Lush Life (35 page)

"What's behind there?" Matty gestured to the hidden door.

"The other house."

"What other house."

"We used to have all our bedrooms in the basement here? The rabbi used to live down there with his family, but it was too damp, so we bought the house next door to sleep in."

She was great-looking, tall and gray-eyed, twenty-one, tops, Matty thinking, These guys . . .

"So what did you do with the basement?" Asking just to keep her here.

"Its a gym," leaning on the rail next to him.

"I like the zodiacs," he said, once again just to say something.

"Well, take a snapshot, because their days are numbered."

"You're painting them over?" trying to sound like he cared. "That's a shame."

"You think? They're a little creepy for me. It's like, for Jews, it's forbidden to paint faces, right? So the archer, what's it, Sagittarius?" She pointed. "Check it out, just a bow and an arm, a weapon and a body part. Same thing with Virgo, see? A woman's hand and a sheaf of wheat. And Taurus over there is a cow, because bulls are supposed to be pagan."

"No kidding."

Down below, Cash, after jerking a glance up to the empty side of the gallery, stood in a half-crouch to pass the empty platter to one of the domestics.

"You see that guy?" Kelley flicked a finger. "Eric?"

"Yeah."

"That's the guy was at that murder. You wouldn't believe what the cops put him through."

"Yeah?"

"What a bunch of assholes."

"I heard he's not cooperating now."

"The hell, would you?"

It was a stupid game, Matty dropping it with a shrug.

"You know what's my favorite?" she asked.

"Favorite what."

"Cancer."

"What?"

"That one." She pointed to a panel featuring what looked to him like a South African rock-tailed lobster.

"Cancer the crab, right? But the artist was kosher, he didn't even know what a crab looked like. Then some other kosher Jew shows him a lobster in a restaurant window, says, There's one,' and so there you go."

"Wow."

"Harry loves that one. He'll probably keep it, start a new restaurant around it."

Below, the meeting was finally winding down, dwindling into small talk and anecdotes, people leaning back, faces softening, ready to laugh at something. One of the managers, a wiry woman wearing a heavily starched and oversize man's white dress shirt, began telling a story about being trapped in the locker area while, in the next room, the Chinese chef and the Dominican prep man were having a grossly graphic conversation about fucking their wives. She described how she kept banging things and clearing her throat so they'd clam up and she could walk past the kitchen without anybody getting embarrassed, but how they just wouldn't take the hint.

"I was stuck for like half an hour."

"So what were they saying?" Steele asked.

"I'd rather not say."

"Aw, c'mon, don't do that to us," Cash said too loudly and with a strangely atonal jocularity, as if he were reading his line off a page.

As the meeting broke up, Matty waited until Cash left the house before coming downstairs.

"So." Steele offered him a seat at the island.

Between them hung three chandeliers constructed of full red Campari bottles arranged in rings around halogen bulbs, the support wires disappearing into the nebulous upper reaches of the building.

"Why didn't you tell me Cash was going to be here?"

"If I told him, I don't think he'd've showed up."

"No. Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I told you, I'd have to tell him."

Matty hesitated, Steele having a little too much fun right now.

"Well, look, in any event, I can't just step to the guy like that," he said. "Did you talk to him at all?"

"About what happened? Yeah." Steele half-laughed. "You guys really did a number, you know?"

"I know. Thats why I was hoping you were going to help me bury the hatchet."

"Well, look, I thought, if you were here, he was here, its someone's home . . . What else can I do?"

"Fact of the matter is," Matty said, "legally, I can't even approach the guy anymore. That's why I asked you."

"Can't approach . . . Because of the lawyer?" Steele said, then, sounding as if he were speaking more to himself, "I had no idea."

Matty studied him for a moment. "You're not . . . Aw shit. Are you the one set him up with that guy?"

Steele looked off. "That's not an appropriate question for you to ask."

Matty leaned back, took in the zodiac panels, the images both maidenly and warlike, the cookbook Torah nook.

"You're paying for him too, aren't you." Grinning as he said it.

Steele stared at him with his sad-sack eyes.

"I'll tell you who else is having a good time with this," Matty said. "That lawyer? I know that Kingston Trio-playing son of a bitch and he is having a ball. On your dime too. And I'm not going to stop pressing, so you better believe that meter will be running."

Steele shrugged helplessly.

And right now he was still the only conduit to Cash, so . . .

"They run that underage op on you last night?"

"Yeah." Steele yawned. "But not until after midnight. I was at the goddamned door for hours."

"Better that than the other, though, yeah?"

T
rue.

"Well, I'd really like to be able to give you a heads-up next time too, you know?"

"That would be brilliant."

"Wouldn't it. So talk to the guy. Please. And lose that fucking lawyer."

"It's his lawyer."

"It's your money."

Kelley . Steele appeared again, this time from somewheres behind the ark, leaned into Steele's shoulder, and took a sip of his cold coffee before leaving the house.

"I don't know how you guys do it," Matty said, trying to make nice.

"Do what?"

"The last time I was with a twenty-one-year-old? I was twenty-two."

Steele jerked back a little, winced. "Thats my daughter."

"Really." Matty colored. "I guess I'm not much of a detective, huh?"

But feeling a little better for it too.

Walking back to work from Harry Steele's house after the meeting, Eric stepped in front of a parked and unoccupied van at the corner of Rivington and Essex and, thinking it was still moving, jerked in terror.

The unexpected appearance of Matty Clark had paralyzed him and was, even now, throwing his perception of the physical world into chaos.

That fucking cop; whatever other reasons Eric had for not coming forward, and they switched up on him almost hourly, the one sure thing he had learned today was this: that he would rather slash his own throat than go behind a closed door with either him or his partner ever again. It would be quicker.

At seven that evening, Yolonda came back into the squad room of the Ninth bearing two grocery bags. Three other prisoners were in the cell with the kid now, and when she finished cooking in the kitchen nook, she had fried-egg sandwiches for all of them, neither singling him out nor even making eye contact.

After a half hour of feeling him staring at her back, she returned to the bars, Tucker stepping to her without prompting.

"You hanging in?" she asked in a conspiratorial murmur, her long brown fingers curled around the bars.

He shrugged.

"You still hungry? I have two eggs left."

Another shrug, but he remained at the bars.

"Well, sing out if you are." Yolonda sad-smiled, then returned to her desk.

"You were right," he said a few minutes later.

Yolonda turned in her chair, asked him from across the room, "About what?"

"They don't like me too much."

"Who's they?" Strolling back to the bars.

"My parents. My brothers, they look just like my father."

"Dark, right?"

He stared at her. "My mother was dark too."

"Oh yeah?"

Signaling to one of the desks, she had Tucker transferred from the cell to an interview room, the squad detective cuffing him to the restraint bar on the wall. "It's regulations," Yolonda said apologetically, then waited for the other cop to leave them alone.

"Shawn, how old are you?" Sliding as close to him as she could without sitting in his lap.

"Nineteen."

"Nineteen, and you got picked out for seven robberies." Leaning back as if overwhelmed, palms open to him in despair.

"Seven's what they got me for," he murmured, both braggy and bummed.

"And for what."

"I don't know . . . stupid shit. You're hungry, got no cash, call for takeout, pound on the delivery guy, take the food, take whatever's in his pocket." He shrugged. "Most times I can't even remember what I did, I was so high."

"I wish I'd've been your big sister." Yolonda made a fist. "I'd've read you like a comic book before you ever left the house. What the hell is wrong with you?"

He gave her another shrug, his eyes roaming the water-stained ceiling tiles.

"You know you're going to jail, right?"

"I'm in jail."

"No. Jail jail. You know what I'm talking about."

"You come visit me?" he asked without looking at her.

"I want you to promise me something." Putting a hand on his arm. "You're so young. Don't waste your time in there. Learn something, a trade, a skill."

"Yeah, I was thinking about being a locksmith."

"You're kidding me, right?"

He stared at her.

"You just got ID'd for two burglaries."

"So? That was then."

"No. Something like electrician, sheetrocking, plumbing. This whole area's blowing up. Your own neighborhood. Construction, rehabbing, demolition. You cant even sleep anymore down here. So you master a building trade in there? A year or two from now, when you come out, unless we got hit with a dirty bomb or something, you can walk to work."

"Yeah, OK."

Yolonda gave it a moment, the silence belonging to them alone, then put her hand back on his forearm. "Let me ask you something . . . You say seven is what we got you for. Any of the others on Eldridge Street?"

Tucker took a long moment, breathed deep. "Yeah. One. A white guy."

Yolonda nodded, gave them another bonding silence, then quietly asked, "What happened?"

"I think I shot him."

"You think?" Her hand still on his arm, the kid looking at the ceiling tiles again.

"I was high. I might of, I don't know."

"When was this."

"October eighth?"

Yolonda briefly closed her eyes in mild disappointment; nobody ever gave calendar dates; at best you'd be lucky to get the day of the week.

"About what time?" Her voice losing its juice.

"Four a. M.?"

"Exactly where on Eldridge." Barely interested enough now to even ask.

"Right in front of Twenty-seven."

"I thought you said you were high."

"I was."

"You remember the exact date, the time down to the minute, the building number, but you can't recall if you shot him or not? That some funny high." "I did."

"Did what."

"Shot him. Shoot him. I didn't want to, but . . ."

"You did this by yourself?"

"Had my podner."

"Who's your podner."

"I'm telling you?" Snorting.

"But you were the shooter." "Uh-huh."

"What kind of gun."

"What kind?"

"What kind." Then, "Forty-five, right?"

"Yeah."

"You're insulting me now. Did I do something to you to deserve that?"

"What are you talking about."

"Shawn, why are you lying to me about this?"

"Lying . . ." Jerking back.

"You're putting yourself in for a murder you didn't do." She had to duck and twist to get into his eyes. "Look at me."

"I might have." Looking away.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"You're breaking my heart now." Yolonda making her eyes glisten. "You're killing me."

"I don't know." Pondering his knuckles. "I figured it would be good for you."

"For me?"

"You know, for your career."

She leaned in close enough to bite him. "My career?" Sometimes Yolonda was so good at her job that she made herself sick. "How'd you even know to bring this up?"

Tucker shrugged yet again, massaged the back of his neck with his free hand.