they
really
turn against everything that the culture represents. People like Barrantes . . . they are the worst. They have gone to the dark side of their soul completely.”

“I’ve seen some pretty fucked-up people in my time—”

“But to do what he did? To do that to a young boy, a boy who hadn’t even started his life . . . and for money?”

Madigan shook his head. “I don’t know details. I heard what I heard. I heard a number of different things. Urban legends . . .”

“No, not urban legends.” Isabella took another drag of the cigarette. He watched the bright tip of the cigarette, the wreath of smoke, the way her face looked as she exhaled from her nostrils . . .

“It was there,” she said. “Right there in East Harlem. Right in that building where he sells his drugs and his guns and his women. He did that thing to that boy, and I knew the boy’s mother . . . I saw what he did and how it killed her too.”

“So tell me,” Madigan said. “Tell me your understanding of what happened.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes,” Madigan said. “I really want to know.”

“The guy . . . Angel, they used to call him. His name was Angelo Torresola. He was Puerto Rican. He came here . . . when? I don’t know, maybe thirty years ago. He was young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and he was always in some sort of trouble. Never serious, just kid stuff. But then something happened and he ended up inside. It broke him, made him crazy. There was the girl I told you about. Eloisa. He got her pregnant. They were just kids, nothing more. He was in his early twenties by the time he came out, and Eloisa had moved on, had taken the kid with her. Maybe it was jail that broke Torresola, maybe the fact that Eloisa had disappeared with his son, but he was out of it. He was off the radar. He was a great deal more dangerous then than before he went inside. And then there was Barrantes . . . and he’d already started to cut East Harlem into pieces and divide things up like he had some God-given right to do what he wanted with people. And Torresola was home, and he’d heard about this guy Dario Barrantes while he was in jail, and so it started. The territorial disagreements, the little wars, the shootings, the stabbings . . . like a gang culture. People on Torresola’s side, people on Barrantes’s side, and they would never agree. Once the first stone has been thrown, there is no way to revert to negotiations. After the first casualty it becomes a matter of pride, of principle . . . And they brought the whole neighborhood down with them . . .”

“Torresola I heard about. He was dead by the time I knew Barrantes,” Madigan said.

“And when was that? When did you and Barrantes meet?”

“Ninety-five . . . early ninety-five.”

“Then Torresola himself was only just dead . . . a handful of months, and the boy, Torresola’s son? You should have seen that boy. He was the one who should have been called
Angel
.”

“Barrantes killed the boy, right?”

Isabella smiled. It was a mournful expression, as if remembering someone she loved who had passed, perhaps remembering a time before all this, when things were good, when she had her daughter with her and she was not in hiding from the world.

“A watermelon,” she said. “It started because of a watermelon.”

She reached for another cigarette, lit it, gave it to Madigan, and then lit one for herself.

“What happened?” Madigan asked.

“Torresola was out of prison. It was ninety-three, just after
Christmas. I remember that because I had just turned seventeen. I was thinking about college, stuff like that. I met a boy then . . .” She glanced away for a moment. “Should have held on to him. He was good. He was the right one, you know? He lives outside of New Jersey now, has his own engineering firm. He has a lot of money, a wife, four kids.” She looked back at Madigan. “Could’ve been me. That could have been me out there in New Jersey with a good husband and four kids.”

“You can’t go backward,” Madigan said. “If you’d have stayed with him, you’d never have had Melissa.”

Isabella’s eyes flashed. The hurt was there. The hurt of truth. She waved the comment aside. “So Torresola . . . Angel, right? He was out. He was in his early thirties. He was the tough guy. He had all his people behind him, and here was this other one, this Dario Barrantes, and he had come muscling in on East Harlem, a territory that belonged to Angel before he went to jail. Eloisa was nowhere to be found. Angel tried to find her, sure, her and the boy, but she had disappeared. It was always the way. He was looking so hard he didn’t see her. She was right there under his nose. She changed her name. She called herself Veronica. She had married someone else, had a couple more kids, and he didn’t even recognize her. The better part of fifteen years had passed and she had grown up. She knew who he was, but she had another life. She didn’t want to be involved with these people. And the boy? Angel’s boy? He looked like his mother. He didn’t look like Angel Torresola. She’d changed his name as well. His name was now Dominic Campos . . . twelve, maybe thirteen years old. That was the old life, the life with Angel Torresola, and she wanted her son to stay away from it. She had plans to move, to get out of East Harlem, and her husband was a good man, a simple man, and he knew nothing about her former life as Eloisa, and he did not know the identity of Dominic’s father. He was an auto mechanic. He had a small place, a little shop, you know? He fixed cars for people. That’s what he did. He was about as far from the world of Dario Barrantes and Angel Torresola as you could get.”

“So what happened with the watermelon?”

Isabella smiled ruefully. “It all sounds so stupid now. So meaningless. Jesus Christ, these people are animals . . . When it comes down to it, these people are little more than fucking animals.”

“What happened?” Madigan prompted.

“The war had gone on. Barrantes killed Angel’s people, Angel
killed Barrantes’s people. They fought over blocks, streets, alleyways. They were both running dealers, hookers, selling guns, whatever people wanted. It went on for two, three years. I don’t know how many people ended up dead, but it was a lot.”

“I heard about it,” Madigan said. “I was over in the Twelfth until July of ninety-four, and then I moved to Manhattan Gangs. I was a good ways from East Harlem, but I heard about it.”

“Nineteen ninety-four,” Isabella went on, “and things just became insane. People were frightened to leave their houses. Torresola and Barrantes were selling their shit everywhere. Even the dealers were fighting between themselves, fighting over who got to supply who with what. The police could do literally nothing. Barrantes had one half of the neighborhood, Torresola the other. Finally it came to a head. They sent envoys. They arranged a meeting, a dinner, and Angelo Torresola and Dario Barrantes were going to resolve their differences, agree on their territories, stop the war. That was the plan.”

“But it didn’t work out that way, right?”

“No, and it didn’t work out that way because they were as bad as one another. It was a setup. Barrantes was going to kill Torresola. Torresola was going to kill Barrantes. It was obvious. Why they even bothered pretending, who knows? But they came together, and they talked, and they went back and forth and didn’t resolve anything. They got to the end of the meal, and there they were, nothing had changed, and Torresola sends for the waiter to bring watermelon. He wants watermelon to cleanse his palate. The waiter is paid off, and this request is his signal to call Torresola’s people. It means that Barrantes is going to die, that Torresola’s people will come and shoot Barrantes right there in the restaurant, and then they will begin the operation to clean up East Harlem. You work for Torresola or you die, it was that simple. But Barrantes had his own arrangements, and he had his own people, and they already had the waiter bought off. The call was never made. No one came. Torresola and Barrantes went their separate ways. Barrantes could have killed Torresola right there in the restaurant, but he wanted nothing to do with it directly. He didn’t want to be implicated directly in the death of Angel Torresola, and he knew that if Torresola died right there that evening then his people would make him a martyr and just keep fighting.”

“So he killed the son, right?”

“Barrantes knew about Eloisa. He knew she had changed her
name. He had been there in the territory all the time that Angel had been in jail. He knew that Torresola wanted the boy back, but didn’t know where he was. So you know what he did?”

“I heard what he did.”

“You heard the truth?”

“That he cut out the boy’s heart and put it inside a watermelon.”

“And you believe he did that?”

Madigan was silent.

“The boy was thirteen, no more than that. Barrantes had his people take him. They cut his throat. They opened up his chest and they took his heart out. Then they cut a watermelon in half. They took out all the seeds, all the pulp, and there was enough room to put the boy’s heart inside it, and then they closed it up and tied it together with a ribbon, and then they sent it over to Angelo Torresola with their love. There was even a message, like with a gift, you know? ‘I found your son,’ the message said. ‘Have a great reunion.’”