Lush Life (7 page)

"Yes, shot," she said slowly. "Can you ask your . . ." The kid translated to his aunt, the woman taking it in with a neutral expression, then turning to Kendra, she shook her head no. "OK, can you ask her if maybe she heard anything?" Again the boy translated, this time the woman having something to say.

"She heard people yelling at each other, but she doesn't speak English so . . ."

"These people she heard, what did they sound like, white, black, Spanish . . ."

Another quick exchange, then, "She says American."

"She wouldn't be able to pick out any words, maybe a name."

The kid waved off the question as hopeless. "Why don't you ask me?"

Kendra hesitated, no time for games, but if the kid maybe heard something . . .

"OK." Flourishing her pen like a baton, giving him a show. "What's your name?"

"Winston Ciu."

"OK, Winston Ciu. How about you? Did you see or hear something?"

"No," he said. "But I wish I did."

On the third floor the Dominican woman who came to the door jumped back, hand to chest, when she saw the detective standing there."Jeez, do I really look that bad?" Gloria Rodriguez said, patting her hair. "Sorry to bother you so early, but there was a shooting right outside."

"An hour ago," the woman said. She wore spin-rack reading glasses, a floral housedress, and vinyl slippers. "You saw it?" "Heard. I was in bed." "What you hear?" "Like a shot, shots." "Which."

"One, like a firecracker, like pop pop.'" "That's two." "Yeah, no, just one."

Gloria could hear Kendra knocking on a door below her, getting a nibble.

"OK, so, you heard the shot, the pop. You look out the window?"

"No, I don't do that."

"You overhear any talking? Arguing?"

"I don't do that either. If I hear something? I don't listen."

"Maybe you couldn't help it. Maybe . . ."

"I heard arguing, maybe. Maybe I was dreaming it."

"What were they arguing about?"

"In my dream?"

"Sure."

"I don't remember my dreams."

Gloria looked at the woman. "You know there's still some bad people around here we're trying to get off the street." "Good."

"You probably see them every day, right?"

The woman shrugged.

"Who am I talking about . . ."

The woman shrugged.

"Who's got a gun around here."

She tilted her chin to Gloria's hip. 'You do."

On her way down the stairs, Gloria could hear another tenant also talking about an argument out on the street, but when she got to thefloor, she saw that the person she was talking to wasn't Kendra but a reporter.

At a quarter to six, Bobby Oh stood across the street from the still
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bustling crime scene with Nikki Williams, the redheads girlfriend.

"I still can't believe, it's like, it's like your life. I mean all you have to do is walk down the wrong street . . ." The tall, slender kid was shivering, her eyes stark in her head. "Nikki . . ."

"It was like nothing. It was like God snapped his fingers."

"Nikki"-Bobby gave a little wave-"you need to tell me what you saw."

"There's a famous line in this poem, 'the world will end not with a bang but with a whimper.' "

Bobby took a breath, spoke to her eyes. " This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.'"

Nikki stared at him with naked surprise.

"Now please, time is everything. Tell me what you saw."

She took a deep, shuddery breath, palmed her heart, followed the arc of a pigeon scouting the commotion. "Nikki."

"OK. Me and Randal we were walking towards each other on Eldridge?"

"Towards each other?" Bobby cocked his head. "I thought you were together."

Nikki took a moment to smile at him. "How do you know T. S. Eliot?"

"The apes that raised me were surprisingly intelligent. So you were walking towards each other?"

"Well, yeah, I mean originally we had come around the corner from Delancey together, but I guess he stopped to light a cigarette or something and I didn't notice, because all of a sudden I'm halfway down Eldridge by myself, so I turned to see where he was and he had like, just rounded the bend onto Eldridge, which was when I started walking back to him, and on my way back, I saw three guys across the streetkind of in between us? They were just standing there, then all of a sudden 1 heard this sharp pop or snap sound and then theres like this flurry of movement like they were all jumping away from something, then two of them fell down and the third one ran into the building with something metallic in his hand."

"Metallic." Bobby needed to rear back a little, Nikki having a good four inches on him.

"I figured a gun because the two of them were laying there, but 1 just saw the shine of it in his hand, so . . ."

"And you first saw the three of them on your way back down to rejoin your boyfriend?" "Yeah."

"Were they facing you?"

"No, more like with their backs to me, like facing the building." "Did you see any other people with them?"

"1 didn't. No one else on the street even, just Randal." Then: "I can't believe I'm just standing here like this," running her thumb lightly across the ridges of her lips.

"And how long would you say you were aware of them before you heard the shot?"

"I don't know. As long as it took to walk back towards Randal with him walking towards me? What's that, ten seconds? Twenty seconds? I don't have a very good sense of time."

"And were you watching them for all that time?" "Not like, staring at them, just seeing them out the corner of my eye because it was just us and them out here." "Did you happen to hear anything?" "From them?" "Yeah."

"You mean like conversation?"

"Anything. Conversation, random words, a name, some kind of outburst . . ."

"I don't think so. I would've remembered, I think." "Some of the tenants around here said they heard arguing or shouting before the shot was fired. But you didn't hear anything?"

Nikki hesitated, cocked her head as if thinking something through;began to say something, then said something else. "Did I offend you by acting so surprised that you knew that T. S. Eliot line?"

"Absolutely not," Bobby said. "So you didn't hear any arguing?"

"Not from them."

"What . . ." Bobby said.

"I mean, when those cops came out of that taxi a few minutes later with their guns out, they were shouting like crazy, you know, 'Police. Put it down. Don't fuckin' move. Drop the fucking gun.' That was pretty loud, and then the guy from that little grocery store came out, they broke his window, somebody did, and he was shouting pretty good too for a while. Maybe those people heard that, but, no, I didn't hear anything from those three guys."

"And you didn't see anybody else with them. Anybody that might have been facing them, maybe they were talking to . . ."

"No. I mean, like I said, I wasn't studying them, but no."

"And you and Randal, where were you relative to each other when the shot was fired."

"I would say I was right here," she said, hugging herself and staring down at her shoes. "And Randal was maybe by that building down there with the mermaid heads carved on it?"-pointing to a tenement maybe a hundred feet south, three doorways up from the corner with Delancey, two reporters standing there now, both on cell phones.

"I have a distinct mental picture of him and I walking towards each other with those three across the street between us so that we all made kind of a triangle, and then all of a sudden hearing that sharp pop and seeing the two of them fall away and the third guy with the silver in his hand run into the building. Next thing I know Randal's on top of me trying to push me down below this car," nodding to a parked Lexus. "Sir Galahad," she added drily.

"What's that?" Bobby smiled.

"Nikki, you OK?" A young couple still dressed in their evening clothes but carrying coffee and newspapers got in between Bobby and his interview as if he weren't there at all. The girl was blond, the boy light-skinned black like Nikki.

"I just saw someone get shot," she blurted.

"What?" the girl gasped."It was like nothing. It was like they slipped on ice."

"Yeah, well, that's how it is," the black kid said sagely, Bobby thinking, Straight Outta Scarsdale.

"Shot dead?"

Nikki leaned around her friend to get the answer from Bobby, who tapped his watch.

"I'll call you." Nikki stepped away from them.

"Be careful what you say," the boy murmured as they walked off.

"What?" Nikki looked after him. "Why?"

The boy cast a chary eye Bobbys way, then kept walking.

"Why?" Nikki looked anxiously to Bobby.

Bobby shrugged. 'Your friend there watches too much TV. Why did you just call your boyfriend Sir Galahad like that?"

"Did what?" Still distracted, then pursing her mouth and staring over Bobbys head. "It's ... I was joking."

Bobby gave it a second, was about to push for more, when the abrupt racket of a security gate going up over a storefront Buddhist temple made her levitate.

"Am I putting myself in any kind of danger talking to you?"

"None whatsoever," he said without blinking. "So where were you both coming from before you separated?"

"My girlfriend's birthday party at this club Rose of Sharon on Essex?"

"Were you drinking?"

"I can't. I'm allergic to alcohol."

"Were you altered in any other way?"

"Was I stoned?"

Bobby waited.

"I had a few tokes earlier, but way earlier, like midnight, and it was just to be sociable and so that everybody would get off my back for not drinking. So, four hours later?" She shrugged. "I was just tired."

"All right." Bobby nodded. "All right." Then, "Look, I'm obliged to ask. Have you ever had any history with the police?"

"Like, have 1 ever been arrested?" Cocking her head.

Bobby waited.

"Would you ask me that if I were white?"

"On something like this? I would ask you that if you were Korean.""No, I haven't any history with the police," she said tersely. "Now. Can I ask you something?"

"Absolutely," Bobby said, his eyes on to the next thing.

"OK, it's like, the cops are pointing guns at you, and they're yelling for you to drop the gun, put it down, put it the fuck down, but they're also yelling for you to freeze. So, which one do you do?"

"Which do you think?" he said. "But slowly."

A moment later Matty came back from his interview around the corner with the boyfriend, Bobby seeing the new story in his eyes too.

The first order of business now was finding the gun Eric
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Cash had dumped. After putting in a request for a search team from Emergency Services to give 27 Eldridge a top-to-bottom toss, Matty went back to the squad room, sat quietly at his desk for a minute to gather himself, then started working the request lines for more manpower.

When he was done with that, he called Bobby back at the scene to have him steer Crime Scenes, if and when they ever showed up, directly to the precinct before processing the street. He then got up and glanced through the window of the interview room at Eric Cash, slumped with his cheek resting on the edge of the scarred table in there, an untouched cup of coffee inches from his face. Matty wanted CSU to come here first to give this guy a gunshot-residue test, without which, if he truly was the shooter and the murder weapon remained unfound, they could possibly be screwed, depending on how tough he would hang during the interviews; how quick he'd lawyer up.

Matty put a hand to the door, then backed off; let him stew.

Back at his desk he started to call his most immediate boss, Lieutenant Carmody, but hung up middial. The guy was supposed to be informed 24/7 whenever anything of this magnitude went down in the precinct, but he was new, would only get in the way, and wouldn't want to know about it anyhow Instead, he called Bobby Oh again.

"Where the fuck's CSU?"

"What can I tell you."

"No gun?"

"You'd know." Then, "You better call them."Matty gave himself one last moment to breathe, to think of a bamboo forest or an alpine brook, whatever they might look or sound like, then put in the call to Crime Scenes, praying he wouldn't get the Goalie.

"Baumgartner."

"Yeah, hey, Sarge," Matty thinking, Fuck me, "this is Matty Clark, Eighth Squad? I have a homicide down here, a possible perp in custody but no gun, and 1 need a paraffin test." "Homicide?" "Yes."

"Confirmed?"

"Yes."

"At."

"Gouverneur's." "Doctor's name?"

Matty checked his notes. "Prahash, Samram Prahash." "And he's the perp why?" "We have two wits."