Red Hook Read online

Daskivitch shrugged; he seemed to accept the explanation. The detectives watched the congregation spill from the doorway into the bright morning sun. Nobody seemed hinky, although one of Tomas’s friends, a handsome kid with a sharp face, made a particular effort to scowl as he walked past.

  The detectives waited until everyone filed out. The last to leave were Mrs. Espinal and the grandchildren and Tomas Berrios’s wife.

  Jack stepped forward. “Excuse me, ladies, I want to say how very sorry I am about what’s happened.”

  “This is my daughter Recina,” said Mrs. Espinal.

  The wife stared through him, her cheeks sticky with tears. A pretty round-faced girl, a little on the chunky side.

  “I’m Detective Leightner, ma’am. This is my partner, Detective Daskivitch. I know you probably don’t want to talk now, but if you can think of any reason why this might have happened…?”

  “He never hurt nobody,” Recina Berrios said.

  “I’m sure he didn’t. All the neighbors have been saying what a good man he was.”

  “I can’t understand it. Why would someone do this?”

  “Was he acting any differently before…?”

  Recina considered the question. The way she looked around, Jack knew immediately that she had something to tell.

  “Mrs. Berrios?”

  “Mami,” she said to her mother. “Would you take the kids back to the house? I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Please don’t keep her for a long time, Detective,” Mrs. Espinal said. “We got a lot of people coming over.”

  They watched as the grandmother took the children by the hand and walked off. The tiny girl kept turning to look back over her shoulder.

  Recina Berrios bit her lower lip. “I know my husband. He would never do nothing to hurt his family. But he was talking different.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That things were gonna get better for us. That soon we’d have a bigger place. Maybe even get my mother her own apartment.”

  “How? How could he afford that?”

  Recina sighed. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said to trust him. I didn’t say nothing because I didn’t want a fight. But I wish…I wish I didn’t let him out of the house until he told me.”

  “Is there anything else, ma’am?” Daskivitch said.

  Recina stared down at the sidewalk for a moment. Then she reached into her purse. “This morning, I found this in the pocket of the shirt he wore his last day at work.” She pulled out a piece of newspaper and handed it to Jack.

  It was a scrap of an article, part of a gossip column. Something about Madonna.

  “The other side,” Recina said. “It’s his writing.”

  Jack turned the paper over. On it, Tomas Berrios had written something in pencil.

  Nine a.m. 7 Coffey.

  “Do you know what this means?” Jack asked.

  Recina shook her head.

  “Let me have a look,” Daskivitch said. He considered the paper for a moment, then looked up. “So? Maybe he was supposed to get breakfast for the guys at work. His spelling’s not so great, but—”

  “No,” Jack said. “Coffey is an address. It’s a street in Red Hook.”

  twelve

  AS DASKIVITCH DROVE TOWARD the Hook, Jack sank lower into his seat. Though he had grown up there, he only returned on police business. And rarely. As best he could, he avoided cases in the neighborhood (but subtly, like an illiterate covering his handicap).

  Daskivitch drove over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and into the Hook. The faces now were unfamiliar to Jack—some Puerto Rican kids laughing and swinging their knapsacks at each other next to a bus stop, two old men sitting in folding chairs outside a fix-a-flat shop—but the streets flurried with ghosts.

  “I guess you Homicide guys used to be pretty busy around here,” Daskivitch said as they drove by the Red Hook Houses, block after block of identical brick buildings. Groups of black teenagers in designer athletic clothes huddled on the corners, staring sullenly at the detectives as they passed.

  “Yeah. Back in the eighties, when crack was peaking, they used to have two or three shootings in there a week. It was open season. It’s calmed down a lot.” In 1992, a popular elementary-school principal had been accidentally killed in the crossfire of a drug shooting in the projects. Afterward, they’d been targeted by massive police sweeps.

  “I still wouldn’t go strolling inside at night.”

  “I used to live there,” Jack said.

  Daskivitch nearly ran a red light. He turned to Jack in astonishment. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  Jack shook his head. “I was born in the Houses. Lived there till I was twelve.”

  “Were you the only white kid?”

  “It used to be different. Fifty years ago, the Houses were filled with dockworkers. We had Italians, Irish, Poles. And Russians, like my old man.”

  Back in the sixties, he’d run with all kinds of kids. Sons of Norwegian pipefitters who worked down at Todd’s Shipyards. Puerto Ricans. Blacks. His father shouted at him many times for hanging out with “those people,” but that never kept him from his friends. There was Chino Nieves, whose boyhood claim to immortality was that, in the middle of a stickball game, he hit a Spaldeen fourteen stories up onto a projects roof. And Kiki Rosado, who would limp home a decade later after four tours in Nam with the 101st Airborne, covered with medals, paralyzed on his left side, deaf in one ear.

  “Back then,” he said, “there was none of this garbage along the streets. The grass in those courtyards was green—you could get a five-dollar ticket just for walking on it. Nobody was allowed to hang out in the hallways.”

  “And now you’ve got people murdering each other in there.”

  “Well, this was before crack.” Before crack, before the docks died out, before a lot of things.

  A few blocks to the south stretched a large playing field. During the Great Depression, the area had been a wasteland of rough jerry-rigged shacks known as Hooverville. Shortly after his father arrived in America, when the magical prospect of unlimited work was spoiled by the Crash, the old man ended up living in one of those shacks. He dreamed of someday owning his own home. The expressway smashed right through the dream.

  Daskivitch stepped on the gas. At the corner of Bay Street, Jack peered out the window.

  “Just up this block there’s a giant city pool. There’s a wall around it, but we used to boost each other over at night in the summer, a bunch of guys and girls. We’d bring cold six-packs, smoke some reefer.”

  “You smoked pot!”

  “Hey, I wasn’t always such a fossil. We had some hot times in that pool.”

  “Skinny-dipping?”

  “Almost. Things were more uptight back then. We kept our underwear on.” He laughed and shook his head. “To this day I have never seen anything sexier than Maria Gonzalez climbing out of that water with her nipples poking through her bra.” And, he might have added, her wet panties barely concealing her lovely bush. The Crystals singing “Da Doo Ron Ron” in the background, or Little Peggy March, “I Will Follow Him.” He’d been fifteen, walking around trying to conceal a perpetual hard-on. Jesus, life had been simple. All he had to worry about was staying out of his father’s way and trying to get laid.

  Some of the older guys’d had jobs down at the A-Con company where they dissassembled trucks to ship them over to Vietnam. The end of the war put them all out of work—yet another blow to the neighborhood. By that point the Hook was punch-drunk. The place had gone so far downhill that you could buy a whole block of houses for a hundred grand.

  Jack looked out in sorrow and disgust. A former patrol partner had described Red Hook as an area were you didn’t have to look hard to find a place to piss out in the open. It was a desert, a no-man’s-land.

  His chest tightened. He hadn’t had an asthma attack since he was a kid, but every time he came back to the Hook he wondered if he might. The flashbacks were intense, an overpowering jumble: hi
s father’s belt buckle snapping across his back; the first time he’d fallen in love; the smooth, reassuring touch of his mother’s hand on the back of his neck; that first great shock of the cold pool water on a summer day. Going back to Red Hook was love shot through with pain, like visiting his mother in the hospital during her last illness, watching her too-patient face turn gaunt and strained. He’d been helpless then and he was helpless now.

  The midday sun glared down, threw almost no shadow, baked the block-long, windowless factories and deserted streets. Beyond the projects, the Hook looked like part of some backwater Texas town. Light glinted so harshly off the chrome trim of the few parked cars that his Ray-Bans seemed useless. Down at the end of a block, a stooped man in brown work clothes emerged from behind a stack of wooden pallets like a pilgrim appearing in the desert, and for a second Jack could almost believe it was his father.

  On a sidewalk, in the shade of a construction Dumpster, a big white dog lay on its side, panting. The passing image tugged at Jack’s memory. A dream? Something to do with a dog—he couldn’t remember.

  Daskivitch cut through his reverie. “Hey, spaceman—this is Coffey Street. Which way do I go?”

  Number 7 was a garage marked R. H. Auto Body, sandwiched between a little aluminum-sided house and a big boarded-up warehouse. Barbed wire spiraled above the sliding door to keep thieves from going in over the roof. The door was half open, but Jack couldn’t see anybody in the dim interior. He and his partner got out of the car and slowly crossed the cobblestone street.

  Something clanked in the depths of the garage. Jack waved his partner over to the other side of the doorway.

  “Anybody there?”

  The clanking stopped.

  A small Hispanic man in mechanic’s overalls ducked under the door and came out onto the sidewalk, blinking in the light. He was stooped over, as if he were balancing an invisible heavy trunk on his back. He wiped his hands on a rag so saturated with oil and grease that Jack didn’t see the point.

  “Are you the owner of the garage?”

  “Owner? Por favor, no hablo inglés.”

  “I’ll deal with this,” Daskivitch said. He spoke with the man in fluent Spanish. (Extra points for the rookie.) “He says the boss is out. Says they weren’t here on Sunday.”

  Jack took a photo out of his pocket, courtesy of Mrs. Espinal. It showed Tomas Berrios, in a sky-blue tuxedo, smiling stiffly at the camera. “Ask him if he’s seen this man.”

  Daskivitch held up the photo and spoke. Jack watched carefully to see if there was anything odd about the mechanic’s reaction.

  Nothing. The man shrugged and shook his head. He looked truthful, as far as Jack could tell.

  “Can I help you?”

  The detectives turned to a big, paunchy man striding up the sidewalk. Sweat circles marked the underarms of his beige polyester polo shirt. His aviator sunglasses looked out of place on his round, doughy face.

  Jack pulled out his badge. “We’re detectives with the NYPD. And you are…?”

  “Charles Greenlee. I’m the manager here.” He turned to the mechanic. “Did you finish the SUV? Finito?”

  The mechanic shook his head.

  Greenlee groaned. “Get in there,” he ordered. “Finish it. Rápido.” He turned back to the detectives and shrugged apologetically. “The customer is supposed to pick up any minute. What can I do for you?”

  Jack held up the photo. “Do you know this man?”

  The manager removed his sunglasses and considered the picture. Jack noticed that his eyes were red and wondered if he was some sort of user. He looked up and smiled pleasantly. “Nope. Never seen him.” Suddenly he sneezed. He took out a handkerchief and rubbed his nose. “Sorry, I got hay fever. Most people just get it in the spring or the fall, but…” He shrugged.

  “Were you here last Sunday morning?”

  “Nobody was here. We were closed. We’re always closed Sundays.”

  “The garage was locked?”

  “It better have been. Leo here is usually the last one out on Saturday nights. It would have been locked unless he screwed up. Which wouldn’t be surprising. No, wait—I opened up on Monday morning and everything was fine.”

  “Would you mind if we stepped in to look around?”

  “I don’t see why not. We run an honest shop. Would you mind if I asked what this is all about?”

  “We’re conducting an investigation,” Jack said. “Homicide.”

  “Whoa,” the manager said. “I thought maybe you guys were looking for chop shops or something. What does this have to do with homicide?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Jack replied. “Can we come in:

  Greenlee suddenly sneezed. “Whoo—pollen, ragweed, I don’t know what it is. Uh—maybe I should call the owner.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “It’s a company. Maybe I should get permission from them.”

  “You can do that, but if they say no, we’ll just have to come back with a warrant. It’s up to you.”

  The manager threw up his hands. “Hey, listen, we’ve got nothing to hide here. Go ahead. I was just doing my job.”

  Jack and his partner stepped under the garage door. The SUV was up on a lift and Leo stood beneath it, hammering away at the chassis. A Playboy centerfold of a big-breasted blonde in farmer’s overalls was tacked to the wall, over a workbench. Idly, Jack wondered at that: in this politically correct era, what did female customers make of the display? But then, Red Hook had always been behind the times.

  The shop seemed clean and well run, with all of the tools hanging neatly. Any one of them could have battered Tomas Berrios’s face, but only lab tests could tell. Jack glanced down, looking for bloodstains, but the concrete was only soaked with oil.

  A phone rang in the back corner. “Excuse me a second,” Greenlee said, and trotted toward the back.

  “Whaddaya think?” Daskivitch said.

  Jack frowned. “I don’t know. Why would Berrios come to an auto body shop if he didn’t own a car? Could he have been looking for a job?” He glanced over at the manager, deep in a phone conversation. “Do these guys seem hinky to you?”

  “Not really.”

  Jack nodded. Both men seemed okay to him too.

  Greenlee hung up and hurried back, wiping his nose again. “Sorry about that.”

  “What’s the name of the company that owns the place?” Jack said.

  “P and L Enterprises.”

  Jack wrote that down in his steno book. He took another look around.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” Greenlee asked. He tucked his handkerchief in his coat pocket.

  “Not right now. Thanks for your help.”

  They ducked out under the door. Jack lit a cigarette.

  “What do we do now?” Daskivitch said.

  Jack walked over to the little house next door and rang the buzzer. A moment later, an unshaven old man popped his head out the door. His frizzy hair was wet and he wore an ancient plaid bathrobe.

  “Yes?”

  Jack held up his badge. “We’re police officers.”

  The usual “I didn’t do anything but I’m nervous anyhow” flashed across the man’s face. “Yes?” he repeated.

  “The garage there—are they usually closed on Sundays?”

  The man nodded. “Always.”

  “Were you here last Sunday?”

  “No, sir. I was in Arlington, Virginia. Visiting my grandson.”

  “Does anybody else live here?”

  “Nope. Just me.”

  “Who’s on the other side, that warehouse?”

  “Nobody, That’s been shut up for years.”

  Jack sighed. “Sorry to bother you.”

  Relieved, the man pulled his head back in.

  Jack looked across the street. Another long, windowless factory wall took up most of the block.

  “Let’s roll,” Daskivitch said.

  Jack didn’t argue. They climbed into
the car and took off, turning onto Van Brunt Street.

  “What do you think?” Daskivitch said.

  Jack shrugged. “I think we’ve put in a lot of hours with damn little results. This isn’t exactly a priority job—the press and Downtown don’t give a damn. I hate to leave a case open, but this doesn’t look very promising.”

  “You want to call it quits?”

  Actually, that sounded okay to Jack. “You had to be gung-ho to be a good detective. Maybe he was getting tired, jaded.

  He thought of Berrios’s wife and the two little kids. “Let’s give it a little more time.”

  Daskivitch pulled to the curb in front of a bodega. “Hey, I’ll spring for a couple of coffees.”

  “Last of the big-time spenders.” His partner started to get out, but Jack stopped him. “It’s okay. I’ll get it.”

  Inside, the bodega was cramped and not terribly clean, but the coffee brewing behind the counter smelled good. Café Bustelo, said the handwritten sign.

  “Dos cafés,” Jack told the woman behind the counter. He knew that much Spanish.

  While she poured, an old-timer shuffled up to the counter holding a six-pack of diet soda. He looked vaguely familiar.

  The man stared at Jack. “I know you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, sure I do. I used to live in the Houses. Don’t you remember me? Mr. Keller.”

  “On the second floor? With the little dog?”

  “That’s me. You were Petey Leightner’s brother, right? I used to watch him play ball. He woulda made the majors.” The old man shook his head. “That was such a terrible thing…Hey, where you going?”

  Jack turned and pushed his way out of the store, ignoring the calls of the woman behind the counter.

  “Let’s go,” he said, tight-lipped, settling into the seat beside his partner.

  “Where’s my coffee?”

  Jack looked down at his hands and discovered they were empty. “They were out.”

  “What, are you kidding? A bodega that runs out of coffee! This is a fucked-up neighborhood.”

  thirteen

  “HOW COME YOU’RE NOT at work?” Jack said.

  “The studio didn’t have a shoot scheduled for today,” his son replied.