Lush Life (14 page)

"It means motherfuck a motive. I'm good with it."

As Matty came downstairs, intending to use the remainder of this breather to return to 27 Eldridge to backseat-drive the gun search, he reflexively checked out the customers in the waiting area below: an elderly Chinese couple, the man sporting fresh blood-blackened stitches down the side of his face; a young East Indian woman clutching a car impound voucher; and a middle-aged, agitated-looking white guy wearing a suit jacket over sweatpants. The usual neighborhood mix, more or less.

As he hit the front door, his cell phone rang, the incoming number vaguely familiar.

"Detective Clark."

"Yeah, hey"

Matty was chagrined to hear his oldest son on the other end.

"Hey, you guys are awake? It's not even noon."

"Where the hell is Audubon Avenue. Me and Eddie been driving around here for an hour."

"You're in Washington Heights? What are you doing in Washington Heights?"

"Looking up a friend."

"You have a friend from Lake George who lives in Washington Heights?" Matty's stomach fluttered.

"A friend of Eddie's."

"Eddie has a friend ..." Matty put the phone to his chest, exhaled. "Put your brother on."

"He's not here."

"You just said to me me and Eddie.'"

"Dad, Audubon Avenue. Do you know where it is or not."

Matty felt sick, with anger, with self-disgust.

"I can't help you there, Matty" he finally said. "Ask a cop."

Rattled, telling himself not to jump to conclusions, he stepped to the handicapped ramp that ran along the side of the building to have a smoke before heading over to the crime scene and saw the Toyota Sequoia, sitting almost in the middle of Pitt Street, unoccupied, driver door open, exhaust fumes curling, no sign of the driver. Then, almost without thinking, he ditched the cigarette and reentered the vestibule to take a second look at the white guy, sitting there hunched forward, elbows to knees, squinting at the wall-mounted bas-relief memorial plaques as if to memorize them. He had the cloudy red complexion of a stew bum, but Matty didn't think that was his problem.

"Mr. Marcus?"

The guy whipped his head to the voice, then just as quickly stood up.

"Yes," extending his hand. His gaze was both alert and unfocused.

"Detective Clark." Matty took his hand and felt a tremor running beneath the overly firm grip.

"You're the detective whose name they gave me?"

"Yeah, yes, I am. How long have you been waiting down here?"

"I don't know."

"Did anybody call up to the squad?"

Marcus didn't answer. Matty stared at the cop at the reception nook still nose-down in his Post, then decided to drop it. "Look, I'm very sorry we have to meet under these circumstances." Sounding to himself like a kindly robot.

"Well, I would have been here earlier," Marcus said, "but I couldn't find it."

"Yeah, no, the streets are tricky down here, but if I had known you were coming, I would have sent-"

"No, no, I couldn't find the, the city, the whole fucking New York City I took the Saw Mill instead of the Thruway, and I wound up at the Whitestone Bridge somehow, then-"

"You came down from ..."

"Tarrytown, the Con Ed remediation seminar, but you know if this had happened a day earlier, I would have been coming from Riverdale, which is just like thirty minutes away."

Matty nodded as if everything he was hearing now was both reasonable and interesting.

"Are you here by yourself?"

"Myself, yeah."

"You drove in by yourself."

"Yeah, but it wasn't . . ."

Sliding his hand inside Marcus's arm, Matty steered him out to the street and gestured to the thrumming SUV in the middle of the block.

Marcus gave a start like he was falling out of a tree.

"Keys are still in there?"

"I can't believe . . ."

Matty flagged Jimmy Iacone, coming out of the building for a smoke. "Hey, Jimmy? Would you park Mr. Marcus's car for him?"

Iacone reared up a little at the request, then Matty watched the name register in his eyes.

"Just put it in the lot." Then, turning to Marcus, "Look, like I said, I'm sorry to have to meet you under these circumstances."

"Well, you know they woke me this morning, the cops up there, actually it was this VP from Con Ed, I guess for the personal touch, and, I don't know, honestly? I think I'm handling it pretty well so far, but I need to ask you something, and this is the main . . ." Marcus looked off for a second, palming his mouth. "Do you have his driver's license?"

"We have his effects," Matty said cautiously, wishing it were Yolonda here instead of him.

"OK. Did you notice . . . Did he happen to check the box for organ donation? And if he did, could I, as his father, override that? I really don't want anybody harvesting his organs. Really don't."

"No, no. We can take care of that."

Two young Latino cops in matching black and blue NYPD wind
-
breakers and fiberglass helmets came through the front door and walked their patrol bikes past Matty and Marcus down the handicapped ramp. Jimmy Iacone, on his way back from parking Marcus's car, drawled, "You guys look like twin centerfolds for Bluebay"

"Yo, bitch, you said nobody here'd see that thing," one bike cop vamped to the other, all three low-key laughing like life is life is life, then going about their business.

"Mr. Marcus, do you want to come upstairs? We can sit and talk."

"Sure," bobbing his head.

Matty turned to the building, but sensed that Marcus was suddenly no longer with him. Turning back, he saw him transfixed by the sight of John Mullins escorting a teary red-haired woman and a stunned
-
looking teenage girl towards the house.

He started to ask Marcus if they were his wife and daughter, but the guy abruptly took off towards the building without him, and by the time Matty made it back inside, all he could see of Marcus were his unlaced shoes high-stepping up the open stairs, the reception cop finally on his feet but doing nothing.

Marcus wasn't on the second floor in any of the assorted squad rooms or bathrooms, nor on the third, in the half-assed gym or locker rooms, but on the unpopulated fourth, which was empty save for storage rooms and weapons cabinets, the guy having apparently just climbed blind until he ran out of stairs.

Matty came on him pacing between the bolted gun racks and the wall-pegged hazmat suits.

"Mr. Marcus."

"Please." He gulped for breath. "I don't want to see them now."

"Was that your family?"

"Can you get them out of here?"

Matty couldn't tell if Marcus was distraught or just winded.

"I'm begging you."

The captain's office downstairs was undergoing renovations, and Carmody was on the phone in the lieutenant's office, so the best Matty could offer the father in terms of privacy was the squad's eating alcove, half-hidden from the cramped sea of desks by a chest-high partition.

He seated Marcus behind the salvaged Formica desk that served as a dining table, turned off the portable TV before they could run any news footage of the murder, stacked and discarded the multiple partial copies of the Post and the News strewn about the tabletop. He could do nothing about the mingled ghost-reeks of Chinese and Dominican takeout or about the bathroom a few feet away, someone in there now having a splashy time of it.

He would have done anything to have Yolonda in his place right now. At least cosmetically, though, he was probably the better choice. Most families found more reassurance in the big, lantern-jawed Irishman, all ass-kick and unrelentingness, than the Bambi-eyed Latina; no matter that for all her touchy-feely vibes Yolonda was a better hunter than he'd ever be.

Marcus seemed less babbly now, more dazed, although he tended to jump at everything, the sound of the toilet flushing a few feet away, the scattered telephone rings and disembodied call-outs, the sudden appearance of a detective who leaned in from around the bend of the partition and, seeing that the bathroom was occupied, palmed his tie to his gut and without ceremony spit a stream of mouthwash into the newspaper-filled garbage can.

When the bathroom door finally swung open, Jimmy Iacone stood there still adjusting his belt, at first startled, then embarrassed, to see Marcus sitting just a few feet away. Whisper-coughing, "Excuse me," he turned back to make sure the bathroom door was closed, then as he sidled past, murmured to Matty, "Give me a heads-up or something."

"I apologize for the mess, we're not-" Matty cut himself off and twisted around, tracking Marcus's distracted gaze to a baseball cap that sat atop the TV, its legend, scripted in red on the brim, nypd crime scene unit, beneath which read we see dead people.

"Sorry," Matty said. "Unfortunately that's how we cope."

"Gallows humor," Marcus said evenly.

As Matty got up to stow the hat, he glanced out the window and saw John Mullins escorting Marcus's distraught wife and kid back to his car.

"All due respect?" Matty said, turning back to the table. "I think you're making a mistake not being with your family right now."

"It was a robbery?" Marcus asked lightly, the red creeping back into his face.

Matty hesitated, wanting to keep campaigning for at least the wife being here, but got caught up in the trickiness of the question. "Well, at this point we don't think so." He hesitated, then forged ahead. "In fact, let me tell you exactly what's going on. Right now we have two credible witnesses whore telling us they saw three white males standing in front of a building, one of which takes out a gun, fires at your son, then runs into the lobby."

"OK," Marcus said, his eyes wandering.

"When, when the first officers responded to the scene, that same white male who ran inside was back out there and told them that he and his buddies had been robbed at gunpoint by two black or Hispanic males, one of whom fired the shot. But, as I said, our two eyewitnesses say otherwise."

Matty wasn't sure if anything he'd just said had registered in the slightest on Marcus, but he knew there was a good chance that this nutshell of a scenario could come to take over the man's life until his own death.

"Mr. Marcus, would you like some water?"

"Why'd he do it?"

"Honestly? We're not sure. They were all drinking pretty heavily, there could have been some kind of argument, possibly involving a girl, but basically-"

'They were friends?"

"They worked together at Cafe Berkmann, his name is Eric Cash. Did you ever hear your son mention that name?"

"No." Then, "He's here?"

"He hasn't been charged yet but we're talking to him."

"Here."

"Yes."

"Can I see him?"

"That we can't do."

"I just want to ask him-"

"We can't do that, Mr. Marcus, try to understand."

"OK. I just thought, you know, both for your sake and mine I could . . ."

"It's not . . ."

"I understand," Marcus said reasonably. Then, "Where was he shot?"

Again, Matty hesitated. "The upper-body region."

"Did I ask you that!" Marcus shouted, the unseen squad room beyond the partition suddenly quiet.

"I'm sorry," Matty said carefully, "I misunderstood the question."

"Where, out there, in New York"

"On Eldridge Street, a few blocks south of-"

"I'm . . . Eldridge? Can I ask what number Eldridge?"

"Twenty-seven."

"Were from Eldridge, Houston and Eldridge . . . Ikes greatgrandfather." It was the first time Matty had heard him utter his son's name, and Marcus took a moment to catch his breath, the ambient clamor filling the void.

"Twenty-seven Eldridge," Marcus finally said, nodding to himself. "Did he suffer?" Then before Matty could respond, "No. Of course not. How could you possibly tell me yes."

"He did not suffer," Matty said nonetheless, hoping it was true.

"It was instantaneous?" The question was real, Marcus unable to hold on to his ironic edge.

"Instantaneous."

They sat there for a moment, Matty seeing the beginnings of a slightly less shell-shocked pain seep into the man's face.

"Look," Matty plowed on. "I know now is a bad time, but honestly we have some real problems figuring out the why of things, so if there's anything you can tell us about your son . . ."

"I can't remember when 1 talked to him last," Marcus said. "When I saw him last. Hang on." His mouth hung open as he searched the ceiling. "Hold on."

And Matty knew there was no way this guy could help the investigation. The thing to do now was get him with his people.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Marcus."

"Do for me."