Gods and Fathers (3 page)

Matt was still in the foyer, standing at the foot of the stairs, when Michael returned. He watched his son as he took off his coat, carefully brushed the snow from it, and hung it in the closet.

“Who were those guys?” Matt asked, when this coat removal ritual, which took too much time to be anything but affected nonchalance, was finished, and Michael had no choice but to turn toward him.

“I told you, they do odd jobs for Basil,” Michael answered, facing his father, standing slightly slouched, slightly bored. “We hang out sometimes.”

“I thought you were going out?”

“You scared them away.”

“Why can’t you stay at your mother’s when they’re away?”

“I told you, Basil’s worried about security.”

Though this statement was challengeable on several levels, Matt let it pass. The marriage six years ago of Debra DeMarco, nee Rusillo, and Basil al-Hassan, a rich and handsome Syrian businessman, had marked the beginning of the end of Matt’s long and tortured fight for a place in his son’s heart. Armed with the ultimate weapon—her new husband’s money—Debra had made quick work of destroying the last vestiges of Matt’s hopes. A penthouse on Park Avenue, a beach house in East Hampton, a flat in Paris, a “cottage” in Bermuda, clothes and cars virtually on demand, Matt had no way of competing with all this, and no way of expressing his anger—until tonight.

“What about Mina?” Matt asked.

“What about her?”

“Why aren’t you seeing her?”

“She’s studying.”

“Studying?”

“Yes, studying. You keep repeating what I say. She’s a student. Students study.”

This statement was delivered dismissively, not sarcastically.
You’re stupid, Dad. I’m tired of you. Why am I bothering with you?
is what Matt heard, and it occurred to him, with a clarity that shocked him after all these muddled and painful years of effort and rejection, effort and rejection,
ad nauseum
, that he could not hurt Michael, that his own son was indifferent to him, and this was a blow, and strangely a release.

“Well, your friends are assholes, and you are too, Michael. You’re an arrogant, shallow asshole. Where you came from, I don’t know. But not from me.”

“That could be. Maybe Mom had an affair—like you did—and I’m not your son. Do I care? No, I don’t. Can I go upstairs now? I’ll leave in the morning.”

In the kitchen, Matt poured himself another scotch. He took the pizza out of the refrigerator and sat down to eat it, surprised to find that he actually had an appetite. Until tonight, despite the bad cards he had drawn, he had never stopped trying to break through to his son. It’s over, he said to himself,
over and done
. He’s not your son. He’s Debra’s son, Basil’s son. You lost him a long time ago.

He finished the pizza and was wrapping the garbage to take out in the morning when the doorbell rang. He looked out the kitchen window and saw that it was snowing heavily. Those idiots
,
he thought, they’re probably stuck someplace. No choice but to let them in. But when he swung open the front door, it wasn’t Adnan and Ali, but his friends Jack McCann and Clarke Goode, homicide detectives who he had worked with for many years, standing facing him. He could see their unmarked car at the curb, and behind it, blocking his driveway, a Pound Ridge patrol car, its engine running and headlights on, two uniformed officers in the front seat. McCann, a florid Irishman whose blue eyes were usually lit by some inner secret joke, looked grim, and Goode, a gnarled black man who never failed to greet Matt with a big smile, was not smiling. Far from it.

“Come in. What’s up?” Matt said. Then, nodding toward the street where the patrol car sat: “What’s with the uniforms?”

The two detectives stepped into the foyer.

“Take your coats off,” Matt said. He could see they were dressed for work, sport jackets and ties on under their trench coats.

“Matt…” McCann said.

“Talk, Jack,” Matt said. “Is somebody dead?”

“Is Michael home?” Goode asked. He had not taken off his coat, and neither had McCann.

“That’s his car out there,” Matt said. “You know that.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s upstairs.”

Matt looked from McCann to Goode, then back to McCann; looked in the eyes of each, and did not like what he saw. “What about Michael?” he asked.

“We’re here to arrest him,” McCann replied.

“For what?”
Drugs
, Matt thought,
good,
let the kid get a taste of the pain he’s always inflicting on others
.
Him and his two Arab suppliers
.

“For murder, Matt,” Goode said. “His girlfriend was shot dead today in her apartment. Yasmine Hayek. I’m going upstairs.” Goode, burly and very strong, headed toward the nearby staircase. Matt stepped quickly in front of the detective, blocking his way. “No you’re not,” he said.

Matt knew Goode’s story: raised on the streets, a Desert Storm veteran, a decorated patrolman. But Matt’s other nature, the one that killed Johnny Taylor, announced itself with a whoosh of blood that swelled his brain and turned the low thrum that always murmured, sleeping lightly, somewhere in Matt’s psyche, to a too-familiar wild drum beat. He stood there, waiting for Goode, now a predator in his house, to try to force his way past him. Because then it would have to be over Matt’s dead, or unconscious, body.
Murder,
Goode had said.
Murder.
The word echoed in his head, the dry, metallic taste of fight night once again in his mouth.
I’ll kill this cocksucker,
he thought,
I’ll kill him if he tries to get past me. It’ll be easy.

Goode did not blink, but after a long two seconds, in which each man’s eyes remained locked on the other’s, he did step back. Reaching into his inside coat pocket he pulled out some papers, the kind with the old fashioned light blue backers that the State of New York uses for service of legal papers on its citizens, and handed them to Matt.

“There’s a search warrant there, too,” said McCann, stepping between his two friends. “Come on, Matt.” The detective put his hand, gently, on Matt’s bicep. “We asked for this detail. You’re a friend. It’s bad shit. Very bad. Come on. I need a drink.”

“I’m going up with you,” Matt said, still looking at Clarke Goode, but the drum beat getting softer, the monster retreating to its cave. He doesn’t know how lucky he is, he thought. Me too.

“You can’t, Matt,” Goode said. “You’re lucky Healy let us be the ones to do this.”

“We had to fight him,” McCann said. “Come on, I need a drink.”

His heart rate slowing, his head clearing, Matt allowed himself to be led into the kitchen by McCann, where the Irishman, who had been there many times, poured them each out three fingers of bourbon neat. Matt drank his down in one gulp, then picked up the warrants:
Murder… probable cause… Michael DeMarco… Yasmine Hayek… the entire premises and a late model BMW automobile… computer and/or computer hard drive…

“Pete Sullivan,” Matt said, seeing the signature on the warrants. “When did you bring these to him?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Where was he?”

“At Manny’s, where else?”

“He hates my guts.”

“He’s a jerkoff,” McCann replied. “But the warrants are good.”

Matt knew what this meant, but remained silent, staring at his detective friend, making sure he had heard right.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, finally, shaking his head. “The kid’s a…” Matt paused, thinking of what he had called his son, to his face, just a few minutes ago, but not willing to utter the word to McCann. “He’s a snob, Jack,” he said. “A wise guy, a momma’s boy, but he’s no killer. Drugs, I could see, but not murder. I know this kid. Talk to me. What do you have?”

“His prints, of course,” McCann replied. “The surveillance tape, the doorman, e-mails.”

“What kind of e-mails?”

“Arguments.”

“Lover’s quarrels? Come on, Jack.”

“Your son can get pretty nasty.”

Matt let this pass. He had no choice. It was true.

“What about a weapon?” he asked.

“Here it is,” said Clarke Goode, stepping into the kitchen and holding up a Ziploc bag with a nine-millimeter pistol and detached silencer in it. Michael stood next to him, his face drained of its usual color, but his eyes haughty. His hands were cuffed behind his back.

“That’s not mine,” Michael said.

“It was in the bottom drawer of his dresser,” said Goode. In his other hand he was holding another Ziploc evidence bag, a large one, with Michael’s Blackberry and laptop in it.

Matt looked directly in his son’s eyes. He saw no fear in them, just the same contempt for inferiors—that would of course include McCann and Goode—that was his default attitude when dealing with people outside his circle of wealth and privilege.

“Is this a joke, Dad?” Michael said. “Did you put these two idiots up to this?”

“Don’t say another word, Michael,” Matt said, his voice clear and sharp. “Not one word. Here—in the car—at the station. Nowhere
.
I’ll be down with a lawyer very shortly. Not one more word.”

“He has to put his coat on, Clarke,” Matt said, turning to the black detective.

“You’re right,” Goode replied, taking the handcuff key out of his pocket and leading Michael by the arm to the hall closet.

“What else?” Matt asked McCann, when Goode was out of the room, wanting to get as much information as he could before the detectives left.

“The bullets were nine millimeter.”

“She’s been autopsied already?”

“No…”

“What?”

“Two went through her neck into her desk.”

“So he hides the gun in his dresser? Come on, Jack.”

“It’s not my case, Matt,” McCann replied.

“Whose is it?”

“Bobby Davila caught it. Him and Nick Loh. Talk to them. I’ve said enough already.”

“Bobby? He can’t keep it either.”

“I know, it’ll go to Homicide South.”

“Let’s go, Jack,” said Clarke Goode. “The kid’s in the car.” He was standing in the kitchen doorway, snow melting on his short thick hair. Then to Matt: “We’re taking him to the two-o, on 82nd Street.”

“Do me a favor,” Matt said.

“What?”

“Tell the front desk I’m right behind you.”

“Jade? Matt DeMarco.”

“Matt… It’s…”

“I know, it’s late. Listen, my son’s been arrested.”

“Michael?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“They’re taking him to the 20th Precinct right now.”

“For what?”

“Murder.”

“Murder? Are you sure?”

“Jack McCann and Clarke Goode just took him from the house.”

“Is it their case? It can’t be.”

“No, it’s Bob Davila’s and Nick Loh’s.”

“Did they have a search warrant?”

“Yes.”

Jade Lee leaned over to peak through the half-closed blinds of the window next to her bed. Heavy snow. Eighth Avenue, ten stories below, a valley of white.

“I’ll get dressed,” she said, looking at her watch. She had been asleep when the phone rang, heavily asleep, but was now fully awake. Matt DeMarco’s voice and the word
murder
had done the trick.

“Thank you,” Matt said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Don’t,” Jade replied. “Let me call you.”

“Why?”

“The press, Matt. You’re famous.”
Plus, you’re a hot head,
Jade thought.
We don’t need any scenes
.

“I’m coming, Jade.”

“I have a friend at The Post. She says their police photographer has a high connection in the NYPD. What if a photographer shows up?”

“Call your friend. You spin it first.”

Jade, standing now, holding the phone to her ear with one hand, swinging open her closet door with the other, pondered this.

“No,” she said, finally, selecting and pulling out a pair of bootleg jeans and a dark green cashmere turtleneck sweater. “I don’t trust her.”

“I’m coming.”

“OK, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Thanks. We’ll talk about a fee when I get there.”

“Matt.”

“Yes?”

“He won’t get bailed. You know that.”

“I’ll call Healy.”

“He’ll be remanded. Then the bail will be a couple of mil. Can you handle that?”

Jade laid the jeans and sweater on her bed, thinking
they’ll do
, waiting for Matt to answer.

“No,” he said, finally. “I can’t.”

“Don’t call Healy. There’s nothing he can do,” Jade said. “You realize how bad it would look if he did?”

“Christ, Jade, the Tombs, Rikers. Can you bring a
habeas
petition with you?”

“Yes, but you know what the appellate division does.”

“Bail has to be set.”

“It will be, after he’s indicted. This is murder, the top charge. Everyone will go by the book.”

“It’s bullshit.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t his mom marry a rich guy?”

“Yes, she did.”

“How rich?”

“Hundreds of millions.”

“There’s your bail money. Call her. She has to know anyway.”

“I will. I’ll meet you at the precinct.”

“Did you tell Michael to say nothing?”

“I did.”

“I’m on my way.”

Jade hung up the phone and looked around her small bedroom. The gray wool suit she had worn to court that day was strewn across a nearby armchair. Jay Leno was on her television screen, the sound muted, saying something to a guest she didn’t recognize who was bent over at the waist laughing hysterically. Attuned to the sounds of her apartment, she listened for anything untoward, but heard nothing. Her seventeen-year-old son, Antonio, a senior in high school, was out with his friends. Her heart rate spiked at the thought of the things he could be doing in the city that never sleeps. He had a one A.M. curfew. She’d have to leave him a note.

Matt DeMarco had spent a night in this room five years ago. One night. After dating for four weeks, they had made love once, and then, two days later, over coffee at a diner near Foley Square, she had broken up with him. The look on Matt’s face that morning as they faced each other across a tacky Formica table—surprise and then nothing, the curtains in his eyes, invisible but unmistakable, abruptly drawn—came back to her now. On the surface they had remained friends, polite, respectful friends. Jade had less experience of men than people might think. She knew what the term soul mate meant, for example, but only in theory. One thing she did know from experience, though, was that surfaces meant nothing. Thinking of her son and of his father in California, she regretted, now that she could use one, that Matt was not a real friend, that she had pulled the cord to draw those heavy curtains over his eyes five years ago.

Dressing quickly, Jade put these thoughts out of her mind. There was no way to keep Michael DeMarco out of the Manhattan Detention Complex—the holding pen for the mixture of unfortunates and low-lifes scraped daily off the city’s streets, known as the Tombs because of its basement labyrinth of cells. It didn’t matter who you were—a star athlete, a Wall Street con artist, a politician caught with his pants down—if you were arrested in Manhattan you went to the Tombs for booking and arraignment. If you were unlucky enough to be arrested on a weekend and couldn’t make bail, or were remanded to custody without bail, as Michael DeMarco would be, you’d be spending two or even three nights in a holding pen filled with drunks and junkies and their various bodily emissions. She had met Michael once. He would not fit in.

Before leaving she called the 20
^th
Precinct and told the duty officer that she had been retained by Michael DeMarco, that no one was to speak to him or ask him any questions until she got there.

When she got out of the cab at the precinct house she got lucky. Bobby Davila was standing under the small portico at the front entrance talking on his cell phone, his breath steaming as he spoke and nodded his head. She could make out his sharp features and goatee clearly in the cone of light from the fixture above his head. He was snapping his phone shut and putting it in his coat pocket as she approached through the steadily falling snow.

“Just the man I was looking for,” she said.

“It’s my body you want, I can tell.”

Jade ignored this remark. Half Chinese, half African-American, tall, her skin a pale translucent amber, her nomad’s eyes set above pronounced, angular cheekbones, she was used to being hit on by cops. A defense attorney with the Legal Aid Society for twelve years, recently out on her own, she took on-the-make cops as an occupational hazard, so hazardous that she had married and divorced two of them in the last ten years. Davila had taken an unsuccessful run at her years ago, when he was a beat cop. He was still trying, although they both knew his heart wasn’t in it.

“No, Bobby, Matt DeMarco called me,” she said.

“Oh, that,” the detective said, the smile gone from his face. “That was Jack McCann on the phone. They’re stuck on the Hutch. That drawbridge went up and they can’t get it down.”

“How long will they be?”

“A while. McCann will call me when they get close.”

“Good, we can talk. Let’s go someplace. You can buy me a drink.”

“Joe Delaney’s is right up the block.”

The bar, one long, dimly lit room with a pool table on a raised platform at the back, a juke box and cozy booths along the wall, was not crowded, the snow having driven people home. They took a booth and ordered drinks, a Coke for Jade, a Jameson straight for Davila.

“I imagine McCann and Goode are anxious to drop the kid off to you and Nick,” Jade said, while they were waiting for their drinks. She had hung her coat and scarf and woolen hat on the coat rack near the front door, and was running her hands through her long black hair, made unruly by the slightest dampness and now totally out of control, or so she thought, ruing her vanity and her obsessive hair issues.

“You’re right, but Nick and I are getting out of it, too,” the detective replied.

“Why? You know Matt?”

“Every homicide and major crimes guy in the city knows Matt.”

“The women too.”

“What women?”

“The woman detectives, Bob. You left them out.”

“You know what I mean.”

“So what’s your conflict?”

“I was the first officer,” Davila said, “at Matt’s first murder trial.”

“The honor killing?”

“That’s the one.”

“You were around then?”

“I was a rookie, twenty-years-old. I was in the Operation Impact program. You never heard the story?”

“No. Tell me.”

“I was riding with Jack McCann. He was teaching me the ropes. Supposedly. I was driving. Jack passed out on the way to the scene. He drank on the job then.”

“Christ.”

“Exactly. Anyway, the neighborhood’s very bad. Dope dealers, gangbangers all over the place. I lock Jack in the car and rush in. The perp is in the basement trying to shove his dead sister’s body through this one-foot opening in this old fashioned incinerator. I didn’t know they even existed any more. He’s covered with blood. I know backup is coming and I don’t want them to see Jack. I wrestle the kid to the ground and cuff him. Now I’m covered with blood, too. The kid’s telling me his sister’s a whore. He’s glad he killed her, shit like that. His eyes are on fire with hate—of me—but cold and calm at the same time. A bad kid. I rush him outside. There’s people looking in on Jack. I back them off. The backup comes, I tell them about the body. I tell them Jack had a heart attack. It turns out they know Jack so we all cover for him.”

“I never heard this, Bob.”

“True. The thing is, I never gave the perp his Miranda warnings, so what he says to me—the sister is a whore, she deserves it—all that gets thrown out. I fucked up, my first day out.”

“But Matt won anyway.”

“Yeah. He told me not to worry and he was right. My career’s been OK.”

“Did he know McCann back then?”

“Yeah, and Goode. They knocked around.”

Jade looked at Davila. The sly smile that she was used to seeing on his face, missing while he was telling his story, had returned.

“How bad is this, Bob?”

“It’s bad,” Davila replied, “and it’s gotten worse. The girl’s father is a big shot in Lebanon, one of the one’s on our side. Healy called our C.O. and asked him to go over the case with him. He wants no holes, no fuck ups.”

“What do you have?”

“The doorman says no one else came in or out, fingerprints, angry e-mails. How am I doing so far?”

Jade couldn’t help smiling. Davila, a bantamweight with a chip on his shoulder because of his size, was not without his charms. One of them was his sense of humor, dry and sly.

“What’s the charge?” she asked.

“One-two-five, two-seven. Murder one.”

“No way!”

Jade blurted this out. Murder one—for cop killers, multiple killings and murder committed while committing certain felonies—carried the death sentence.

“We think she was raped,” Davila said, his voice matter-of-fact. “They’re doing the autopsy tomorrow morning.”

Jade shook her head. She had left Legal Aid and opened her own office only a week ago. She had taken two shoplifting cases yesterday. Today, it’s murder one, her client the son of a high profile prosecutor and an ex-lover to boot.

“Based on what?” she asked. “They were dating.”

“Bruises. You’ll see the pictures.”

“Anything else?” Somehow she knew there was more to come. Their drinks arrived before Davila could answer. He drank half of his down, then said, “You won’t believe it. The murder weapon, found in the kid’s room.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yes it is.”

“It goes against premeditation, at least.”

“If you say so.”

“If he had thought the whole thing out he would have disposed of the gun.”

“You would think so.”

“Something’s wrong, Bobby, don’t you think?”

Jade was fishing. She did not know if something was wrong. She had only met Michael DeMarco once, briefly, when he was seventeen. He had barely acknowledged her. For all she knew he was capable of rape and murder in a fit of rage.

Davila knocked back the rest of his whiskey and then looked around the room for a second before answering. “Maybe,” the detective said, “but I’m not being paid to think, not in this case. Tomorrow it goes to Manhattan Homicide.”

“What about a security video?”

“We’ve asked for it.”

“Do me a favor,” Jade said.

“What? Hold it,” Davila said. “Let’s have another drink.” He had caught the waitress’s eye. When she came over, he ordered another round. Jade watched him, knowing he was calculating the risk-reward factor of doing something for this tall half-breed who he had once dreamed of having a torrid affair with, perhaps renewing those hopes.

“I don’t want the kid to spend the night in the Tombs,” she said.

“So? What?”

“Keep him at the precinct. Take him downtown around seven AM. I know the head court clerk. She’s a friend of my mother’s. She can get him booked quickly, and arraigned at nine sharp.”

“That’s only one night,” Davila said. “He’ll be there till Monday.”

“I’m going to try to get him his own cell.”

“Good luck with that.”

Jade watched as Davila again looked around, thinking over her request.

“I can do it,” he said, finally. “But it won’t be as easy as you think. And you’ll owe me.”

“Bob,” Jade said. “You know what Robert DeNiro said in
The Godfather
, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

“
I don’t forget
,” she answered, putting her right index finger to her temple and smiling.

“Good, I don’t either,” said Davila, smiling back.

The drinks came, but before they could sip, Davila’s cell phone rang. Jade listened carefully to his end of the conversation:

“Is that you, Jack?… OK… I’m at Delaney’s… He’s lawyered up, by the way… Jade Lee… Of course I remember.”

“Was he reminding you that you’re a happily married man?” Jade asked when he hung up.

“As a matter of fact, he was,” Davila replied, picking up his double whisky and drinking it in one gulp.

“I guess we’re going?” Jade said.

“Yes, they’re on the Westside Highway.”

“I’ll get this,” said Jade, placing a twenty-dollar bill on the table, noticing that the detective had not reached for his wallet.
That’s your payback,
she said to herself.
We’re even.