Samaritan (27 page)

“Yeah, uh-huh. I hear you, I hear you,” Salim said. “Domination through financial takeover. But see, I’m not like most men, you know, be they African-American, white, Jew. I don’t have a need to, to
dominate
in return. I just want to be equal with her. I just want to hold up my end, you know?” Salim’s voice started to get away from him, become feathery and hoarse. “And I will. No doubt about it. I survived six years of penitentiary life, and there is nothing out here, and I mean
nothing,
that can compare to that. End of the day?” Salim stopped, tried to remaster his delivery. “End of the day? My son . . .” He quickly swiped at his cheekbones with the heels of his palms, a graceful fanning motion outward toward the ears. “End of the day . . .” he repeated, the words then coming out of him in a burst as if racing the tears. “My son will look backwards and have great pride for his father.”

Salim turned his face away. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Ray said, desperately trying to hold onto the notion that this kid was maybe still working him, but then losing all self-control himself.

“Oh, what the hell, Coley. Let’s go for the hundred dozen.”

Chapter 21

Danielle—February 24

Nerese waited for Danielle Martinez in the encroaching twilight under the marquee of the RKO Rajah in downtown Dempsy.

The first time she had ever come to this place was as a kid to see
Enter the Dragon
with her grandmother in the early seventies; the last time was as a uniformed cop, helping to oust the more than two hundred homeless who had taken up semipermanent residence inside the long-dark theater in the early nineties.

In its seventy-seven years of existence, the Rajah had gone from splendiferous vaudeville house to movie palace to multiplex to crack squat, to in its most recent incarnation, school building; the city, a few years back, had finally unloaded this white elephant by leasing it for a dollar a year to Dempsy Community College which, with minimal modifications, had converted the eight smallish theaters into lecture halls.

A moment after hearing a prolonged rasping bell from inside the building, Nerese was enveloped by exiting students—working adults, for the most part—separating then closing around her like streaming water around a rock. Everyone and his cousin was seemingly making a break for the street through those doors—everyone, that is, except Danielle Martinez.

She was in there, though, most likely trying to wait Nerese out, but Nerese loved pissing contests and patiently stood her ground in the gray flannel gloom, as the rush-hour rage began to build: an endless stop-start caravan of SUVs, black-and-orange gypsy cabs and red-and-yellow buses, all plowing through the near-black slush and hammering their horns as if they had never encountered traffic lights before.

And in the midst of her determined idleness, Nerese found herself recalling that last visit to this place nearly twenty years earlier, specifically the half carrying out of one old geezer, a milk-eyed, scabby guy who, despite the fact that Nerese was literally in the act of eighty-sixing him into the street, nonetheless in his fear and disorientation began to speed-rap to her in a disturbingly cheerful voice about the Rajah in its glory days during World War II, when on consecutive Saturday evenings he and his wife had seen Charles Laughton, Ray Milland and Walter Brennan deliver patriotic speeches from the stage before the lights went down; Nerese politely ooing and ahing until the poor bastard was out in the cold with everything he owned—one of those days when she was less than proud about doing her job.

After having kept Nerese on ice for thirty minutes past the agreed-on meeting time, Danielle finally, reluctantly exited the theater, Nerese easily ID-ing her by the turgid anger in those cat-light eyes.

She came out swinging. “You think my life’s a game or something?”

“Excuse me?” Nerese blinked, thinking, We can play it that way.

“Two thousand messages. I got my boss, the school, everybody going ‘What’s with you and the police, what’s with you and the police.’”

“Well, as far as I knew you didn’t
get
any of my messages”—Nerese shrugged, eyeing the traffic—“being that not a one was returned.”

“Yeah, I got ’em. I just didn’t want to talk to you. You’re a detective, couldn’t you figure that out?”

Nerese just stared at her for a good fifteen seconds before responding, Danielle still hot but having to look away.

“You don’t return my calls, not only does it piss me off, but worse for you, it makes me think I’m on to something.”

Danielle flashed fire, leaning into whatever she was about to say but . . .

“
Think
before you talk,” Nerese leaning into it herself. “
Think
who you’re about to mouth off to,” locking into her eyes.

Outgunned, Danielle grudgingly toed the line, looking off again, down the darkening boulevard.

“Let’s just do this nice and easy,” Nerese said placatingly now that she had won the initial face-off. “C’mon, I’ll buy you dinner.”

Nerese steered Danielle to a corner booth in the Red Robin Diner—no window views—then nudged her to a seat that put her back to the room, so that she had to look either directly at Nerese or at the clown painting for sale above her head.

Danielle carelessly, wearily hauled her schoolbag up on the table, some textbooks spilling out across the damp-wiped Formica.

Nerese eyed the titles:
Case Problems in Organizational Behavior; Regulating the Poor; The Vertical Cage; Elementary Statistics.

“What’s your major?” she asked, signaling for two coffees.

“Public policy.” Danielle began snapping toothpicks, her left leg jiggling restlessly.

“Public policy.” Nerese tried it out. “Can I see one of your notebooks? I’m just curious.”

“Which one?”

“Any.”

She slid a spiral notebook out of the bag and inched it toward Nerese.

The pages were a pale mint green; the class notes written small in some kind of bronze-toned ink, exquisitely neat.

Danielle leaned forward, trying to read upside down whatever was being scrutinized.

“You have a nice hand,” Nerese said softly, turning a few pages. “Beautiful . . .” It appeared to her that Danielle took down every word out of her teacher’s mouth. “Look at this,” brushing her fingers across the back of one page, feeling the minute raised impressions. “My notebooks in college? They looked like someone upended a numbers runner, glued on a page whatever paper scraps fell out of his pockets.”

“You sound like what’s it . . . 
Columbo,
” Danielle said, reaching for more toothpicks.

“Me? Nah. I like
Law & Order.
But damn . . .” She gave Danielle’s calligraphy one last caress. “That’s it. I’m going back to college.”

The waitress bellied up to the table. “How you doing, baby,” she said to Nerese. “Turkey cheeseburger?”

“Yeah, and throw me some cottage fries with that?”

The waitress turned to Danielle.

“Just coffee,” she said, exhaling adrenaline.

Nerese watched the waitress shuffle across the room, then returned to Danielle.

“Six months from now, I’m moving to Florida? There’s three different colleges within twenty miles of my house, and I’m just twenty-four credits shy a bachelor’s,” Nerese said.

“A bachelor’s in what,” Danielle asked, without interest.

“In what? Hell, I don’t know, addiction counseling, rehab management, youth services, family services, social services . . . You know, whatever retired cops tend to major in. What’s public policy?”

“Two years of horseshit followed by a job in city housing if you know the right people.”

Nerese gestured at the book bag, the copious notes. “That doesn’t look like horseshit to me.”

Danielle didn’t answer, started chewing on her thumbnail, waiting.

Over by the counter Nerese spotted two men whom she’d personally arrested in the last year and a half and three others whom she knew to have been locked up in that same time span; the Red Robin Diner was in walking distance of the County Correctional Center and was often the first stop for just-released inmates or those lucky enough to make bail.

“You know I’m from Hopewell, too,” Nerese said as the turkey cheeseburger came to the table with suspicious speed and the coffee cups were refilled.

“Ammons in Four Building,” Danielle said. “My mother told me.”

“You’d be too young to remember us.”

“You had a brother Antoine, he was gay, right?” Danielle asked carefully.

“Yeah, uh-huh,” Nerese said. “Although I do believe the correct term back then in Hopewell was faggot.”

“My mother said he beat up my brother Harmon once in Big Playground.”

“Hey, Toni beat up everybody. Just because you’re a faggot doesn’t mean you’re a fairy.”

“What kind of counseling did you want to study again?” Danielle drained her second cup of coffee.

Nerese shrugged. “It’s just us Hopewell girls talking here.”

“Right.” Danielle turned her head away, biting down on a smirk.

“So, Danielle, talk to me.” Nerese leaned forward on her elbows.

“About . . .”

“Guess.”

“Hey, you called me.”

Nerese sighed heavily, then, “So how did Freddy take to you sleeping with Ray while he was stuck in County?”

“Whoa.” Danielle reared back, the blood coming to her face.

“I’m sorry. Am I going too fast?” Nerese kept up the eye contact.

“No,” Danielle said, after a moment of pulling herself together. “No. He had it coming.”

“Ray did?”

“Freddy did.” She seemed to relax for the first time all evening.

“Did he ever react to any of your other boyfriends while he was away?”

“Step Two,” Danielle said. “When interviewing a suspect or witness, always try to come off like you know more than you actually know.”

“That’s good.” Nerese laughed, fending off a third cup of coffee.

“Look, I’m really sorry about what happened to Ray, he was a very sweet guy.” Danielle was almost chatty with relief now that the bottom line had been broached. “But you’re wasting your time studying Freddy for this.”

“Well,” Nerese shrugged, “maybe you’re right. I mean, I ran his sheet and there’s no real pattern of violence on it. But there
is
that one body, indicted or not. And we
do
have a situation here, you know, the three of you . . .”

“Hey.” Danielle leaned forward. “Ray broke up with
me.
”

“Yeah, so . . .” Nerese shrugged. “Did Freddy know about you and Ray?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Hey, he gets locked up like that, he knows the drill.”

“The drill.”

“Look. I know my husband inside out, and I’d never put another human being in harm’s way like that.”

Nerese just stared at her; the intermittent clatter of dirty dishes tossed into a gray rubberized busing bin punctuated the silence.

“You got to do better than that,” Nerese finally said. “Make me a believer.”

Danielle frowned at her cup for a moment, then came up bright-eyed. “Tell me when it happened, then ask me where Freddy was.”

“OK. Two weeks ago Tuesday, where was Freddy . . .”

“Two Tuesdays ago? He was home with me.”

“Yeah, OK.” Nerese laughed. “That takes care of that.”

“Ask me if anybody saw us.”

“OK,” gesturing for Danielle to proceed.

“My son. He was sick. Came home sick from school.”

“How old is he?”

“Twelve. Almost thirteen. Nelson.”

Nerese remembered the boy from Carla’s apartment, the name from her chat with Brenda Walker. “If I need to, can I speak to him?”

“Not without me there.”

“You’d have to be there. It’s the law.”

“Then hell yeah, no problem.”

“Do me a favor. Just, lay out that Tuesday for me. What did you do, where’d you go. Get me off your back.”

Danielle studied her for a wary moment. “Well, I didn’t see my family till about seven o’clock because I had classes until six-thirty.”

“So you came home at seven?” Nerese eased a reporter’s pad onto the table, began jotting things down.

“Yeah, at seven.” Danielle frowned at the notepad.

“This is just”—Nerese dismissed the pad with a flicking gesture—“I have a head like a sieve.”

“Whatever you say, Columbo.” Danielle sipped her coffee.

“So you came home at seven. Was Freddy there?”

“Yeah.”

“What was he like that night, you know, mood-wise.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Why’s that?” Nerese asked, ostentatiously dropping her pen as if they were off the record.

“Nothing illegal,” Danielle said. “Just in a bad mood.”

“About . . .”

“He doesn’t need an about.”

“Still . . .”

“He’s trying to learn day trading now, sits at his laptop from can to can’t . . . I mean, I will give him this. He is trying.”

“OK, so you come home, Freddy’s there in a bad mood.”

“Like Darth Vader with his helmet ripped off. I say, ‘Where’s Nelson.’ He says, ‘In bed.’ I say, ‘Why.’ He says, ‘He’s sick.’”

“He’s sick.” Nerese casually took up her pen again.

“I go into Nelson’s room; he’s sleeping, so I wake him up because I don’t want him disrupting his biological clock with any naps. You know, all of a sudden it’s two a.m. and he can’t sleep or something.”

“Right.” Nerese scribbled.

“I feel his head and he’s hot a little but I say, ‘Come into the living room, lay on the couch. You can watch some TV.’ See, normally he’s not allowed but a half-hour of television a night but I’d rather him just keep his eyes open until his bedtime. I mean, if he’s sick, I’ll write him a note for his teachers about not doing his homework but . . .”

“Do you remember what he was watching?”

“What else. MTV.”

“Same by me,” Nerese said. “Drives me up a wall. So you sit down for dinner . . .”

“Me and Freddy. I give Nelson a TV tray on the couch. We eat, Freddy goes back online and I do my homework, put Nelson in bed about eleven, go to bed myself about twelve-thirty, one.”

“Where’s Freddy?”

“In bed. Still with the laptop. That’s his new girlfriend.”

“Did you talk about anything during dinner?”

“I guess. I don’t know. Oh wait. Yeah. You know what he says to me? He says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Not during dinner but later when I’m getting ready for bed. He says, ‘I’m sorry.’”

“For what?” Nerese said lightly.

“That’s what I said. He says, ‘For everything.’”

“OK,” Nerese waiting.

“I say, ‘Gee, where’d I hear
that
before.’”

“I hear you,” Nerese going all sister-sister. “But you don’t think he was referring to anything specific.”

“Like being sorry for putting Ray in the hospital?”

“Or whatever.”

“Or whatever, huh?” Danielle said dryly. “I’m just trying to give you a flavor for Freddy. He keeps wanting to be something better than he is. He keeps trying. And that’s why I’m still with him. The minute I feel like he’s given up, I’m gone. But I’m not going to walk out on someone who’s fighting for his own soul, no matter how bad that fight’s going most of the time. That’s all I meant by telling you that.”

“OK then.” Nerese smiled, arched her back and signaled for the check.

“That’s
it
?” Danielle reared back.