Lush Life (20 page)

Marcus continued to nod, as if to show Matty what a good attentive listener he was.

"Can I be honest with you?" Matty said. "We fucked up. We wasted a whole day throwing everything we had at the wrong suspect and . . . we fucked up. But we're going to move fast now and make this right."

"Good," Marcus said with a hollow forcefulness, then extended his hand. "Thank you."

Having been braced for an explosion of rage since the moment he walked into the room, Matty just felt saddened by this man's total lack of comprehension.

"Are you sure Elena won't be coming back here?"

"Who's to say, but, no, I don't."

"Mr. Marcus, I don't have a lot of discretionary time but . . ." Matty leaned into him a little. "Would you like me to reach out to your wife for you?"

"You know," Marcus said, addressing the middle distance, "when they're little, you love them, take pride in them, and when they grow up, you still do, but it's bizarre when other people, new people, see him and think, 'Well, here's this young man, here's this young adult who does such and such very well,' and you're witnessing this acceptance from others, this respect and seriousness., and you, I can't help laughing, thinking, that's, what young man, that's Ikey, you wouldn't believe the dopey shit he did as a kid, but there he is getting respect, and it's not like I don't have it for him, me of all people, but I always feel like laughing, not put-him-in-his-place laughing, just 'Aw, c'mon, that's Ike . . ."

"Mr. Marcus . . ."

"Call me Billy, please?"

"OK, Billy, look, I understand you're distraught, but you have to believe me when I say you're making a serious mistake by being alone right now. This, this, what you're going through? You're going to be going through it for a long time, and your family? Your family can save your life."

"It's like . . ." Marcus stared at the terrace rail. "People try to convince you, they do convince you, that you can't make a child happy if you're miserable yourself. You want to take care of him? You take care of yourself first."

He shook his head in disbelief, then, tearing his eyes away from the railing, looked directly at Matty. "So with Ikey? ... I just left." Then in an explosion of dry blubbering, the words coming out as if tumbling down stairs, "He was so little and 1 just left, you know?"

"Mr. Marcus, Billy"-Matty so bad at this-"were you ever contacted by victims' services?"

Unable to think what else to say, Matty found himself picking up random scatter from the floor: a towel, an empty vodka from the mini
-
bar, and at least a dozen reporters' cards from every media outlet in the tristate area.

"Look, Mr. Marcus, Billy, I have to go now."

"I understand," Marcus said. "I just need to lay down for a minute, get my head together."

"I'll try to come back, keep you abreast, see how you're doing."

Marcus stared off, whispering to himself.

But when Matty turned to the door, Marcus said, "Don't be too hard on yourself. You did what you thought was right," then eased his head to the pillow.

He needed to get Marcus moved to a lower room. On one hand, if someone intended to do himself in, dropping from a fourth-floor window would do the trick as neatly as a drop from the sixteenth, but that wraparound vista seemed a little too charismatic.

Walking out of the elevator into the lobby, Matty was surprised to see Billy Marcus's wife, in jeans and a wilted T-shirt, leaning across the front desk to get into the eyes of the clerk on duty, a spectacular blond kid in a bloodred Mandarin blouse that matched the hellish hue of the walls to the point of camouflage.

"He is my husband, he has lost his child, what am I asking you, just give me his room number."

Strangling beneath her innocent fabulousness, the clerk looked to Matty with openmouthed distress. "Miss, I'm sorry," her voice small and pleading. "I'd lose my job."

He began to step forward, then stopped; he'd been campaigning for this reunion all day, but now that he had husband and wife under the same roof, he reminded himself that the guy had just been up there a few hours ago fucking and fighting with the dead kids mother, who could possibly return; that family reconciliations were not his job.

"Look." Marcus's wife extended her hands to the girl, took a breath. "I cannot imagine any decent person in the world penalizing somebne in your position for doing the compassionate thing here."

Definitely take a pass on getting involved any further; nonetheless he found himself lingering, just to watch her.

This woman was something else: exhausted, distraught, probably hitting one wall after another since the morning, she was still somehow in possession of herself, mounting this latest assault without losing her composure, without allowing herself to degenerate into abusiveness or rage; in his eyes, a real high-hearted warrior.

"OK, how about . . ." the wife began, the long, slender fingers of one hand hovering over a decorative bowl of indestructible-looking green apples. "Is there someone you could call, someone that could take the weight off you."

The clerk, becoming with each passing moment more and more of a child, picked up the phone as directed. Matty waited until he heard a recorded voice on the other end of the line, then he left the hotel.

Out on the street he called Yolonda, found out that the autopsy had confirmed Eric Cash's description of how the gun had been held, raised overhead in a curled-wrist gangsta arc, the bullet having entered the heart and exited through the lower back; that the recovered shell casing had no connection to any other casing in the system; and that dredging twelve manholes and grates in a three-block radius of the crime scene produced six knives, eleven box cutters, the lower half of a samurai sword, but no gun.

He took the long way back to the precinct so he could go past the crime scene one more time and was not particularly surprised to see the first sproutings of a makeshift memorial: a few bodega-bought bouquets still in their stapled cellophane wraps, a few condolence cards, and two botanica candles, one featuring Santa Barbara, the other San LPSzaro.

He had forgotten to get Marcus moved to a lower floor.

He could have arranged the transfer by phone, should have arranged it by phone, but what he really should have done was push for a family reunion. With the guy in the state he was in, for Matty to conspire in keeping him away from a wife like that ... He headed back to the hotel.

The lobby was empty save for the blond clerk standing stock-still behind her severe pyramid of apples.

"She went up?" Matty asked.

"She left," the girl said quickly. "I would have lost my job," her voice suddenly sticky with tears.

"Hey, no, I hear you." Matty nodded, masking his disappointment.

"She gave me a note for him," the clerk said.

"You send it up?"

"I was waiting for the bellhop."

"I'll take it for you."

He didn't even have to ID himself.

Riding the elevator back to sixteen with a young couple arguing in German, Matty resisted unfolding the sheet of hotel paper.

The front door was ajar, the ones to the wraparound terrace flung wide-open. Marcus was not there.

Flushed with dread, Matty stepped to the terrace, looked down to the street, and saw, nothing. People.

The guy was just gone.

The wife's note was short and to the point: billy please.

Even on the brightest of days the steel accordion grate that covered the front parlor window of Eric's three-room dumbbell made the dark train of rooms seem like a penitent's cell, looking out as it did on the identical grate of a window across the narrow street; but at night the flat came on like a straight-up tomb.

Eric had turned down the ride from the detectives, had walked in a daze from the jail to his building, through the small vestibule reeking of cat piss, damp, incense, and a hint of decomp, walls, stairs, doors, everything aslant to the earth, climbed the five flights to his floor, past the defunct hallway toilets, to his apartment, stepped inside, then he threw the double lock, took a shower without turning the lights on, puked in the toilet, took a second shower, brushed his teeth, came out into the parlor naked, turned on the TV, nothing on the screen registering but the gibber of voices as calming to him as a double vodka, which he got up and made for himself, then drained in a swallow before he could even get back to the couch, the shit-ass futon couch, then just sat there glass-faced, debating whether to get up and pour himself another. That was when he noticed the printout of his one-fifth-done screenplay, his bullshit screenplay, Pushcart Pauline meets the dybbuk on Delancey, which was lying atop the steamer trunk/coffee table. He picked up the first page, tried to read it, but the words just slid off his eyes incomprehensible, as meaningless and blithery as whatever was coming out of the television; what the world needs not; dropped it back onto the velvet shawl that served as a tablecloth or whatever the hell it was supposed to be other than his supposed girlfriend's way of marking even this as somehow hers; got up, fell back down, got up, was abruptly revisited, saw, heard that deceptive pop, that sharp snap, the buzz of that steel bee, followed by the slow falling back of Ike, as slow as a flip-book, onto the pavement, Eric imitating it now and clipping a shoulder blade on the corner of the steamer trunk but no matter, he had it coming, that and more, got to his feet, walked past his girlfriends bookshelves packed with literature both academic and sleazy on prostitution and bondage, with Southeast Asian phrase books and sex-tourist guides, with assorted fetish magazines and reproduced Tijuana Bibles, every fuck book, textbook, eight-page comic and titty magazine bristling with her hand-scrawled notations; unhinged the security grate on the window, went back to the bathroom, wrapped a towel around his waist, waded through the lone closet, the allegedly shared closet, jam-packed with zippered bags full of whatever they don't wear in Manila, found the hibachi on a high shelf lined with her boots, her shoes, brought it out to the fire escape, returned to the kitchenette, had another drink, rummaged through all the labeled pouches and widemouthed jars of her dried lentils and beans and spelt and fuckball until he found the small bag of briquettes, grabbed a box of kitchen matches. He was headed back to the fire escape when the sharp and sudden rap at his apartment door shot through him like an arrow, spun him like a top.

"Eric."

Yolonda stood there in the hallway, looking small and tired, her hands in her coat pockets.

He just stared at her, his legs trembling beneath the towel.

"I just came by to see how you were doing. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I'm supposed to go home now, but I can't stop thinking about you. Are you OK? Tell me you're OK."

He nodded, unable to speak, to take his eyes off her.

"Listen, we need for you to come down to the house, help us try to ID these guys."

"Not now." His voice a hoarse whistle, the trembling getting worse.

"Are you cold? You want to put some clothes on?"

"Not now."

"Yeah, no, you must tired, I understand. But we got to get these guys, you know? Something like this, every minute is precious."

"I did that already." Sounding like he was gargling.

"What?" Yolonda squinted.

"I did, that"

"What . . ."

"Try, to help you."

"You know, you're shaking like a leaf. Please, I don't mean to mother you, but you're gonna get sick. Put something on, I won't even come in, I'll wait out here."

"Not"-closing his eyes-"now."

Yolonda took a breath. "Eric, listen to me. We know it wasn't you. We know that now. Why do you think of all people I'm the one coming here to knock on your door? Because this request needs to begin with an apology, and who needs to apologize to you more than me. There's nothing for you to be nervous about. I swear on my son's eyes."

Eric continued to stare at her, his body popping and rippling as if it belonged to someone else.

Yolonda took another moment. "OK, you know what? I'll come by, pick you up first thing in the morning, this way you can get some rest."

"I have to work tomorrow."

"No problem. What time do you need to be at work?"

He closed the door in her face.

Yolonda called Matty on her way down the stairs.

"I hate to say it? But I think we maybe good and fucked ourselves with this guy."

Out on the street, a small cluster of people were standing opposite Erics building and looking up at his lone window.

Yolonda crossed over to see what they saw: Eric still in his bath towel, feeding sheets of paper to a small grill on his fire escape, each page catching and curling before floating off in the heated air, then drifting down to Stanton Street in a flurry of glowing black snow.

It was a tribute to Yolonda's reputation that after she'd spent all day trying to break the guy down, then had him arrested for something he didn't do, she was still regarded as the best choice for reeling him in as a witness so soon after his release from the Tombs. Matty knew he himself would have been a stone disaster, although a part of him had wanted to take a shot at it anyway, not so much to directly apologize to him, but at least to explain the day In any event, with Cash released and everybody back to square one, actually not even up to square one considering the nearly full-day head start they had given the shooter, at this late hour Matty was relegated to poring over Manhattan robbery-pattern reports from the last six months, the monthly All Sheets of unsolved crimes, keeping it close to home, though, the Eighth, the Fifth, and the Ninth, because a deer never travels more than a mile from where it was born and always walks in the path of its ancestors. The local housing projects were the best bet, but he still had to sift through volumes of computer spew in response to his punching in the categorizable details of the Marcus homicide: location of incident, number of perps, race of perps, weapon used, wording of threat, angle of approach on victim, mode of flight.