Lush Life (36 page)

Not until she brought him back to the holding cell did she see the information-wanted poster for the Marcus homicide that was taped up on the wall in there, that was probably taped up on all the walls of all the prison cells, bull pens, intake centers, and parole offices in lower Manhattan by now, and that had been staring back at him all day long.

Alvin Anderson's parole officer had told John Mullins earlier in the day that Anderson tended to play fast and loose with his curfew, so when he finally walked into his mothers apartment in the Lemlich Houses at nine-fifteen in the evening, violating himself by fifteen minutes, Matty, Yolonda, and Mullins were there waiting. They sat in the living room on chairs dragged over from the dining nook and arranged in a loose horseshoe like a makeshift tribunal. His mother, who had unhappily let them in a few minutes before nine, was seated by herself on the plastic-covered couch.

"Hey." Alvin, shave-headed and round, stood there in the doorway, frantically trying to suss out the nature of his trouble. "Whats up?"

"You tell us," Mullins said, leaning forward and flourishing his curled wrist to frown at the time.

He had arrested Anderson a little over a year ago.

"Hey. I been trying to make it home for the last hour. There's like some kind of transit strike goin' on."

His mother palmed her mouth and slowly shook her head in surrender.

Matty had come upon Alvin Anderson while poring over the District Arrest Books for the last two years; the situation that locked him up: three men, two guns, one tourist; Alvin quickly giving up the others in exchange for a lighter-than-light sentence; a soft target, according to Mullins.

"So what's happening," Matty asked from one of the other easy chairs.

"Nothing." Alvin continued to stand as if contemplating a dash out the door. "You here to violate me?"

"Rather not, but . . ."

"But . . ."

"Working?" Mullins asked.

"Looking."

"Where you looking?"

"Everywhere," Alvin said with an exhausted air. "Ask my mother, ask my PO. I was over at the Old Navy the other day? It's all good, going good, then they see I was at Cape Vincent, so . . ."

"Transit Authority's hiring porters right now," Yolonda said. 'Your record doesn't weigh against you there."

"Yeah?" Alvin tried to sound helped. "OK, OK."

"How's your girl?" Mullins asked.

"Which one?" Straining to come off relaxed and devilish.

"You're so bad," Yolonda said.

"Gonna be a father again," he said to Mullins.

"Oh yeah?" Mullins offering what for him passed as a smile.

Alvin's mother looked off again, sighed, then got up and left the room, everyone watching her go.

"Have a seat," Matty said.

Alvin lowered himself into a chair at the dining table as if into a hot bath. "So, what ch'all here for?"

"What do you think?" Matty said.

"'Cause I'm fifteen minutes violated?" Screwing up his face. "Three officers?"

They sat there staring at him, waiting.

"Yo." He sat up. "If it's that thing went down last week? I don't care what you heard, man, I wasn't there. I ain't doing that no more. You can' ask my mother where I was that night."

"We're talking about the same thing here then, right?" Matty said.

"Yeah. The Chinese wedding store, right?"

"So if not you," Yolonda said, "then who?"

"Some Messican dude."

"Who." Mullins's turn.

"Some guy."

"What guy."

"Messican guy. That's like the sum total of what I heard and no more, God's my witness." Then, gesturing to Big John, "You can ask Detective Mullins how I do."

"Well, who told you about it?" Mullins asked.

Alvin hesitated, then, "Reddy."

"Reddy Wilson?" Matty asked. "Reddy's out?"

"Like, last week."

If Matty had known Reddy Wilson was out, he'd have been an automatic Want Card. That was something, at least.

"Other than that"-Alvin looked from one detective to another
-
"I'm not too sure exactly how 1 can serve you officers."

"No?" Mullins gave him the stare.

"Hey, just say."

Yolonda moved her chair back to the dining nook and put her hand atop Alvin's as if to hold him to the table. "You know that homicide last week?"

"The white boy?"

Again, the pregnant silence, Alvin looking from one face to another. "Oh." Snorting, 'Tail can't be serious."

They continued to stare to keep him talking, although no one really thought he was involved.

"C'mon now." Alvin laughed nervously.

"Anything in the pipeline?" Matty asked.

"I ain't heard nothing except 'Damn, you hear about that?'" Alvin's face bathed in relief.

"Just so you know," Yolonda said, "there's a twenty-two-thousand
-
dollar reward up."

"Twenty-two?" Then, "Yall got the extra ten thousand from the White Victims' Fund?"

"It's called the Mayor's Fund," Matty said, trying not to smile.

'Yeah, OK."

"The point is," Mullins said, "a guy like you could be in a good position to hear something, make a little kale for himself."

"OK," Anderson said. "It's in confidence, right?"

"Always."

"OK, then." Slapping his knees and half-rising, as if it were up to him when they left. "I'll keep an ear out."

"Good," Yolonda said, standing up. "And don't forget what I said about the Transit Authority."

"The Transit Authority?" Alvin blinked.

Outside the apartment they rang for the elevator and waited in silence.

"What Chinese wedding store?" Matty finally asked.

"I have no idea," said Mullins, impatiently pounding the call button, then putting his ear to the door to hear if the car was at least in motion. "Probably something in the Fifth."

When the elevator finally came, it was full of cops heading to a higher floor.

"Hey," Matty said, "what did we miss?"

Hitching a ride to the call, a domestic on fourteen, they barely had room to exit into the hallway, dozens of police already crowded into the narrow space between the apartment and elevator doors.

It was a typically slow night in the area, so anyone who could pick up the transmission had responded just for something to do: uniforms from the Eighth, from Housing, supervisors for both, Quality of Life and other anticrime units, and now Matty and two other detectives; the scrawny, goggle-eyed woman at the apartment door scared by the sheer numbers, saying over and over, "It's OK now. It's nothing."

"What's going on?" Matty asked Lugo.

"The fuck knows, some kind of family smackdown," he said, gesturing for his crew to head out. "Might as well do our vertical." Leading them through the mob to the fourteenth-floor stairwell.

Matty was ready to go too, but Yolonda, as was her wont, had already began burrowing her way through the bored mill of cops into the apartment.

"What's up, buddy?" Matty heard Lugo say to someone on the other side of the staircase door.

"Just sittin'." The voice sounded familiar.

"Sittin' and . . ."

"Thinking."

"You live here?"

"Not really."

"Can I see some ID?"

Matty stuck his head around the open door to see Billy Marcus sitting on the stairs between fourteen and thirteen, that pilfered steno book falling off his lap as he twisted around to offer up his driver's license.

"Are you kidding me?" John Mullins half-whispered to Matty as he joined him at the stairwell door.

Lugo handed back the license. "How about you sit and think up in Riverdale."

"My wife doesn't let me smoke."

"Well, you're not smoking now."

Matty put a hand on Lugo's shoulder. "I know the guy."

"All yours. Lugo shrugged and Quality of Life began their nightly vertical patrol, splitting up, two men for each stairway to catpaw it out on alternating floors all the way down to the lobby, Daley and Lugo sidling past Marcus, still on the stairs, and beginning their quiet descent.

Waiting until they had disappeared around the thirteenth-floor landing, Matty stepped into the stairwell and not quite gently pulled Marcus to his feet. "All due respect, I am really starting to get tired of you." Then patted him down for a weapon.

Yolonda finally fought her way into the apartment through the bottleneck of cops, some of whom, like sports fans in the last few minutes of a blowout, were moving in the opposite direction, trying to beat the traffic home.

There was no interior hallway, the front door opening directly into the living room, where a fortyish Latino, liquor-breathed and with a fresh, bright punch-induced gash on his cheekbone, stood dead center as if onstage, delivering a speech to the half-dozen cops still there. His small, pop-eyed wife stood in a corner now, her arms draped over two equally pop-eyed but otherwise impassive young kids, who leaned back into her housedress.

Yolonda had never seen a room so clean and squared away; clear plastic slipcases or coverlets on every piece of furniture, including the VCR and cable box. A Yankees game was on the TV, the sound muted.

"See, I blame his mother for the way he turned out," the guy declared, sounding as if he honestly believed anyone present gave a shit.

The woman in the corner didn't react; He's not talking about her, Yolonda thought. Tracking the man's jabbing finger, she discovered who she assumed was the he of this speech: a skinny, scar-mouthed teenager in the half-walled dining nook, a Housing cop with a hand lightly to his chest as if to restrain him. The woman in the corner definitely wasn't his mother.

"I blame her for not teaching him the basic principles of, of prudential responsibility, of prudential impulse management, prudential self
-
control."

"Sir, are you pressing charges here or not-" one of the other cops said.

The teenager stood calmly, one hand resting on the dining table, the uniform there to keep him in check but there was no real need, keenly absorbed as he was in just observing this older guy, studying his every word and gesture, something both defeated and quietly triumphant in the set of the kid's mouth, his eyes.

"See, my mother raised us right," the older man stalled. "I am forty
-
six years old, lived a lot longer than many men of my age that grew up in these houses, but as she told me-"

"Sir . . ." the housing cop droned.

The man wasn't going to do shit and the kid knew it but had, Yolonda intuited, just found that out; ergo the small smile. Yolonda took in the fresh cut on the guy s cheek again, the jangly scar that ran across the kid's mouth and lower face like a polygraph readout, thinking, First time he ever fought back.

She moved past the remaining cops, more of them leaving every second, and sidled up to the kid. "Show me your room."

After taking Billy by the elbow down two flights of stairs to get away from the crowd, Matty abruptly backed him up against the wall. "What are you doing here."

"I'm not afraid of this place," Billy said, bouncing the back of his head off the smoke-dinged cinder block and looking off to get out from under Matty's eyes.

"Answer my question," Matty said, pressing in closer and cocking his head.

"You should have seen the shithole projects where I grew up," addressing the stairs heading back up to fourteen.

"Were you looking for somebody?"

"Besides"-Billy shrugged
-
what can they do to me now."

"Who's they. Who were you looking for."

Billy kept craning his neck to get out from under Matty's stare.

"Who, True Life?"

"I don't know."

"Were you looking for True Life?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" "No."

"And what would you do if you found him?"

"I just want . . ."

"What. You want what."

"I just want someone to explain to me."

"You want True Life to explain to you? What would you like him to explain? You want explanations, you talk to your wife. Your priest. Your shrink. True Life's out of the explanation loop. So I'm asking you again, what are you doing here." Then, "Give me this," taking the open notebook from his unresisting fingers.

Half-expecting to find some kind of vendetta written there, some kind of violent manifesto, he found instead a to-do list.

Accept

Find higher meaning

Family

Friends

Prayer (??)

Whatever strengths of character

Don't be second victim-vacations, hobbies etc.