Lush Life (22 page)

"Are you deaf? Little Dap hissed without turning his head from the view. "I said, give me the motherfuckin' gun!"

Tristan reached into the pocket of his hoodie, panicking a second because there was nothing in there, then discovered that the .22 was still clutched in his right hand, had been in his right hand since he'd squeezed one off.

"OK." Little Dap took it, still looking straight ahead in the direction of the body. "OK. You say anything?" Shaking his head, wheezing. "You say, to like, anybody?" Taking a breath. "I got this now," holding up the .22. "Got your prints all over it."

Tristan had the thought, Got your prints too with you holding it, but figured it had to be more complicated than that. Didn't it?

Then suddenly Little Dap had him from behind in a bear hug, was thrusting his crotch into the seat of his jeans and hissing in his ear, "You like this? It's all day, all night in there like this, you hear me? But you ain't even gonna make it that far." Tristan wanted to laugh at that, big gladiator-school man, but then Little Dap squatted behind Tristan's legs, brought his hands in another bear hug around his thighs, and lifted him off the gravel, tilting him almost upside down over the too low railing, Tristan mute with terror, the blood bubbling in his temples as he clawed for purchase on the outside metal grille that separated him from a fifteen-story drop.

"Nobody knows nothing. You don't say nothing, it's gonna stay that way," Little Dap hissed, his grip slipping a little. Tristan jerked a few inches closer to the earth, his mind a screech. "Now. You know they gonna come in here knocking on doors looking, so don't you give them a reason to knock on your door, look at you, you hear me? Because I am not going back to that place" Even in his white shock, Tristan could hear the blubbery catch in Little Dap's throat.

Little Dap hauled him back up, Tristan silently dropping to one knee just to feel the gravel beneath him.

"I'm goin' downstairs," Little Dap said, his voice still shaky. "You wait twenty minutes, then you come down." He started to walk to the roof door, then turned again. "And now on? You don't even look at me."

Half an hour later Tristan ninja-walked past his ex-stepfather's bedroom to the one he shared with the three hamsters, all four mattresses packed so close it was like one wall-to-wall bed. Tristan's bed was the third or the second in, depending if you were counting from the window side or the closet. The boy, Nelson, to his left was six; the girl, Sonia, to his right, five; the baby, Paloma, three.

There was a note on his pillow: don't think you won't pay for this, written in the same painstakingly fancy print as the House Rules pushpinned to the bedroom wall.

Tristan went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. After a long moment, he turned on the hot water, running it as quietly as possible, reached inside the medicine chest for his stepfather's disposable, and started to shave for the first time since he was old enough to grow the goatee. When he was done, the fat white lightning bolt still ran in a jagged S-curve from his left cheek to the corner of his mouth then out the opposite corner and dovyn to the right side of his jawline. The tight beard had covered enough so that at least it wasn't the first thing he saw whenever he caught his own reflection in a store window, but the sight of it now completely exposed after all this time was a raw shock, kicking up some more unasked-for memories.

Heading back to the bedroom, he pulled his spiral notebook out from beneath the mattress and tried to put down some lines.

Touch me once ill touch you twice

But nothing else came to mind so he put the notebook back in its hiding place.

A few minutes later, when he finally lay flat on his back, he heard the first bird out there, the first bird in the world, sunrise in a half hour, school business a half hour after that.

Closing his eyes, he once again felt the buck of the .22, saw the guys eyes going up, up, then listened to that bird again, its insane tweety song. Turning his head to the window, he saw its trembling, magnified silhouette against the lightly flapping manila shade: monster bird.

He stared at the ceiling for a bit, then closed his eyes again.

He was OK.

Chapter
Four.

The next morning, giving his back to the rumple and clutter left behind by his departed sons, Matty stood hunched over the railing of his AstroTurfed seventeenth-floor terrace, coffee cup in hand, and looked down on the neighboring streets to the west, an aerial checkerboard of demolition and rehabilitation, seemingly no lot, no tenement untouched; then looked south to the financial district, to the absence of the Towers. He always imagined the slick obsidian office building that as of last year dominated the view as embarrassed, like someone exposed by an abruptly yanked shower curtain.

He felt mildly embarrassed himself, for avoiding his sons again, for sleeping in the bunk room. At least it was just that one night; Jimmy Iacone, unable to get it together after his separation, and preferring to spend his disposable income in Ludlow Street bars, had been straight -
up living in that windowless hamper for the last six months.

Matty's piano-legged neighbor stepped out onto the adjoining terrace and, ignoring him, started beating a throw rug like an intractable child. Hers was the only Orthodox family in the building willing to use the self-starting shabbos elevator as opposed to walking up the stairs from Friday sundown through Saturday, and therefore the only Orthodox family willing or able to live above the sixth floor. But they had only a two-bedroom and she was pregnant again, the third time in five years, so they'd probably be moving soon, selling for at least half a million, most likely to some young Wall Street couple who liked the idea of walking to work. Each December you could track the increase in gentile couples living in this formerly all-Jewish enclave simply by counting the new Christmas-light-trimmed terraces along the twenty-story building front; last year's influx finally enough to vote in a seven-foot Scotch pine in the lobby next to the perennial Hanukkah menorah.

The ringing of the cell phone set his shirt pocket trembling. He peered down at the number coming up, Berkowitz. And so it began.

"How you doing, Inspector."

"He wants to see you."

"Oh yeah?"

"You got a hell of a lot of explaining to do."

"I do, huh?" Matty rained the dregs of his coffee cup down onto Essex Street.

"How come you didn't tell us how weak this was?" Berkowitz said.

"How come I didn't?" Pacing the AstroTurf now. "How many times did you hear me say, 'I have some real problems with him being the perp on this.' How many times." The persistent pounding one terrace over was giving him a headache. "And all I ever heard back from you and everybody else was wrap him up, pull the plug, wrap him up, pull the plug. The DA too. I laid it out like carpet. Guy says, Two wits trumps no gun, we have probable cause with the wits.'The DA says go, when do we ever say no? Tell me one time."

"Eleven o'clock."

The chief of detectives' office in 1PP was like a cabin in the sky, the fifteenth-floor reception area tricked out like a banged-up precinct house complete with an old wood-scarred receiving desk, poorly maintained fish tanks, and paint-chipped newel-and-post barriers, walls covered with cheaply framed photos, petty administrative notices, and an American flag big enough to cover a king-size bed.

Once you got past the stage set, however, into the inner suites, it was all teak, hush, and power.

Which is where Matty found himself two hours later, standing already exhausted in his best suit directly outside the chief of detectives' conference room, Deputy Inspector Berkowitz beside him, one hand on the doorknob but going nowhere for the moment.

"This isn't good." Berkowitz's voice an urgent murmur.

"So you said."

"They're all trying to find a way out." "I'll bet."

"My boss doesn't want to be embarrassed."

"I'll bet."

"So. Who authorized this arrest?"

"He did."

Exhaling through his nose, Berkowitz quickly scanned the barren corridor, then brought his face even closer.

"Who authorized this arrest?"

"You did?" Matty knowing what Berkowitz wanted to hear.

Another exhalation, another walleyed scan.

"One more time."

"Are you kidding me?"

Berkowitz glared at him, Matty thinking, Okeydoke. "I did."

Berkowitz hesitated for a second, searching his face, then finally opened the door, taking his seat before Matty could even cross the threshold.

Despite his righteous truculence, Matty's first sight of the seven men waiting for him around the long, burnished table high above the East River momentarily turned him into a child.

The chief of detectives, Mangold, impeccable, telegenic, pissed, seated at the short end, flanked by Berkowitz and Upshaw, the chief of Manhattan detectives; the others included two full inspectors; Mangini, the division captain; and seated as far away from the other bosses as possible, Carmody, the Eighth Squad lieutenant.

"So." Mangold tilted his chin in Matty's general direction. "What the hell happened?"

For the thousandth time Matty gave his recitation: his concern about the absence of the gun, the absence of a motive, the ultimately prevailing counterbalance of two seemingly dead-on eyewits, the DA saying, Probable cause, saying, Better safe than sorry.

"Let me ask you a simple question," Mangold, said, squinting out at the East River, the mountain chain of rubbled lungblocks lurking beneath the dapple. "Did you at least do a paraffin test?"

Matty wanted to laugh, thinking this had to be some kind of Candid Camera thing, April Fools' thing, but no. Everybody was either glaring out the window or scowling at his nails.

"There was a time concern according to CSU," he finally said, setting himself up for the next shot.

"In that case I have another simple question." Mangold had yet to look at him directly. "Who was running this case, you or the techs?"

Matty could feel the color rushing into his face. "I was."

"And so you let them talk you out of a paraffin test. You've got no gun, no motive, a situation like that, we're talking the most elemental, the most basic . . ." Shaking his head in disbelief. "A detective of your experience."

"This is news to me, boss," the chief of Manhattan d's said, sounding both mournful and mind-boggled.

In a moment everyone at the table was doing the exasperated head shake, the entire phone tree plus Carmody, who was completely out of the loop on this one, who, on the simplest of jobs, couldn't find a lump of coal in a snowball.

"Don't you shake your head at me," Matty blew at the lieutenant before he could stop himself, Carmody the only one in the room almost safe enough to snap at. Almost, but not really.

They all had their eyes on him now-where's he going with this
-
until Mangold said, "All right, enough," as if bored. "Now you're gonna do things my way"

Everybody exhaled.

"You have Vice involved?" Mangold asked Matty

"Vice?"

"Back in '92 we had a ton of pross in that area. Call Vice, see if they have any kites on that block, any informants, maybe it was a john from an encounter."

"We're on it," Berkowitz said.

A john . . .

"Hit any after-hours clubs, gambling activity." Mangold speaking to the river again. "Your robbery parolees in the Eighth, you know who they are?"

"Actually I do," Matty said. "Most of them are in their thirties and forties, nobody that fits."

"Get Parole involved anyhow. We had a PO down there when I was on foot patrol back in the eighties? Guy mustVe closed half a dozen cases for us. A human computer."

"The eighties?"

"Also that bar, the one they were last at?"

"Berkmann's."

"Somebody knows something there hasn't said it yet. I want Vice to do an underage ops, call Narcotics, see if they have any kites for that place. I want an all-out effort in there until somebody waves a flag."

Matty thought about opening a bar, teaching high school, junior high, anything. What did he know enough to teach . . .

"OK, next. Guy claimed to have a gun?"

"Who."

"The guy you locked up."

"Not anymore," Matty said. "Says he handed it in at one of the guns-for-cash exchanges at the Eighth a number of years back."

"OK, fine. Find out if he actually did that."

"We can't, Chief." Matty again. "We don't keep records for that."

Mangold finally looked at him directly, his eyes starred with marvel. "Man, you are nothing but trouble for me."

But then Berkowitz surprised Matty by stepping in, although all he did was state the obvious: "The whole point of cash for guns, Chief, is no names, no questions, that's the hook for it, otherwise . . ."

"Then go back to the Eighth, find out the year he supposedly gave it in, check the invoice log, and see if any .22s were vouchered at that time. Get me something makes me a little fucking happy here."