Lush Life (10 page)

"At least we're clear on how you remembered the footwear," Matty said.

The crack made Eric flinch, Yolonda glaring at Matty; way too early for that; but it was just a probe, Matty wanting to confirm his impression that the guy, for some reason, found his calculated displeasure near unbearable.

"All right, so you didn't see much," Yolonda said, still eyeing Matty. "But you couldn't shut down your hearing, right? So . . . When he spoke, what kind of accent did you hear, Nuyorican, black, foreign . . ."

"I have no idea."

"And what did he say again exactly?" Matty asked.

"Please," Eric begged. "Just look at your notes."

"I thought we were going to forget my notes."

"Eric?" Yolonda ducking and bobbing to find his eyes. "You want to take a breather?"

"Look," Matty said, "I'm sorry if I sound persistent or aggressive or however I'm coming off to you, but like I told you before^ repetitive questioning-"

"Sometimes stirs new memories, and you're racing the clock out there with a too vague description," Eric near-snapped at the table. "I'm frying, OK?"

There was an unnerving moment of silence, Yolonda half-smiling as if she were proud of him, Matty frowning as he made a show of reluctantly opening his pad.

"I'm trying," Eric repeated in a smaller, more apologetic voice.

"We can see that," Yolonda said.

"OK, you told me he said"-Matty squinted at his own scrawl
-
" 'Give it up'?"

"If that's what I said.""Not"-checking his notes again-" 'I want all of it'? Which is what you told Night Watch."

"Whatever I said he said," Eric pleaded.

"And then your friend Ike said to him, 'You picked the wrong guy'?"

"Ike? Yeah. Yes."

"Or did he say, 'Not tonight, my man,' because once again, you gave us two different versions."

Eric stared at Matty.

"Any other exchanges come to mind?" Yolonda said.

"No."

"Between Ike and the bad guys, the bad guys among themselves . . . anything. Words, threats, curses . . ."

"No."

"Don't just say no," Matty said. "Think for a minute."

"You mean like 'Hey, Jose Cruz!' 'Yeah, Satchmo Jones?' 'Let's shoot this guy, then throw the gun down that sewer at the corner of Eldridge and Delancey, after which we'll withdraw to our hideout at 433 . . ."' Eric cut himself off, looking suddenly winded.

They stared at him.

"Sorry," he said, his lids turtling down.

"This must be like a nightmare for you," Matty said.

"I'm so tired." Eric looked at them with ragged eyes. "When can I go home?"

"I promise, soon as we get to the bottom of this?" Yolonda said in her mournful voice. "You are out of here."

"Bottom of what . . ."

"Let's talk a little more about the actual shooting."

Eric cupped his temples, stared bug-eyed at the table.

"The guy who throws the shot."

"What?"

"Shoots," Yolonda said.

"Yes."

"How was he holding the gun?"

"How?" Eric closed his eyes and, after a moment's hesitation, extended his arm, his gun hand turned sideways, his elbow slightly higher than his shoulder, so that the bullet would have a downward trajectory."That gangsta style from the movies?" Matty asked. "1 guess, yeah."

The coroner would verify the accuracy of that. "OK. Then what." "They take off."

"They take off. And you did what." "Me? I tried to call 911." "From where exactly."

"First I tried right on the sidewalk, but I couldn't get any reception, which I told you before, so I ran into the building to try in there." "No luck?" "No."

"But you definitely tried. Punched in 911?" Matty asked.

"Yes." Searching their faces. "Of course."

"How long would you say you were in the building for?"

"I don't know. As long as it took to try a few times?"

"A few times."

"Yes."

"So, guess." "A minute?"

"A minute," Matty echoed, thinking of all the possibilities for stashing a small gun in a broke-down walk-up with sixty seconds at your disposal.

"And where in the building were you exactly?" Again, with each new question, Eric's responses became both more tentative and more alert.

"In the lobby, you know, the ground-floor hallway." "Anyplace else?"

Eric faltered then. "Maybe up the stairs." "Up the stairs? Why would you go up the stairs?" "To see if I could possibly get better reception higher up?" The exhaustion leaving his eyes altogether.

"Do you know anybody in the building?" Yolonda asked. "No." Eric again looking from face to face.

"I'm just asking," she said, "because most buildings, the street doors are locked, so unless you know someone to buzz you in, or . . ." "Well, this one was open.""OK."

"Probably a boat building."

"A boat building?"

"You know, two hundred Chinese guys sharing an apartment, you have to keep the front door open or make a million keys."

"A boat building." Matty turned to Yolonda. "I never heard that one before."

The door opened, Fenton Ma, cap in hand, popping his head in.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for the witnesses they brought in on the shooting last night?"

"Who, him?" Yolonda chucked a thumb.

Ma recognized him, Matty could tell, his expression of naked surprise making Eric Cash feel both humiliated and lost.

"No," Ma said. The, the Chinese people from the canvass? I'm supposed to interpret, they said to check with you."

"We don't have them." Yolonda shrugged.

They're somewheres around," Matty said. "Ask the desk."

"All right." Ma giving Eric one last look. "Thanks."

"Canvass came up with a couple of people in some of the buildings near 27 Eldridge claimed they saw the whole thing from their windows," Yolonda said.

Eric didn't respond, most likely, Matty thought, either too busy rejigging his story or still lost in the Chinese cop's eyes.

"My guess, however," Matty said, "is the most we'll get out of them are aerial head counts, you know, how many people were there when the shot went off."

"That would be five, right?" Yolonda said.

"Yes," Eric said carefully, "that would be five."

"Good," Matty said, then settled into himself without losing eye contact, as if it were Eric's obligation to keep the conversation going.

"I didn't think . . ." Eric finally said just to say something. "Can you guys just barge in on each other in rooms like this?"

"Why not?" Yolonda shrugged. "It's not like we're in the middle of an interrogation or anything."

A knock on the door brought round one to an end, a detective waiting for Matty's "Yeah" to stick his head in.

"Sarge, Chief Upshaw?"Leaving Yolonda to small-talk her way out of the interview room, Matty eyed the time as he walked to his desk: 9:00. Five hours since the shooting, not great in regards to the test, but . . .

"Yeah, hey, Chief, thanks for getting back to me." Matty taking the call standing up in order to stay up.

"What's this about a paraffin test?" The chief of Manhattan detectives not sounding too happy.

"Well, here's what we got-"

"I know what you got, and the answer's no."

"Chief, it's only been five hours, we still have a shot at a positive, otherwise . . ."

"Well, at this point, if in fact he is the shooter, which with your two wits it sounds like he is, you got a better chance of getting a false negative."

"Boss-"

"False negatives, false positives, too easy to screw up a case from the door on in. Look, the bottom line here is that Chief Mangold doesn't trust that test under the best of circumstances. Any of those others you talked to before me this morning could have told you the same."

Matty and Yolonda stood behind one-way glass watching Eric Cash work with a tech on the digital photo manager, Eric staring pie-eyed at the computerized mug shots coming up on the screen six at a time.

"Bottom line?" Matty said. "Mangold hates the test, wouldn't've OK'd it two minutes after the shooting. Baumgartner, Mangini, Berkowitz, Upshaw, it was like the pass-the-buck Olympics."

"Fuck it." Yolonda shrugged, studying Cash through the window. "He was like a cornered rat in there."

"Or like he didn't know where we were coming from," Matty said.

"Right. What I said."

"Well, he's lying about calling 911."

"No kidding."

"I don't know. Maybe he was in shock and just thought he did."

"Thought he tried it over and over?" she said.

"Can I be honest with you?" Matty began, then let the rest of it go."He never asked how Marcus was doing," Yolonda said. "Or did I miss that."

"No, he didn't."

"He doesn't know the guy's dead, does he?"

"I don't think so," Matty said.

"Good." Then, "Check it out," tilting her chin at Eric, his eyes at half-mast as he sat slightly rocking before the computer screen. "He's not even looking at the thing."

"Let's just go nice and easy until they find the gun," Matty said.

Fenton Ma stepped to them, his cap in his hand. "Was I OK?"

"You were great," Matty said. "Thank you."

"You were so convincing, you should be an actor," Yolonda said, looking into his eyes. "Matty, don't you think he'd be a great actor?"

"It looked like you recognized him in there," Matty said.

"Yeah, Eric something. Works at that restaurant nobody can get a table at over on Rivington." Then, rearing back a little, "He's the perp?"

"We're just talking," Matty said. "Anything you can tell us about him?"

"Let me jump the line once with my girl." Ma shrugged. "Good guy by me."

"Well, like I said, we're just talking."

"Thanks again," Yolonda said.

Ma continued to stand there.

"What?" Matty said.

"Just . . ." Ma fidgeted. "So, there are no Chinese witnesses, right?"

"And so handsome too," Yolonda said, patting his cheek.

'You catch anybody?" Eric Cash asked almost listlessly as Matty and Yolonda walked back into the room thirty minutes after they had left him.

"Not as yet," Matty said, dropping into his chair.

Whether it was the tediousness of the photo manager or just the interlude itself, the guy seemed transformed: emotionally flattened and near-agog with fatigue.

Matty had seen that before in here; sometimes the first go-round did no more than set up the physical and mental plummet of the break,which in turn yielded a much less artful customer for round two; it was the interrogation equivalent of rope-a-dope.

"Eric?" Yolonda briefly covered one of his hands. "We need for you to run us through the night."

"To what?" He raised his eyes to her as if they were attached to sinkers. "From when?"

"I don't know. From knocking off work, say."

"From me knocking off work?"

"Why not?"

Eric hesitated, then, with his forehead supported by a splay of fingers, he addressed the tabletop before him. "I don't know, I left Berkmann's at eight, went home, took a shower, then I went to this coffeehouse on my corner."

"Which one?" Yolonda asked.

"Kid Dropper's on Allen. You know, everybody's in there with a big mug and a laptop. Except me, I like a martini after work. They have a bar, so . . ."

"What time are we talking?"

"Eight-thirty, eight-forty-five? They were having some kind of open
-
mike thing in the back room. I take a look and I see Ike at the podium, and he's reading."

"Reading out loud?" Yolonda asked.

Eric stared at her. "That's what the microphone was for."

"What was he reading?"

"I guess it was poetry because it had that pronouncement thing, you know, where you say each word like you're angry at it?"

"OK," Matty said, clocking the new tone.

"I just looked around, then went to the bar up front, had my drink, and a half hour later there's this big clapping and everybody comes out of the back room. Ike sees me at the bar, says he's going over to the Congee Palace with his buddy for dinner, do I want to come."

"So you're friends?"

"With Ike? No. I told you that. We just work under the same roof."

"So you never hung out before?" Matty asked.

"No ... But so I go with him, it's him, me, and that guy Steve that, that was with us last night." Eric faltered, his jaw working."What," Yolonda said.

"Nothing."