Slipping Into Darkness (21 page)

 

“Anything you need,” the father piped up, desperately trying to stay in the loop.

 

“Did Christine, by any chance, ever mention an individual to you by the name of Julian Vega?”

 

“No,” the mother said sharply. “Who the hell was he?”

 

“Some of her coworkers said she’d been talking about him a lot. And we found she’d been collecting newspaper stories about him.” Francis looked at the father, humoring him. “Obviously that’s not something we’d want to get out.”

 

“Oh sure, I understand,” said the father. “But who was this Julian? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.”

 

“Sir, I’m afraid he’s a guy who just got out of prison for murder,” said Francis.

 

The lines around the mother’s mouth instantly sank so deep that it looked like she had the jaw of a marionette.

 

“But how did that happen?” asked the father.

 

“Unfortunately, these cases don’t always go the way we’d like them to,” Francis said.

 

“And what makes you think Christine knew him?” Roy hunched forward, elbows on his knees.

 

“She might not have. We’re trying not to jump to any conclusions.”

 

“Those strays again,” the mother muttered, resentfully flicking ashes out the window.

 

“Excuse me?” Rashid arched an eyebrow.

 

The parents gave each other a recriminating look.

 

“She had a soft heart,” Roy said. “When she worked at an inner-city clinic in Chicago, she was always inviting some poor child over to her apartment or going to visit some family in the projects. I suppose she wasn’t good at what you call boundaries.”

 

“Soft head is more like it.” The mother shut her marionette mouth and then opened it, tired of keeping her harshest opinions to herself. “She could’ve stayed in Madison and married that boy who was going to be a cardiologist. . . .”

 

Francis cricked his neck to catch Rashid’s eye for a half-second, making sure they heard the same tumblers falling into place.
Taking in strays. No good at boundaries. A soft heart.
They’d just nailed down that Hoolian was working for a supermarket in the neighborhood. Was it that much of a stretch to think he’d managed to wangle his way into Christine’s apartment on a delivery run or something, selling her some sad-sack tale of woe about his innocence?

 

“Mrs. Rogers, we’re going to do everything we can to get the guy who did this to her,” Francis said.

 

“Fine,” the mother said, stubbing out her cigarette on the sill. “Then can you tell me what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life?”

 

 

23

 

 

 

HOOLIAN WAS WAITING in front of Met Foods when Angel arrived to open up that morning.

 

“You’re an animal,
compańero.
” The manager smiled admiringly as he reached into his pocket. “Better watch my back around you.”

 

“You said you wanted me to come in early, right?”

 

“Tanto majo.”
Angel tossed him the keys. “You lift the gate today. Way you’re going, it’s probably gonna be your store soon.”

 

———

 

A little before ten, Francis parked across the street from the supermarket and left a yellow police business placard on the dashboard. He’d decided to play behind the beat a little, as if he were just following up on Allison’s case. No mention of Christine Rogers at all. He turned off his cell phone and locked the car door, not wanting to hear from any bosses at the moment. Everybody knew how to run an investigation these days, from the lowliest patrolman up to the mayor’s special assistant for coordinating catered events.

 

He crossed the street, looking carefully both ways, noticing that it took a fraction of a second longer now to see cars coming from the side.

 

———

 

Stomp or slash.
Angel wasn’t particular, as long as that cardboard got flattened. The boxes that were thick and tightly glued needed to have their sides razored. But the thinner ones you could just jump up and down on, crushing them with your feet and getting all of your ya-yas out. Hoolian always liked working in basements anyway, being close to the warm pumping guts of a building, feeling like he was the secret engineer keeping all the systems running smoothly. He remembered the long hours playing hide-and-seek around the storage cages and boiler room with Nestor. The two of them chasing each other around the dim narrow hallways, garbage barrels, and slop sinks of their little rabbit warren when the old porter wasn’t working in the incinerator room or running errands on the service elevator.

 

He finished flattening the boxes and then loaded them one by one into the compactor, enjoying the pure mindless exertion of physical labor for a few minutes. He pulled a lever and a flat broad iron lowered on a piston, crushing the cardboard with a series of satisfying pops. What was left was a solid brown chunk, as if a child had kneaded a piece of pumpernickel dough into a cube. Then he went to the giant spool in the corner and reeled off four feet of twine to thread through the machine so he could tie the pieces up for easier handling.

 

———

 

Francis stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The walls, shelves, and floor of the storeroom were painted gray, so objects emerged only slowly from the darkness, like shapes in a developing photo. There was Hoolian, snipping off lengths of twine and tying hunks of crushed cardboard together. Gradually Francis discerned muscles moving under the dainty-looking store smock as Hoolian tossed the pieces across the floor like bodies going into a sandpit. Without the courtroom suit on, he looked a little more like the ex-con that he was.

 

“Well,” Francis said. “Somebody’s been eating their Wheaties.”

 

———

 

The detective looked older and somehow smaller, standing there in his three-quarter-length leather coat with an American flag on the lapel. In Hoolian’s memory, Loughlin had always been a towering slab about to fall on him. Now he was just a middle-aged guy losing his hair so that you could see the raw pinkness of his forehead and the nasty peaks of his eyebrows.

 

“What happened to your hand?”

 

Hoolian stepped back a little, remembering that the last time he’d been this close to Loughlin was in a prison hallway.

 

“Got it caught in a subway door.”

 

“Really? In a subway door? I can’t quite picture that. There’s rubber everywhere.”

 

“I was leaning against it with my hand and then the door opened real sudden and it got stuck. The rubber must’ve worn away there.”

 

“I never heard of that.”

 

Hoolian resisted the urge to hide the hand behind his back. “What are you doing here, man? How’d you find me?”

 

“You’re out on bail, aren’t you? Your lawyer has to keep the court informed about where you’re supposed to be at all times, in case you don’t make your trial date.”

 

“That’s a bunch of bullshit, man.”

 

Loughlin kept looking at the dressing, like he could actually see blood spreading across the gauze. “Must’ve hurt like a bastard. Where’d you go to get it fixed up?”

 

“Emergency room, St. Vincent’s. What’s it to you?”

 

“I was thinking you might’ve stopped by Mount Sinai or Metropolitan. That’s a lot closer, isn’t it?”

 

“I was going
downtown
on the train.” Hoolian flexed his fingers, trying to appear unfazed. “Look, I don’t think you should be here. You got anything to say to me, you should say it through my lawyer. Otherwise, it’s ex parte.”

 

“Ex parte?”
Loughlin stuck his lip out, pretending to be impressed in that familiar unnerving way. “You really must have been hitting the law library when you were upstate.”

 

“It’s
improper
for you to be talking to me outside of court. How’s that?”

 

“Oh, I got you the first time. But this is still an active investigation and I am still the primary.”

 

“Yeah. So, what do you want?” Hoolian put his shoulders back and shook out his arms. “You wanna finish that beef we started upstate?”

 

“Nah, I’m ready to let that go.” Loughlin reached inside his jacket and pulled out a long Q-Tip in a clear plastic wrapper. “Can’t keep licking old wounds.”

 

“What the fuck is that?”

 

“It’s a swab stick for DNA.”

 

“Man, get out of here with that crap.” Hoolian swatted the air between them. “You could’ve called my lawyer’s office and we would’ve made an appointment at the lab to give you a sample.”

 

Loughlin shrugged. “Look, I don’t know how they handle specimens there. People try all kinds of things. I’ve seen guys tape squirt sacks under their dicks so they can use somebody else’s piss in a drug test. But on my watch, I’m going to make damn sure everything is done according to Hoyle.”

 

“Well, I’m not doing shit until I call my lawyer.”

 

“Hey, bro, I thought you wanted this. What are you afraid of?”

 

“I’m not afraid of anything. I just don’t trust you. You’re the cocksucker who set me up in the first place. Why couldn’t they send another detective?”

 

He went into a dark adjacent room to get more boxes and noticed that Loughlin stumbled as he tried to follow him.

 

“It’s still my case,” he said.

 

“They must not be giving you anything else to work on, you got all this time to fuck with me.”

 

Loughlin looked strangely distracted for a moment, as if he’d been eavesdropping on a snatch of conversation in the other room.

 

“Lemme ask you something, Hoolian.”

 

“It’s Julian. Call me by my right name.”

 

“O-kay,
Joo
-lian.” He made his lips into a little circle of contempt. “The judge allowed your four-forty motion because your lawyer allegedly never told you that you had the right to testify in your own case.”

 

“Yeah. I was a kid. How would I know?”

 

“I’m just kind of curious then. What exactly would you have said if you got up there?”

 

Hoolian put a box on the floor and stomped on it, knowing he shouldn’t be letting the cop rev his motor again. “I’m not gonna get into that with you. That’s what I got a lawyer for.”

 

“Come on now, amigo. Just you and me talking, off the record.”

 

Loughlin almost tripped over a recycle bag full of Poland Spring water empties; Hoolian wondered if he’d been drinking.

 

“Fuck you. I’m not a little boy anymore.” Hoolian stomped another box, the coil in his head starting to glow red. “You can’t play me like that this time.”

 

“Who’s playing anybody? I’m talking about what your public sworn testimony would’ve been. If you wanted to say it in court, what’s the big secret?”

 

“You wanna know what I would’ve said?”

 

He heard a whistle rising in his ears as he looked down and saw the cardboard hadn’t collapsed correctly.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You really want to know?” He took out his knife and started ripping at the sides.

 

“I can’t wait.”

 

“I would’ve told everyone how bad you flaked me, you piece a shit.”

 

———

 

This room was even dimmer. Francis tried to stay attuned and alert to how Hoolian’s voice was moving around the space, coming at him from different angles.

 

“Is that
still
your story?” He waggled his eyebrows, the merry Irishman not letting on that anything was akmiss.

 

“You and me both know what you did.”

 

Francis saw a silvery flash in the dark and realized Hoolian was holding a blade.

 

“And did
I
put your fingerprints on the murder weapon?” he said coolly. “Did I
beat
you into confessing you used your key to go in and out of her apartment when she wasn’t there?”

 

“You put me in that box all day and kept my father from seeing me. I asked for a fucking lawyer.”

 

“So, that would’ve been your testimony? That I
set you up?
” Francis smiled like he had a dog licking his face. “Dude, who do you think is going to be more credible to a Manhattan jury? Me with more than twenty-five years on the Job and a half-dozen commendations, or you with twenty years in the can?”

 

“What the fuck you smiling about, man? You think that’s funny?”

 

Metal winked less than a foot from Francis’s eyes.

 

“I seriously think you might want to be more careful waving that blade around,” he said, trying to follow its movements through the grayish light.

 

“What?” Hoolian held the knife up in front of his own face. “Oh, you afraid of this now? You call this a deadly weapon?”

 

“Doesn’t look like a loofah to me.”

 

“A . . . ?” Hoolian looked confused. “So, what, you’re gonna shoot me because I’m cutting boxes?”

 

Francis tried to judge the distance between them. “You don’t want to be seen threatening an officer.”

 

“Oh, yeah, like I’m really threatening you.” The blade’s gleam blinded Francis for a second.

 

He tugged back the side of his jacket, so he could reach his Glock more easily. “You’re making me a little nervous here, Hoolian. Don’t be talking wild. I heard about what you did up in Attica.”

 

“Yeah, what the fuck you know about that?” Hoolian made a quicksilver slit in the darkness.

 

“I know Fat Raymond lost a kidney because of that shiv you stuck in him,” said Francis, refusing to be intimidated.

 

“Because that
hijo de gran puta
wouldn’t stop his girlfriend from blowing smoke in my father’s face in the visiting room. And my old man had a fucking tank of oxygen for his emphysema.”

 

“How long did they put you in the bing for that?”

 

“A month. I missed my father’s funeral.”

 

“Poor Hoolian. Always the victim.”

 

“He died by himself, man. I never even got to say good-bye to him.”

 

“And whose fault was that supposed to be?”

 

“Far as I’m concerned, it was yours.” The knife was shaking in Hoolian’s hand. “Treat a man like an animal long enough, he’ll become an animal.”