South by South Bronx (13 page)

The street now taking color. Rainy grays washed out. With sun bursting through clouds came faces, from this way from that from all over tenement streets. That Spook was dead, going fast from ear to ear across town. Fingers punched numbers on cell phones. Cars started up. Wiggie and Jaco arrived by 4x4. There were screaming wailing cousins. Quique tried to reach Roman but only got his voice mail. It made sense that he was hiding. As the only person from the group “in on it,” he could be thinking maybe there was a trail to him. Soon Lieutenant Jack would ask about him. Soon Myers would do his own math. Roman, who had wanted to stay out of it, was now conspicuous in his absence.

The others knew something was coming for them. They didn't know what it was. (They were right. The cops would soon start raiding all their asses.) They clustered around, tossing up bits of information. Seen in the area: two white men in business suits. That wouldn't help much, considering white men in business suits look alike to most Puerto Ricans. Spook was being secretive, Spook was avoiding his people, Spook was seen with a white guy who looked like a narc—all patches and bits, nothing solid, nothing secure. I sang them a different song than the lieutenant. Hard cop, soft cop. LATINO cop. I kept hoping Roman would have the common sense to put in an appearance, at least so Jack could question him and take him off the suspect list. Already briefed by Myers and me, he would soon take his cop thoughts to the next cop place: What if someone inside the organization got wind of the ten million and decided to make a move for it?

The meat wagon comes.

Cops start to push. Sometimes when a body lies there a long time, people start to get angry about how it's lying there. Cops don't like people fucking with the body because it's evidence, so sometimes they push. People push back. Some cop panicked and got on the radio. Three more cop cars arrived with staccato shrieks, as if sonic beeps from a cop car would ever break up a crowd.

I didn't let them wheel Spook by me, this time I left with the body. This time I felt sure I had to make him talk to me. Somehow or other he had to tell me what happened and there had to be something somehow that I could read, pick up, a clue a sign a feeling. The coroner could tell me, couldn't he? We could find the answers hidden on him. But at the morgue, I was having a hard time finding a coroner to work on him. Would the day go so fast? Three hours before anyone would even touch him. I set off with Jack, a squad of cops along to hit two of Spook's nearby hideouts around Jackson. These were rooms, small apartments, spaces cluttered with old junk that didn't say much to us. Where was Myers? Had he somehow gotten what he wanted, as Jack was saying?

“Maybe he's already hiked his ass back to Washington,” he said, but I didn't think so. I knew there was something Myers wanted and it had to do with me. There was no way to fight the feeling: I did it. I let something in. I opened a door, and maybe now it was up to me to stop it.

When I got Myers, he sounded harried and hassled. Anderson had him locked in an office somewhere. “I'm talking the whole shit,” Myers said. “They shine a light in my face. They shove bamboo shoots up my nails. They're really grilling me. It's been a waste of a day. There's so much to do, and I still can't get out of here.”

“What do they want?”

“I told you, they want information.”

I filled him in on Spook, that I was rushing an autopsy and had searched a couple of his nearby cribs. Myers was not going to speed down like Agent Cooper to look for minute clues, the bits of dirt under a fingernail.

“I don't want you distracted by all this,” he said. “The lieutenant will do just fine. Finding Ava Reynolds right now is the most important thing. Did you start the canvassing?”

“Yes. Some cops, some detectives. Lieutenant Jack's handling it.”

“You make sure and look in on that. I don't trust the lieutenant to be as motivated as you when it comes to the girl. Don't get distracted by cop business. This isn't the time to be a cop.”

The words froze me. Again that feeling, of hot and cold. I was searching my pockets for a smoke. (
Nada
.) These same words, that same phrase, coming back to me like a hammer blow. Again I could see her eyes, the widest, greenest eyes I had ever seen. As big and round on that small face as any character in a Japanese cartoon. This was a game, a sick game. I was puffing fast on a piece of cigarette, found broken in some pocket.

“I hate to tell you this, but I don't think there's anything Spook's body can tell you. They finished with him. It's very probable he talked, led them to his brother.”

“But who led them to Spook?”

The Myers laugh, sudden like a cough. “You did,” he said.

“What?”

“Who knows? He could have met them. He was doing business with them, wasn't he? I'll tell you something right now that I just found out here. The FBI was trying to hire him. Trying to hire the both of them.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. They approached David Rosario about it, just around the time the money vanished. They could have approached his brother directly. You see what I'm saying? The more people who get involved, the more teams. The more teams, the more information gets thrown around. There could be a mole at any point along those lines of information. They could be tapping any source at any point. We can't be sure.”

“And what if you're the source?”

Myers laughed. “Great,” he said. “My team is too small.”

“They could tap your lines, find a way into your information. And goddamnit, that's
my
information.”

“I hate to say it, buddy, but these people are sophisticated.” There was a sudden interruption on his end. “Hey, I have to get out of here. We've got a date later.”

The line went click.

The thought that it was my information that got them killed grew stronger. I would rather believe it was a mole, a leak, a tap, not that other idea growing in my head like a poison mushroom. “This isn't the time to be a cop.” And that brought me right back to the blonde.

I had been to David's office several times before Ava Reynolds started working there. Fischer-MacMillan, an advertising firm on 54th Street. I had gone past the imposing woodgrain reception desk many times. The alley of cushiony cubicles, the name plates made out of CDs, everything familiar enough. Odd how just when all this begins, David finds himself needing to hire an assistant. The first time I saw her, they were both outside his office, she typing furious into a laptop. She saw me and stopped typing, face quizzical and edged with a sense of recognition that I found baffling. The last time I saw her, her eyes stayed with me every step of the way into David's office. They were with me when I stepped out. When I waited for the elevator, they appeared in person. She stood there, not saying anything. She waited until I got into the elevator, then slipped in just before the doors closed.

The elevator ride was one long drop. Her eyes did not leave me, so close so large so green. The glowing orbs in a science fiction movie that force people to tell the truth … maybe a kind of scopolamine … Her hair, what was with that hair? Everything around her wanted to go black-and-white, until we were both in a 1930s movie.

“I know why you came,” she said. Words, there were words. She was staring at the rows of buttons on the wall. Down, we were going down. The elevator made muffled beeps.

“I know you're trying to help him,” she said, “but it can be done.”

It was funny to me how she had the same tone David had, only more insistent, more sure. It was as if she was continuing the argument I had just lost with David.

“No, it can't,” I said, with the same passion I wasted on David. “The feds are bound to come. If I picked up on this, they will. Especially this kind of money, and the people that come attached to it.”

“What people?”

“Terrorists. Criminals. Republicans. Whatever the fuck they are! The people the money's getting stolen from!”

“The feds are already here.”

She pulled out a key and stuck it in a slot on the button board. The elevator came to a halt. So did my stomach, two sickening jolts later.

“It's more the reason,” she said, “to do it.”

“Now hold on.” There was not even room to pace. Her eyes took up all the room all the air. “I've been trying to warn David off.” Because the button hadn't been pressed, the money hadn't gone missing the first time David told me about the plan. By this time the money was gone. I didn't think they would be able to give it back, but maybe they could cut a deal with the feds to scam the terrorists and set them up. I couldn't tell her all that, or the reason I was trying to warn David off—I knew damn well once those two hit the ON switch, I was in it. I would show up, as involved as anyone, no matter what my final decision was. I didn't know if she knew that. David just wanted me to keep my mouth shut. Look the other way, then, should the feds get the ball, block the kick.

“Don't you know what it's like,” she asked, “to have a personal score to settle?” The way her eyes flashed told me I wouldn't have to bother answering.

There was a sudden loud buzz. A red light flashed on the button board. The speaker crackled.

“Hey, number two. You stuck? What's going on?”

She quickly opened a small compartment and pulled out a phone.

“System training for a new recruit,” she said, hanging up the phone. She closed her eyes for a moment, exhaled. Her face flushed bunny pink.

“There's someone coming to see you.”

The burning in my stomach moved to my hands my ears my eyes felt like I had smothered them in onions. A sudden paralysis: the feeling this Ava Reynolds was more than just a David assistant.

“Who are you?”

“He's not just a fed, he's worse. He's a bulldog. If you can derail him long enough—”

The buzzing drilled through everything.

“Hey, number two! Pick up the phone! What's going on?”

“There's no time,” she said, turning the key in the slot. The elevator groaned. The buttons on the board blinked mad crazy like slot-machine time.

“This isn't happening,” I said. “I'm not hearing this because we're not talking about this. I'm a fucking police officer.”

“I know what you are.” It was a soul-weary smile, a sense of shrug. No explanation necessary. She nodded. She hit the
M
button. Her eyes went hopeless.

“This isn't the time to be a cop,” she said.

The elevator buckled and began a speedy drop. I felt words crowding me. I suddenly wanted to explain, the way I couldn't to every cop every Puerto Rican cousin every commander-in-chief. I just couldn't break the silence in that falling box. I wanted to stay there, the two of us going down fast. I was inside something, pulsating with life. It was that perfect moment when you feel everything is in flow. And then she messed it up by opening her mouth.

“David's counting on you,” she said.

Barely had the words hit, the doors slid open. People were already pushing in by the time I managed to swim out into the open space of the elevator bank, to see she had vanished like a mirage, that bad dream that good dream.

The murderers were real pros. Dissolved locks. Gloves, drugs, electronic equipment.

“They pumped him full of scopolamine.” Richards was the medical examiner who did Spook. “It's an old-style truth serum drug used by the OSS in World War Two.” Truth truth who was telling the truth? “Amnesiac drugs.” Of the anticholinergics group, including atropine, hyoscine, and glycopyrrolate. Not to be confused with the mild stuff they give you for motion sickness. “In larger doses, it can cause irreparable brain damage.”

The Buick Skylark used to deliver Spook was stolen from 146th Street and Grand Concourse. Fisk, Jack, and Tedder went through the car inch by inch. Seen in the area, two white men in business suits. Who hasn't seen white men in business suits these days in the South Bronx? On Jackson Avenue, I spotted two FBI agents standing on a corner like they were hailing a cab. I recognized that Dupreé fellow smoking a cigarette, laughing a joke. They weren't fooling anyone. They might as well have been wearing sandwich boards. I don't know what their angle was. My angle was: The bus driver said she asked for 149th Street. She ran down Prospect Avenue. I drove down that same way to where it ends slam against 149th Street. I parked there, lit that last cigarette, and stared at the building across the street.

It was where Roman lived.

I thought one trail led to the other. I wondered if it would seem that simple, that clear to Myers. He could connect the dots any way that suited him. I wanted to believe that Myers didn't know what I knew, but I wasn't convinced.

Of course, Roman wasn't home. I left more messages. I knew I could find him. Spook had been the same when he went under, sometimes leaving a face on the corner, the stoop, the bodega. Just a dude chewing on a plastic straw until you come along. It's no push-button thing. You have to hoof it, talk, share a cigarette. You have to know the route, know what door to knock on for answers.

“Where are you?”

I was speeding crazy swerve, back to Jackson Avenue. I had the earphone plugged in so Myers was an insect presence as I drove.

“I'm at the fence, right by the grassy knoll,” I said.

“And what do you see?”

“Just some fucking motorcade. Did you know there are FBI agents crawling all over Jackson Avenue?”

“That's right,” he said. “They want to jump in now that the stakes are getting higher.” He sounded breathless, like he was climbing up some back stairs. “They planted FBI agents outside the Ava Reynolds apartment, in case she goes back. There are FBI agents arriving at both Rosario residences. I suppose it doesn't look too good for them if some foreign terrorist mob is running around slaying Bronx residents.” He chuckled. “Like that does any good now.”