South by South Bronx (12 page)

Roman was not “in” it, but he knew about it. I'm wondering if David told that to the blonde. I'm wondering if the blonde knew about him. She had asked for 149th Street, then ran straight down Prospect Avenue. Prospect Avenue crosses 149th Street right where it ends against Southern Boulevard. I bet if I had put it to Jack, he would've come up with Roman. I hoped it might take Myers a little longer to connect the dots—I was counting on it. Myers was all over Jack—where was the manpower to do all these searches? David's office had to be sealed and searched. Ava Reynolds's things had to be seized. There was her apartment too, and what about the girl herself? I plotted her course on a road map. From the moment she left that bus on Westchester, a straight line ending some place near 156th Street, close to the last sighting of her … a good place, I said, to begin canvassing the neighborhood. Cops carrying pictures, maybe a few of my detectives to do lay-and-waits.

Myers seemed a little distracted, his momentum shot, when Jack just came out and asked, “So, was this chickie one of your agents?”

Myers was unable to speak for a moment. There was nothing on the street but cop cars and pigeons. The sidewalk was wet again, vehicles dotted with drizzle. Dawn was dingy and dirt-streaked. I kept seeing that rock-faced Anderson, laying words like landmines. I kept seeing the blonde. Those first lingering stares of hers, the sense that she knew something about me. Had she really been in touch with Myers, was Anderson right about that? Myers hadn't contradicted him. Again the thought: If David trusted her enough to lay the prize on her, he could have mentioned me to her. And she, in touch with Myers, could have mentioned me. I couldn't light another cigarette fast enough. Myers looked needy. I lit him one too. When he took the cigarette from me and nodded his appreciation, I felt an odd kinship with him. I sensed about him an intense loneliness, suddenly. I don't know what it was, just a sense of standing outside locked gates. Something to prove. How those days were over for me. When I saw how he pulled up the collar of his raincoat and didn't answer Jack at all, I felt included in some secret world. When Jack moved off to consult with some officers, it was just me and Myers, smoking side by side in the airless gray.

“Why does Anderson know you?” I asked. He shrugged, his eyes getting blurry. A high school student reminded of homework.

“He followed me from D.C. He caught the tail end of my last op. Couldn't raise a stink there so he followed me here. You have no idea how personal this all is.”

“You're going to have to brief me again,” I said, sounding reluctant, like I was trying to spare him. “Anderson covered a lot of turf.”

He looked at me a moment with round, glassy eyes. “You're not insulted I didn't tell you, right?”

“Nah,” I said. “Part of the job.”

“I'm glad. I would hate if you—”

A cop car suddenly let out a string of beeps. Cop laughter.

“I meant to tell the lieutenant,” Myers said sluggish. Tossed down the cigarette. Stepped on it, ground it into the sidewalk with his shoe. “I didn't mean to be rude. I haven't slept. He's a good cop.”

“I know.” I tossed my cigarette too. A nice flaming arc that sparked the street. “He's my favorite.”

“Anderson only knows the half of it.” Myers became more animated now, some of the old verve returning. “He makes good guesses and knows just enough to fuck up the game. This whole thing he pulled today.” A dismissive wave of the hand. “He did it on purpose, to discredit me. He's still about three steps behind.” Myers winked at me. “He hasn't even gotten to the Sanchez part.”

“The Sanchez part?”

“That's right. There's a Sanchez part. He won't find her because he doesn't have the Sanchez part. He hasn't even gotten there yet. That's why we'll find her, while he's bumbling around getting court orders for a few cheap wiretaps.”

My stomach was a knot. I closed my eyes for just a moment, almost fell into a dream.

“So. You still think David Rosario was clean?”

I looked at him. It was a soft voice, tinged with sadness. There was no mockery on his face. I could see he didn't expect an answer.

“Don't worry about it.” He looked out at the empty street, hands deep in his pockets. “I seem to have misjudged somebody too.”

I felt he was talking about the blonde. I knew he was talking about the blonde.

He was looking at me. He spoke softly. “You knew, didn't you?”

Cop car let out another string of beeps. Electronic farts. Cop laughter.

“She told you?” I said, though I couldn't look at him. Anything was better. Gray brick. Parked cars. A brown dog happily lapping up water.

“I can't believe everything she says. Not now.”

“I tried to stop it,” I said.

“I know.” He wouldn't take his eyes off me. “You see why we have to find her?”

“Yes,” I said. Were we now in the same boat? Would eliminating her make everything okay? Is that what it meant? Sometimes the heaviest things in a relationship are those things never spoken, never admitted, the words never said.

“You should go home, get some sleep. We can meet in the afternoon.” He smiled. It was slow, tentative, real. “You brief me, I brief you.”

I nodded assent. I said something, or was I dreaming it? Did I tell you my wife's name is Milagros? The name means MIRACLE she was still with me after four years. She could sense when I was disturbed, couldn't sleep. She has those deep spiritual qualities that dark-skinned mountain women are supposed to have. Her fingers, soft stroking, could send me into a trance. There was candlelight squirming on the ceiling. David being wheeled by in a gurney just wouldn't let me sleep. All light was too bright.

I sat in the living room and almost finished my pilfered cigarettes. Milagros brought over the chessboard. Some little diversion while the sky lightened and the tea kettle boiled. I kept thinking:
I don't want to find her, I don't. I want it all to go away. I want to sleep and forget
. The strong scent of
jengibre
: She cooked up a strong tea, a potent blend of leaf magic that soon had me in bed with fluttering eyelids. Her touch … savory waves shimmery nymphs. Hendrix when he plays slow, and mystic. Her whispered words tranced me dark.

“Maybe the answers will come to you in dreams,” she said, like she would breathe spirits into me.

14.

Memory blitz. Or memory something, the tune was a recurring swirl through dream. The drum was a heartbeat. It was feverish dark when the images started to play. Something was trying to snap him awake. He fought it, wanting to catch that glimmer of song before it faded off into the distance. He knew it had something to do with Belinda, with permanence, with a dress hanging in the bathroom. The drum was a heartbeat. Snapping to: like waking up under a table. Shiny boy shoes and girl calves. Donna wears a toe ring. Amanda has an ankle bracelet. A flash of sick came over him. As if time tripping, he had gone back to the prom, to that dizzy moment before he threw up.

Jarred awake, or not. Unsure, dream or UNdream. Fire escape window all lit up silvery, yellow, bronze. Pain, or fever. From time to time, an electric jolt, a lightning bolt.

Ava was on the fire escape. He could see her outside sitting, maybe on the sill maybe right by it. Squinting from sun, her hair all golden. “Ava as in Gardner, not Gabor.” With his fingers he found the tender spot, the bump at the back of his head. There were brief pain sparks. Barely a memory, just black after the last snapshot: images cascading like falling postcards. There was a cab ride with Monica. The blonde in his bed. Mink: “Where did you find her?” The tall thin vodka bottle on the kitchen table. Changó in a minidress. A fat roll of gaffer's tape. “Yes. Four cubes, please.” A laugh. “The rain came down in sheets.” The warm breath in his ear: “I never happened.” She was going out through the fire escape, or she was coming in. “I was never here.”

Ava came in through the fire escape window. She climbed in only as far as it took for her to straddle the thick sill, her legs dangling down. Half in, half out. Her purse slid to the floor.

Jolted awake, all images scattered. He rolled off the bed, lightning bolts flashing. Left corner under the mattress where he kept the toy baseball bat. Had that shit since he was ten, sturdy old wood stained and chipped but still a potent weapon. Easy to swing, a Babe Ruth autograph visible on the fat end. To hold it felt good. To hold it felt right, but standing so fast from his roll was wrong. There was a thick gelatin feel to his legs. The sense of swirling sick came back.

“What the fuck?” he said.

Her eyes were wide and startled. Her hands were up.

“Easy,” she said.

He was awake, wasn't he? The floor felt gummy under his feet, clinging to him sucking him down making him slow. He was not moving very well, his muscles sluggish. The room seemed smaller than before. Her eyes were very large, sucked the space from the room.

“Why'd you whack me?”

The sick pasty taste in his mouth, the ooze of facts and pictures. There was no way he could trust any information right now, not senses not sight not this strange dizzy and those clanging bells.

“What are you doing here?”

Bells?

Ava's eyes were pinned to the boy baseball bat he was waving around. Her hands open before her like that reminded him of a painting he had seen somewhere with Mink. It was in a museum. Maybe Spain. It was a religious scene, the tender pink hands of a supplicant.

“I can explain,” she said.

That set off the bells again. Words words they would be coming soon and coming fast, words to explain to cloud to clutter to conceal to correct to trick to fool. Words coming was hardly a good thing. What Alex needed was not words. It was that tall thin vodka bottle sitting on the kitchen table. That first cold splash of sting would waken the senses all right. Splash mold off rocks, blow barnacles off steamships. To hear a muddle of words with that unlubricated brain would only make things worse. He needed that drink! But he wasn't going to get it with Ava sitting there on the sill. He didn't trust her one bit and there was no way he was going to turn his back on her and give her another crack at his head.

“I don't want to hear it now,” he said.

Before she could react, he pulled her off the sill. She was reaching for her purse, which had fallen. That's when he gave her a conk on the head with the toy bat. She fell forward, onto the bed. She tried to sit up, to shake her head clear. It didn't work. She fell, she fell.

“Now we're even,” he said.

15.

I was on a train. No idea about where it was going. It must have been a very high elevated track, or no track. Out the tinted windows, no land or houses or streets. Nothing below but ocean. Wisps of cloud stroked window glass like sand.

The train car was moderately packed. I was swaying dizzy from height, wondering what train to where. I couldn't speak, couldn't ask anyone where this train was headed. The chatter swooned around me, all butterfly wings with no substance. In the middle of this sat Spook and David, huddled together like conspirators. They were talking loud enough for me to hear. I found myself sitting across from them, squinting from the sharp sun that cut through clouds like pinpricks. I wasn't even sure they could see me until David looked right at me and said, “Hey, did you ever wonder what you would do with ten million dollars?”

“He's not getting ten,” Spook said, throwing me a look. “How much do you think a spick cop is worth?”

The conversation was familiar. I remember once telling David I used to dream of having my own island. Was that my answer? I couldn't say now, I couldn't speak.

The train stopped somewhere, a station high up in a cloud bank. Misty cumulous was everywhere. Couldn't see tracks. The platform was a narrow thin wafer suspended in the cottony white. More people came on, talking that language that I still didn't understand. The only people I understood were David and Spook, sitting and talking like there was no one else in the car. I would have thought they would clam up in front of a cop. Maybe they knew me better than I did, right then.

“Ten million dollars,” David said, rocking back and forth like a Muslim.

Spook rocked with him. “Yeah.” He nudged David. “Hey. You know what? We might as well be the Romero brothers now.”

That was the punch line, the kicker to the tale that sent them foot-stomping hand-clapping train-tilting laugh. Train tilting train tilting and then I was sick.

Her hand was cold on my forehead. I puked into the toilet.

“Another message,” she said.

I shouldn't have taken that nap.

Milagros made a quick green tea.

The Romero brothers are a pair of Puerto Rican boys from the South Bronx. Milagros reminded me I had read a piece about them in yesterday's DAILY NEWS that said they were worth ten million dollars.

I was reaching for a cigarette when

to quit. To just quit. An elevator going down. A gold shield on the captain's desk. It seemed every time I made up my mind

always a new cigarette would find my fingers. Coming across one I forgot in my pocket. (Jack had slipped me three on the stoop.) It was no longer a challenge to wear the mark of Cain with distinction. Each time I almost forget, a phone call comes in.
You're going to die, Sanchez
. Maybe she doesn't say anything. I see it on her face. She hangs up.

“Wrong number,” she says.

Myers talked a lot about betrayal about traitors about that Vonnegut book
Mother Night
where a seemingly American traitor is in reality a great American hero. Traitor, hero, traitor, hero, a theme song a constant refrain. It was him or me: I had Myers on the brain, a weird growth that screwed with my ability to keep to the story with a sense of chronological accuracy. I was getting flashes: a window five floors up. A look straight down. A blonde in a chalk circle. Myers in a state of blank shock. He liked jokes about the Kennedy assassination. (“How many shooters does it take to screw an asshole?”) He kept bringing it up in those sudden phone calls as if he was working out some problem. Big questions about improbabilities and conspiracies and how there are always mistakes made and evidence seeps through YET THE PEOPLE WON'T BELIEVE IT won't go there won't accept it because America is NOT based on facts. America is a belief system—Myers rambling and I rambling just like him, a manic word fix while thinking of the just-after when I am sitting before the man with the face like the rock of Prudential.

And I change the subject, I say, “We were talking about Vonnegut.”

And he says, “No, you were talking about the money.”

Myers never talked about the money. It bothered him to mention it. His face creased like there was a bad smell.

I couldn't see him doing something just for money. That couldn't be exciting to him. It was more about the chase, the daring bits of Tarantino-speak between bullets, the victorious conclusion to another campaign. He was the point man, the unsung hero who worked in the dark for the big boys. He was the one who carried secrets. He had the magic truck with the special toys. Even the FBI knew that and wouldn't like to admit it sometimes hired strange fellows to do the strange deeds that probably repelled them but might be called for in order to preserve freedom liberty etc. And when making a point like that during what can only be taken as an interrogation, the best course is to radically and quite suddenly change the subject.

“We were talking about my father.”

My father was not a cop. He said there were other issues back then, about identity and culture. Becoming a cop wasn't big on the agenda if you wanted to express your PUERTO RICAN. He is still to this day uncomfortable around cops. He grew up in '50s Spanish Harlem. There were Italians in that neighborhood who kicked your ass just for being Puerto Rican. A lot of those Italians became cops. One of the reasons back then why Puerto Ricans didn't become cops so much. It was a far simpler time.

I would rather think of something farther. Not a blinking dot on any dispatcher's board just yet. No high window no five floors down. No bread trucks no path to follow. To quit means to just vanish, disappear without a trace. Not so easy in today's U.S.A.

Things I found out about Mallorca on the Internet:

1. 3,640 sq. km.

2.
Mallorca
is part of the Balearic community of islands off the Spanish coast. It gets 300 days of sun a year. Palma de Mallorca is the capital city. Approximately half of the island's population, or about 320,000 people, live there.

3.
Balearic
Islands:
Mallorca, Menorca, Cabrera in the north; Ibiza and Formentera in the south.

4.
Valldemosa
: where Chopin and George Sand spent the winter of 1838–39.

5.
Palma
de Mallorca
:
in 1983, declared the capital of the Balearic Islands, recognized as one of Spain's autonomous regions.

6.
Cathedral
la Seo
:
constructed from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in Palma de Mallorca. Antoni Gaudí redesigned its interior in the twentieth century.

Some people run away and they don't get far. Either they have no idea how to run or they have no idea they are already caught. I was thinking a lot about that “already caught” bit. More like a setup than I had planned. My pockets full of death threats. A place where houses are sold to foreigners on very favorable terms. Beach. Sun. Spanish. Milagros whispers: “Try not to force things.” There's an art to letting your enemy's momentum destroy him. Do nothing. Wait, and a door will appear: La Puerta del Mirador, Cathedral la Seo, Palma de Mallorca. A door to the sea, designed by Guillem Sagrera. How I found Mallorca on a latenight surf. Milagros was half-right. This wasn't the time to wait. There was no combination of something else to think about. No drugs to make the mind go slow and careful like grunts in a Michael Herr book. The persistent sensation: a ghost tickling my elbow. I felt watched, observed, tracked. A red blip on someone's screen.

“Maybe I'm just being paranoid,” I said.

“Just because you're paranoid,” she said back, “doesn't mean they're not after you.”

It was the cell phone.

“Where are you?” Myers had supposedly been called away by Anderson. Twenty questions, or: “Tell us what you know.” They'd have better luck interrogating a turnip. I was glad to see him go, but I hadn't lost him. He hadn't lost me. He called so much I had to put the earphone on so I could drive. “Where are you?” was his way of hello. Every time he asked, I didn't believe him. I felt he knew where I was. He only asked to see if I would tell him.

I was driving away from. No point in being seen. I was making those sharp turns. All of a sudden there was this bread truck. I swerved LEFT jumped the curb CRASH and rattle. The tires could squeal—I wasn't about to slow down. What if Myers had lied? What if he hadn't gone downtown?

That made me stop driving.

I jumped out of the car. On my knees outside, doors open, checking under seats. Pulling out vinyl mats. Glove compartment, cup caddy, ashtrays armrests seat belts. Fucking sun visors. Those little furrows and crannies along seats and doors. Windows up, windows down. I was breathing fast, slamming trunk and hood. The cassette player came on.
“Roadrunner, roadrunner. Going fast three miles an hour.”
A Jonathan Richman slow drawl.

I checked rims, hubcaps, fender, and hood. Ran my hand along the grille. I felt up every inch of my black Caprice. Strange looks from the peds as they spotted me on my back, getting a feel of the undercarriage. The giggle of gaggles.

“You lose something, mister?”

I drove over to a shop on Bruckner, where I got some Pedro to put it up on the hyrdaulic. He kept asking me what I was looking for. “I'll know it when I see it.” That was a lie. For all I knew it was some gummy paste, an ink stain, a minute chip hidden on a paper clip. Bottlecap, bread crumb, empty cigarette pack. How does so much junk accumulate in the backseat of a car? I fully vacuumed after the car wash. I floated under soap suds and big brushes, stupid nauseous. I smoked three cigarettes and laughed defiantly through each one. I laughed at myself, at Myers and ten million dollars and a blond woman, running. Through caffeine buzz and nicotine burn came acceptance: The car could be bugged, but I wasn't going to ditch it. It might be easier to lead him toward something than to try leading him away from.

“Where are you?”

Somedays you wish. No car, just speed. Traveling down those South Bronx streets like in a video game where the POV is just street and houses speeding by, no car but driving fast as easy as. To speed down streets so fast no one can catch you ever again. Dream that.

No sense of boundaries. The thing about growing up here was that there was always a line a ceiling a fluttering tape that said POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS. Doors could remain shut a whole lifetime. Could turn walking a beer can down the street into a blatant act of rebellion. I understood fully about people making their own rules, searching out their own breaks. I knew them, I chased them, I put them behind bars. But good guys bad guys? No such luck that life could be so easy. It was like reading Marvel comics. Some people always get away with it. Some people never do.

You can wake from a dream and wish you were still dreaming. You can wake from a dream and go back to sleep in hopes of picking up where you left off. You can wake from a dream and not rememeber a thing about it. Or just fuck it, jerk the steering wheel to the left, violent fast. A radio call, a nightmare sound. The other shoe drops. A sudden surge, all landscape gone spin. The wheels chirp a little. A line of trees, and you know you're on Jackson Avenue. The cluster of sand-colored projects jutting into sky. Shiny silver train cars rattle by on tracks above.

The cigarettes seemed to be making me sick, but I had two left and I was going to smoke them.

The 2 train shared the same elevated track as the 5 train, at least until 180th Street, where the 5 veered off toward Dyre Avenue. The 2 continued on up White Plains Road. Both trains passed through Manhattan to Brooklyn, the 5 taking the east side while the 2 took the west. It had a bad reputation, passing as it did through the heart of Harlem and some rough turf in Brooklyn. It was once dubbed “The Beast,” but that was just bad press. The 2 train was a trooper that sped express through Manhattan's overcrowded west side with ease, that went local through Harlem and Flatbush instead of cruising by and leaving people stranded. It was a heart-of-gold train, as tough as any veteran New Yorker with a tall tale. It roared into subway stations like a tantrum, but by the time it was side by side with the 5 train on elevated tracks, it was mellow. Clacking down the track, a pretty girl in heels walking fast. The clatter of trains like the clatter of dominoes. A group of old men playing under a bodega awning. The arrival of cop cars flashing lights and those POLICE CRIME SCENE, DO NOT CROSS tapes did not disturb their play. They were surprised when told someone had just dumped a dead body on the corner while they were playing. They didn't see a thing. Those fucking domino games.

At fifteen minutes past 1:00 on a Sunday grown muggy and gray, Spook was found garbage-bagged and dumped on the corner of Jackson and 152nd. Lieutenant Jack was the one to call me. I don't know where Myers was. I left a message. After that scene with him, I felt I was being pushed in a direction I wasn't sure I wanted to go. The inside dialogue never stopped. The blonde was creeping into my thoughts. I could see her eyes following me to the elevator.

Lieutenant Jack seemed brighter-eyed than I had seen him in a long time. He now had his homicide, his sense of mission. Knowing Spook and many of the central characters gave him the feeling of being personally involved.

“It's strange,” he said, popping the customary stick of gum. “This was the one guy I didn't expect to see like this. A big shot like him, swatted down and dumped like garbage. It's almost the end of an era.”

Yes, the end of MY era. The mess they made of Spook. The mashed-up face the rope burns the way they slashed his throat from ear to ear. They do that to people who “sing,” who tattle, who tell tales. What a mess they made of Spook. With all the hideouts and all the security, he was murdered and dumped on his own turf.