South by South Bronx (17 page)

Alex smirked. “He asked me where I got her. His eyes were all lit up. He kept circling the bed like he was checking out a Rodin.”

“Hmf.” Monk was rocking twitchy. He stopped suddenly and smiled. “Maybe my boy got himself a buzz.”

“It could be.” Alex almost thought Mink was somehow angry with him at the end. Couldn't tell why. “He sure left in a hurry after he saw her.”

“What about when she woke up?”

Alex didn't find it easy to tell the story. It wasn't that he couldn't remember. It was that he could. Monk was much more used to having to drag the story from him, bridging gaps, connecting the dots. As it rolled out to Monk that she bonked him, that he bonked her, and that she bonked him again, there was a look of wonder and amazement that Alex had never seen on Monk's face.

“You're shitting me, right?”

“Nah, man. She bonked me.” Alex showed him the back of his head. “I bonked her. And the second time, she …”

A radiant burst of images. More like dream than real. The fire escape was glowy with moon. She was that dark outline, moving at night. She was against the wall, looking at him. He thought he was dreaming. He still thought that. She took her shirt off, slipped out of the jeans. A smooth, female shadow.

She said shhh when he murmured, tossed, turned. Had a calm, careful touch. She undressed him with the stern precision of a nurse, then got into bed with him. It happened slow. It happened in parts. Time-lapse photography, how a rose grows. Her skin felt fresh, a cool chill. He could make out her eyes, dark staring.

He touched her wet face.

“Why are you crying,” he'd asked.

She touched his fingers. Then she turned, spooned into him. Still kept the hand.

“I'm worried about you,” she'd said.

She was gone when he woke up. He'd had no sense of having slept but the jarring feel of having awoken. The sun was too bright on the gleamy floor. There was no air, a thick gelatin feel to his legs. He touched the back of his head: sharp flashes of pain. A sense of stupidity, of blankness. The apartment seemed emptier than before. There was the thought that he had already done this scene.

“It sounds to me,” Monk said, “like you're having a relationship.”

TIME

it wasn't time that was the problem, it was the distance. the distance from what? something hidden. not lara croft as portrayed big-lipped and big-titted. this was something worse. filling those blank spaces along the way with bravado. big time to chant poetry. build dams. shore off streams and fissures. landscape out some land. go out and cowboy some indians. not care much where or who. the old life was over. every room a new big inning. “a blonde always deals from strength.” yes, but that was trudy talking. swallowing the myth of sex as power. madonna's pelvis/britney's tan tummy/jennifer's
culo
, but was that freedom and power or the weight of obligation? serious life training. mariah carey slashing and UNslashing her wrists. the suspicion very strong that there would be no amelia earhart this generation unless she sported a bare midriff and did a booty dance.

it was the usual blonde battle with casting.

her head was okay. no blood no pounding no deep sting. no sense that she had been wronged. maybe more of a feeling that she had it coming—the tears had been unnecessary but unstoppable, a mad wave as she dragged him from the bathroom, and it felt like murder, like murder again or some death about to be, all because of situation because of her because of something she brought with her, and if she could ever stop dragging people into her shit she would be more than grateful more than happy to for once not be in the middle of some grand death play—

and, as if she could be the kiss of death (didn't he call her that once?), so above caring about the havoc she wreaked in her wake (the snake that bites the tortoise because that's its nature)—no remorse meddling with what must be, but who said it must

who says she couldn't change things flip them around become like a person?

and yet when she knocked alex out again she saw herself reacting from instinct from training from fear. of having to say of having to explain of alex calling the police—and that would mean alan—a gut reaction a quick fix that left her miserable and all sudden, alone

the least she could do put him in bed check his wound make sure he wasn't dead.

a panic a fear again of being alone. a cold compress a whispered prayer. she undressed him she undressed. she got into bed with him. contact insuring he didn't sneak up on her he didn't run off just in case it would occur to him to make a move she was as close to him as a wife and to be sure she could feel his every move

(she had his hand, and kept it with her)

tied connected no separation no space in between so no escape no running no fear of him and when his eyes closed with sleep she would not ask

was she holding him or was she holding onto him?

19.

and no feeling

as good as that first bite of a
perníl
sandwich from Julio's on 149th Street just off Wales. That toasty bread crushed down crunchy crackle the meat stringy soft hot like flaming. That sudden flavor attack of a curl of salty pigskin snap crackle crick with every munch

(he was being real or he was being fake, and that was the key. The
perníl
sandwich brought color to his face. Not so pale not so wide-eyed hungry now, but that mind of his working like a calculator.)

I told him he should have some real Puerto Rican food and that's why I started the fucker off with a Cuban sandwich. (A little payback, a little inside joke.) He haggard he looking a little slow yet the energy in his eyes pulsing wicked. I thought a beer would loosen him up. What are the truest words spoken in American culture? It's not “make my day” or “it's quiet … too quiet,” heard in westerns and war movies. The truest words spoken in American culture are: “Cover me.” Every American alive knows them. Every American alive knows what they mean. They are the symbol, the call words of a fraternity. A brother turning to a brother for help: “I got your back.” Words that say we're American. No matter what color what culture what stripe, that we are there for each other no matter what. Americans standing up and sticking up for each other, because just look at the world. Who's there for the poor American slob when he's in crusade mode? Who's going to stand against the wall with us?

(Okay. We were drinking rum.)

Julio's. A joint. Bar and restaurant, mostly Cuban sandwiches toasted flat by Julio's wife, Irma. A dark booth for both of us in the dark back just beyond the juke playing El Gran Combo, and that joyfully uniquely PUERTO RICAN music made me want to piss-fuck all over any Miami
cochino
who dared talk about salsa like it was invented by Gloria Estefan

and Myers missing the whole point about Celia Cruz NOT being the QUEEN OF SALSA because Myers was on his war kick. No time for music for art for writing, he had to ask me again just who was going to stand with us in the next war? And I had to blink a lot.

“Who is this we're fighting again?” Because I hadn't heard that part. Myers screwed up his face like he'd heard a bad note. This was impossible as El Gran Combo was still on the
vellonera
.

“I don't know,” he said. “Pick a country.” He emptied his shot glass. “Preferably one with a very large oil reserve.”

“Are you serious?”

“Hubbert's Peak. The world's oil reserves will be exhausted by the year 2008. The U.S. reserve is already exhausted.”

“So don't drive,” I said.

“That's the thing the president should do when he explains to the dumb American peephole about why the war. He should say,
HEY, you fat Americans in your fat gas-guzzling environmentally unfriendly 4x4s. You want to keep driving your cars? Cars need oil. So decide now if you want to spend your future walking to work, or whether you want this administration to go get you some oil.
”

“
Your
administration,” I said, clinking glasses, “wouldn't last a month.”

“That's the point exactly. Americans don't go to war because of reasons. They need to get pushed, to get angry, to feel they have no choice. Some bad things have to happen first.”

The first pair. Rum and coke.

“Pearl Harbor,” I said.

“The Lusitania. The Gulf of Tonkin.”

Clinking glasses. “The Bay of Pigs,” I said, like a toast.

“It could have been,” he said, as we took the first sip. The carbonation floated that warm rum bite subtle. “It would've been, if only that son of a bitch Kennedy hadn't gotten cold feet.”

“Remember the Maine.”

“The wrestling fans got it wrong. Americans don't say,
Bring it on
. Americans say,
You started it. We finish it
.”

The Puerto Rican food was only part of it. There's that tall, broad golden man with the beer tummy who everyone calls
Pan Doblao
who has his colored buggy out by the stoop of his building on Tinton Avenue. Serves up freshly fried
bacalaítos
. Big, leaf-thin, crisp, and greasy like you get them on the island. I fed Myers
pasteles
and fat
rellenos de papa
from a
cuchifritería
near St. Mary's Park, and two
empanadas
from a Dominican place on Prospect. This was my master plot—to alter his DNA, lull the taste buds into that calm, lackadaisical whimsy state. Then came the real attack: Julio's, and those continual doses of rum. This was subtle at first, an after-bite to the Coke, then straight and gentle on ice, the warm of the brown against the stroke of ice-white. Puerto Rican rum hits slow, slithers up on the senses. It sometimes takes the stomach on dippy loop-the-loops as it starts to kick in. Then, the sweating, the feeling just after a good run. The loosening of the tie. At the right dose, Puerto Rican rum can be a far more effective truth serum than the scopolamine shit that Myers keeps talking about

first comes the happy

the slow dislocation of mind from senses

then comes the pensive

then comes the truth

though there is no telling how much mush and sentimentality can be jarred loose by such doses.

“Listen,” Myers said, “let me hook your phone up to a ripper trace. The next time some bastard calls you a scumbag, we can ride over to his house and beat the fuck out of him before he even hangs up.”

(The slow dislocation of mind from senses.)

“Don't say no. We'll just ride over and kick his ass. No point going to Internal Affairs. What the hell for? You want to fill out forms for a year? Just take care of it yourself. I mean, you must be awful tired of this bullshit.”

I could see him sitting right in front of me. I could see his mouth moving, but the words seemed to come from somewhere else, someplace inside me. Not even Lieutenant Jack had said those words. I stared at Myers. I was imagining him.

“All those years you put into the force. I saw your record. Everything tossed down the toilet, all because of one lousy moment, one lousy choice. I could say you made the right choice. I could say you made the wrong choice. It doesn't matter a spit.”

I felt drowned. I was falling backwards into a cave. That fucking Puerto Rican rum was betraying me. I wasn't thinking about David or Spook or the fucking blonde. I felt erased.

“You're a cop. You're a good cop, out there every day taking risks for these two-bit shits, for that word people like to throw in your face—
community
. You work for the community. But tell me this, where was the community when you stuck your neck out? Did your community do anything for you when you took this murdering asshole off the streets?”

His face was changed, different. Maybe it was the rum, the way his face colored with emotion, the way his voice got deep. I thought he was talking about me. I thought he was talking about himself.

“No,” I said, but I was barely audible.

“And there you are, every day, plugging away, hoping things will change. Things will get better, but cops have an elephant's memory. They won't ever forgive you. You know that. I know that. You'll end up choking on your own vomit.”

Clink. Glasses. A hard, burning swallow. The fucking Puerto Rican rum was betraying me …

“So maybe it happens. Right at the moment when you're at your weakest, or maybe at your angriest. Somebody comes along right when you want to kiss it all off, and makes you an offer.”

There was no reason for me to say anything. I preferred to let someone else tell the story this time. I was no deer in headlights. I stared full back. I gripped my empty glass like I would pop it in my fist.

“We're talking a good offer, not some halfway deal. A way to kiss off the whole shit. You even get back at the system that screwed you. Do you really think this is something so hard to understand?”

I didn't want to drink any more rum, even though the next round arrived. The drinks sat unnoticed. I grabbed the waiter's arm before he could go—no more rounds. I requested a bottle. How one mistake leads to another mistake, leads to another. I had to stand up for an entire generation of
boricuas
. Wasn't going to be beat by my own game and let a white guy drink me under. That fucking Puerto Rican rum! Lava, fierce red and churning. I picked up my glass.

“So where are you going with this?”

I downed my drink with no clinking.

“I'm not going to sit here and play fed with you. There are bigger things at stake than the rise and fall of a cop. I already know things the feds don't.”

“You trying to put me to sleep?”

He emptied his glass now with no clink, shutting his eyes a moment. The waiter brought the bottle, thin, tall. Myers waited until he left to speak.

“I know you tried to stop it,” he said.

“Did she tell you that?”

The juke with its shifting reds and greens had gone from El Gran Combo to Willie Colón, that '70s stuff imprinted in Puerto Rican DNA like a genetic inheritance. Myers seemed to lose some energy. Something about him sagged. I knew it was her. The waiter had opened the bottle for us and poured the first round. I ordered
empanadas
. Greasy, bulky, to fill the stomach and keep us from keeling over.

“Listen. If you think you can trust her, you're crazy. I was working on her a long time. I worked on her hard. She has something about her, unbreakable. It's always like starting over with her, every time. A real plum pit. Do you know Katharine Hepburn?”

I was lighting a cigarette. I don't know where I swiped the pack, but I pointed it at him, knowing he would want to brother right along.

“Katharine Hepburn, sure,” I said. He took a cigarette. I lit him.

“
Bringing Up Baby
, did you see that? I mean, you can't argue with a mind like that. There's a thing a lot of people don't know about Katharine Hepburn: She had a photographic memory. Detail oriented. Every word, every scene. This girl has that. She's maddening. A gabfest that says nothing. She gives you that quiet smile. That Mona Lisa thing, she has that.”

I couldn't believe this guy, all these doors opening on his face. Now he looked like a drunken, broken-hearted lover who gets dumped at the altar. I felt an odd mixture of pity and disgust.

“I hate that Mona Lisa shit,” I said.

Clink. Glasses. Hot fire. Cigarettes.

“Did you ever see
Dishonored
, this Marlene Dietrich picture? She plays a master spy who does her job really well until one day she meets an enemy agent and falls in love with him.”

“Is that why you think she did it?”

I made sure to refill that glass. He knocked the shit back fast and seemed to regain some energy.

“I thought that I lucked out. That David Rosario just happened to need an assistant. I had two ladies lined up to go get that position. I thought I lucked out, that it was her. I thought she was my best.” I didn't have to move. He was filling the glasses again. “She was feeding me information, right up to the moment when David Rosario told her about these fake IDs …”

It was Felipe Rodriguez on the juke box now, the man Puerto Ricans call
La Voz
. It was definitely the right thing to go with Puerto Rican rum. It added to the narcotic effect. The rhythm of the congas slowed the heartbeat. Speeded it up. Slowed it down.

“That's when she cut out, started getting dodgy. I know she wasn't in love. She said that just to spite me. It's not about love. It's about rebellion, dismay. That's what this piece is about.”

“Disgust,” I said.

“She told me about you.”

“I know.”

“I didn't tap your phone, Sanchez. But I have you on tape. Calling David Rosario. Calling Anthony Rosario.”

“Did she tell you I was in it?”

Myers grinned slow.

“You mean whether you were a member of the ten million club?”

I didn't like the grin. I didn't like sitting with him drinking. It made him laugh to say that. I didn't like that he was laughing.

“She's out to fuck you, Myers.” I downed my drink. “She wants to destroy you. I wonder what you did to her.”

“Maybe she thinks I stole her identity.” He seemed to be pondering the question the way one ponders baseball stats. “She mentioned something once about wanting to become a real person.”

“After she fled from David Rosario's apartment, she went to a man named Roman. I think you know a little about him from my files.”

“But you told me he had nothing to do with it.”

“That's right.”

The
empanadas
sat uneaten on the table.

“She didn't go to him for help. She went there to drop off something.” His eyes went glassy and vague. “She said it was from David but I don't believe her. It was a tape. From David's answering machine.” Another shot, another burst of flames. “You know what's on that tape, don't you?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, I figure you do. If you bugged his phone like you keep saying, then you have it on tape somewhere, which makes me really wonder what the feds would think of that, after all.”

“Are we going to start talking now about federal investigative panels?”

“I was listening to this tape over and over. I don't think it exactly proves murder, but it does show knowledge of intent. It should be enough to bring up some questions about how you were privy to certain information, and how you used that information.”

“I could say the same thing to you. We've both played before investigative panels. I think I have a better batting average than you. I'm sure you checked my stats. What would you say?” He poured us both drinks. “I think you've already been through that, haven't you?”

Did I have to answer that? The person who brings the charges has the burden of proof, has to bear the stares the impatience, to jump the hurdles of a system built to be impenetrable and intimidating. Cop vs. cop? There was no such concept allowable. “You are either with us or against us.” I had looked him up all right. So far he had survived two inquiries that resulted from operations so convoluted and crisscrossed with agencies and jurisdictions that it was never clear who would be held responsible. In the last case, his name was struck, records too confidential, his identity protected by higher hands. The only clear thing was that he was involved, that he had gone before a panel and testified behind closed doors. I didn't remotely intimidate him. He already knew my story, knew I would be reluctant to go through all that again. The captain would be less than eager to listen to me after I started telling him Myers has dirt up to his eyeballs, that this operation stinks to high heaven, and that I want to open an investigation. He'd fight me and refuse to drag the department through the mud again, least of all because it's me. There was no way he would stand by me in any case. It would be a supreme waste of time to even start that kind of trouble. It was just that elevator going down. The squealing of a stuck pig. A gold shield on the captain's desk.