Buried on Avenue B (22 page)

“So what could Pizza do?”

“Strike back or get over it.”

“Make her own friend at the phone company?”

“Why not? It's a free country.”

“And a new American is born every day.”

“That's a good one, Darlene. I like that.”

 

CHAPTER 55

AFTER PUTTING UP
with her cold for a week, O'Hara decides to throw everything she has at it, sweat it out or die. As soon as she gets back to her apartment, she strips off the clammy clothes she's been in all day and replaces them with two T-shirts, sweatpants, and thick cotton socks. Then she puts a teapot to boil and does an inventory of her cabinets. When she's done, three bottles and a puckered tea bag are lined up on her kitchen table. The green one is NyQuil, the orange Theraflu, and the brown Maker's Mark. None is more than a third full, and according to the stamp, the NyQuil expired in February '03.

When the kettle whistles, she pours three fingers of bourbon over the tea bag, adds boiling water and the viscous remains of the NyQuil, and stirs it with a chopstick. With Bruno looking on anxiously, she transports the steaming concoction to the living room, where two towels and a blanket have been spread over her couch. Before it can cool, she downs it in its entirety, crawls between the towels, and pulls the blanket to her chin.

Although O'Hara feels the weight of her beverage, it doesn't quiet the chatter in her head, and despite the help from Marla, one question keeps tripping her up. Why would they rob Levin when he was already volunteering the contents of his bank account? What could they hope to find that would justify the risk? Were they lured by that safe in his closet? Had they somehow found out about it, but didn't know all it contained was an ancient pair of trunks and shoes? Or maybe they were convinced they'd already extricated all the cash they could by other means. But still. A good Willie is like an oil well. It can keep pumping for decades. Why chance closing the spigot?

Beads of sweat line the creases of her forehead like planes on a runway, but she's still wide awake. She pulls one arm from under her blanket, opens her laptop, and returns to the entry about Romani death rituals. “For Roma, death is a senseless, unnatural occurrence that should anger those who die,” she reads. “At the approach of death, Roma are concerned not only with the pain and heartbreak of the final separation from a loved one. They are also worried about the revenge that the dead, or
mulo
, might seek against those who are living.”

Later in the entry, the writer repeats the theme. “The dying Rom must never be left alone. This is not only out of compassion for his condition, but also out of fear of possible anger. . . . According to traditional Romani beliefs, life for the dead continues on another level. However, there is great fear among the survivors that the dead might return in some supernatural form to haunt the living. It is for this reason that the name of the dead should not be mentioned, that the body should not be touched, and that all objects that belonged to the dead must be destroyed. The survivors must be protected in every way from the evil spirits the dead can emit. To avoid this, stones or thornbushes are sometimes placed around the grave.”

When O'Hara stumbled on these passages at the service center, she'd never met a Gypsy in the flesh. Now that she has spent quality time with Marla, Pizza, and Crisco, they resonate more vividly. To a Gypsy, death is nothing more than the worst version of bad luck, like scratching off the numbers of a black Lotto ticket or pulling down the arm of a slot machine and watching five skull-and-crossbones fall into place. Naturally the person doing the dying is pissed off and jealous of those lucky enough to still be alive. When tools, money, and gifts are tossed into the grave, it's less out of generosity than fear of reprisal.

When O'Hara learned that the crew preying on Levin were Gypsies, she imagined a confederacy of perps, who shared information and resources. In fact, they are more like rival hyenas fighting over the same infirm caribou, and the infighting and distrust extend into the afterlife. If Barnum was right, the supply of Americans is bottomless. Every day another batch of pink little suckers open their eyes for the first time. So you would think there would be more than enough to go around, and they wouldn't have to poach each other's Americans. But when you spend all your time and energy fucking with people, even if you designate them as subhuman, it spills over and fucks with your head and turns everything toxic, even your relation with other Gypsies. That's the fly in the ointment of all criminal societies. The members turn on each other.

Still unable to sleep, O'Hara peels herself off the couch and heads back to the kitchen. The water takes forever to boil, and O'Hara and Bruno stare at it together. When it finally does, she fixes herself another, this time with Theraflu, and returns to the couch. It tastes even worse than the first, but she drinks every drop and is crawling back between the damp towels when Wawrinka calls again.

“Hey, Con.”

“Darlene, you sound underwater.”

“Do I?”

“I just sent you a piece of video. It's from the ER at the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Florence, South Carolina, seven miles from where we found Popsicle. The light isn't great, but you can make out all three of them.”

O'Hara struggles to understand what Wawrinka means. “They took the kid to an ER?”

“Almost. Just watch it.”

“Almost? How did you find this?”

“You know how we figured Fudgesicle killed Popsicle for stealing his swag? When I thought about it some more, that didn't make sense, because Fudgesicle didn't know about it.”

“I don't follow you,” says O'Hara groggily.

“If Fudgesicle knew about the swag,” says Wawrinka, “he wouldn't have left it in the car. And based on the beating he gave Popsicle, if he knew about the diamond, he would have cut it out of his stomach. So if he didn't kill Popsicle for stealing from him, there had to be another reason. I thought maybe it had to do with the boy, particularly since one perp seemed to be trying to help him a lot more than the other.

“On a flier, I called all the hospitals anywhere near where we found Popsicle, and had them go through their logs for the night of March 3, when we know the three passed through. A couple hours later, Mother of Mercy got back to me. According to their records, someone called the ER that night at 1:07 a.m. on March 4 and told them that they were about to bring in a sick child, but there was no record of a child being admitted. I asked them to look at their security footage, and they found this. It's only thirty-eight seconds. I'll stay on the line.”

The hospital camera is mounted above the entrance to the ER, aimed at a piece of driveway beneath a concrete overhang. At the center of the overhang moths swirl around the bulb. A white station wagon pulls into the frame. Although the car stops just short of the light, O'Hara can see through the windshield that Popsicle is behind the wheel and Fudgesicle in the passenger seat. Fudgesicle's chin rests on his massive chest, and he slumps in his seat as if asleep.

The door on the driver's side opens. A small man steps out and hurriedly opens a back door. He bends out of view and comes up with the boy in his arms. From the limp way Herc's head and limbs hang, he appears to be unconscious. As Popsicle gathers the boy in his arms, there's a sudden movement in the front seat and a flash of light as the passenger door flies open. A large blur passes in front of the car, and when Popsicle turns from the backseat with the boy and steps toward the glowing entrance, he and the boy run straight into the oncoming blur.

As Popsicle stands defenseless, the boy in his arms, Fudgesicle strikes him in the face with vicious force. The first blow sends the smaller man reeling against the side of the car, the next knocks him onto his back, but neither gets him to release the boy. As Popsicle lies in the driveway, with the boy sprawled across him, his partner stomps him in the head, glances over his shoulder, then brings his full weight down on him again. Even when Fudgesicle tosses them into the backseat, Popsicle clings to the boy. After Fudgesicle shuts the back door, he drops to one knee and reaches behind the rear tire. Whatever he finds, he slips into his pants pocket, then clambers into the front seat. When the car pulls out of the frame, Popsicle and the boy are as good as dead.

 

CHAPTER 56

O'HARA SITS UP
between the soaked towels, and with the back of one hand wipes the gunk out of her eye. In her other hand is a phone. “Dar,” says Krekorian, “I just backed out of my driveway. What are you doing?”

O'Hara looks at the light streaming through the window, then turns over the Casio on her coffee table: 10:43. She slept thirteen hours. “Not sure.”

“I was thinking I'd swing by and give you a ride downtown. There's something I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay.” It's been four days since O'Hara saw her old partner at Lakeside, but it feels like forever. “It's good to hear your voice, K,” says O'Hara before she can catch herself.

New City is forty minutes from her side of the bridge. That's enough time to walk the pooch and shower, not a makeover.

“What the hell, Dar, they giving away Maker's Mark in Riverdale?”

“Not that I'm aware of. The only thing I've been abusing is NyQuil and Theraflu.”

“Together?”

“You think I'm crazy? Consecutively.”

Krekorian pushes his way into the traffic crossing the Spuyten Duyvil into Manhattan.

“Like I said, I want to talk to you about something.”

“Okay. But I need some coffee.”

K reaches into the backseat and hands her a Red Bull.

“It's about your homicide,” says Krekorian. “Yesterday, I'm going through the robbery reports from the night before. I see that at 4:15 a.m., a call came in for a robbery in progress at a fortune-teller on Eleventh Street between A and B. First thing I think, is Who the fuck robs a fortune-teller? The second thing I think of is you.”

“I didn't arrest anyone at that location,” says O'Hara, who realizes that her cold is gone.

“I know, but seeing as you've been dealing with Gypsies, it caught my eye. I speak to the responding officer. He tells me it turned out to be nothing, or at least that's what he was told by the old lady who came to the door. ‘The cat set off the alarm,' she says. The cop tells her the caller heard more than an alarm. He heard screaming and yelling and a car taking off, but the lady swears the caller heard wrong. Just a crazy old cat who doesn't see so good.”

Krekorian exits the West Side Highway at Eighteenth and crosses under the rusted-out trestles of the old high line. “It was a slow night—in robbery, they're all slow—so I look to see if there's anything else involving fortune-tellers. There wasn't, but there were three other 911s around the same time—a robbery, a report of suspicious behavior, and the report of another house alarm going off. The first, at 2:45 a.m., is from Thirty-Eighth Street and Ninth Avenue, the next, at 3:05 a.m., is at Eighteenth and Eighth Avenue, and the third, at 3:50 a.m., at Sixteenth Street and Seventh. And then there's the first one I saw on Eleventh Street, another twenty minutes later. Based on the sequence and timing, it looks like one perp, working his way downtown, like he plotted his spree on Mapquest.”

K drives east through the brick towers of the last public housing in Chelsea, turns south on Ninth and east on Fourteenth. “I play the calls back. In every instance the drama is on the ground floor, or basement. So I take a drive—like I said, it's a slow night—and sure enough every one of these buildings has a sign in the window—‘Psychic' or ‘Tarot Cards' or ‘Fortunes Read'—and if I can get anyone to come to the door at all, they tell me the same thing the lady told the patrolmen. It was nothing, a lover's quarrel, a fight over a poker game.”

“I didn't lock up anyone at those addresses either,” says O'Hara.

“I know, but think about it. I've been in robbery over a year, I haven't heard of one fortune-teller getting knocked over. You start hocking Gypsies, dragging them in, busting their crystal balls, and a couple days later someone is out there robbing four of them in one night. You think that's a coincidence?”

“Probably not.” O'Hara is as taken by his generosity as by his thinking. If the shoe was on the other foot, with her in robbery and him in homicide, would she be driving around on a slow night for him? “It's got to be another Gypsy,” she says.

“Of course. It's like a drug dealer robbing drug dealers. Whoever it is knows exactly who he's dealing with and where the money is. In ten minutes, he is in and out and on to the next one. The only other possibility is a cop who specializes in Gypsies, and I don't see you turning vigilante quite yet.”

“So where we headed?”

“A diner on Second Avenue. Of all the calls that came in that night, the most coherent came from a place called the B & H Dairy, a kosher place between St. Mark's and Seventh. The guy who made it is a cook, an Egyptian dude named Ahmed.”

“An Egyptian cook at a kosher dairy?”

“If he wasn't Egyptian, Dar, he'd be a Mexican or a Puerto Rican. The old lady in the back, baking the challah, she is going to be a Pole or a Latvian, but behind the counter you need someone with fast-twitch muscles.”

Kosher food and fast-twitch muscles make O'Hara think of Levin. “You know the other victim in this case,” says O'Hara, “the old guy in Florida—he was a boxer, a real one.” For the next couple minutes, O'Hara brags on Levin so vehemently, you'd think Sollie was standing behind her whispering in her ear, which he is, in a way. “Turned pro at fifteen, beat a leading lightweight contender when he was still in high school, fought at the old Garden and the old Coney Island Velodrome.”

K parks in front of a hydrant, makes O'Hara toss her Red Bull, and the two step into a diner as tight as Milano's. They sit at the counter across from the grill. Inches away, his back to them, is a tall man wearing a Nike tennis shirt who must be Ahmed. He breaks four sheets of matzo into a steel bowl, adds boiling water from the coffee urn, and drowns the shards with his fork, getting them nice and soggy. Then he cracks two eggs and empties them into the bowl, whips it all up with the fork, and empties the bowl into a hot skillet. After a couple minutes he flips it, and a couple minutes after that, slides the browned yellow disk in front of the tattooed kid at the end of the counter, along with a side serving of applesauce. Ahmed turns to face O'Hara and K. “You must be the detectives.”

“Serge Krekorian,” says K, “and my old partner Darlene O'Hara. We'd appreciate it if you could tell us everything you saw that morning.”

“It's what I heard,” says Ahmed. “My shift starts at five. I drive in from Long Island and try to get here by three thirty. At that hour, no one is on the road, and I have plenty of time to find a space. Then I go to the jungle gym in Tompkins Square, work out for about an hour before work.” As O'Hara listens, she smells the omelet at the end of the counter.

“That morning it was hard to find a space, I didn't have time to exercise. I read the paper in the car, then walked over. On Eleventh, I hear an alarm go off on the ground floor of a building with a sign for a fortune-teller in the window. As I got closer, I heard a couple women screaming hysterically in a language I didn't recognize. It was like an opera, but not Italian.”

“All you heard were women?” asks O'Hara.

“No. I heard one man with a deep voice and then the females, two, maybe three, shrieking for about ten seconds. Then they all shut up quick—like someone threw a switch.”

“You see the guy?”

“No. I didn't want to. And I didn't want him to see me. I put my head down and kept walking. When I got here, I called the police.”

“You notice anything else as you walked by?” asks O'Hara.

Ahmed wipes his hands on his apron. “There was a cab out front, double-parked on the other side of the street.”

“Anyone in it?”

“There must have been. The engine was running. It was a brand-new Toyota Camry. I have a Camry too, with 180,000 miles on it. This was brand-new, the first time I've seen one used as a cab.”

“Ahmed,” says O'Hara, “let me ask you something. That omelet you just made for the kid. What was it?”

“Matzo
brei
.”

“We'll take two. With applesauce. Please.”