Lush Life (15 page)

"If you don't want to be with your family, which, as I said, I think is a mistake, is there someone else I can call?"

Marcus didn't respond.

"Do you need a place to stay?"

"To stay?"

"We can arrange-"

Marcus jumped as Yolonda abruptly materialized alongside him, leaning against the partition.

She touched his shoulder in sympathy, gave him her sad face, and he finally started to cry.

Matty's cell went off: Bobby Oh. Leaving Yolonda to babysit the father, he took the call around the corner.

"Mr. Bobby, tell me something good."

"Nothing from nothing," Oh said, then yawned.

Matty could just see him after eight hours on the scene, pink-eyed, shirttails flapping, the sparse hair rimming his scalp shooting straight up like frozen fire.

"Nobody in the building knew him or ever saw him before, so I can't imagine he passed it off to some in-house confederate, the roof's clean, so's the neighboring roofs, the fire escapes, drainpipes, stairwells, basement, we went through the garbage cans on six corners, tracked down the sanitation truck which makes the nighttime pickups around here, holding that for a go-through, got EPA coming in to dredge manholes and sewer grates . . . Anything we missed?"

"This guy's a regular fuckin' Rip van Winkle," Yolonda said, tilting her chin at Eric Cash through the glass. "If I got that much sleep, I'd look ten years younger."

"I'm just not feeling him for this."

"I do."

"And I'll tell you something else. If he's telling us the truth about last night, he was six inches from catching a bullet. And with what we're putting him through?"

"You're such a good person," Yolonda said. "So how do you want to play it?"

"I don't know. Give him one last run for his money, then let the DA call it."

"OK. So how do you want to play it?"

"Let me go at him hard."

"Why you? You say you don't even like him for it."

"Yeah, I know, but he gets real upset when I come off disappointed in him."

Deputy Inspector Berkowitz materialized alongside them, his London Fog draped over his arm.

"Where we at?" Going into a half dip to eyeball Cash through the glass. "The natives are getting seriously restless."

Matty and Yolonda started arguing again like an old couple with a road map.

"Well, I'll tell you." Berkowitz straightened up and checked his watch: 12:45. "I were you, I'd be getting ready to wrap this guy up."

"You got it, boss," Yolonda said, looking at Matty as if she were dying to stick out her tongue in triumph.

With Billy Marcus in no shape to drive and, in any event, unwilling to return to his family in Riverdale, Matty had booked him a room at the Landsman, a new hotel on Rivington that had a goodwill arrangement with the precinct, offering a cheap rate for drug-sting suites, and economy singles for out-of-town testifiers, victims, and on occasion family members waiting for the release of a body. The Landsman would have gotten out of the deal if it could. The owners had panicked midway during construction and started scrambling for long-term commitments within the community, fearing that they had overestimated the allure of the neighborhood, but in fact the place had been a hit from the door on in.

Jimmy Iacone drew the job of handling the check-in. Since there was no luggage to carry and the hunt for a parking space could take half an hour, Iacone decided to walk Marcus the seven short blocks from Pitt to Ludlow. It was slow going, the guy moving as if he were walking through a neighborhood in the wake of a bombing, its storefronts in flames and bodies littering the pavement; and he couldn't take his eyes off any of the kids coming their way, male, female, straight, freak, black, or white. Then, on the corner of Rivington and Suffolk, he stopped dead and turned to stare hang-jawed after someone or other they had passed, and Iacone knew that Marcus had just seen his son, most of them did; and that's why he hated being a squad detective: he would rather go through the reinforced door of a dope house, roll in the dirt with a 250-pound ED off his meds, buy crank from a tweeking biker-anything but deal with the parent of a freshly murdered child.

Because the hotel was nearly full, they had no choice but to give Marcus a room fit for a photo shoot, a sixteenth-floor glass-walled corner aerie, more perch than shelter, all white: white furniture, fixtures, wall
-
mounted flatscreen, and a king-size bed covered in synthetic white fur.

Despite its stark opulence, the place was the size of a shoe box, with barely a foot clearance between that huge bed and the three-sided terrace, which offered an imperial overview of the area: a sea of cramped and huddled walk-ups and century-old elementary schools, the only structures out there aspiring to any kind of height the randomly sprouting bright yellow Tyvek-wrapped multistory add-ons, and farther out, superimposed against the river, the housing projects and union-built co-ops that flanked the east side of this grubby vista like siege towers.

Marcus sat slumped on the edge of the polar bed, Iacone fidgeting before him as if they were breaking up and he didn't know how to leave without provoking a scene.

"Do you need anything, Mr. Marcus?"

"Like what."

"Food, medication, fresh clothes . . ."

"No. I'm OK now, thanks."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Thanks, thank you." Reaching out and shaking his hand.

Iacone extracted a card from the side pocket of his sport jacket, laid it on the night table, then continued to two-step for a minute, feeling a little guilty about how easily he was getting out of there.

An hour after they had left Eric, they reentered the interview room, Matty whacking the door into the cinder block to wake him up.

"What." He jerked upright, his mouth white with sleep. "Is he OK?"

"Now you ask?"

"We haven't gone over there yet. Something came up." Yolonda took her chair and slid it so close that their kneecaps intersected.

"What."

"Eric, are you sure everything you told us is to the best of your memory?" she asked, leaning in even farther.

"Considering that I was drunk," he said carefully.

"Well, you're sober now," Matty drawled, pushing himself upright off the wall.

"What?" Eric repeated, his eyes ticking from face to face.

"Almost the first thing you said to me walking into this room, you looked at that rail," Matty barked, leaning on the table now, his shoulders humped higher than his head, "and you said, 'I feel like I should be cuffed to that.'"

"What were you trying to tell us?" Yolonda asked.

"Nothing." Rearing back from them. "I was feeling bad."

"Feeling bad. Bad for Ike, or for yourself?" "What?"

"Here's the latest." Matty straightened up. "We now have two witnesses just came in the house, said they were right across the street last night when the shot went off. And guess what. They saw you, and Steve and Ike, and no one else. Explain that to me."

"No. That's not right."

"They heard the shot, saw Ike go down, and you take off into the building."

"No."

"No, huh?" Fuming. "No."

"Look, we're not here to hurt you," Yolonda said. "There's a million reasons why shit happens. You guys were horsing around, drunk off your ass, and the goddamn thing just went off."

"What?" Eric started to tremble, seemed embarrassed that he couldn't control his own body.

"Hey, for all we know, Ike grabbed it from you, or maybe the other guy did, whatsit, Steve," Yolonda offered. "We have no idea, that's for you to clear up, but I am telling you, Eric, as stupid as you were for bringing a gun with you on an all-night crawl like that? You are one lucky bastard because the jam you're in could be a hell of a lot worse. Ike could be lying on a slab right now and you could be looking at a murder charge."

"No. Hold on . . ." Sounding as if he were shouting in his sleep.

"Eric, listen, Matty and me? Every day we're up to our ass in human garbage. Psychos and sociopaths and common household scum. Every, day Does that even remotely sound like you? Doesn't to me. As far as I'm concerned? You're almost as much a victim in this as Ike, so here's the deal. You tell us how it went down, tell us where the gun is, and we'll make this as close to a Cakewalk for you as we can. Will be happy to. But the first move here has got to be yours."

Eric frowned at the blank table, then abruptly jerked back, chin into chest.

"C'mon now, Eric, work with us."

"Work with you ..."

"Use your head" Matty snapped. "When we go talk to Ike, he's going to tell us what really happened anyhow, right?"

"I hope he does," Eric said, small-voiced, his eyes still trained on the table.

"You what?" Matty cupped an ear.

Eric didn't repeat himself.

"Why do you think we're holding off on going to the hospital right now?" Yolonda's eyes shining with emotion.

Eric stared at her.

"If he lays it out for us with you still holding on to this story of yours? What do think that's gonna look like? To us, to the DA, to a judge. We're holding off to give you one last chance to help yourself."

"I don't understand." Eric near grinning in disbelief.

"Look, I know you're scared, but please, trust me on this." Yolonda palmed her heart. "Nothing good will come of you sticking to a lie."

"It's not a lie."

"No? Well, let me tell you something," Matty said. "If I was, like you claim to be, an innocent man? Right about now I'd be hopping around this fucking room like my ass was on fire. Any innocent person would. That would be the natural instinctual reaction. But you've been sitting here all morning, you're coming off a little bored, a little depressed, a little nervous. It's like you're at a dentist's office. You went to sleep, for Christ's sakes. In twenty years, I have never seen an innocent man just rack out like that. Twenty, years. Never"

At first, given the lack of eye contact, Matty thought Eric was literally shrugging off the barrage; then he realized that his body was spasming.

"Eric," Yolonda said. "Tell us what happened before Ike does." "I did."

"Did what" Matty snapped.

"Tell you what happened."

Yolonda shook her bowed head in grievous surrender.

"You're a terrible actor, you know that?" Matty yanked at his tie. "No wonder you wound up working at a restaurant."

"Look, what if, God forbid, Ike doesn't pull through?" Yolonda again. "Do you think that's somehow better for you? All we have then is your version and the witnesses'version. Where does that leave you?"

"It leaves me wherever you want me left." His voice still small, but with a shaky touch of defiance.

This is costing him, Matty thought. This man is a mouse, and hanging tough here is taking everything he has in him, is taking everything out of him.

"All that shit about running into the building to get better phone reception," Matty said. "You never even tried to call 911, did you."

Eric hunched his shoulders as if waiting for a blow.

"Admit that at least, for God's sakes."

Silence, then, "No, I didn't."

"Your buddy is lying there with a bullet in his chest, and innocent man that you are, you refuse to dial the three numbers that could save his life? How can that be? Even if you were telling us the truth about this, this Afro-Hispanic stickup team, which you're not, the question remains, what kind of human being would refuse to do that for a friend? Or, no, excuse me, an acquaintance from work."

"I just wanted to get away," Eric said minutely, addressing the space between his hands. "I was scared."

"Was what?" Matty squinted in disbelief, then turned to Yolonda. "He was what?"

Yolonda looked helpless and grief-stricken, a powerless mother watching her child being beaten by her husband.

Eric finally raised his face, stared at Matty, gape-mouthed.

"Yeah, you look me right in the eye, you fucking ant."

"Matty . . ."Yolonda finally put out her hand.

"I have listened to your shit in here all day. You are a self-centered, self-pitying, cowardly, envious, resentful, failed-ass career waiter. That's your everyday jacket. Now, add to that a gun and a gutful of vodka? I don't believe that shooting last night was an accident. I think you were a walking time bomb and last night you finally went off."

Eric sat there in a rapture of attention, chin uptilted as if for a kiss, his eyes never leaving Matty's.

"We are giving you one last chance to tell us what happened. Save your own skin and give us any version you want to justify your own part in it, but you get the ball rolling right here, right now . . . And I swear to fucking Christ, if you hand us one more time that pernicious horse -
shit about a, a Hispanic and, or, and, or some, some black guy coming out the shadows or wherever, I will make sure this goes down for you in the worst possible way."