Red on Red (45 page)

W
hen Daysi called, she left tender, tactful messages. “Thinking about you. Call me when you feel like it….” A few days after the funeral, Nick called back, left a message for her. He stopped by the shop not long after. Her mother kissed him, and gave him another boutonniere, a white one. Daysi had stepped out for a moment—
“Momento!”
—and so he waited, breathing the green air. He hadn’t returned to work yet, and so he wasn’t wearing a suit. There was no lapel to pin it on, and he tucked it behind his ear. Mrs. Ortega was laughing when Daysi came back, stopping short, just in the door. Nick thought she looked pleased to see him, but more surprised than she should have been. She hugged him, and kissed him chastely on the cheek. Seconds later, Nick understood, when a boy followed her into the shop. Nick took the flower from behind his ear, a moment too late.

“Nick, this is my son, Esteban…. Esteban, this is a friend, Nick Meehan.”

“Nick Meehan. Pleased to meet you, Esteban Ortega.”

Nick offered a hand, and Esteban hesitated before extending his, pulling it back quickly after a loose grip, never looking at Nick. Esteban was tall and gangly, with a beaky nose and curly black hair that went to his shoulders and covered one eye.

“It’s Otegui.”

“What?”

Daysi interjected worriedly, “Esteban Otegui, same as his father.”

“Basque?”

“Very good, Nick!” said Daysi, too pleased with the observation, as if her enthusiasm might compensate for her son’s willful indifference, restoring neutrality to the room. Nick hadn’t thought about Esteban
much, and he had been in no hurry to make his acquaintance. Like Esteban, Nick wasn’t eager to share Daysi with a stranger. Despite her brief remarks about him—his school, his interests—Nick had somehow pictured Esteban as a neighborhood kid, in a wannabe way, with low-slung pants and gangsta rap on his headphones. Instead, his tattered backpack and his slouch, his cup of Starbucks, gave him an air of hippie privilege. He went to a private school downtown. Nick hadn’t been glad to hear that.

Though Esposito had since spoken with Kim Martone, obtaining assurances that the Ortega Florist van had not been involved in the kilo deal, the thought remained with Nick, a grain of irritant. Suspicion had entered his mind, and he couldn’t be sure if it worked in his eyes like love or hate, seeing or not-seeing. Private school in Manhattan could cost twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year; that was a lot of flowers. Was there a scholarship, financial aid? Nick’s wariness reminded him how serious he was about Daysi, how she stirred things in him, hope not least among them.

Esteban kissed his grandmother, and they exchanged pleasantries in Spanish. When he turned to his mother, he spoke faster, more singsong; he wasn’t hiding what he said just in the language, but in the dialect. He couldn’t have been more ostentatiously private if he’d clicked his tongue in Morse code. Daysi had a look of mild dismay before she turned hurriedly to Nick, offering abridged translation and chipper editorial.

“Esteban has a project for school. I’m going with him. It sounds like fun. What is it, Esteban? Tell Nick.”

Esteban fixed him with his uncovered eye and uttered two dry syllables: “Goya.”

“The bean people? I mean, the food company?”

“The painter,” Esteban said, unsure whether to emote boredom or ethnic offense.

Daysi spoke up before he could decide. “There’s a show at the Hispanic Society, on 155th Street. Do you know it?”

“I do. The museum of museums …”

“What? Anyway, we’re going there. Do you want to come along?”

Esteban’s shoulders rose, tense. This was not the time. In the twenty-five blocks between where they stood and the museum, there were ten thousand bags of rice and cans of beans that said “Goya” on them; it was
not the worst mistake anyone could have made, Nick considered, and yet it was the perfect one, for him at the moment.

“No, I have something to do. I’ll walk you to the subway, though.”

“Oh, good. Honey, you want to leave your backpack? I don’t know why they make these kids carry all this stuff. It’s like a library on their backs.”

Daysi reached to help him take it off, and he flinched. Nick knew that bad instinct, the need for attention and the allergy to it. Esteban didn’t lift the backpack as much as he wriggled out of it. Nick wanted to kick him and take his lunch money; he also wanted a do-over, another chance at making an impression. This should have been easy for Nick. Not the situation—that was not easy—but the question.
Daysi plus museums; “Goya” means what?
Nick felt like he’d blown the word “cat” at a spelling bee. Lunch money or do-over?

As the three of them left the shop, Esteban started speaking Spanish again, until Daysi cut him off. Lunch money.

“Stop it. Be polite.”

“Spanish isn’t polite?
Pero, Mama, yo—
”

“Stop it.”

In the street, amid the sidewalk crowds, it was almost better. Nick heard the strain in Daysi’s voice, but he was spared the sight of the kid’s expressions. No winners in this, better to dampen things down, delay. She walked between them. Nick touched Daysi’s arm, once he was sure that Esteban could not see.

“Thank you, thank you for what you sent. They were beautiful.”

Daysi had sent a vast stand of lilies and roses to the funeral home. The old ladies from the neighborhood had wondered at it adoringly, then had clucked at the card, Ortega Florist. Daysi laughed, forgetting Esteban for a second.

“My mother wanted to send a big shamrock, green carnations …”

“I’m glad you stepped in.”

Esteban’s near shoulder rose up, as if to defend against the dirty spray of affectionate talk. Daysi swept her hair back with one hand, nervously deciding whether to touch Esteban with the other. For a second, the hand didn’t really wave, but the fingers flickered; Nick thought she was calling a tiny invisible cab. The hand lowered, caressing Esteban’s arm.

“Nick’s Irish. That’s why your
abuela
wanted to send the shamrock. His father died.”

The plea for sympathy was naked, obvious, and for a moment Nick was glad she’d made it. Esteban didn’t jerk away this time, he’d become cooler and harder than that, but he veered to the farther edge of the sidewalk, as if to dodge an oncoming pedestrian. Lunch money, and dinner money, and breakfast. And then Nick felt for Daysi, knowing she’d made a worse mistake than he could have, talking about fathers who had gone. It was not a good subject, worse than cans of beans. This was the fight, and Nick decided to take a dive. You couldn’t even call the fight fixed. The fight was never winnable—he was already dead. El Cid on his last ride, strapped lifeless to his horse; an inspiration maybe, but not for himself.

“You know, Esteban, the Hispanic Society is the only real museum still left there. The Museum of the American Indian, they moved it. Not enough people went there. It’s too far uptown, and the neighborhood—I don’t know if you remember, but it used to be really bad around here. All the names of the tribes are carved on the front of the building—Iroquois, Eskimo, Arapaho. It’s weird to see the tribes are lost, and the museum is gone, too. The tribes who used to live in Manhattan, they were part of the Algonquin people. A lot of places in New York have Indian names—Canarsie, Rockaway, Hoboken in Jersey. Mannahatta, that’s Indian, too. The museum was good, they had all kinds of artifacts, but I wished it had more about the neighborhood, because the history is here.”

Daysi looked at Nick appreciatively, viewing the overwrought and overlong speech as proof of his genuine effort. They were at the subway entrance. Nick extended his hand to Esteban, as if they were both gentlemen, as if to offer assurances at least that the next round would be fair. Esteban stared down, casting his eyes around. Nick continued to hold his hand out until Daysi poked her son. Esteban’s hand went slowly to Nick’s, and then he jerked it away—hey, that old gag, not bad!—but then he slapped Nick’s shoulder, and pointed down. Nick looked where he was directed, but he only saw one thing, on the top step of the subway stairs. It was a quart of beer, in a paper bag. Esteban tapped Nick again on the shoulder and pointed, so that everything was clear.

“Look, there’s an artifact from your tribe.”

N
ick took to working afternoons, then evenings, later and later. After midnight, the phones usually stopped ringing, and unless there was an incident of some consequence, the office emptied out shortly after. When he went downstairs, the vacancy was more pronounced, given the ordinary chaotic traffic of precinct visitors, voluntary and otherwise. The cop behind the desk had the look of a fire-watcher in a remote forest tower, settling in for the rainy season. Once, when Nick went out for coffee, he saw a stray dog sleeping in front of the desk, unobserved. No notice was paid when the dog followed him back outside, a few hours later, wandering off on its own rounds.

Nick often walked around the block once or twice, to clear his head. Sometimes it worked too well. In the stillness, he noticed how the office machines made odd and spontaneous sounds, metrical ticks and buzzy whirs, conversational noises that accompanied no evident function from the printer or copier. It was as if the toys played with one another when the children slept. One night the phone rang, and when Nick picked it up, he was greeted with the serial beeps of a fax machine. A few minutes later, it beeped at him again when he asked how he might be of service. After a third robotic exchange, Nick caught on that it was set to automatic redial, but rather than ignore it, he was provoked by the idea that he could speak to it, persuade it to reveal the meaning in its digital code. What would it be, a Chinese menu, love note or death threat, instructions to fire an underperforming sales division in Akron? In his asylum privacy, Nick made several attempts at talking back, and hours passed in high bemusement. A pad for messages headed “While You Were Out” was dutifully and exclusively filled with the word “beep.” In time, his interest
dwindled and his patience thinned. His tone became bitter, and his voice took on an unexpected force that grew fiercer with each call.

Beep, beep, beep
 …

“That’s a lie.”

Beep, beep, beep
 …

“Just shut the fuck up already.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Someone had, it seemed. Had the code been broken?

“This is Captain Carver, from the Chief of D’s. Who the hell is this?”

Chief of Detectives. Nick knew who they were. Not good. No code had been broken, but Nick might be. Still, he found it hard to care. What would Esposito do?

“Sorry, Captain, there’s been a string of crank calls. How can I help you?”

“Who is this?”

Nick didn’t have to think about the answer. “This is McCann. Detective McCann, sir. What do you need?”

“What I need, McMahon, is for you to get your ass down here to tell me why you answer the phone like you did. Plus, you will bring down the overtime figures, the arrest breakdowns of felonies and misdemeanors for the last month, and Sergeant Hanratty’s report on why Pipcinski’s sign-out time in the movement log doesn’t match his DD-5 about canvassing for video cameras in case number 558. Got that?”

Who was Hanratty? Who was Pipcinski? No one Nick knew. The man might as well have been talking in beeps. This was another wrong number, another precinct, another squad. This was a gift.

“I don’t think so, Captain. Not today.”

Nick hung up and didn’t answer the phone again. When Napolitano came in, not long after daylight, he threw his cellphone across the room. “These people!” It broke, and he cursed himself on top of everything else. Apparently there was some crisis in which union intervention was desperately needed.

“This prick captain from downtown wants to transfer half the Two-Eight Squad to Brooklyn. And this poor bastard McMahon, he’s suspended. Can you believe these people, Nick? Can you believe them?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“I hear you, Nick.”

“You want coffee, Nap? I’m gonna step out and grab some.”

“Yeah, thanks. You look tired, Nick. How are you feeling? It’s early—you just get in?”

“Five minutes before you did.”

“Coffee would be great, Nick.”

Nick took his time on his errand, returning half an hour later with bagels and cream cheese, a dozen coffees and a gallon of milk. He felt a little better as he laid out the food in the meal room. Daylight calmed him, as did the sight of his colleagues, their normalcy and purpose. After taking food and coffee, the detectives returned to their desks to hustle the phones, their conversations no less strange than Nick’s had been, when he’d tried to talk to a machine.

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. I don’t want the Lord to smite me. But your son, he’s still gotta come in…. Yeah, people might be makin’ up stories on him, just like the last time, but he’s still gotta come in….”

“I’m looking to talk to … the report says the name is ‘A-Queen.’ Is that right? Is that you? … No, it’s your sister. What’s your name? … B-Queen, naturally …”

“And what can you tell me about the man who robbed you? … He was a Gemini? How do you know that? Do you know him, know his birthday? … You just have a sense of these things. I see….”