Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) (21 page)

Soon we were parked in front of one of the many tall, nondescript brick buildings on 143rd Street. We both climbed out of the car and made our way toward a group of black and Latino teens posted up in front of the building even though it was two o’clock on a school day. I wasn’t sure whether it was because they knew a police car when they saw it or because Terrence, who had grown up in these same streets just a few blocks south, gave them all the universally recognized brotherman head nod and casually said, “What’s up
?
” but the sea of hoodies, oversize jeans, white T-shirts, and Tims parted easily as we made our way into the building. We stepped into the graffitied hallway of the building’s dimly lit lobby and pushed the button for the elevator. The smell of garbage and urine assaulted our nostrils and made the car I had just been complaining about seem like a lavender-scented oasis in c
omparison.

“Yo, the elevator’s out, B,” a young man tossed in our direction as he walked out from behind a metal door in the corner of the lobby leading to the stairs. He bounded out the door to meet his crew hanging in front of the
building.

“Thanks, my man,” Terrence said as we headed over to the stairs to begin to climb the nine flights to Maria Esposito’s apartment.
She better be home
, I thought as I started up the first flight of stairs, glad I’d worn jeans and flat Prada riding boots today. Terrence followed
behind me.

“You all right?” He chuckled as we reached the fourth floor and my pace began to slow. “Do I hear you wheezing
up there?”

“I’m fine. You just better worry about you. You got a cushy desk job now in the DA’s office, so I’m sure you’re not as fit as you were when you were out jacking fools o
n patrol.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m all good. I stays in the gym. I’m just enjoying the view,” he said as I turned to look at him eyeing the back of my s
nug jeans.

“Keep your eyes on the stairs,” I said as I swung back around, pulling down the tail of my fuchsia blouse and black Dolce & Gabbana blazer over my butt even though I switched my hips a little harder as we rounded the seve
nth floor.

When we reached Maria’s floor, we headed down a long, dimly lit hallway. We made our way down the cracked tiled floor along a sea of banged-up brown metal doors spaced out on either side of the hallway. The smell of urine and stale reefer clung in the air, and raised voices arguing in Spanish, babies crying, and dogs barking could be heard behind different doors as
we passed.

“You always take me to the nicest places,” I cracked as we approached Maria’s apartment at the end of the hallway. Terrence knocked on the door marked #8J. We could hear the sound of a Spanish-language television program playing loudly from behind
the door.

“I think you’re going to have to knock harder,” I
suggested.

Terrence knocked a bit more forcefully. Suddenly the television volume was lowered, and we could hear a parrot squawking in the b
ackground.

“Aaaaawk! Aaaawk! Doorbell! Doorbell!” screamed t
he parrot.

“
Dios mío
, I coming. I coming,” a woman’s voice yelled from behind the door. “Shut up, you stup
ido bird!”

“Who is it?” yelled the woman, who was likely straining to see through the battered peephole in the middle of
her door.

“Hello, ma’am. My name is Terrence Graham. I’m with the Manhattan district attorney’s office. I’m here to ask you some questions about your so
n, Carlo.”

The woman didn’t respond, although we could hear her breathing, so we knew she was still stand
ing there.

“Ma’am, can we talk to you for a minute?” Terrence repeated. “It’s about
your son.”

Suddenly one of the apartment doors in the middle of the hallway opened. Terrence and I turned around to see a heavyset Latino man with a jagged knife scar down the side of his left cheek and a colorful sleeve of violent-looking tattoos snaking up one of his arms step into the hallway and look in our direction. I felt Terrence’s body tense up beside me, and the man stared us down for what seemed like forever. Then, just as quickly as he appeared, the man slipped on a black leather jacket over his wifebeater and then headed quickly down the stairs. I exhaled, not realizing I had been holding my breath. Terrence turned back to the door and knoc
ked again.

“Ma’am, can we come in just for
a moment?”

“I ain’t talkin’ to no cops!” she yelled through the door in a ragged voice I assumed was destroyed by years of smoking. Terrence lowered his tone, recognizing her concern was that she didn’t want her neighbors to think she was talking to the police about
anything.

“Ma’am, please, I’m not a cop. I’m with the DA’s office, and I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about
your son.”

We heard the sound of three locks being undone and then a chain being removed. The door opened to reveal a short, chunky Hispanic woman with gray hair twisted in a severe bun at the nape of her heavily lined neck. Her eyes were dark black pools of anger, and folds of skin hung down underneath her eyes. Her lips were pulled tight in a thin pink line over her coffee- and cigarette-stained teeth. She had on a pink terry cloth housecoat over a thick cotton nightgown. Reading glasses hung on a silver chain around her neck. Her heavy, veiny legs led to feet stuffed into run-down fluffy gray
slippers.

“What do you want?” she snapped with a deep heavily accen
ted voice.

“Ma’am, I’m Terrence Graham from the district attorney’s office, and my partner, Nia, and I would like to ask you a few questions about your son if you do
n’t mind.”

She opened the door a bit wider to let us into her apartment. Terrence handed Mrs. Esposito his card, and then we followed her down the narrow hallway, which was lined on both sides with piles of newspapers, magazines, clothes, and plastic containers. To say this lady was a candidate-in-the-making for the TV show
Hoarders
was an understatement.
The parrot resumed its squawking when we came around t
he corner.

“Aaaaawk! Aaaawk! Cop! Cop!” the large green-and-yellow bird screeched from its perch in a rusted cage in the corner of the cluttered room by t
he window.

The only signs of family in the cluttered apartment were two large framed pictures hanging alongside each other on one of the dingy cinder-block walls. The first was a framed school picture of a boy who looked to be around eight years old smiling brightly and wearing a navy-blue private school sweater with an emblem on the breast and a white shirt. The second was a black-and-white wedding photo. The bride, who looked like a much younger and prettier version of Mrs. Esposito in a long white taffeta dress, was standing next to a tall, handsome groom in a bla
ck tuxedo.

The main room of the apartment looked like the entire contents of the home had been dumped there. Mountains of books, clothes, cans of food, plastic grocery bags, shoes, and more newspapers and magazines lay all around the room. The dusty coffee table was laden with a collection of at least forty tall Santería candles. The sofa was hidden by four overflowing laundry baskets full of clothes and children’s old toys, as if someone had started on the Herculean task of trying to organize Mount Trashmore but had given up. A thirty-six-inch flat-screen TV hung over the sagging, di
ngy couch.

Luckily, there was no place to sit. Unsure if my latest tetanus shot was up to date, I was more than happy
to stand.

“Aaaaawk! Aaaawk! Cop! Cop!” the bird screec
hed again.

Mrs. Esposito dropped down in the patched brown corduroy Barcalounger and pulled the black lever wrapped in duct tape to raise the cushion for her legs. I swore I saw a ball of dust come up out of the chair as if she were the Charlie Brown character Pig-Pen. She took a cigarette out of the pocket of her frayed housecoat and then reached down to dig around in her bra for som
e matches.

“See, even the stupid bird thinks you’re a cop,” she said, taking a deep drag on the cigarette and looking me up and down as she blew smoke in my direction. I tried not to shift nervously under her hardened gaze. “You got five minutes. Whatchu want to know about my so
n, Carlo?”

“Ma’am, when was the last time you saw your son before he was murdered last month?” Terre
nce asked.

“I haven’t seen my son in nearly a year,” she said, her eyes looking at the silent images moving across the screen of the large, old wooden floor-model TV in front of her chair. I wondered why she was watching that instead of the flat screen mounted on the wall, but I didn’t ask, thinking that Mrs. Esposito barely wanted to talk to Terrence, let alone his
“partner.”

“Why is that, Mrs. Esposito?” Terre
nce asked.

“Because I told him I never wanted to see him again,” she said feistily as she took another deep drag of the cigarette and then tapped it on the edge of the overflowing glass ashtray on the metal TV tray next to
her chair.

“And why
is that?”

“’Cause ’bout two years ago he start runnin’ wit that gang. I said, ‘Carlo, me and Papi didn’t raise you to be no thug.’ But he don’ listen. He disgrace his father’s memory. God rest his soul.” She looked over at the wedding picture posted on the wall and made the sign of
the cross.

“My husband, Hector, he was a good man. He work hard for thirty-seven years for the New York City Transit Authority as a bus driver before he died five years ago. He worked his fingers to the bone to provide for me and Carlo. But Carlo don’t wanna work real job. He want fast money, flashy car
s,
putas
!”

“If you don’t mind me asking, Mrs. Esposito, where did you get the flat-screen TV?” I asked, finally working up the courage to speak up and follo
w a hunch.

“Who you, welfare worker? What you care where I get my TV?” sh
e sneered.

“Well, I was just wondering as that’s a really nice expensive TV, yet you’re choosing to watch your telenovela
Diario de Mi Familia
on this older TV,” I said, gesturing to the model resting on the wo
rn carpet.

“Ah, whatchu you know about
Mi Familia
?” she said, lying back in her chair and looking at me sk
eptically.

“Muy poco,”
I said, holding up my index finger and thumb and smiling at her to try to break the ice. “I know sweet little Rosario better watch her back and her man Ricardo with that blond hussy Carmacita.” For once I was thankful to have taken in some of MJ’s ramblings while he was talking to his boy toy du jour, Ricardo, who had just landed a small part on
M
i Familia
.

“I know,
Mami
! Right, I knew that Carmacita was no good!” she said, beginning to get animated. We exchanged a few more thoughts on the popular Spanish-language drama, and then I came back around
to the TV.

“But why don’t you watch the show on that beautiful flat screen, Señora? Then you can see all the drama in HD
,” I said.

“I’ll never watch that TV,” she said as her shoulders slumped and her eyes began to loo
k far off.

“Why, Mrs. Esposito?” I asked, even though I already knew t
he answer.

“Carlo. He bought that TV with his drug money,” she said, spitting out the words. “He mount it on the wall when he know I be out at Mass. I come home and he say, ‘Surprise,
Mami
! Look what I done for you.’ I tell him get out; I don’t want none of his drug money. That was the last time I
see him.”

“Mrs. Esposito, did your son ever tell you who he was working for?” Terre
nce asked.

“No,” she said, sniffing, and her voice went down to a hoarse whisper. “I don’t ask and he d
on’t say.”

“Mrs. Esposito, have you ever heard of Diablo Negro?” Terrence pressed. At the mention of the notorious drug cartel, Mrs. Esposito’s shoulders tensed as the parrot began to squawk excitedly from its c
age again.

“Aaaaawk! Aaaawk! Diablo! Diablo!” The parrot hopped around the cage, repeating itse
lf loudly.

Mrs. Esposito lowered the footrest on her chair and then
stood up.

“Look what you’ve done now! I’ll never get that damn bird to shut up now. I think it’s time for you to go.” She began shooing us back down the cluttered hallway toward the door as the bird continued t
o screech.

“Aaaaawk! Aaaawk! Diablo! Diablo!” As the bird screamed, Mrs. Esposito became more and more insistent that we leave despite Terrence’s pleas for just a couple more
questions.

“People will hear that loco bird all over the building,” she hissed. “You have to l
eave now.”

“Mrs. Esposito, according to the images I reviewed from the crime scene, your son had a parrot in his apartment. Please, was there anything your son ever said to you about Diab
lo Negro?”

“Are you crazy? You’re going to get me killed talking about those people,” she hissed as she opened her door, stuck her head out, and looked around. Once she felt the coast was clear for us to leave, she opened it wider and stood aside for us
to depart.

“Now get out and don’t ever come back! I don’t talk to no cops!” she yelled loudly into the hallway, putting on a show for her neighbors. As I walked by her to follow Terrence out of the apartment, she whispered something
in my ear.

“I find this at the bottom of the parrot’s cage,” Mrs. Esposito said as she furtively pressed something in my hand and then slammed the door
behind us.