Outrage (7 page)

“Are you all right, lady?” the man asked, helping her to her feet. “Shut up, Roscoe. Sorry about him, he gets a bit wound up.”

“I think so,” she said. “And that’s okay, Roscoe was a big help. Thank you, thank you so much.” She wobbled and pointed to a bench. “Maybe I should sit down for a minute.”

“Yeah, yeah, you do that,” the man said. He pulled out his cell phone. “Dialing nine-one-one. Maybe if the cops aren’t snoozing in their patrol cars somewhere, they can still catch this creep. I couldn’t see him very well myself. Did you get a good look at him?”

“Not really,” Tate replied to the same question from the detective a half hour later, sitting at his desk in the detective squad room at the Forty-eighth Precinct house. “I mostly saw him out of the corner of my eye and he had the hood pulled up on his sweatshirt. I know he had black hair and might have been Hispanic, maybe Puerto Rican or Mexican, but not too dark skinned.”

“About how tall?” Detective Phil Brock asked, his pen hovering above his notepad. He didn’t hold out much hope that they’d catch the guy. Muggers were a dime a dozen, and for all
he knew, this one was probably holed up in whatever rat’s nest he called home or accosting tourists in Battery Park.

However, the brass was all over violent attacks on women because of the Atkins murder. There’d been insinuations from some media outlets that the NYPD, in particular the detectives working out of the Forty-eighth’s detective squad, had messed up because the murder happened during the day and the killer had gotten away clean. The case had received a lot of press—particularly from one Ariadne Stupenagel, who’d been nosing around through unsolved murders in the five boroughs and was apparently using Atkins as her story’s centerpiece.

Brock thought the attacks were unfair. Actually, violent crime had dropped significantly over the past two decades in the Forty-eighth, an area of the Bronx described as “economically disadvantaged” and filled with a lot of low-income residents.

Rapes tended to fluctuate year by year, averaging three to four dozen. But robberies, which had numbered a thousand or more per year in the early nineties, were now a third of that. There’d been 137 murders in 1990, which dropped to a couple dozen ten years later and had been holding steady at less than a dozen for the past couple of years, and detectives like Brock were beating the national average at making arrests.

Still, the press barked and the brass sat up and listened. They wanted the Atkins killer and they wanted him bad. “Before he kills somebody else,” the captain in charge of the detective squad said. “Or life around here is really going to get miserable.”

So Brock and the other detectives were putting a little more
into anything that sounded like a possibility. And this guy had attacked Tate during the day, even if it was a little early; he also used a knife and wasn’t just trying to rob her. The problem was Brock had no idea what he was looking for; no one had seen a suspect in the Atkins case.

Tate shrugged. “He was behind me, but I’d say a little taller than me, and I’m five-seven.”

“What color was his sweatshirt?”

“Gray. A light gray.”

“What about pants?”

“Jeans. I didn’t really look at him. I was trying to keep my eyes to myself.”

“I understand,” Brock said. “But sometimes you never know what question will stimulate a memory. Was there anything unusual about him? A scar you might have noticed? Maybe a tattoo on one of his hands?”

Tate shook her head. “I didn’t see anything like that…. He had bad breath.”

Brock laughed. “Don’t they all? Dental hygiene is not a priority with most of the bad guys I meet. What was his voice like? Gruff? High-pitched?”

“He had an accent.”

“Any particular kind of accent? Hispanic?”

“Yeah.” Tate thought about it for a moment then added, “I think so. Or maybe something else. I’m not sure.”

“No problem, you’re doing real good,” Brock said. “So he grabs you and says something. What was it again?”

“He said that if I screamed he was going to cut my head off,” Tate replied. “And he called me a name. Something like ‘sucka’
or ‘sooka.’ Then he said we were going to ‘get busy,’ which I guess meant he was going to rape me.”

“Then Mr. Tierney shows up and yells. You fight with the guy and you think you got him pretty good?”

Tate nodded and demonstrated how she’d struck her attacker with her elbow. “I know I hit him hard because I heard him give like a little grunt and he sort of let me go. That’s when I got away.”

Brock made a note and smiled. “Good for you. I hope you cracked his friggin’ skull, pardon my French.” He closed his notepad. “I think that’s all the questions I have for now. I have your number, and we’ll call if we need you.”

The two stood up and shook hands. “So what happens now?” Tate asked.

“Well, I’m going to get an officer to drive you home,” Brock said. “And while he’s doing that, I’m going to have dispatch put out a BOLO—that stands for ‘be on the lookout’—for someone who looks like your guy. Dark hair, dark eyes. Maybe Hispanic. Five-nine or so. Slight build. Wearing a light gray sweatshirt and jeans. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of the patrols will see him.”

“I’m easy, easy, easy like Sunday morning. I can kick a stupid nervous joint when I’m yawning.”
Felix Acevedo practically skipped down Anderson Avenue on his way to Mullayly Park while reciting the lyrics to Common’s “Take It EZ.”

As far as he was concerned, the previous night at the Hip-Hop Nightclub couldn’t have gone better. Even his run-in with Maria Elena’s boyfriend—
former boyfriend
, he thought—had
been a blessing in disguise after Alejandro Garcia stepped in and then the girl had said she thought he was sexy.

When she said that he’d panicked and taken off for the men’s restroom. He sat in one of the stalls to pull himself together and considered whether she was hinting that he should ask her out. But where would he take her? He didn’t have much money. Then he thought about asking her to go for a walk and he’d give her the ring. But after some more thought he’d decided to talk it over first with Alejandro.

“A diamond ring?” Garcia asked when Felix told him hours later. “Where’d you get it?”

“I bought it,” Felix had replied, fishing it out of his wallet and handing it over to his friend.

“Bought it, huh?” Garcia said, holding it up so that he could read the inscription. “It says ‘Always,’ but someone filed another word off of it. Who’d you buy it from?”

“A guy I know from Mullayly Park,” Felix replied. “His name is Al Guerrero. He’s a friend and sold it to me for twenty-three dollars and sixteen cents. It used to say ‘Always, Al.’ But he broke up with his girlfriend and she gave it back. I filed the ‘Al’ off.”

“Yeah, I see that, homes,” Garcia said. “But you know it’s probably hot, Felix. Stolen. You shouldn’t be buying diamond rings from guys on the street.”

Felix looked crestfallen. “I know,” he said. “I just get tired of being teased because I don’t have a girlfriend, and I thought maybe if I had a nice ring …”

Garcia put his arm around his shoulder. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. But next time, say no.”

“I will, Alejandro,” Felix replied, then he brightened. “Do you think I should give it to Maria Elena?”

Chuckling, Garcia shook his head. “No, I’d hold off on that for a bit. She just got out of a relationship, and it’s too soon. Especially for diamond rings. Maybe ask her to a movie or something first if you want.”

Felix considered the advice and then nodded. “You’re right. It’s too soon. I’ll wait until after our date to give it to her.”

Unfortunately, he never got the chance to ask Maria Elena out. He kept watching for the opportunity, but she seemed to have other people around her the rest of the night. And then Alejandro told him he was leaving and that if he wanted a ride home in the limousine, they had to go.

Wishing there were more of his neighbors out and about at two
A.M
. so they could have seen him, Felix had stepped out of the limo feeling important for one of the few times he could remember in his life. The back window came down and Alejandro poked his head out. “If your dad gives you any more shit,” he said, “I want you to tell me. It’s not right he beats up you and your mom. Someday, somebody’s got to put a stop to it.”

Alejandro drove off and Felix crept into the family apartment. He paused at the door and was happy to hear his father snoring on the couch. Once the old man passed out, the fire alarm in the hallway, even if it had been in working order, wouldn’t have awakened him.

In the morning, Felix got up early, pulled his light-blue Georgetown Hoyas sweatshirt over the T-shirt he’d worn the night before, and left the apartment. He wanted to miss his father’s foul mood when he woke up hungover. Standing on the
sidewalk for a moment, he decided to head to the park even though none of his crowd would be there yet. It would give him time on a park bench to rehash his recent victories so that he could tell the others, whose faces he pictured turning green with envy.

Lost in his daydream, Felix didn’t notice the police car that passed him going the other direction. The car slowed and then, with a sudden squealing of tires, pulled a U-turn to come alongside of him. He turned just as the officer on the passenger side jumped out with his hand on the butt of his gun. “Hold it right there, I want to talk to you!”

Felix panicked. If he got in trouble with the police, his dad would beat the hell out of him. He turned and started to run but tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and fell to the ground. His glasses skittered away.

A moment later, the officer was on top of him, wrenching his arms behind him. “You’re under arrest, asshole,” the officer snarled.

Screaming in pain, Felix at first couldn’t think why the police officer was attacking him. Then he knew. “The ring! The ring is in my wallet,” he cried out.

“What ring?” the officer demanded.

“The stolen ring! It’s in my wallet!”

“Thanks for the tip,” the officer said. “Now, pay attention, ’cause I’m going to read you your rights, and then my partner and I are going to haul your ass down to the Forty-eighth.”

M
ARLENE JUMPED UP FROM THE COUCH WHERE SHE’D
been talking to Lucy when the security-door buzzer went off. “Sorry, honey,” she said, looking back down at her daughter, who was dabbing at tears, “I think this is the Sobelmans. Can we pick this up later?”

Lucy nodded. “Sure. It’s not something we can do anything about on a Sunday morning. I’m just having a moment.”

Marlene hesitated. The “moment” was actually a continuation of the discussion they’d been having since Lucy had shown up unexpectedly from Santa Fe a week earlier. Given her new occupation as a translator and sometimes field agent for a secret antiterrorism agency headed by former FBI special agent in charge and family friend Espey Jaxon, the unannounced comings and goings were not unusual. However, this time was different; it was personal.

When Lucy called from the airport to say that she was in
town and would be coming home, Marlene thought maybe it was to get help in sending out announcements and other wedding incidentals. Instead, she got home, waited until she was alone with her mom, and then said she was calling off the wedding.

At first, Marlene assumed that Lucy and her fiancé, Ned Blanchett, must have had an argument. Made sense; Lucy could be pretty hotheaded and Ned was a stubborn cowboy, and planning a wedding was stressful.
She’ll blow off steam, he’ll call to apologize, she’ll put him through the wringer, and then she’ll be on the next plane to New Mexico. Wedding’s back on, only now there’s even less time to get everything together.

However, Marlene had misinterpreted Lucy’s reasons. She wanted to marry Ned, but “not now.” The world and their roles in it, she said, were just too crazy and dangerous to be thinking about marriage, settling down, and having kids.

Ned Blanchett was a former ranch foreman and skilled sharpshooter. He had been recruited onto Jaxon’s team, and having never worked for a government agency before, he was an “unknown” in spy circles. And although Lucy wasn’t allowed to tell her parents about their work, there were indications that some of it took them overseas into dangerous situations.

Apparently, from Lucy’s hints, Ned was on such a mission now and she didn’t know when he would be coming back.

Marlene had tried to console her. “Ned’s pretty tough, baby. Ever since he got hooked up with this crazy family, he’s come through time after time in some terrible situations. He can take care of himself.”

“Until something happens he can’t take care of,” Lucy
retorted. “He’s not Superman, Mom … he’s not faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, or able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound. He can be killed, and for that matter, so can I, though he’s in harm’s way more than I am.”

Marlene didn’t quite know how to answer that. And it was clear that her daughter wanted to talk, not debate.

Lucy went on. “But it’s not just that. We’re both dedicated to what we’re doing with Espey. We’re willing to take the risks because we think it’s important for our country and the people we love. But the only reason I see to get married is to provide that stability for children. Ned and I don’t need a ceremony or a piece of paper to know that we’re each other’s soul mates. But who can justify having kids these days? The world is crazy—lunatics trying to blow up subway cars filled with innocent people, including children; unstable fanatical governments racing to create nuclear weapons and thumbing their nose at the international community that says they can’t; self-serving and myopic politicians who would rather see us all go down in flames than work together for the common good.”

Lucy had gone on for quite a while, but then she’d clammed up and didn’t want to talk about it. She just lay around the loft reading books, hanging out with her family, going for walks, and avoiding serious conversations. Several times, Marlene had caught her crying, only to have her say again that she didn’t want to discuss the wedding or Ned. “Not now. I need to think.”