Red Hook Page 17

“Leave it alone, kid. I’m not gonna tell you again.”

  He strode out of the squad room.

  He found a café on Court Street to sit in, a yuppie place with tiny, expensive pastries and fancy coffees. At least it was air-conditioned. At the wrought-iron table next to him, two young mothers discussed the speed of their Internet connections as their little kids ran around and whined that they wanted to go home.

  It took half an hour before the rage inside him ebbed away, and then he was just left with shame. Sometimes it seemed that Daskivitch was more like a son to him than his own son—and he couldn’t seem to get right with either one of them.

  He resolved to go home and talk to Ben. The kid was getting to be a man now—maybe they could finally bury the hatchet and meet on a new level. Get to know each other after all these years.

  But his son wasn’t home. Was he avoiding his father, or just busy with work?

  twenty-four

  BEFORE HIS NEXT SHIFT, Jack stopped off at the hospital to see Mr. Gardner.

  A beleaguered clerk at the front desk told him that unless he was immediate family, visiting hours for the intensive care unit were not due to start for another forty-five minutes. He held up his detective shield.

  Upstairs, a pretty young Filipina nurse led him through the ICU, a loud demented frog pond with its constant un-synchronized beeping and booping, its bubbling of liquids and hissing of gases. She pulled back a curtain to reveal a small oasis in the whirl of activity. Mr. Gardner looked shrunken, like an elf sleeping amid a tangle of intravenous tubes, hoses, electrical cables, and hanging bags of bright liquids. A compressor chugged, feeding air into the tube which branched into the old man’s nostrils.

  Jack looked up at the four jagged green lines surging across the monitor over the bed. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s stable,” the nurse said. “But if he’s a witness or something, you won’t be able to talk to him today. He’s very weak.”

  “Do you know what the prognosis is? What are the chances of a good recovery?”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s too early to tell. I can give you the name of his doctor so you can check back later.”

  “Thank you. Do you mind if I sit here for a minute?”

  The nurse shrugged. “I’ll come back.” She stepped out and drew the curtain closed.

  Jack set down the box of chocolates he’d bought at the newstand in the lobby and prayed that Mr. Gardner would be well enough to eat them before they went stale. He stood next to the bed and held on to the metal railing.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me, Mr. G., but it’s Jack. I just want to tell you that I hope you get better soon. And”—he swallowed—“and that I’m sorry this happened.”

  In the corner, the air compressor chugged on. “I been screwing up a lot recently,” he confided to the sleeping man. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Somewhere beyond the curtain a small alarm trilled.

  He sat for a few minutes watching the sheet over Mr. Gardner’s chest slowly rise and fall.

  He leaned over and murmured, “I’ll come back when you’re feeling better, You fight City Hall, okay?”

  He spent the morning helping one of the other task force members canvass an apartment building in Flatbush. It was the kind of work no one wanted: going door to door, floor to floor, in a place where just about everybody hated you for being a cop. And then you had to spend more time typing up the Fives. 3B—no answer. 3C—tenant at work at time of incident. 3D—tenant watching TV with grandmother at time of incident…Normally, a team of uniforms would have been assigned to the duty, but on some sensitive cases the detectives did the work themselves—patrol rookies didn’t have the experience to analyze the subtle undercurrents of an interview.

  He’d just returned to the task force office and sat down to his lunch, a meatball hero, when a call came through from Gary Daskivitch. The young detective sounded breathless. “Can you come over right away?”

  “What’s up?” Jack said curtly, peeling a hot string of mozzarella off the sandwich’s foil wrapping.

  Daskivitch cleared his throat. “When I’m not too busy here, I keep an eye out for what comes through the Eight-four.” That precinct was in Brooklyn North, just over the line from the Seven-six. “Last night they brought in a kid named Ramon Aguilar.”

  “So?” Jack said around a mouthful of steaming meatball.

  “He was one of Tomas Berrios’s bicycle buddies.”

  “What did they bring him in for?”

  “Attempted assault. With a knife.”

  Jack almost choked on his sandwich. “Hot damn!” he said. He slapped his desk and grinned like a proud father. “You know what, kid? You’re not as dumb as you look.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line, then Daskivitch said, “Thanks…I think.”

  They met at the Seven-six house and then the young detective drove them north, through Carroll Gardens, on past the genteel brownstones of Cobble Hill. At Atlantic Avenue, in the middle of a strip of Middle Eastern grocery stores, they sat waiting for a long red light. A couple of Arab women veiled from head to toe were slowly crossing the intersection.

  “Just use the siren and go on through,” Jack said impatiently.

  “I don’t want to hit those women. They must be boiling inside there,” Daskivitch said. “What a strange way to go through life.”

  Jack nodded distractedly. His heart lifted as the car picked up speed and swung around onto Atlantic. He remembered Tomas’s buddies, remembered one particularly lippy, sharp-faced kid, the one who’d made some dumb joke about the Mod Squad. He hoped this was Ramon Aguilar.

  Daskivitch careened left onto Boerum Place, just next to the massive barred monolith of the Brooklyn House of Detention, where—God willing—the Berrios/Ortslee killer would soon take up temporary residence. Daskivitch swerved into a side lane and zipped past the traffic waiting to go across the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Speed it up,” Jack said.

  They ran up the steps of the Eight-four house and slipped around three laughing patrol cops coming out the door.

  A young sergeant with a weak mustache glanced up from behind the front desk as they rushed in. “Hey, Gar’,” he said. “What are you doin’ over here?”

  Daskivitch hunkered down over the desk. “I need to know who brought in a kid named Ramon Aguilar last night. Attempted assault.”

  The sergeant consulted a computer printout. “Let’s see…that was Tony Ruiz.”

  “Did they take the kid to the House of D yet?”

  The sergeant swiveled in his chair and called out to an office next door. “Hey, Nootsie, did Ruiz leave with that Spanish kid?”

  “They’re still upstairs,” said a voice from the office.

  The sergeant turned back with the news, but the detectives were already on their way up.

  Ramon Aguilar paced back and forth in a holding cage at the back of the squad room. Jack recognized him as the wisecracker of Tomas’s little crew. The kid walked up to the bars and scowled. “Oh, shit, it’s the Mod Squad again. What’s your problem? You lock me up, but you can’t even find the guys who killed Tommy.”

  Jack grinned. “Oh, yeah? Maybe we got lucky today. Maybe we got a two-for-one.”

  “The fuck you talking about?” sputtered Ramon, but Jack and his partner moved on to find Tony Ruiz, a handsome detective with the on-the-balls-of-his-feet stance of an ambitious young riser in the department. They stepped into the squad lounge, another drab little room with crappy furniture, to give him the background on the Berrios and Ortslee stabbings.

  Ruiz frowned at the grave direction his case was taking. “The complainant’s a kid named Carlos Fulgencia, twenty-three, also Latino. He says he was walking with his girlfriend and one of her friends in the Fulton Street Mall last night. Says they passed Ramon here, and our friend made a comment about his girl’s ass.”

  “Did the guys know each other?” Daskivitch asked.

  “Yeah
. He said they used to be friends, but apparently last year there was a falling-out—something about a bike. Anyhow, the Fulgencia kid said he challenged Ramon, and our guy pulled out a knife. They were tangling when a mall security patrol came by and broke it up.”

  “Did Ramon cut the kid?”

  “Nope. He just pulled the knife out in the middle of the scuffle and waved it around.”

  “You have witnesses?” Jack asked.

  “Well, the two girls backed up Fulgencia’s story. My partner’s down at the mall trying to find others.”

  “Did they recover the weapon?”

  “Yeah. We got it downstairs.”

  The clerk in charge of the evidence room, a very pregnant young Italian-American woman, unlocked the cage and waddled back among shelves crowded with tagged brown bags. A minute later she waddled back with a small sack.

  Jack eagerly opened it and reached in to lift out a plastic bag.

  The detectives frowned. The bag contained a folding hunting knife with a blade about four inches long. It was certainly-big enough to cause mortal damage, but had no hilt.

  “Maybe he has more at home,” Daskivitch said. “At least we know he likes blades.”

  Ramon glared across the table at Jack and his partner. Tony Ruiz leaned against the closed door with his arms folded across his chest: to get out, you have to go through me.

  Ramon turned to look back at the detective from the Eight-four. “I told you already, man—yeah, I said something about his girlfriend, but he’s the one who got all up in my face. And it wasn’t my fuckin’ knife! She was carrying it, in this little Hilfiger backpack.”

  Jack leaned forward and set his palms flat out on the table. “Let’s forget about this for a minute. What I wanna know is: if Tomas Berrios was such a good friend of yours, why would you stab him? How could you do that, Ramon?”

  Ramon groaned and grabbed the sides of his head. “You’re fuckin’ crazy, cop. I never had nothin’ to do with that. Me and Tommy din’t have no problems.”

  Jack lowered his voice. “What knife did you use when you stabbed him?”

  Ramon squirmed and glanced back at the door. “This is fucked up,” he moaned. “You got the wrong guy. I never even been arrested.”

  This was true: the kid didn’t have a sheet.

  “Where were you on the morning Tomas was killed, then?”

  Ramon pointed at Daskivitch. “I already told this guy! I work in a bodega on Hoyt Street. I was there alt day. Why don’t you just call my boss?”

  Jack turned to his partner. “Did you check this alibi?” Daskivitch shrugged. “I never thought he’d be a suspect.” Jack turned back to Ramon. “All right, kid, what’s your work number?”

  Daskivitch got up to make the call.

  Ramon kept shaking his head dramatically, muttering, “I can’t believe it! This is so wrong, man.”

  Jack crossed his arms over his chest and settled back to wait.

  A knock came at the door. Tony Ruiz admitted a big man with the look of an athlete gone to seed—an overweight bull. Ruiz introduced his partner to Jack and then stepped outside to confer with him. When he came back in, he was frowning. “Ramon,” he said. “I want you to go talk to Detective Carlucci out there.”

  Ramon sullenly rose to his feet and walked out.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Jack said.

  Ruiz sank sheepishly into a chair. “Looks like we screwed up. My partner found a busboy who was working in a Wendy’s on Fulton Street where the fight went down. He says he watched it through the front window and that it happened just the way Ramon says. The girlfriend pulled the knife out of her backpack. When Fulgencia waved it at him, Ramon tried to grab it away. An Arab guy selling incense at the curb tells the same story.”

  Ruiz frowned. “The girlfriend’s friend broke down and gave us some background: it turns out Fulgencia is some kind of Army/Navy store freak—he’s got a collection of brass knuckles, nunchuks, knives…”

  It was Jack’s turn to groan. And groan again: a minute later Daskivitch returned to say that the bodega owner had confirmed Ramon’s alibi.

  Jack closed his eyes and rested his face in his palms for a moment. He’d been overeager—he should have thought it through. Ramon might have killed his cycle buddy due to some sort of rivalry or moment of anger, but how would he have moved the body all the way to the canal? And how would he have tracked down the barge captain?

  “This case is a pain in my ass,” he muttered. Abruptly, he stood up. Many cops wouldn’t have bothered with what he was about to do.

  “Where you going?” Ruiz asked.

  “I’m gonna go out and apologize to that jerk kid.”

  twenty-five

  BEN LEIGHTNER CAME UP from the subway onto Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens, struck as always by the neighborhood’s bustling mixture of Greeks and other immigrants. Within a couple of blocks, you could buy a souvlaki sandwich, a sari, or a plate of pierogis.

  Steinway Books was a tiny used-book shop, tucked between a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Korean nail salon. Ben ducked his head to miss the low doorway and squeezed in amid the crowded, disordered stacks. At the counter in the back, nearly hidden by more piles of paperbacks, he found a gaunt, disgruntled-looking man whose long, frizzy white hair was tied back in a ponytail.

  “Hi Avery,” he said. “Is my mom around?”

  The aging hippie couldn’t be bothered to answer. He looked up at the ceiling and picked up a battered telephone. “Louise,” he muttered into it, “your kid’s down here.”

  Ben’s mother lived over the shop. She’d moved there from Brooklyn several years after the divorce. The jumble of books reminded Ben of the house he’d grown up in. His mother had never been a fanatical housekeeper, but after his father left she almost completely gave it up. She’d do the laundry, but leave piles of clothes on the couch, the stairs, the kitchen table. She stopped cooking, and the two of them lived off TV dinners. She withdrew from all of her social contacts, and spent most of her time doing crossword puzzles or reading.

  Avery picked up an open book; he didn’t make small talk. Despite his distinct lack of charm, Ben’s mother kept him on because he was the only employee who understood her Byzantine filing system. He understood it better than she did—once he’d saved the store during an IRS audit.

  Ben browsed while he waited for her to come downstairs. Ironically—considering his father’s occupation—the largest section was given over to mysteries. Mystery readers were among the most devoted of buyers, but that wasn’t the only reason. During the first hard years after the breakup, his mother had become an avid consumer—she preferred the “cozies,” books set in quaint English towns where some feisty little spinster always set the chaotic world to rights. For years after the divorce, Ben worried she’d end up a spinster herself. During his senior year of high school, he was both relieved and dismayed to find that she’d taken on a “boyfriend.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  He looked up to see his mother standing halfway down the narrow staircase in the back of the store; she peered over the top of her glasses. She wore purple sweatpants and an Emily Brontë T-shirt. After his dad left, she’d put on a shocking amount of weight, but after Ted came into the picture, she lost it all, thanks to endless laps in the local YWCA pool.

  “You’re looking good, Ma.”

  His mother shrugged. She came down the stairs and gave him a quick peck on the cheek—she wasn’t the demonstrative type.

  “You wanna come up and have something to eat?” Another mother might have made a big deal about how skinny he looked—she went right for the practical.

  They tromped up to her apartment, which was bright and airy, with hanging plants everywhere, suspended in mac-ram e holders. She lived alone, even though she and Ted had been going out for years. They both valued their privacy.

  “How about a sandwich?” she said, opening the refrigerator. He was still surprised to see how well stocked it was with fresh vege
tables and fruit, after the years of junk food.

  “I’m okay,” he said, leaning on the counter.

  “How’s work?”

  He snorted. “The usual excitement. Yesterday, I had to listen as these corporate clients went on for hours about how the slice of pizza we were shooting wasn’t ‘glistening’ enough. We had to brush more oil on it, then I had to reset the lights about ten times.”

  He watched his mother cut up a peach; he was impressed by her swimmer’s muscles.

  “Jesus, Ma—you’re getting pretty strong these days.”

  She didn’t respond, but smiled, pleased by the compliment. She dropped the peach slices in a blender. “I’m making us a fruit smoothie. So, how’s the filmmaking going these days?”

  He toyed with a can opener he found lying on the counter. “That’s actually one reason why I came over. I’ve been working on a project about Red Hook.”

  “Really? Why Red Hook?” His mother asked the question evenly, but he knew she’d see behind it.

  “It’s an interesting place, with all of the history, the shipping, you know…I wanted to throw some family stuff in there too.”

  “Have you talked to your father? Your could go see him.”

  He spun the can opener around. “Actually, he’s been staying in my apartment for the past couple days.”

  His mother raised her eyebrows. “He’s staying with you? Why?”

  “His landlord had a stroke, and the son wants him to move out.”

  She shrugged. “I hope you have better luck living with him than I did.”

  These days his mother didn’t talk compulsively about his father, the way she had after the divorce, but the bitterness remained.

  “Have you asked him about Red Hook?” she said.

  “You know what he’s like.”

  “I’m afraid I do. What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know…It just occurred to me the other day: it’s ridiculous, but I don’t even know his parents’ first names.”

  “His mother was Doris. His father’s name I think was Maxim, but in this country he was just called Max.”