South by South Bronx (25 page)

“She was just a bait to lure you away from the money,” I said. “The money is hidden in the bowels of the old Majestic Theater on Van Cortlandt. The captain wants a nice highprofile raid from the department side. We can give it to him. While the lieutenant and his boys are making the big splash, you and I can settle this.”

There was nothing broken about Myers now. Maybe the rum had fired up his blood, lit up his mind. Maybe he was at his best at times like these, when things go wrong and he has to do the dodge ball. The dark glassy aspect to his eyes had nothing weak about it. He tossed back that shot and laughed.

“Yeah, right. As if it would even be there.”

“It's there all right.”

“Really. And it's going to sit there all snug and patient and wait until you and the entire New York City police force just walk in and get it?”

“That's right.”

(Light another cigarette. Make a lot of smoke.)

“And this Roman guy, he's just going to sit tight and let you?”

“Sit tight.”
I laughed. “That's exactly right.
Sit tight
. I like that.” I laughed again, Myers cocking his head, not getting it. “Myers, there is only one person directly linked to the money right now, and that person is Roman. I told you I saw him yesterday.”

“So?”

“So after he told me where the money was, I couldn't let him go. He might disappear with the money, or just disappear, and I might need him. The FBI won't need scopolamine to get him to talk.”

Now Myers started laughing. Then he stopped. “Get the fuck.” It was dawning on him now. “You didn't.”

I shrugged, puffing on the cigarette. “I beat him, I cuffed him, I threw him in my car.” Right in front of his boys, redfaced and confused. Were they supposed to do something?
You wanna do something? I'M A COP!
I'd screamed. “I took him someplace I know, someplace safe.”

“You're trying to shit me, Sanchez.”

“Tied him up, hand and foot. Gaffer's for his mouth. There's an old bed in an old shed. Isn't that a country song?”

“You should stop trying to shit me, man, because—”

I dropped the two Polaroids on the table. One was of Roman's face before I taped his mouth. The other was of him gagged and bound and lying in the bed. An old bed in an old shed. I tried to sing the tune but couldn't quite hit it. Myers stared at the pictures, eyes disbelieving, mouth twisted to mock. His head slowly shook no no no.

“Where do you have him?”

“Like I would tell you. Every person connected to the money in this case has been murdered. You're the last person I would tell.”

“Fuck you, Sanchez. You ain't got shit.”

“Actually, I do got shit. I got ten million. I guess that's the last thing left that can save your case. I mean, short of you eliminating every trace this ever happened—but the FBI is on it now. It might be better for you to turn up with the money. Give you some collateral. You can set yourself up again. Choice choice choice, it seems every time we end up talking about this choice you have to make. You can choose not to believe me. I can choose to go to the FBI.”

Myers eyes glass. Spacey. “Why don't you?”

Slow grin. “I'm Puerto Rican,” I said. “I don't like the FBI.”

Myers smile vague. I could tell he was working all the variables. He could probably hand
me
over to the FBI, show I was involved, give them my information about where the money was. But that meant the FBI would get it. He could put a bullet in my head anyway, collapse the case, wipe the traces and vanish—but no money, no guarantee of getting it if anything should happen to me. Outside of Roman, I was the last direct link to the money. And I had denied him Roman.

“The classic Daffy Duck conundrum: Should I shoot him now, or wait until I get home?” His eyes went blank, empty. “I should just shoot you now, should I shoot you now? A place like this, people won't even turn around. A simple dispute between cops … Look, okay, okay.” Myers seemed like a person having a three-way argument, interrupting himself to interrupt himself. “Fine, fine, look—okay, I'll do this, I'll do it your way, but on this one condition. If for some reason the money isn't there—” “It'll be there.”

“—if it isn't there, then I want Roman. You give me Roman, understand?”

He had leaped across the table he had grabbed me by the shirt. Spilled glasses clink and the stink of rum dripping off the edge. Then it all sagged from him, energy spent. He sat like a sack. He righted glasses he wiped at spills he ordered another pair of drinks. Like nothing ever happened. I almost didn't experience it in real time.

“I better not drink anymore,” he said, loosening his tie. “I'll probably be talking to the FBI later.”

“About me?”

“No. How long before the raid on the theater?”

“It'll take me at least a day to mount the operation. I can get it going tonight and maybe tomorrow we—”

“You think we can wait? What if somebody else … ?”

“There is no somebody else, I told you. Nobody else in Roman's posse knows about the money. It's safe, nice and tight. We just have to go in and get it. Listen, Myers, if you tell the FBI about me—”

“My case status is still confidential. I've been ordered to secure my information and not hand it over … The agency and the FBI are going to have to fight it out. You handing over this money will go a long way in getting you off the hook. You understand what I'm saying to you?”

We shared a final cigarette outside in a frisky wind that seemed to smoke the cigarettes for us. In the middle of a sentence he seemed to simply vanish, slinked around the bend, wasn't even there anymore. I felt empty strange when he left, pursued and on edge. “I've dismantled my team,” he'd said, as if this really was the final scene coming, a half-laugh linked with cough. “They'll never find that bread truck.”

He had lied—we would find the bread truck the very next day. Made the radio rounds from a fire department call. “There's a big bread truck on fire, Edison and Burnside, abandoned … Some kids must have set it on fire.” It was an empty truck. What I knew about Myers was that bread truck or not FBI or not he would always have that information, that bit of me that he would hold onto for the rest of his life. Maybe now I was part of his team. Maybe he would never leave me alone. I knew too much. That Ava Reynolds wasn't on the train proved to me she was going to go through with it. She was taking that ten-million-dollar club all the way to the finish line. That meant I had to as well. It was another obligation to David.

I picked up the radio and called the precinct. “Jack, I need you.”

A whole day. Myers and I didn't talk. I didn't talk to Anderson. I didn't talk to my wife. She was already flying. A series of planes. Only one call at 4 a.m. from Lisbon Airport.

“I love you,” she said. “Are you sure you're going through with this?”

It was that soft voice from my conscience again, what was left of it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you sure you can't just get on a plane and get out of there?”

“Yes, I'm sure.”

The big empty bed. Her words in my head like a dream. A long feverish day of plans and maps and phone calls to the D.A. Jack and I like the old days, big raid, adrenalin rush, but with a difference I felt when I caught a glimpse of the captain—it was my last time.
Last time
, what does that mean?

At night I left a message for Myers. “It's on.” I went to bed with my gun by the pillow, waiting for maybe the crash of the shattered front door, the scurry of feet rushing in. Cop feet, Myers feet? Good guys bad guys. Didn't register. Didn't sleep. I only knew I wanted Milagros again, I just wanted a chance to see her again, to lie beside her on that sandy white beach. It was as simple and as basic as my desires got.

The warrant was a piece of cake. Choice of: pirate CD op. Weapons stockpile. Stolen goods warehouse. A drug processing center. “Police acted on a tip.” Where was Roman? There were only three people in the funeral parlor when we swarmed in. The two squads dismounted fast from buggies, with a detachment to cover the street all the way around the corner to secure possible escape routes. It was tall Jenkins who entered with me, Jack, and Myers. The few people in the funeral parlor offered no resistance. I didn't waste time on them, rushing past to the basement and the corridor leading into the theater.
“¡Corre
,
que ahí viene la jara!”

“Myers and I go straight,” I told Jack, “and we'll meet you on top.”

What was it with Jack peering at us from a distance, giving Myers that strange look? “Okay,” he said.

“Does he know,” Myers asked as Jack disappeared around the bend, “what we're looking for?”

“Hell no. Come on.”

I pushed on down the long corridor. Of course Myers was behind me. I didn't like it, but what was I supposed to do? I felt he wouldn't plug me as long as the money was still the goal and I was the one taking him there. Going down the corridor I figured the Jenkins group would be coming across the roomful of weapons by now. Jack and Peters would hit the stairs which bypassed the main floor directly above us to the top floor where the fenced goods were stored. It was big up there, full of CD-ripping rigs and Roman's office where the forging equipment was. I wondered who would come blasting out on the talkie first as I led Myers along those stone walls. The ceiling got lower. A little darker in this space, a warm black alcove before the shaft of light that streamed down from the large windows on the side of the elevator shaft, going up. I paused. Myers paused. Breathing space. In all this time, he hadn't said a word. Not much even when he'd arrived in the morning, straight to business.

“What if it isn't there?” he said.

“That's more your problem than mine.” We were hunched and moving toward the light. He put his hand on my back. I turned and noticed his eyes, vague and round.

“We've got weapons here, chief,” Jenkins said into the talkie.

“Where are you, buddy?”

It was Jack, groping for me by talkie.

“We're coming to the elevator shaft,” I said. The big yellow pipe, jutting out of brick, disappearing into floor. You had to either crawl over or crawl under. It wasn't easy and you couldn't do it quick. I had to go first, pipe cold and gritty. I could expect—the perfect moment for that bullet in the head. He could pop me and claim … claim what? That I was in on it all along. (He had the tapes.) I must have made a move on him in the dark. Myers was lucky he drew in time …

“Enough guns here for a battalion,” Jenkins said into the talkie. “Man oh man.”

I felt squeezed between cold wall and cold pipe. I passed through, came out in the elevator shaft.

I was thinking that Peters and his cops would go across the top floor pretty fast to clear it before really checking it through. They might not get to the stairs that led down to the floor right above us. I pressed my talkie button.

“Jack, where are you?”

“We just hit a room full of car parts, believe it or not.”

“Let me know when you hit the stairs, chief.”

“Copy that.”

Myers had taken the opportunity while I was on the talkie to tackle the pipe. He was trying to move fast. He seemed stranded between wall and pipe. Wriggling small, buglike. Rats scurrying from a drain pipe. Roaches panicking when the light comes on.

I hate bugs. I've always hated them. Always pull that
chancleta
out to wham SPLAT that shit fast, no thinking, just pulled out that pistol. The blow crumpled him folded, crumpled him heap. Moaning, or maybe it was cursing. I had to hit him again he was moving so much.

I went through the corridor on the opposite side of the elevator shaft, where the steel door was. I shut it, then hopped up a series of steel steps jutting from the stone. What was that noise? Cop voices, shuffling, boxes. A loud crash. “Hey! Watch that shit, will ya?” Talkie chatter.

“Hey, buddy, we're at the stairs now,” Jack said.

I was fiddling with the box that stood a few feet from the elevator shaft. I could see Myers. He could see me. He was moving again, touching his head. I was messing with wires. I was cursing my luck. I was hearing cop chatter talkie chatter my wife Milagros chatter and a blonde with big green eyes that were still following me. Things blurred around me, I had to blink fast. A sudden tunnel vision. A liquidy blur like when the fish tank sweats. (A ride at the front of the 6 train, that front window and how I fought to get the view on tippytoes.) I was looking down at Myers. One moment he was all blur. The next, he was clear.

“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?”

It was a Myers scream. At first I thought the voice was in my head. It couldn't have been Myers. He was looking up at me from the inside of a well. There was blood on his face. I must have hit him pretty hard.

“Jesus, what are you doing?”

“The elevator's broken,” I said. I fiddled with the box some more. There was a loud clatter boom. The platform far above jerked. Started to move. Fell, with a hydraulic whining grinding crash

the squealing of a stuck pig

27.

The drive to the airport was effortless. There was no feeling with them together in the confines of a small car that they needed to talk, or make talk. They didn't have to be cordial or fight to avoid long silences. In fact, they loved silences. When questions would come, he found she would answer them. Not with evasions or long tales or even coy pauses. She would just say as she thought it.

“Why do you think a train station?” he asked, the first question after a particularly long silence.

“A train station in Berlin?”

“Yeah. How come?”

“David told me he had a cousin who was stationed in Germany. I don't know where in Germany. Maybe he helped arrange it. I have a key with a number on it.”

“Fifty-three,” he said.

“Right.” She seemed pleased he remembered. “I suspect the key is for a storage locker. You know, like they have in train stations.”

The road was smooth. The New York City traffic flowed. The sun came out strong and bright. He would look at her and smile. She would look at him and catch him smiling and she would smile too. They would both look away.

“What?” she asked.

“Your hair,” he said.

“Is it funny?”

“No.”

“But you're laughing.”

“No. I'm smiling.”

She let that sit for a moment. A restful silence was broken. They were both hungry and took a moment to stop at a gas station, to eat their salami sandwiches with lettuce and tomato and share a cigarette together.

“You're lucky,” she said as they got back into the car. “You have good friends.”

“You mean Mink?”

“Yes. Especially Mink.”

“I am lucky,” he said, jerking the car into drive. “Don't you have friends?”

“No,” she said. “I was never in one place long enough.”

“Sometimes it happens that you can take your friends with you.”

“It's never happened to me.” She was finishing the cigarette, and put it to his lips for the last puff. “The only people I had around were people I worked with. I didn't really feel like they were my friends. It wasn't that kind of job.”

“I've always had friends,” he said.

The toll booth they passed was fun because she leaned far forward so that she could be seen by the attendant, as if to push fate. She was a black-hair now. Her face was not yet on a
Wanted
poster hanging in every post office. It seemed that no one really noticed her. It made them both laugh.

He tossed her the tobacco and asked her to roll them one. She rolled a beautiful tube of a smoke that wasn't too tight and yet wasn't too loose. It wasn't thin and small or bulby and pregnant. She lit it for them and took the first puffs. When she passed it, he was duly impressed.

“Where did you learn to roll like that?”

The cigarette even tasted better.

“I used to roll a lot of joints,” she said.

Alex started to think about what would happen when they got to the airport. Was he supposed to just drop her off? Is that what she expected, or would he park the car and make sure she got on a flight? They hadn't called ahead or booked anything. Ava was uptight about making reservations or leaving any kind of trail. There was the possibility that there could be people watching out for her at the airport, or that her name could be on some sort of list. They could prevent her from buying a ticket or getting on a plane. They could hold her there until Alan.

“That's why I was thinking,” Alex said, “that I should probably not just drop you off. I could park the car and go into the terminal with you. Just in case, you know.”

“You don't have to do that,” she said, but she took his hand and squeezed. Her eyes seemed to be saying,
Please do that.

“It's no trouble,” he said, squeezing her hand right back.

Alex started to think about what would happen after he returned home. Could it be that this one-eye guy would come after him? He could probably sleep over at Benny's for a while, until maybe things blew over. But then it happened again when he started to think about himself: Somehow, she crept into the picture. He started to think about what might happen to her in Germany.

“But do you know anyone in Berlin?”

“No.”

“And you're just going to go there with this key, to pick up some package?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know this isn't some trap? That you won't get killed the moment you pick it up or something?”

“I don't know that. But I have no choice.”

“Why not?”

“Because I could stay here and get killed.”

Her answers did not remotely sound irritated or bitter. She was almost talking dreams to a child, or telling a story, or giving directions.

“It could be that I get there and I end up picking up a package that has an address on it. I take the package to the address and hand it to someone, and then maybe this is over.”

“You think so?”

“It could be.”

“But you don't know.”

“No, I don't.” She exhaled a thin stream of smoke and passed the cigarette. “Maybe David wanted to keep this in his family. Maybe he
didn't
want it all in the family. I don't even know what he wanted,” she said tiredly. She gave him a long stare that he could feel, laser sharp. “Maybe you could come,” she said.

Alex felt a strange burning in his stomach. He was thinking about that empty apartment, his job at Henderson's, and the danger he might be in if he went back to life as usual.

“I just mean,” she went on, still holding his hand, “that you could fly with me to Berlin.”

He was thinking about blackouts, drunken weekends, and how today he hadn't even thought about having a drink. This was the first time he could remember wanting to be awake, wanting to catch every moment and not miss a thing. In a way, he felt he had been asleep for a long time. Her hand was still in his. He found it hard to look at her. She finding it hard to look at him. Her glances to the side, out the window, away. Looking. Throwing glances.

“I don't know,” he said. Squeezing her hand, feeling the tremble.

The tails of those parked airliners appearing along the highway.

“I bought two tickets,” she said.

He had wanted to go up to the counter with her but she had refused. There were cameras up there and she didn't want Alan to possibly spy him with her on some snatch of tape, so he waited for her to come back. They had stopped at an ATM. His card worked. He had withdrawn money and handed her his wallet. “Just in case you need extra cash,” he said.

He got a coffee and browsed through some magazines, figuring that sometime soon he would turn around and she would be gone, as quickly as she had appeared, some phantom, some product of a blackout dissolve, that dark spot between frames that happens too fast for the human eye to register.

It wasn't like that. She came back to him, running, excited, like a young niece sent on an errand just accomplished.

“I bought two,” she explained, “because I thought of asking you if maybe you could accompany me to my gate and you know how it is here at JFK where only ticketed passengers can go in, and besides, I prefer an empty seat on a long flight … Anyway, here.” She handed him his ticket and his wallet. “I got your name right, didn't I?”

“Yes.” He felt like something was choking him, making talk difficult.

“We'll settle all the money stuff later, okay?”

Her eyes were glittery wet, and what was happening to him? Why did things come all at once?

“Now come,” she said, “twenty minutes to boarding …” Pulling him by the hand. Why do people in airports think having no luggage is suspicious? (So is paying with cash, Ava said, but she's a fast talker when the role requires it.) Is a woman not supposed to change her hair color just because of a passport? The blank-faced agent who checked hers didn't even nod smile or wink. No hand luggage, just her purse, sans the gun. This had already been disposed of in a gas station trash can on the way. No beeping items, no sense of just passing through—Alex hated goodbyes. Airport scenes gave him stomachaches, and here, being held by the hand, walking the crowded concourse, the perfume shops, the newspaper stands, the stink of fast food frying—her dark hair—he would look at her and smile. She would look at him and catch him smiling and she would smile. (She looked away.)

“What?” she asked.

“Your hair,” he said. “I can't get used to it.”

“The blond will come back. Is it funny?”

“No.”

“But you're laughing.”

“I'm smiling,” he said. The crowd all strange around them, blurred dark blobby unreal. The call of the flight the whirr click of the ticket machine like a stapler, and the voice of the woman handing back those ticket stubs. “Have a nice flight,” over and over like a recording. He looking at her fighting off that mad rush of feeling and questioning. What was there to fight off?

“It makes me happy to look at you,” he said. Cupping her face with his hands, those small trembling lips, those sparkle bright eyes.

“So don't stop,” she said.

The kiss was salty. Was lips was soft sea and swimmy waves and eyes closed and hands clasped and bodies pressed and that flowery smell, flowery smell of her new hair. A few more kisses, by mouth, by cheek.

“Thanks for saving my life,” she said.

And then she had to turn, to walk from him, to go straight to the ticket lady and the whirr click STAMP of the ticket machine and her stub appearing on the other side: “Have a nice flight.”

The smile and wave she gave him just before rounding the bend down that corridor to the plane was not a pity-me sadness. It was a blessing, as if all her feelings had been compressed into her eyes and her fingers. It was the best thank you she could have ever spoken. It was better than a painting or a photograph. It was a memory no blackout could ever erase. The three words she mouthed he heard across the distance as if she had been still beside him and had whispered them into his ear.

“Yeah,” he said, “me too.”

Once upon a time

I was the only child forbidden to climb

over the garden wall.

—Anne Sexton, “Eighteen Days Without You”

A little time to kill before going back. The two of them doing roof. Some drinks, some pipe hits, some sense that something marvelous had happened. Something came. Something went. Their country was not at war, or: It felt like the last night before the start of a big campaign. The air was spiced with something burnt. Something came.

“I didn't even get to tell her,” Monk said. “About her black hair.”

Mink was wet-eyed and red-faced. “You think Alex is coming back?” He handed Monk a lemon slice and poured tequila into the glass.

Monk put some salt on his hand. Licked it up. Downed the glass, then bit into the lemon. He squinted at Mink. “Again,” he whispered.

Mink set up a round by pulling out another glass and filling both. “It's the first time,” he said. “The first time we've been working at the same time that we … that we've been working at the same time. We got all kinds of habits together, but this … this is a new habit.”

“New habits break old ones,” Monk said, thinking he'd heard that somewhere before. They clinked glasses.

(Salt. Drink. Lemon.)

The sky was growing lighter. The seagulls had started to buzz the rooftop by then.

The seagulls were just like them—creatures of habit. They were probably the same seagulls that swooped by every morning on their way to hangouts along the East River. They knew that roof because many times Mink and Monk would be sitting up there when they came by. Monk had a drum of junk up there for them. Banana peels, bread, pizza, salami-and-cheese sandwiches. Mink would tip the drum over so they could come and browse. Monk would select choice bits and toss crap up to them. They hovered with their quivering tremendous wingspans, their wide unblinking eyes, their snapping beaks as they caught crap in mid-flight. Some would land and stand as if posing on the parapet, watching the festivities like spectators. All sudden, after twenty minutes or so of show, it was as if someone offstage had blown a whistle. All the seagulls would take off in a pack, like surfers eager to catch a wave. There was another metal drum. Mink and Monk would light a fire in it, and no cops would come.

“I didn't even get to tell her,” Monk said. “I saw her going up the fire escape.”

The vibe turned boomy bass and drum dub. King Tubby's or one of those old Clocktower Records. They played the CD-Rom, manipulated their way through seven different atmospheres, all floaty Mink blocks and cubes. “We can only offer you $500,000.” The South Bronx finally pays off. Monk laughed so hard
baba
came out of his mouth.

“There's no way that's real,” he said.

“That's what I thought.”

“But you should do it anyway.”

The last two cigarettes of the pack. Shook one out for Monk. Lit them both.

“I don't speak blocks and cubes anymore. Besides, I don't think I want the South Bronx to became a mecca for the ultra-hip.”

Monk was staring at him. It was a faraway stare, glassy and from a great distance. Mink got the distinct feeling that Monk saw right through him, saw straight through artifice and wordplay and smoke screens and all those pretty things words do to throw people off. Something wistful on his face. Some people never fall for three-card monte. “If only things could stay the same.” All snug and small town, insular and well-preserved. The air was spiced with something burnt. Something came, something went.

Tequila sunrise. A long, uneventful silence.

Mink said, “I wonder if Alex is coming back.”

At that moment, a great flapping, an agitated shriek. A great big spotted seagull, that last late straggler, swooped over the junk drum, nervously chattering. Hovering and dipping, he scooped up that old pizza crust and flew off fast, making great strides to cut through sky and catch up to the fleet.