You Have the Right to Remain Silent (2 page)

Marian knew it was. “Thanks, Captain. Appreciate it.” She got up to leave.

“Larch—do the paperwork on this one yourself? And send Foley in.”

Foley was on the phone when she got back to the PDU room. He looked up and she jerked a thumb over her shoulder:
Captain wants you
.

He hung up abruptly. “What'd you tell him?”

“The truth.”

Foley snorted. “I'll bet.” He headed toward the captain's office.

Marian muttered to herself and started rolling forms into the old mechanical typewriter on her desk. She'd just started filling in details when a shadow fell over the paper.

Romero was standing by her desk. “Went all right, didn't it?”

She finished typing a word and said, “Went just dandy.”

“Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

Marian looked up at him, this sarcastic man from Intelligence who'd done her partner's job for him. “Wouldn't mind,” she said. He nodded without answering and went on out.

She was only halfway through the report when Foley came out of the captain's office, his face purple; DiFalco must have given him a real going-over. Her partner stormed over to her desk. “You and your buddy Romero fixed me real good, you did. Proud of yourself?”

So Jaime Romero had backed her up in the captain's office as well. “You fixed yourself, Foley,” Marian said. “You can't blame somebody else this time. Too many people saw it.”

“Saw what? I didn't do anything!”

“That's what they saw. You not doing anything.”

He didn't even hear. “He gave me a warning. Me, a
warning
! I been working this shithouse precinct eleven years and you two virgins come in here and tell me I—”

“Put a cork in it, Foley,” Marian said sharply. “Enough! And that's an order.”

“Oh, yes
sir
, Sergeant Larch, ma'am sir! Whatever the
sergeant
wants, ma'am sir!”

Marian lowered her voice. “And it's not my fault you failed the Sergeants Exam. If you'd studied a little harder, I wouldn't be here at all. That's what really burns your ass, isn't it?”

Foley wasn't quite self-destructive enough to say what he was thinking. Rank was rank, and he'd been a cop too long to forget that. He whirled and charged out of the squad room, muttering obscenities under his breath.

Marian let her own breath out. Pulling rank wasn't the most diplomatic way of handling a troublesome partner, but she'd had it up to
here
with Foley. The confrontation had rattled her a little—not as much as facing four healthy teenagers armed with knives, but enough. Locking horns with Foley was nothing new. The first day she showed up at the Ninth, he'd let her know he resented her presence and he'd reminded her of it without fail every day since.

Marian missed her old partner. She and Sergeant Ivan Malecki had worked together for almost four years, and they'd reached the point where they could anticipate each other and even complete each other's thoughts. That kind of rapport wasn't built up quickly or easily, but their partnership had been dissolved in a blink of an eye. Shortage of sergeants, their superior officer had told them. Bunch of retirements coming all at once, along with the lowest median score on the Sergeants Exam in the history of the NYPD. They couldn't have two sergeants working as a team out of Police Headquarters when a couple of precincts were screaming for at least one sergeant.

So Sergeant Malecki was sent to the Thirty-second Precinct and Sergeant Larch to the Ninth, Ivan to Harlem and Marian to the Lower East Side.
It's only temporary
, their captain had told them;
once we get some qualifiers after the next Sergeants Exam, you'll both be back here
. The two sergeants had gritted their teeth and said
Yes sir
, wanting to believe him. Once a week Marian and Ivan got together and debated which of them had the lousier job. Ivan's new partner was a hotshot rookie who saw himself as an irresistible force chosen by destiny to clean up New York's crime scene all by himself; consequently he had to be watched all the time. Marian would gladly have traded Foley for him.

At first Marian had looked on Foley's hostility as just another challenge, but after a month she'd given up on him. She wished to god Foley had passed the exam; the two of them would never find a way of working together. Sergeant Larch
ma'am sir
, he'd called her.

Sergeant Larch. Still
Sergeant
Larch. But Marian couldn't dwell on that; she had enough to be dejected about.

She put Foley out of her mind and re-immersed herself in the life and times of the Downtown Queens; and right away she felt the chronic sadness creeping in that plagued her whenever she arrested someone for murder. This time it all seemed especially senseless. Why had the Queens killed Mrs. Maria Alvarez? A harmless, helpless woman with no connections. What did they possibly have to gain from her death? Mrs. Alvarez was a native Jamaican whose husband had long since disappeared from her life; she was struggling against great odds to make sure her four children stayed clothed and fed. Her English was poor enough to keep her in menial jobs, whenever she could find one—usually cleaning office buildings at night. She'd been on and off welfare for the past ten years.

Marian had first come across Mrs. Alvarez while investigating a minor scam a paper boss was working. Paper bosses oversaw the distribution of the dailies, dealing with both carriers and newsstands. Unsold papers were returned to the bosses, who cut off the banner and date from the front page to be turned in for credit; the rest of the newspaper was discarded. But one paper boss had gotten the idea of clipping all the manufacturers' coupons from the papers and selling them to grocery store managers at a discount. The managers then sent in the coupons for their full value plus a handling fee and the books showed a little extra profit that week. The arrangement had grown into a big enough enterprise that the paper boss had had to hire Mrs. Alvarez to cut out coupons for him.

But that was the only dishonest venture Mrs. Alvarez had ever been associated with. She'd steadfastly refused to have anything to do with
the
business of the project house where she lived. She'd even managed to keep her four children free of drugs. But Mrs. Alvarez had been found with forty-three stab wounds in her body. Why? She was no threat to the gangs; she was no threat to anybody.

Their tip that the Queens were responsible had come from a male gang calling itself, theatrically, the Symptom of Death. The gang coveted the Queens' turf, and because of that Marian had been inclined to discount the tip at first. But then the Symptom had turned up two witnesses, a ten-year-old boy and an old man, both scared witless. The kid and the old man were afraid of the Queens if they talked, and afraid of the Symptom of Death if they didn't. But eventually the story came out. The Queens had been waiting for Mrs. Alvarez when she came home from her night job; they'd jumped her and stabbed her repeatedly, right there in the street.
It was like they wanted ever'one to know, man
, the kid had said. Yes, there were other witnesses.

Those other witnesses would start creeping out of hiding once it was known all fourteen Queens were safely locked away at Riker's Island. Marian sighed. They had a case. What they didn't have was a reason. All those girls with their colorful names … Denzella, Little Leticia and Big Leticia, Ti-Belle, Guadalupe, Frisky Nell, Encarnaçion (nicknamed “Ree”), Large Marge—they'd all been counting on fear to keep the witnesses from talking to the police. It would have worked, too, if the Symptom of Death hadn't seen Mrs. Alvarez's murder as an opportunity to get rid of a rival gang.

Well, maybe one of the girls would let something slip during interrogation; some of them were very young. Marian finished typing the report and glanced at her watch. Two and a half hours until she met Brian for dinner. If she left right then, she'd have time to wash her hair.

Or, she could go tell young Juanita Alvarez they'd caught the girls who'd killed her mother.

Marian rubbed her eyes tiredly. No real decision. Brian had seen her with messy hair before.

2

Running north and south along FDR Drive, the Jacob Riis Projects sat on a windswept lot surrounded by a low wire fence. The tallest building was a fourteen-story pile of mud-colored brick (
shit-colored
, Foley called it), with bars or plywood or chicken wire over the windows of the lower floors. Marian Larch had no trouble getting in; all three locks in the double glass doors were broken. Inside, the ubiquitous stench of urine mixed with the smells of spices and marijuana. Spray-painted gang signs were everywhere—on the peeling walls, the doors, even on the ceiling. The elevator was working for a change. Marian checked the escape hatch before stepping in; someone had nailed boards across it. Kids strung out on speed or blacktar heroin sometimes thought it was a gas to ride on top of elevator cars and blast away with a shotgun at unsuspecting passengers.

The Alvarez apartment was on the eighth floor. The decibel level would have made a deaf man wince; TVs were blaring, boom boxes were booming. Twelve-year-old Juanita Alvarez and her siblings were being cared for by an aunt—who Marian suspected was a neighbor bribed to put in an appearance whenever the cops or the social workers showed up. Juanita was a very self-sufficient child.

Marian's knock was answered by a cherub-faced child of eight or so who had eyes that never quite looked at you. Marian smiled at him and said, “Felipe?”

“Felipe dead,” the boy said tonelessly. “I'm Tito.”

Marian was taken aback; one of the children was dead too? “Oh, I'm sorry! When did he die, Tito?”

The boy gazed at his shoes, said nothing.

Marian hunkered down to his eye level. “When did Felipe die? How long ago?”

Tito stared past her shoulder at open space. “Mama say don't talk about Felipe and Estella.”

Estella as well? What was going on here? Marian gently took hold of the boy's arms. “Tito, is Estella dead? The baby died? How?”

He didn't answer.

“You understand your mother won't be taking care of you anymore, don't you, Tito? You have to tell me so I can help you. Is Estella dead too?”

He nodded, wouldn't meet her eyes.

“But Juanita's all right, isn't she? Is she here? Where—”

A high, shrill scream made Marian jump. She looked up to see Juanita flying through the air at her. The girl landed heavily, fists and feet flailing and her mouth pouring out a stream of curses in Spanish. Marian lost her balance and they both fell across the doorjamb, Juanita screaming and hitting and Marian trying to catch the girl's arms. Three black teenaged boys walked by and laughed. “Thassit, Sugar Doll—you get 'er!” one of them said.

Tito stood by silently watching, or not watching.

Marian finally managed to get the girl turned around and wrapped both arms around her in a restraining embrace. She spoke soothingly into Juanita's ear and rocked her like a baby; the girl's fury gradually dissolved into a kind of crying that wracked her whole body. Marian half lifted, half wrestled her into the apartment and closed the door. She told Tito to fetch a cold wet cloth; he moved silently to obey.

Eventually Juanita had calmed down to the point where she could talk, but she still looked as if she wanted to kill Marian. It turned out Juanita already knew about the arrest of the Queens; news traveled fast in the projects. And it also turned out that that was the reason she'd attacked Marian.

“But why?” Marian asked in bewilderment. “Those girls killed your mother, Juanita! Didn't you want them caught?”

“No! Not the Queens! Not them! Oh, you don' unnerstan' nothin'!”

“I most certainly do not. Explain it to me, Juanita. Why should you care what happens to the Queens?” When she was met with only sulky silence, Marian turned to Tito. “Do you know why she wants to protect the Queens?”

The boy stared at her without blinking. “She ast 'em to kill mama.”

“You shut your mouth!” his sister screeched.

Tito's eyes turned inward.

Marian was shocked. Juanita had asked the Queens to kill her own mother? And they had obliged? Juanita looked as if she was getting ready to attack again, so Marian made her voice as gentle as she could. “What did she do to you, Juanita? What did your mother do?”

The girl licked her lips. “She dint do nothin' to me.”

To
me
. “To Tito? Did she do something to Tito?”

Juanita's eyes flickered toward her brother and back again. “She dint do nothin' to him neither.” And then in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible: “Yet.”

Yet. “What was she going to do to him?” No answer. In a firmer voice: “Juanita, what was your mother going to do to Tito?”

“
She was goin' to kill him, you dumb pig!
”

Slowly the ugly story came out. According to Juanita, Mrs. Alvarez had killed her two younger children—first two-year-old Estella and then six-year-old Felipe. Juanita hadn't been too sure about Estella but she'd actually seen her mother push Felipe out the window … eight floors up. Keeping out of sight, the frightened girl had followed as her mother went down and wrapped Felipe's body in a filthy army blanket. Mrs. Alvarez had carried him away in the middle of the night; two hours later she'd returned with nothing in her arms.

The reason? She couldn't support four kids. The two deaths had gone unreported; and each time a social worker paid a visit, Mrs. Alvarez had borrowed two children from her neighbors so her food stamps and living-expenses assistance wouldn't be reduced. Even so, the welfare checks didn't go far enough, and the salary checks when she was working bought less and less. First she'd disposed of one mouth to feed. And then another. And now times were lean again.

“Tito was next,” Juanita said in an old woman's voice.