Lush Life (8 page)

"Any visible residue on clothing or hands?" "I believe so, yes," Matty lied. "What time was the shooting?"

Matty took a breath, knowing where this was going. "Roughly oh
-
four-thirty," making it later by half an hour. "And what time is it now?"

Look at the fucking wall clock; Matty envisioning Baumgartner sitting there, the guy as big as a sea lion with a mustache to match. "Sarge?" Baumgartner singsonged. "What time is it now?" "Oh-six-thirty, about." Pedantic douche.

"All right," the Goalie sighed, "I'll have to reach out to my boss for this, but I'll tell you, as I'm sure you know already, once you're past two hours a paraffin test's inconclusive."

"Look," Matty said through his teeth, "when you get your boss on the horn, tell him that the chiefs are already all over this," he lied again. "Tell him we already have more news trucks than residents down there. Tell him we got a major shitstorm on our hands." "All right," Baumgartner said, "I'll get back to you." "Call me direct." Matty gave him his cell number."Name again?"

"Clark. Sergeant Matthew Clark. Eighth Squad."

At 7:00 a. M., two of Matty's detectives, Yolonda Bello and John Mullins, were at 2030 Henry Hudson Parkway in Riverdale, a white
-
brick twenty-five-story monstrosity overlooking the river with a near -
primordial view of the Jersey Palisades. It was not Isaac Marcus's current address, that would be a five-man crash pad in Cobble Hill, an Our Gang, pot-stanky garden apartment in which none of his just woken roomies could even tell the detectives where Ike originally hailed from. Riverdale was the address on his drivers license, also home to a William Marcus, presumably the father or at least a blood relation.

The two cops assigned to the visit were chosen because the Riverdale address was pretty much on their way in to work: Yolonda living only three blocks away, Mullins ten minutes north in Yonkers. John tended to come off as an impassive hulk, not his fault really, but Yolonda, when in the mood, was the best at this, with huge liquid eyes that seemed perpetually on the verge of tears and a voice like a hug. When they identified themselves as detectives to the fortyish barefoot woman who met them at the door, she went from sleepy to irate in a heartbeat.

"Oh, for Christ sakes, did that psycho file a complaint or something?"

"What?" an alarmed teenage girl announced her presence in the dining alcove. "What do you mean a complaint. What's a complaint?"

"That kid had been beating the crap out of her all game and she got what was coming to her. The ref didn't even call a flagrant," the woman went at Yolonda. "She was the one tripping, throwing elbows, talking all kinds of shit, and there's a hundred witnesses that'll back that up. I mean, Jesus Christ, did you take a look at the size of her?"

The woman was wearing a carefully ripped pair of jeans and a freshly ironed white T-shirt.

"I go in today, I'm dead." The girl in a straight-out panic now. "I told you!"

"Calm down, Nina. Nobody's dead," the woman said, then turnedback to the silent detectives. "This is complete and utter horseshit."

Whatever these two were talking about, it was either relevant or not, Yolonda thought, but it would have to keep for at least a few minutes.

"Does Isaac Marcus live here?" she finally asked.

"Isaac?" Yolonda's soft, apologetic tone immediately slowed the woman down. "No, he lives in Brooklyn I think." Then, "What do you want with Ike?"

"No way I'm going to school today," the girl moaned to herself.

"What do you want with Ike?" the woman repeated, her voice getting smaller.

"Are you his mother?"

"No. Yeah. No, no." Stark-eyed now, she began stepping in place, raised a finger like a saint. "I'm married. To his father. Remarried. What's wrong."

"I'm sorry, what's your name?"

"Mine?"

Yolonda waited, thinking, She's there already.

"Minette. Minette Davidson."

"Minette," Yolonda said, then without asking eased herself across the threshold and steered the woman to her own couch, Mullins following silently, his gaze straying to the prehistoric bluffs across the river.

Lost in her own panic, the young girl did everyone a favor by marching out of the dining area. A moment later a door slammed.

"Please," Minette said, an open-ended entreaty.

"Is his father home?" Yolonda asked, following the script.

"He's upstate."

Yolonda and John glanced at each other, upstate to them a euphemism.

"At a conference. He'll be back tonight. What is it ... "

"Do you know how we can reach him?"

"Oh, please!

Enough.

"Minette . . ." The woman tried to rise but Yolonda put a hand on her shoulder, then squatted on her haunches to be on eye level. "We have some really bad news."Minette shot to her feet despite Yolonda's staying hand, then, not waiting for the details, swirled to the floor like a leaf.

Unwilling to leave Minette Davidson alone with her daughter, Yolonda called in to Matty, then she and John stayed in the apartment for the thirty minutes it took until Minette's sister finally showed up. During that time, no one approached the girl, oblivious behind her closed bedroom door.

According to Yolonda via the guy's wife, a high school Spanish teacher at a prep school in Riverdale, the dead kid's father worked for Con Ed, a project manager on toxic remediation sites, whatever the hell those were, and was currently up at a Marriott near Tarrytown for a two-day seminar on hot-spot removal, whatever the hell that was.

Matty was about to ring the Tarrytown PD to request a notification when Kendra Walker, one of the Night Watch detectives, came in to use the bathroom, her belt half-undone before she even knew where it was located.

'That way.'' Matty pointed from his desk. "Hey, did CSU ever show?"

"Yeah, they just got there when I was leaving. Bobby's talking to them now, trying to get 'em to come by for that GSR test you wanted? But I think I heard one guy say they never got an order to do that, so . . ."

"Never what}"

"Yeah, sorry there, Sarge." Kendra shrugged and headed for the bathroom.

"Baumgartner."

"You talk to your boss yet?"

"Who's this?"

"Matty Clark, Eighth Squad."

"He gets in at eight."

"I thought you were gonna reach out for him right after we talked?Eight? You didn't tell me that." Matty tried to curb his anger, there being no percentage in pissing off this guy, who would only put you at the back of the line the next time you needed CSU fast.

"Well, I can tell you right now what he's gonna say." Baumgartner chewing something. "Which is that for something like this, the request's got to come from higher up than you, division captain at least."

"Hey"-Matty grinning with rage-"couldn't you tell me that the first time? You know, with us playing beat the clock here?"

"I'm just telling you how it is."

"This better be good." The voice of Mangini, the division captain, came over the line like crusted glue.

"Cap"-Matty wincing-"Matty Clark from the Eighth, are you up?"

"Am now." Mangini coughed.

"Sorry there, boss. What time you due in?"

"Noon."

"Yeah, we have a situation down here, a homicide, we maybe got the shooter, two eyewits say he's the shooter, but we haven't found the gun as yet, and I need CSU to do a paraffin test."

"So?"

"I need a boss to make the call."

"The fuck, it's not even seven yet."

"It's seven-thirty. The thing is, I need this done now, it's already going on three and a half hours."

The captain abruptly smothered his receiver, Matty stuck paradiddling a pencil on his blotter as he endured the muffled halftones of Mangini arguing with his wife, whom he had probably just woken up by taking this call in bed.

"All right, what?" The cap back on the line.

"How about this . . ." Matty sitting there, palms up and out. "How about I have one of my guys call over there and just say they're you."

"Sure, whatever." Then, "Wait. For a paraffin test?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't you just tell me you got two eyewits?""I did, but-"

"Then what do you need a paraffin test for?"

"Because I want one. Because I'm thinking better safe than sorry."

The cap sighed. Matty envisioned him lying there, his hair sticking up against his pillow.

"All right, look." Mangini coughed, sniffed. "You want to do me a favor? Call the DI for this, clear it with him."

"Berkowitz?" Matty pinching his brows. "What time's he get in?"

"Eight, about."

With bosses, eight could mean eight, could mean nine, could mean ten; ten o'clock, six hours after the shooting.

Matty hung up, rang up Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, got the machine, left his situation and cell number, and that was all he could do.

He got up to check on Eric Cash again, then stopped, what was he forgetting . . .

Sitting back down, he finally called the Tarrytown cops to notify Isaac Marcus's father at his hotel, although by now the guy's wife in Riverdale had to have given him the news.

No one had a clue as to where to find the kid's mother.

The moment he hung up, his cell went off, Matty hoping for Berkowitz, for Bobby Oh.

"Hey, Matty." The squad boss, Carmody, on the line. "I was just watching the news. What the hell's going on down there?"

"Yeah, hey, Lieutenant, I didn't want to bother you, we got it under control."

"You need me to come in?"

"We're good, boss, thanks."

"All right, call me if something changes."

"Absolutely, boss."

From his desk he saw Eric Cash being escorted to the bathroom, walking from the interview room as if he should be wearing an open
-
backed hospital gown.

At seven-thirty, roughly three and a half hours after the murder, the redheaded witness, Randal Condo, was, for the third time since com-ing forward, once again standing across the street from 27 Eldridge, this time with Kevin Flaherty, an assistant district attorney from the Prosecutor's Office.

". . . the three of them arm in arm in arm like a chorus line. They were right under the streetlight. It was like they were on a stage."

By now the crime scene was down to the tape, a bloodstained sidewalk, a pair of discarded inside-out surgical gloves, and a scatter of lesser reporters like boys at a dance trying to figure out the best way to approach the prosecutor and the witness across the street.

"They were facing you?" The ADA, a still-young ex-cop, offered up some gum, his now regrettably tattooed wrist, a trompe l'oeil ring of barbed wire, peeking out from beneath his stiff white shirt cuff like a bracelet.

"No, with their backs to me. I was walking up from the corner towards Nikki."

"Your girlfriend."

For a brief moment they both took five as a tall blond girl on a bicycle stopped directly in front of them to watch the action, the tattoo at the base of her spine drifting up from the ass of her jeans like blue smoke.

'Your girlfriend," Flaherty repeated.

"Yeah, and she was walking down towards me and they were like in between us, across the street, so . . ."

"You hear anything they said?"

"Not really." Randal shielded his eyes from the daylight, their whites now as red as his hair.

"A lot of people on the block said they heard arguing."

"I didn't hear any, maybe Nikki did. Anybody giving her the third degree?"

"I'm sure they are. So, arm in arm in arm, backs to you . . ."

"Yeah, and we were coming at each other, me and Nikki, then a shot goes off, the guy in the middle like, crumples to the ground, the guy on the left falls straight back with his arms out, and the third guy runs into the building."

"Did you see a gun?"

"No, at that point Nikki and I kind of met from where we both started walking towards each other, fortunately, and I just went on au-tomatic pilot, you know, pulling her down right behind this car here," touching the passenger door of a battered Lexus, "so I wasn't looking."

"So you never actually saw a gun."

"No, but I'm pretty damned sure as I was walking towards Nikki I saw the guy that ran into the building raise his arm beforehand, and I bet you the dead guy had a bullet in him."

"And you didn't see anybody else with them."

"Nope. Just those three."

"Just those three." The ADA popped some gum. "Any people walking by?"

"Nobody here but us chickens."

"But who?"

"It's a song."

The ADA stared at him.

"Never mind." Condo looked off, half smiling then. "No. No other people."