Red on Red (22 page)

Every time Nick crossed the bridge from Queens to Rikers, he never thought as a cop. He looked at the curlicues of razor wire atop the hurricane fences, the water, the checkpoints, and had a brief daydream of escape, scanning the grounds to see how many guards he’d have to take out, scanning the water to see where the currents might take him. They were near Hell Gate, where the tides collided from the East River and the Sound. Not a good place to swim. Fear of shipwreck, fear of drowning, were plaintive in the names of the waterways—Spuyten Duyvil, Kill Van Kull, Gravesend Bay. Death by water, with the shore lined with spectators. On the little islands, you had as little faith in the system as you did in nature. Even if you weren’t a crook at heart, you knew how fast the world could turn against you.

Esposito had engineered a little lie to conceal their errand, not out of any particular mistrust of the Department of Corrections, but because it
was no one’s business. Inmates kept close watch for breaks in routine, to see who was called away; among the staff, carelessness could be as bad as outright corruption. A chance meeting might lead to a chance remark, to a girlfriend, a brother, a friend, and news of a conversation might find its way back to the neighborhood before the detectives did. It didn’t even have to be true for people to die.

Malcolm Cole had a history of ulcers, and it was arranged that he would claim to have an attack on the days he wanted to speak to them. Esposito knew a nurse at the Rikers infirmary who would relay the message and reserve an out-of-the-way examining room were they could speak. Her name was Audrey, and she was tanned, short, and curvy. After leading them to the examining room, she winked and walked away. Nick wasn’t introduced. She was pleased to play the part; all of them were. Conspiracy is a kind of religion, bringing solace to people in dark places, lending significance to their losses. Malcolm was in a hospital gown, waiting with a wry smile. There was an ease in his body, a poolside slouch as he reclined on the examining table.

“Hey, Malcolm, how you doin’?”

“Not bad, not bad.”

“They treating you okay?”

“I been in worse places. Yo, Espo, you look sharp today!”

Esposito was in a black suit, with a red shirt and tie. Nick thought he looked like a racketeer in a school musical.

“Thanks, pal. So, what you wanna talk about?”

“I got shit for you.”

“I’m here.”

“You lock up Kiko?”

“No. I went to talk to him yesterday. I wound up saving his life, his kid’s life. His wife called a lawyer from the hospital. He’s not gonna talk to me now.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you do now?”

“I don’t know, something. I’ll figure it out. What else you wanna talk about?”

“I got guys who got bodies, uptown, Harlem, Bronx. I got guys who even got bodies in Brooklyn.”

“You see any of this, or you just hear about it?”

“Both. What does this do for me?”

“It depends. I can’t give you numbers. I can’t say, ‘This many murders, this many years.’ Five don’t get you ten, two don’t get you five. I can say, you help me, I’ll help you. Nobody ever got burnt working with me, unless they tried to burn me first. We get along, you come out ahead.”

“We both come out ahead.”

“That’s it. Tell me about one you saw, the last one you saw.”

“Kiko, last summer. Him and his cousin, the one … I shot, did the drive-by on Little T, in the projects by me. Little T was my man. I came up with him. He raised me in the trade.”

“The one … I shot.” The hesitation was brief, and inspired not by conscience but by tact, choosing simple words carefully, without pride or shame.

“Wasn’t it Little T who killed Fafa, the month before?”

“They said it was, but it was Dirty Moe.”

“Dirty Moe worked for Fafa?”

“Nah, Fafa worked for Dirty Moe.”

“Little T shot Fat Hector?”

“Everybody know Little T shot Fat Hector. Back up, back up. With Dirty Moe and Fafa, it had nothin’ to do with that. Fafa threw a bottle, scratched Moe’s car. It had nothing to do with work. And we didn’t have no problems with the Dominicans before Kiko. We was mad cool before then. Kiko come from wherever, decides he has to tighten shit up, playin’ Scarface. Fat Hector was his man.”

“And you saw ’em shoot Little T? What did you see?”

“I saw Kiko with the cousin—that cousin, the one I did. He leans out the window with a big silver burner, and it was—Pa! Pa! Pa! Three shots. He hits Little T twice, the neck and the leg. Little T, he just sits down and looks at me, like, ‘Can you believe this?’ ”

“Who drove?”

“Kiko.”

“Who shot?”

“The cousin.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw ’em, I saw ’em both. Plus, it was Kiko’s car, a white Escalade, Jersey plates, spiderweb rims. He never let anybody touch it. He shot a crackhead through the foot for sneezing on it.”

“Crazy Joe? Rasta Joe?”

“Shit, you know Joe?”

“Yeah, I know him. Another guy had the case.”

“What he tell you?”

“He told me that Joe said it was a hunting accident, he was wrestling with an alligator.”

“Ha! What you do?”

“We didn’t go looking for alligators.”

“You know, Crazy Joe, he really had a alligator? That’s why he said it. Kept it in his bathtub, fed it chickens. Live chickens, real chickens. You know they sell ’em on Tenth? What they call ’em, ‘
vivo—
’ ”

“Vivero,”
Nick said.

“Whatever. That was when I was a kid.”

A meditative look crossed Malcolm’s face, as if he were viewing his life so far, and it wasn’t half-bad. A sweet youth, which ended yesterday—crack and alligators, few regrets. From there, he detailed three more homicides, two of which he’d witnessed, and four more shootings, one of which might have been a homicide, but he hadn’t waited to see how it had ended. Nick believed what he had heard. Malcolm didn’t try to show off, and his memory of events was detailed without being suspiciously complete. An informant like Malcolm was money in the pocket, a skeleton key, a passport. These were spatter-pattern cases, a bloody mess at first look, and second, and third, until the fine tip of a red droplet pointed you in the right direction. Esposito knew some of the cases, to some degree, and Nick filled a notebook with specifics of who had stood where, and how many shots had been fired, and what time it was when it happened, and who drove what after, to test what Malcolm offered against what they’d find in the case files, to match the unstable brilliance of the been-there moment against the documents and diagrams.

There was a blitz of nicknames—Cagney-era gangster monikers, scumbag moderne, Spanish. Nick had offered the word
“vivero.”
Otherwise, Nick stayed out of the conversation. These were all perp-on-perp hits, thug family fratricides. It was not his cup of shit. But it was Esposito’s. He understood them, understood the contest, the battle for territory, meat, and mates. He liked these cases because they were like him. They were Espositos in parallel, in reverse. It was one of the reasons he was so good at this, Nick reflected—Esposito didn’t hold it against
them. Nick’s partner leaned forward on the chair, hands on his knees, and Malcolm was in the same position until he let out a breath and listed back on his seat—enough for now. He lounged on his side, playing with a fold of his ludicrous hospital gown, and smiled.

“So. We good? ’Cause I got plans.”

The remark struck both detectives; the tone was so politely peremptory, an executive brush-off. Esposito took pains not to appear snide. “You have a lunch meeting, Malcolm? Tennis lessons?”

Malcolm laughed. “No! I’d take ’em, though! You wanna get lunch, you wanna play tennis, I’m all in! My plans, they ain’t for today. I got a lot positive goin’ on, real positivity.”

Esposito looked to Nick, who was unhelpful. Nick had gotten tired of the hoodlum almanac, but he couldn’t stand the word “positivity,” the jargon of parole board karaoke.
Umm, and I know now I gotta be a leader, not a follower….

Malcolm took no offense. “I got kids, a wife, business—legit. A couple of ’em, doing good. What you think I been up to since I been on the run? You think I’m just another raggedy-ass street hustler, every dollar I get I put into gold for my teeth?”

Nick thought it best not to answer. Esposito, in his shrewdness, answered with a kind of question of his own. “I heard you was down South, in Carolina somewhere.”

“Close!”

Malcolm’s teasing reply gave Esposito a chance to maneuver again. “It don’t matter to me, Malcolm. For one, the sooner you get out, it means the better we done by each other, so I’ll be waiting for you when you get out the door. We’ll go out for a beer. Second, I ain’t the drug police. Whatever cash you got, whatever you came out with, good for you! I ain’t gonna try and game you for hints, where you got all those coffee cans full of twenties and fifties, where you got ’em buried.”

Malcolm smiled again, shaking his head. “That’s funny, that’s good. But nah, I got two laundries, a barbershop, in a town down in Georgia. My sister, she’s assistant principal at the high school. My wife, she sings at the church. Property taxes, business taxes, they are nothin’ down there. It’s beautiful, when you’re on top. You think my kids are little hood rats, shit in their Pampers, brought up on food stamp formula, government cheese? I been out of this, awhile now. I was up, checkin’ on my moms. Milton, he was my little man. Was gonna take both a them down
with me, take ’em in and set ’em up. I ain’t been on the run. I just moved. Hey, Espo, look at your partner! He thinks there’s only one system where I fit in!”

Nick shifted in his seat, uncomfortable at having been caught in his assumptions. There was so much more to Malcolm than what Nick had first supposed, days ago, in the project apartment, grimy and poor, luckless and mean. No, that hadn’t even been the first mistake. The first had been believing him to be the blasted corpse. But the surprise of seeing Malcolm walk in the door had been no greater than now, with his revelations of substance and sense. Or on the jaunt from jail to the funeral home, from hell to hell, when he gave thanks. “Even a day like today …” These truths did not cancel one another out—ghetto predator, Mayberry shop owner, paterfamilias—but Nick could not quite reconcile the contradictions, could not see the whole man made of such outlandish parts. It was a relief when he remembered he would not have to. Malcolm was a killer, and he had been caught. The job was done. Everything else was positivity.

“Yup, family—that’s what it’s all about,” said Esposito, casual in his segue. “So, you talk to your brother? You talk to Michael?”

Malcolm’s eyes tensed a little. “Nah. He hasn’t been to see me, I don’t call. What he do?”

“It’s not what he did. He didn’t do anything. But I’m worried about what he might do. Do you worry about him?”

Malcolm eased and tensed again. “We never been close. Not since I was little. I got a big family, and we got different fathers. Lots of us, with half-brothers and sisters we’re never gonna know. My father? Mine was never there. Michael—Michael and Milton—their daddy looked to be a real daddy, to me and them both. He worked. He was a doorman downtown, at a rich white people building. He took us to the beach once, in the Bronx. He had a car. I never seen that. I never seen sand. Can you believe that? Ten years old, I knew what street was, I knew was dirt was, but I never seen sand, never stepped on it. My feet didn’t believe it. It was like a made-up thing, like snow for a Puerto Rican or something, you know? Big fat guy, his name was Jerry, Jeremiah. He was sweet as pie. He bought me a bike. Then, heart attack. Pop! Done. We had in-and-out daddies after that, some of the old ones, sometimes new. Back like it was before. Me and Michael, we was close till then, but I didn’t mind both ways.
I liked the ‘Didja do your homework’ daddy, but when he died, I didn’t have to do homework.

“Milton always looked up to me, but Michael, after that? Michael looked away. Michael is the older one. He’s in his twenties. Milton was … I don’t know, but I guess he wasn’t twenty-one, or else … or else he wouldn’t need my ID.”

Malcolm’s aspect darkened, and Esposito pushed ahead, so Malcolm wouldn’t dwell on what couldn’t be changed.

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“About six.”

“About six?”

“There’s half-ones and step ones I lose count of.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway. Michael, he wasn’t the same after. Never was a happy-go-lucky kid, but after, he was as fun as a funeral. Worked hard, good at school—he went, even when it snowed! Hot, cold, wet—he went to school, whenever it was open. Couldn’t play ball, couldn’t hit a ball if you tied it to the bat. He woulda had the black beat off him at school, in the neighborhood, if it wasn’t for the rest of us. He had glasses. You remember my brother Nelson? They called him N-Dog?”

“Yeah, I remember. Stabbed at a club? Downtown?”

“Three years ago, God bless. Him, me, our whole peoples, that was what let Michael be Michael. You know that my man took violin lessons for a while? Shorty walkin’ around the projects with a violin case and glasses. That’s not even like havin’ a big ‘Beat me!’ sign on your back. That’s like advertising on the radio. It was all us, respect for us. He played like crazy after Jerry died. First it sounded like he was frying cats, but nobody could say nothin’. He was special, he was sad, and then he got good. He got mad good, all this old-timey shit. I don’t even know what it was—classical shit, I guess, I don’t know. All these songs, it was like the movies, when the nicest white girl dies. Sad and special, just like Michael. Everybody wanted him to shut up, and he wouldn’t, and then nobody wanted him to stop, and he did. He is one backward mother…. It was right before I went upstate—a two-year bit, for hustling, but you knew that, right?—that he quit. He joined the army. Something to do with 9/11 maybe, but I don’t know, I don’t think it had to do with that. I think he just wanted somebody to fight with.

“I gotta laugh at you guys—no disrespect. You guys figure, we’re brothers, we’re like … brothers. But it ain’t like that. I went upstate, he went into the army. We both got back, the same time. My moms had a party for both of us, but Michael wouldn’t come.”