Resolved (22 page)

“Why don't you let us be the judge of that. I'd like to have a list of names and addresses.”

“Sure. Just a second.”

She rose from her stool and disappeared into the loft, returning a minute later with a set of laser-printed sheets. Tancredi looked at them, his forehead knotting.

“What is this?”

“Like it says up there, a list of people who would not be unhappy if I died violently, and might be inclined to do the job themselves. Oh, you thought I'd have to scratch my head over a yellow pad? No, I've been adding to it over the years and I kept it where it'd be found if I got killed.” She watched as he glanced through the names.

“Any of these you like especially for this?” he asked, passing the list to his partner. Fox looked through it and stared at her, with either horror or wonder.

“Not really.” She realized she had never crossed Felix Tighe's name off. Again, it was on the tip of her tongue to lay out the theory, but the flaws in it dissuaded her. Ridiculous when you thought about it. Tighe wasn't a bomber. He was a knife artist. He liked to get close. She added, “Some of them might be dead or out of town, though. You'll find out. And, look, if there's nothing else, I got an appointment in Queens. Can I get to my truck now?”

When the policemen left, Marlene had a minor nervous breakdown. It came upon her unexpectedly as she poured another glass of wine. Her hand started to shake. It shook the glass right out of it, to shatter in the sink, and she could hardly put the bottle down without knocking it over. Then she started shaking all over, like a malaria victim. She tried to sit on a chair and knocked it over instead, and finally collapsed against the stove, with strange, honking hoots coming out of her mouth and tears gushing from her eyes.

Her daughter found her like this. Without wasting any time on hysterics of her own—for the more extreme mental states were no strangers
chez
Karp—she got the mom seated in a chair and a roll of paper towels handy for sopping up the leakage, and sat next to her with her arm across Marlene's shoulders. When she was sufficiently recovered to make words again, she said, “I wasn't going to take the dog. I could've taken the kids. You know how they run ahead and jump into the truck when I pop the locks. They would have both…both of them…” More weeping. Then, “I have to go. I have to go out.”

“Mom, sit down. You're not fit to go anywhere.”

“No, this was the capper. It wasn't a random bomb. It's Felix Tighe.”

“Who?”

“A case. Before you were born. He was a kind of violent con man, a psychopath. He used to get next to women, move in on them. Strip their assets, dominate them. He liked to torture them, too. One of the girlfriends complained and he beat her up, and the woman in the next apartment called the cops. He came back later and slashed her to pieces along with her little boy.”

“She was one of your clients? The victim?”

“No, not at all. I never met her. It was one of your dad's big cases. He convicted Felix and sent him away, twenty-five to life.”

“So this is because Dad convicted him? And how did he get to be the bomber? Or escape from jail?”

Marlene looked at her daughter, who had an expression on her face that no parent likes to see, the one that comes before “Gee, Mom, maybe you ought to see somebody.”

“I'm not crazy, Lucy,” she said and proceeded to relate Jim Raney's theory of the Manbomber case, adding the information about the way Mary Chalfonte and her little girl had died. “And this just now, like I said, is the capper. Only he's dead, which is why I have to go see the cousin.”

Unlike most children, Lucy didn't ask for an explanation of this seeming paradox. Instead, she said, “You're not going out of this house by yourself.”

“What!”

“What I said. Look at you, you're still shaking.”

“I am not!” Marlene protested, holding out her hand, which fluttered like a pennant in a stiff breeze.

At that moment, they heard the elevator door thump open, and a moment later the sound of the loft door opening.

“Good! Dad can watch the boys,” said Lucy, as she snatched the truck keys up from where the cop had laid them.

 

The drive to Hampton Street in Elmhurst, Queens, took a good long time, as it was nearly the height of rush hour. Lucy drove: the Midtown Tunnel, Roosevelt Avenue, Elmhurst Avenue, and the street itself, a row of asphalt-shingled or aluminum-sided two-story semidetached houses with tiny front yards, under maples and sycamores in dense leaf. The streets were spotted with men and women coming home from work, and others going to work, and children playing noisily. The people here were Asians of various flavors, and Latin Americans.

The yard on the one they wanted was unkempt: weeds shot up among the deep mulch of last year's leaf fall. The blinds were closed on the front windows.

“Wait here,” said Marlene.

“You're sure you're all right?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. I just want to talk to this guy.”

“Okay, but if you're not out of there in twelve hours, I'm calling nine-one-one.”

Marlene forced a chuckle and went through the chain-link gate and up the cracked walk.

Ding dong.

The door was hauled open and the guy who opened it did the sort of double take you get when someone expects a caller and gets someone else. He was wearing greasy gray canvas work pants, a sleeveless undershirt (with gold chain and shiny crucifix), and a black ball cap with a Rangers logo on it, bill cocked to the side. He had a broad, high-cheeked tan face, coarse black hair spattered with little white grains, and a drooping Fu Manchu moustache and short beard.

Marlene said, “Hi, I was wondering if Bruce Newton was home?”

The man started to close the door. “No hable inglés.”

“But we speak Spanish,” said Marlene in that tongue, making beckoning motions. Lucy got out of the truck. “My daughter speaks it very well,” she promised. This statement virtually exhausted her colloquial Spanish, although she could follow simple conversation fairly well.

Marlene explained to Lucy what was required. Lucy asked the man if Bruce Newton were available.

“Who're you?” the man asked.

“We're working with the corrections department, checking up on some things. Don't worry, he's not in any trouble.” She tried a smile, which was not returned. “Is Mr. Newton at home?”

“No, he's away. On a trip. Business.”

“But this is his residence, yes?”

“Yes. But he's not here now.”

“When will he be back, do you know?”

“No. Month, two months. I don't know.”

Marlene said, “Ask him about the funeral.”

Lucy said, “Yes, excuse me, Mr….”

A pause. “Gonzales.”

“Mr. Gonzales. Did Mr. Newton attend a funeral recently? His cousin Felix?”

“Yes. They sent the body to the funeral home and he went there. They cremated him.”

“Ask him what funeral home,” hissed Marlene, but when Lucy did so, the man professed ignorance. “In the neighborhood, I don't know. He wasn't my cousin, you know?”

Marlene thanked the man, who went back behind his door. The two women returned to the Ford. Lucy drove away. After half a block, Marlene said, “Pull over here.”

Lucy did so. “What now?”

“What did you think?”

“Of Mr. Maybe Gonzales? Not forthcoming. Why? Maybe he's got fifteen Salvadorans back there with one green card between them. He's a working stiff, though. He had pipe grease and plumber's dope on his pants, and concrete dust in his hair, too. Construction plumbing, I'd say. Also, he's not a Latino himself.”

“No? What is he?”

“I don't know. His Spanish is fluent enough, but still a second language. And it's not a Latin American accent. He's a Spaniard, or someone who was raised in Spain but was originally from somewhere else.”

“That's very impressive, Lucy.”

Lucy polished her knuckles on her breastbone and blew across them. “Language is ma game.”

“Yes, but you got he was bent and that he was a plumber. And if you go into detective work, I'll break your knees for you.”

“It's too late, Ma.” Laughing.

“We'll see about that. So, you can't tell where he comes from? From the accent?”

“Not offhand. If I had a tape, maybe I could.”

“Let's get one, then,” said Marlene, pulling a microrecorder from her bag. “Come on!”

With that, she was out of the truck and heading down to the Newton-Mr. Maybe Gonzales residence, with Lucy following. They slipped down the side alley between that house and its neighbor, crouching low so as not to be spotted from any of the windows. These were all wide open because of the heat, and they could hear sounds coming from the houses on either side—an argument in Spanish, a pop song in the same language playing on a radio, and from the kitchen window of the Gonzales house the dull roar of a fan. And talking. Marlene lifted an eye to the corner where sill met window frame. Gonzales was on the kitchen phone, his back to the window. She held up the microrecorder and pushed the button. The conversation went on for some time, the man speaking nervously in a language Marlene had never heard, which was not going to be a problem because here was Lucy with all the answers in that department.

But when they were back at the truck and Marlene asked, Lucy said, “I have no idea.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because there are around sixty-five hundred languages spoken on this planet, and I can speak fifty or so with some fluency and can identify maybe fifty more, and those are only the really common ones. There are hundreds of languages that I've never even heard, each one of them spoken by millions of people. On the other hand I can probably make some guesses.”

“Like…?”

“Well, clearly not in the top forty, because I know all those. Not an Indo-European, not Asian. Could be an Amerindian tongue or something out of Africa—I would guess Africa, because, like I said, his Spanish isn't really American, plus I have a gut feeling it's in the Afro-Asiatic family. The gutturals, the dentalized
t
's, the glottal stops, the voiced implosives…”

“I thought you just said it wasn't Asian.”

“No, Afro-Asiatic takes in north Africa and the Middle East—Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, like that.”

“That guy could have been an Arab, huh?”

“I don't know about that, but he probably wasn't Gonzales from San Salvador. I'd figure a guy from the Middle East who grew up in Spain.”

“I'd like it if he was an Arab. Bombs and Arabs go together in my mind, I'm afraid.”

“Yes, racism is alive and well in New York,” said Lucy. “Give me the tape. I'll play it for some people and we'll find out.”

They drove back to the city. Marlene smoked one Marlboro after another, which was something she did not often do, and never did out at the dog farm. It's working at this again, she thought, it's not good for me. I should be happy, getting somewhere with this case, getting along with my daughter, but all I can think of is I'm back in the salty soup and something awful is going to happen to the kids because of it.

“What's wrong, Mom,” Lucy asked, after they had driven almost to the tunnel in virtual silence.

“Nothing,” Marlene said. “I'm just a little tired. You can slip in there behind that bus.”

 

Felix was in the crowd that watched the removal of the bomb from Marlene's truck. He wore a Caterpillar cap pulled down low on his forehead and wrap-around sunglasses, and blue mechanic's overalls with the sleeves hacked off and
Larry
embroidered in red on the breast. He watched the bomb squad work with interest as they x-rayed the bomb and then did some things he couldn't see, because they set up screens for the guy in the Kevlar suit to work behind. In any case, the thing didn't go off and they placed it successfully into the bomb vessel and drove it away. It was a shame there wasn't a dual circuit on the thing, Felix thought, radio and trembler, because then he could've set it off and watched the bomb guy fly through the air.

The bitch had escaped, however, and he had to call Rashid and tell him about it, which he didn't really feel like doing, because the little fuck would carry on like it was the end of the world and Felix's fault. Seeking to delay the confrontation a little, he walked up Broadway to West Houston, found a coffee shop, slipped into the john, swallowed a handful of pills, drank a cup of coffee, and then went to the pay phone he'd spotted in the narrow alley near the restrooms.

To Felix's surprise, however, Rashid listened calmly to the story. He asked about the dog and then said, “A bomb dog, interesting. Who could have imagined she would own a bomb dog. In any case, it is no big thing. We will succeed another time. But it is important that you come here right away.”