Slipping Into Darkness (14 page)

“Baby, you gotta eat something. You look pale.”

 

He realized cold clammy sweat was oozing out through his pores, like he was getting a fever. “Nah, can’t eat.”

 

“How long did you say you been out?”

 

“Since last night.” He wiped his brow. “I was counting on that fucking old man to back me up.”

 

He stared at the emptying ketchup bottles lined up like part of a blood bank. All at once, it seemed that each terrible thing that had happened to him no longer stood alone. His mother’s funeral at St. Theresa’s. The interrogation room. The courthouse. The prison yard in Dannemora. His cell in Attica. They were all the same place. Even this coffee shop. They were all just illusions. He’d never really gotten out of the cage.

 

“You believe me, don’t you? You know it’s not like they said it was.”

 

“Listen,” she said, patting his hand. “You’re tired. You’re trying to do too much.
Echa un trago. Echa una siesta.
”

 

He slowly looked up, a column of steam from the dishwasher rising near the kitchen pass-through. It seemed like all this struggling and thrashing around to get his name back was just a pathetic waste of time. A side of him wondered if he should just give up and see if the DA’s offer to let him plead guilty was still on the table. At least then it would all be over.

 

But every time he came close to setting his mind on that course, he pictured his cousin’s daughter giving him that look from behind the refrigerator again. That child thought he was some kind of filthy animal. When she thought back on him, she wouldn’t remember anything about the tender way he brushed her hair. She’d take her mother’s word that he’d tried to do something terrible to her. And that, he surely could not accept.

 

“I don’t feel so good.” He held his fragile gut.

 

“I could have the cook fry you up some
huevos rancheros.
I remember how you used to like them.”

 

He started to reach into his pocket, but she slapped his arm. “
ĄLargo de aqui!
” she said. “I’ll kick your ass, show me your goddamn wallet.”

 

He gave up, touched and intimidated, as she leaned into the kitchen and gave the cook his order.

 

“You seriously don’t have a place to sleep tonight?” She settled back on the stool.

 

He shook his head, not wanting to talk about what happened at his cousin’s.

 

“Ay.”
Nita rolled her eyes down to his duffel bag. “I’m betting you don’t have a job lined up either.”

 

“I got out too soon for them to put together a discharge plan. I’m supposed to still be there.”

 

“Well, there ain’t nothing for you here,” she said, as if he were one of a long line of men who’d tried to take advantage of her.

 

He’d probably imposed enough already. She was a good-hearted woman who’d probably taken in more than her share of strays who’d then turned around and bit her. He’d eat his eggs and be on his way. Maybe he could catch the A train and sleep on the long ride going back and forth to Far Rockaway, until the conductor kicked him off.

 

“There’s a little room downstairs,” she said quietly.

 

“What?”

 

“A little storage room. The delivery guy crashes there sometimes. It’s not the Marriott Marquis. You have to lie between shelves, with the soup cans and lard. But no one will bother you.”

 

He stared at her, trying to comprehend. It wasn’t that there was never any decency in prison. A CO might cut you a break sometimes over some pissy little infraction; another inmate might let you use a hot plate in his cell once in a while. But you could never count on it. Kindness equaled softness, which equaled weakness, which was a sickness to be eliminated. Better to be thought of as a thief, a rapist, even a murderer, than a man, say, like his own father.

 

“But you have to be cool about it,” she said, rising. “I don’t want the owner finding you down there. I need this job.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

He had to resist the urge to throw his arms around her in gratitude, still not trusting the world enough to be seen touching a woman yet.

 

“And put back that damn steak knife.” She pointed at his pocket. “I’m already sticking my neck out for you.”

 

 

12

 

 

 

TOM WENT DOWNSTAIRS to the apartment after the news ended and found his mother holding a half-empty glass of red wine with a cigarette filter floating in it.

 

“Nice,” he said. “Did I miss the part where Dr. Spencer said you should start mixing pinot noir with antipsychotics and Prozac?”

 

“Have I ever told you how much I hate those drugs?”

 

“And you think it’s going to help if you start drinking with them?”

 

“I don’t like the way they make me feel.”
Her jaw clenched. “They make my head feel full of cotton. They make me write small. They make me see things that aren’t there. Did I tell you what happened the other night?”

 

“What?”

 

“I got up, thirsty, and thought I was drinking a bottle of water. The next morning I found an empty bottle of olive oil on the counter.”

 

Tom pursed his lips in disgust. “You want to end up back in the ER again? Is that what you’re going for here?”

 

“I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all.”

 

He looked over at the oak rolltop desk she’d rescued from Sag Harbor. A tulip drooped in a vase, its petals falling off, and the scraps of discarded paper were hanging out of the wastebasket like sheared-off wings.

 

“You know, the least you can do is go out in the backyard if you’re going to smoke.” He picked up her wineglass and swirled the forlorn butt around in its dregs. “Michelle has asthma, in case you didn’t notice.”

 

“Oh, so now I’m a bad grandmother too.”

 

He rubbed the space between his eyebrows like he was trying to smooth over a crack. Poor long-suffering Tom. Who probably put off getting married a half-dozen years to look after his crazy mother. With a twinge of shame, she remembered watching him try to play touch football in Central Park when he was young and discovering that for a few seconds she didn’t like him. His awkwardness, his sheer lack of athletic grace, the way he pretended to know the rules of the game when he didn’t. The way he turned pink with the slightest exertion. He didn’t take to things naturally the way his sister did; Allison could pick up a tennis racket and start volleying within minutes. With Tom, everything had the potential for embarrassment. She constantly found herself comparing him with other children and then feeling guilty about it afterward. In the end, he’d shown her, though. He turned into the man of the house, taking over the finances and giving her not one but two granddaughters to justify her otherwise unjustifiable existence nowadays.

 

“I guess you know that Francis Loughlin stopped by before,” he said. “He had some news I wasn’t happy to hear.”

 

“I’m waiting.” She folded her hands on her lap in ladylike poise.

 

“They let Julian Vega out early. They overturned his conviction. He’s free now.”

 

She nodded, trying to maintain a dignified silence.

 

“I told him I thought it might be best to let it drop. We’ve been through enough already. But he thinks he owes it to you to keep going. . . .”

 

She continued nodding, finding herself unable to stop.

 

“I told him I was against it, but I’d pass along the message.” Tom blushed a little. “He says you had a kind of understanding.”

 

She finally held her head still and turned to him, slowly letting a sense of things collect. You wait and wait for something, and then when it happens it’s as if you never expected it.

 

There was a little sound at the back of her throat. Just a murmur, hardly even a real word. But everything in the universe depended on keeping it there. She straightened her back, trying to remember the old actor exercise. Relax. Breathe in. Create your own sense of time. She put back her shoulders and slowly let out a breath that seemed to have notches on it. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” she said finally.

 

“What?”

 

“Maybe there’s a reason I haven’t been able to finish this book. Maybe it’s not the right time. I mean, rewriting Hans Christian Andersen, it’s so . . .
indulgent.
Don’t you think?”

 

“I don’t know, Mom,” he said weakly. “I’m not the creative one in the house.”

 

“I’ve been thinking about another kind of project.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“You know, I’ve been more interested in science for a while now. How the body works. How the mind regenerates . . .”

 

“Mom . . .”

 

“Have you ever thought about double star systems, Tom?”

 

“Can’t say I have.” He sighed.

 

“Almost every star you see at night has a companion. But one usually dominates the other, so you can barely see it. What’s interesting is that even if one is dying, when it gets close enough to the other it can start to draw hydrogen until it reignites again. But then it sets off a supernova explosion, and all that’s left is a black hole.”

 

“It’s late, Mom. I thought we were over this.”

 

“She was my shining star.”

 

“I thought my girls were your shining stars.” He looked at the ceiling.

 

“I want her to know I haven’t forgotten.”

 

“If you really think she’s still alive, then why do you want to see this back in court again?” He stood up, biting his lip. “Can you explain that to me?”

 

“She needs a sign. If she sees the case is getting attention again, she’ll know we’re still looking for her. Even dying stars can reignite.”

 

“You also said they can suck the life from each other.” He went to the sink and dumped out her wineglass. “I’ve got an early sales call tomorrow, but then I’m calling Spencer about adjusting your meds.”

 

“Tom . . .”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”

 

“Forget it, Mom.” He plucked her cigarette butt from the strainer and threw it in the trash. “You did what you could.”

 

 

13

 

 

 

IN THE MIDDLE of the next afternoon, Francis took a ride out to the NYPD’s evidence warehouse in Long Island City, a dusty scaffold-surrounded four-story in an industrial wasteland strewn with truck garages, recycling centers, factory carpet outlets, and titty bars.

 

His heart sank when he went through the cage, crossed the scrap of Oriental carpet duct-taped to the cement floor, and saw out of the corner of his eye that the only clerk on duty was one Sergeant Brian Mullhearn.

 

“Gustav Mauler, word up.”

 

“Francis X., as I live and breathe.”

 

The sergeant took his time setting aside a tin of cold sesame noodles and wiping his hands with a paper towel. He stood up from his desk, and they gave each other the stiff long-armed handshake of old friends who can no longer abide each other’s company.

 

Francis knew he should have called ahead, to make sure someone else was on duty.

 

The bright disco thump of Hot 97 on the office radio somehow emphasized the whipped-dog mood of the place. Paint peeled off exposed pipes, mold formed on the air-conditioner vents, and a sign warning that CORRUPTION MUST BE REPORTED TO THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS BUREAU was half obscured behind a banged-up refrigerator.

 

“They say only the good die young, Sarge.” Francis forced a smile as he extracted his digits. “So neither of us has anything to worry about, right?”

 

In truth, though, Mullhearn looked like one of the pieces that had been stored back among the oil drums since 1972. Limp gray hair, drowned-rat mustache, rigor mortis shoulders, a bar sponge complexion. Behind scratched lenses, his eyes were the color of pencil erasers; above them, his eyebrows were scrub marks. He moved slowly and with great effort, as if he were due overtime for each individual muscular response.

 

“We had us some Wild West times in Narcotics, didn’t we?” he said.

 

“I still got the aches and pains from it.” Francis touched the small of his back.

 

“Remember the time you fell over a third-floor railing at the Baruch Houses on Houston Street?”

 

“As a matter of fact . . .”

 

“Jesus, we thought you were dead, Francis. Five of us stood around, waiting for the chaplain to come say last rites. You weren’t even breathing. Suddenly up you sit, ‘Where’s my fuckin’ wallet?’ like you’d just passed out at the counter and one of us took it.”

 

Francis hoisted a grin. “We’re all lucky to come out of it in one piece, I suppose.”

 

“Some of us more whole than others.” Mauler settled back behind his desk. “Look at me, look at you. I turn on the TV some nights, you’re on more than O. J. Simpson.”

 

“More like Homer Simpson.”

 

“Well, you’ve done all right for yourself at any rate.” Mullhearn picked up his fork again. “I heard you’re retiring First Grade come April.”

 

“You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.”

 

“Yeah, you always knew how to walk away a winner, I’ll give you that much.”

 

“Luck of the draw, my friend. That’s all it is.”

 

“Luck of the gene pool is more like it.” Mauler let a long strand droop from the end of his fork. “I had an old man in the First Dep’s office, I’d be on your side of this desk and you’d be on mine.”

 

“Now, now . . .”

 

Francis sucked in his cheeks, seeing this was going to be a protracted negotiation. While he’d been on the rise these past twenty years, Mauler had been consigned to a kind of bitter civil service purgatory, a Rubber Gun Cop guarding the ancient ledger books and Great Deadly Weapons of the Twentieth Century.

 

“So, what can I do you for?”

 

“I’m looking for anything you got from the Allison Wallis case. I think Paul Raedo from the DA’s office faxed over a subpoena before.”

 

“First I’ve heard of it.”

 

“But you know the case I’m talking about. You’re the one with the good institutional memory, Bri. The girl doctor who got killed in her apartment by the super’s son back in ’83 . . .”