Where It Hurts (15 page)

(TUESDAY, LATE MORNING)

T
he young woman standing barefoot in the empty doorway couldn’t have been much older than Krissy. Striking to look at, she still had some girlishness about her. I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. Maybe it was something in her mischievous smile or the careless, loose-jointed posture of her curvy body. It could have been the fire in her green eyes or the lingering fresh-cut lemon scent of her shampoo. Her hair was a long cascade of water-darkened reddish curls that flowed over her shoulders and framed her triangular face. Her skin was the shade of medium dark coffee lightened with a few drops of cream, yet her face was dotted here and there with freckles. She wasn’t wearing very much: a short black T cut to expose her flat abdomen and black silken panties that went most of the way toward rendering my imagination useless.

The dog at her calf, a happy-faced and excited chocolate Lab, was no man-eater. The pup, still months away from growing into her legs and paws, ran to me, jumping on my leg, yelping, wagging her tail a mile a minute, begging to be petted. I knelt down and obliged, rubbing her belly, scratching under her chin. Then the woman in the doorway called the pooch back in with a whistle and a snap of her fingers.

The pup hesitated for a second, then gave in and left me to wipe fur off my hands.

“Missy ain’t learned to be choosy with her affections jus’ yet,” she said.

I stood. “Have you learned?”

Her face hardened, the girlishness vanishing. “Whatchu want, yo? I ain’t got time for this shit, Detective.”

Detective!
Maybe I did smell like a cop. I didn’t do anything to disabuse her of her mistake.

“Is Mr. Shivers at home?”

“K-Shivs ain’t here, yo,” she said, bobbing her head slightly as she spoke, gesturing with her hands. They were fine hands with beautifully manicured piano fingers. There was a diamond-encrusted ring on her left hand. The featured stone, cut in a star shape, was enormous.

“Nice ring. You engaged?”

She smiled, staring down at the ring with love and pride. Then she remembered I was there.

“He ain’t home,” she said.

I turned and pointed at the Mercedes.

“That says different.”

She laughed at me, but she hadn’t mastered the art of the sarcastic laugh just yet. That came with time and experience she lacked. “Shit, you thinkin’ K-Shivs only have one ride? That’s
my
ride, fool.”

I was right, then. Shivers really was marking off what he perceived as his property. But regardless of the accuracy of my insights, I wasn’t big on some twenty-year-old calling me a fool.

“You’re sure Mr. Shivers isn’t at home?” I asked, my voice steely as I could manage.

“You deaf or somethin’?”

“No, and I don’t appreciate your bad manners. I know your mama didn’t raise you to talk to people that way. To call your elders fools. I’ve been nothing but courteous to you.”

She glared at me, the fire in her eyes no longer so innocent. “Don’t you talk about my moms.”

“Even if I’m saying something good about her? What’s your name?” I asked in my best cop voice.

“I don’t have to—”

“What’s your name,” I repeated, my voice even more stern.

“Katy. Katy Smalls. Why?”

“There, that wasn’t so hard was it? I have a daughter your age, Katy, and—”

She wasn’t interested. “What’s this about, anyways?”

“Drugs and murder.”

She blanched a bit, then got control of herself. Next, she leaned in close to me, the lemon scent of her shampoo much stronger now. “Y’all best get gone, Detective, if you know what’s good for you.”

I stepped back. “Yeah, why’s that? Kareem gonna get Jamal and Antwone to kick my ass?”

She curled her finger at me to come even closer. When I did, she put her lips close to my ear, her breath warm and moist. She whispered, “If you don’t leave and leave me be, Kareem and his boys will be the least of your worries.”

Her voice was soft but it had teeth, sharp ones. I couldn’t help but wonder if her threats did.

“Okay, Kareem’s not home, but do me a favor.”

She was wary, but curious, too. “Depends.”

I handed her Shivers’ driver’s license. “Give that back to him for me, will you? Tell him to give me a call.”

Her hard, ghetto girl persona seemed to vanish in a sea of confusion that brought back the girlishness to her face and posture. She seemed not to know what to say, so I saved her the trouble.

“Thanks. It was nice to meet you, Katy. Please give that to Kareem.”

She nodded. I waved and turned. I waited for the door to slam shut behind me, but it didn’t. I turned back to see Katy still standing in the doorway, her eyes watching my retreat. She seemed a very lonely figure
there in the big empty doorway. Then, finally, as I reached my car, she closed the door. She was a very exotic-looking young woman. She wasn’t wearing very much and she smelled great, but I just kind of felt sorry for her. I wasn’t even sure why. What I was sure of, though, was that I wasn’t the only person interested in Kareem Shivers. I knew that because as I drove down his street, I passed an older, unmarked Crown Vic about as inconspicuous as a lump of coal in a basket full of eggs.

(TUESDAY AFTERNOON)

W
hen I got back to Bagatelle, I turned right and drove those few miles south into Wyandanch to find Lamar English’s address. Unlike the listing in Tommy’s notebook for Ralph O’Connell, which had come complete with notes and a photograph, the listing for English was nothing more than a name and address. And if I hadn’t spoken to Ralph, Lamar English would have been an afterthought. A name in a notebook full of names. A name I probably would have passed over. I’m not even sure where Tommy D. had gotten English’s name and address. I suppose he might have culled it from his late son’s cell phone. With Tommy dead, might-haves and guesses were the best I was going to do. And frankly, I was guessing now. Was it purely coincidence that Lamar English’s initials matched Lazy Eye’s? Maybe. Probably. But of all the listings in Tommy’s notebook, the only address in Wyandanch was this one.

Long Island is divided up into townships within the counties, and when you neared the end of Bagatelle you crossed from Huntington Township into Babylon. Babylon indeed. Even as you crossed the invisible line marking the transition from Melville to Half Hollow Hills to Wheatley Heights to Wyandanch, from whiter to blacker, and from
more money to less, even the name of the street changed. Bagatelle Road became Conklin Avenue. Long Island was like that, a place of demarcations: some subtle and gradual, some obvious and ugly.

Wyandanch is black and poor and the system is set up to keep it that way. When you’re a cop, you’re not supposed to think about things like that. Not supposed to have opinions about what makes drugs, violence, and poverty possible, about what causes them to flourish and persist. You’re just a triage nurse with a badge and a gun, treating the victims and passing them along. But I wasn’t a cop anymore, and when I was, I had opinions. I wasn’t blind or deaf or dumb then. I wasn’t now. The point is that the system is set up to maintain the status quo. And a big part of that system is about those lines of demarcation.

Whenever I tell people there’s something like one hundred thirty distinct school districts on Long Island, they stare at me like I’m the dolphin boy at the Coney Island Freak Show. But I’ve got no fins or flippers and the facts are the facts. The reason we have so many school districts in a relatively confined area is a simple one: de facto segregation. And the formula to perpetuate it is equally simple: The more exclusive the address, the smaller the district, the higher the property taxes, the less likely lower-income families can afford to live in the area. Sometimes life really is as simple as A then B then C. You don’t need white hoods and burning crosses when you’ve got high property taxes. It’s one of the great unspoken truths of Long Island that, in many ways, the 1950s are still alive and well here. If Ike ran for King of Long Island, he’d win in a landslide.

From the air or on Google Earth, Wyandanch would look like any working-class suburb, a place of small single-family houses with tiny lawns on crooked blocks and boulevards—some numbered, some named after the revered dead, others for forest animals and trees. And as you came closer to earth, you might hear the amens coming from the storefront hallelujah churches. You might even think it was like any other working-class suburb. Only, people lived on the street, not looking down at it, and the streets of Wyandanch could be mean ones.

Lamar English lived on Jefferson. His yard littered with car parts. Stacks of old batteries, worn tires, bent axles, and shock absorbers. The concrete driveway stained with dark splotches of engine fluids. There were matching grooves in the concrete where steel ramps were placed so that someone, presumably Lamar, could access the undersides of cars. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Lamar and TJ shared an interest in cars, but it was a leap from there to conclude that their business extended beyond stolen car parts to drugs. I’d have to have a look at the man before taking that leap.

As I got out of my car, a little boy, no more than five or six, walked right up to the edge of his yard to have a look at me. His house was next door to English’s. He was a handsome kid, very dark-skinned, and had already developed eyes wary of white faces.

“You lookin’ for Lamar, mista?”

“How’d you know that?” I said, smiling at the kid.

“I’m smart.”

“I bet you are. What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer the question. “Lamar ain’t home.”

“You know where he’s at?”

The kid shook his head.

“You know when he’ll get back?”

More head shaking.

“Did you see him leave?”

He stopped moving his head, but he didn’t speak, either. He was thinking about it. In other words, he had seen Lamar leave. He just wasn’t sure he should tell me. Over the kid’s left shoulder, the front window shade was pulled back to one side.

“Does Lamar like to work on cars?”

That made the kid smile. “He shows me stuff sometimes.”

The shade moved again.

“You like Lamar?”

Lots of nodding.

The front door opened. I needed to find out if my guess about Lamar was right or if I was wasting my time.

“That funny eye of his, doesn’t it scare you? It scares me.”

He smiled, shaking his head proudly. “No. That don’t bother me.”

“Whatchu want with my boy, mister? Whatchu botherin’ my boy for?”

The woman coming toward me was pretty, a little heavy, and wasn’t much more than a teenager herself. Her son had her face, her eyes, too, and I could also see where he’d gotten his wariness from.

“Sorry, ma’am, I wasn’t bothering your son. We were just discussing Lamar, your next-door neighbor,” I said in a voice that was calm and steady. “Isn’t that right, little man?”

The boy nodded, but it still didn’t sit well with his mom. She grabbed him by the arm and shouted at him, “Isaac, how many times I tol’ you, don’t be talkin’ to people you don’t know. Now get on in the house. Right now, boy.”

Isaac did as he was told, but before he did, he turned back to me and waved. I winked at him.

“That man, he ain’t none of our business,” Isaac’s mom said, her pretty face full of worry. “You wanna talk to him, you talk to him your own self. Leave me and my boy out of it.”

I tilted my head at Lamar’s house and asked, “You ever hear anyone refer to him as Lazy Eye?”

“Mister, I don’t know nothing and I don’t wanna know nothing about that man. You understand me?”

“Better than you think I do.”

She turned and fairly ran back inside. I didn’t bother calling after her. I sat on Lamar’s steps for another hour, but he didn’t show. Just as I went to twist my ignition key to leave, my cell phone buzzed. When I realized who it was, I couldn’t stop smiling.

(TUESDAY EVENING)

I
pulled into her driveway as she asked me to. Casey lived in a nice little saltbox on St. James Parkway in Nesconset. The house was only a few blocks away from the wooded lot where TJ Delcamino’s body had been discovered. I tried not to think about the murdered Delcaminos as I drove to pick her up. Murder doesn’t usually make for light and airy first-date chitchat. Then again, maybe it did. How the hell would I know? I hadn’t been on a first date, or any other kind of date, in over two decades. The other subject I tried not to think about was Annie. While she wasn’t the only woman I’d ever been with, she was the only woman I’d been with for a very long time. And while Saturday’s encounter with her had ended badly, very badly, it was hard not to think about the intensity and comfort of it. But if this was a new start, I had to keep those subjects out of the conversation even if it was impossible to keep them out of my mind.

Our plans were a little hazy. I would come over and we’d figure out what to eat after I got there. One thing that had improved in Suffolk County over the last decade or so was the quality and number of restaurants. When I was growing up here, the choices were, to say the least, limited. A big night out to eat for us when I was a kid was the Ground
Round or really mediocre Chinese food. Even the pizza sucked pretty bad and it’s hard to make bad pizza in New York. I’d stopped at the big wine store on Main Street in Smithtown and picked up a good bottle of Cabernet. Well, I didn’t know if it was actually good. I wouldn’t know that until I tasted it. I might not even know then. I wasn’t much of a wine drinker. What I knew was that the salesman said it was good and that it was expensive. Experience had taught me that those two things weren’t always synonymous. I’d also done a goofy thing that I regretted doing the second I did it: I stopped at the florist in Lake Grove and bought her a half-dozen mixed roses. It was too much, I thought, but I was never a man to take things back. I didn’t suffer buyer’s remorse because I didn’t usually buy things on impulse. But that was who I used to be. And while I didn’t know who I was now or would be, I knew I was no longer that man. More important, I knew what real remorse was. I could teach a class in it.

I was sitting there in the front seat of my car, arguing with myself about whether or not to bring the roses with me when someone rapped on the driver’s side window. I jumped out of my skin. When I got back in it, I saw Casey standing at the side of the car. I rolled the window down.

“You stay out here any longer, I’m going to charge you rent.”

“Sorry.”

She leaned into me and kissed me gently on the lips. “Stop saying sorry to me, Gus. I was only teasing.”

My heart was pounding pretty good after that kiss and I almost said sorry again. All I did was smile up at her. And when I got out of the car, the wine and flowers came with me.

As we walked the short distance to her front door, I noticed that Casey was dressed in a way that I wouldn’t have expected her to be dressed. The quality of food around the area may have taken a great leap forward, but generally it was casual dress. There wasn’t a thing casual about the simple but incredibly flattering black dress she wore. It did this kind of magical thing in that it both hung slightly loose off her yet seemed to cling to every curve on her body. It was cut low enough to
reveal some cleavage, but not in a sort of crass come-and-get-it way. And the hem was cut high enough to reveal the muscular beauty and pleasing taper of her legs, yet not so high that it was an invitation. Her sheer black stockings had a thick seam in them that ran down the back of the leg and into the black stilettos on her feet. I liked that she wanted me to look at her and like what I saw. I did, very much. I liked it that she liked how she looked, too.

When we got inside I knew that I’d been duped, but gladly so. The house smelled of cooking, of a clash of great, mouth-watering scents. Of sweet frying butter and olive oil. Of roasted garlic, rosemary, oregano, torn basil leaves. Of balsamic vinegar, raw red onion, and arugula. But playing the deeper notes beneath all the other incredible aromas was the intense smell and heat of baking chocolate. Casey had cooked for me, for us. She saw the look on my face.

“When I thought about dinner and about us going out . . . for me, I’d waited for it for so many months, I wanted it to be only about the two of us talking.”

“Is that what you usually wear to talk?”

She blushed a little, but not too much.

I handed her the flowers. “Here, these are for you. This,” I said, waving the wine bottle, “is for us. And if my nose is working okay—veal, right?—it’s the right color.”

“Thank you, Gus. And your nose is still working very well.”

Dinner was pretty great—pounded veal, lightly breaded and sautéed, topped with arugula, shaved red onions, and chopped tomatoes with a balsamic reduction over a bed of spinach. And the salesman at the wine shop hadn’t lied to me after all. The red was great and went perfectly with dinner. It also went well with the chocolate cake. What doesn’t go well with chocolate cake? But the best part of the meal didn’t involve eating or drinking. It was the conversation. For two years I’d been as good as frozen. I’d forgotten the simple joy in getting to know someone. It was an incredible relief to hear about someone else’s life. About their tragedies and small victories.

I was right about Casey’s hands. She worked for a living as an occupational therapist, treating kids at a center for the physically and learning disabled.
There’s a lot of teaching by showing and by doing. You’d be amazed at how many times a day I do things we take for granted, like tying sneaker laces or buttoning a shirt.
You can’t imagine how much satisfaction there is for the kids in accomplishing those things.
I didn’t have to imagine. I could see it in her face. She didn’t have any kids herself.
My husband couldn’t have kids, and when you do what I do for a living . . .
She never finished that sentence, but she didn’t really have to. She’d loved her husband, a contractor, but, like Annie and me, they’d gotten married young.
After fifteen years together, neither one of us could figure out why we should stay married anymore.
Eventually we got around to talking about me. About Annie, Krissy, and John Jr. After I’d finished talking about John, she stood up from her seat and came over to me. She placed her right index finger across my lips and took me by the hand. I let her take me.

Now the damp skin of her back was pressed against the warm, damp hair on my chest. We were breathing heavily, my heart pounding against Casey’s skin so that it seemed to reverberate through her flesh and bone and back into my arms. The room was silent of noise but loud with unspoken questions.
Was I any good? Did you like it? Was I what you’d dreamed I would be?
Was I better than your wife? Your husband? Should I have been gentler? Rougher?
Like that. I don’t suppose it ever changes regardless of age or experience. First times are always so fucking weighty, so fraught with judgment and anticipation.

Like I said, it was over twenty years since I’d been with somebody else, and in that there was a kind of anxious joy. In not knowing her body. There was a surprise at every turn. At the mildness of her taste. Her scent. In the soft gasping sounds she made and the rippling muscle contractions of her body in orgasm. But the sex was the easy part, the natural part. What happened in the aftermath between us was the high-wire part of the evening. Finally, when her body settled down, her breathing almost normal, she spun herself around in my arms to face me. She stared at me, hesitated, then kissed me.

“I like the way I taste on you,” she whispered, her voice husky and a bit drowsy.

I curled my hand around a hank of her. She had another small aftershock. “I like the way you taste on me, too.”

We kissed again and fell into a more comfortable silence, Casey closing her eyes and nestling her head in the crook of my upper arm and chest. With no apparent prompting, she was laughing that goofy laugh of hers.

I was confused. “What?”

“I was just so afraid of you for so long.”

“That’s funny?”

“I guess I’m just laughing at myself,” she said. “If I had only had the nerve, we could have—”

It was my turn to put my finger across her lips. “No, Casey. If you had approached me even two weeks ago . . . I’m just happy we met when we did.”

“You believe in fate?”

“Just the opposite. I believe in chance.”

I kissed her again, hard on the mouth, pulling at her hair and rolling on top of her. Neither one of us was laughing or talking.

This time when we were done, we were done. We were like two spent fighters hanging on to each other in the middle of the ring, praying for the final bell. I stroked her hair. She twirled her fingers through my chest hair. Some of the unspoken questions had been answered. Some not. But at least enough to satisfy the both of us and to let us fall easily into sleep.