Slipping Into Darkness (39 page)

 

“What are you doing here?” Nita intercepted him at the bowl of mints by the register.

 

“I got thrown out of my halfway house,” he said, clutching the duffel bag he’d retrieved from the lot in Red Hook this morning. “They said I was having ‘a negative influence on the atmosphere’ because of all the bad press.”

 

“What happened?” She looked at the bump he still had on his brow from head-butting Nicky. “They arrested you again for this other girl?”

 

“No, Nita, listen, I swear I had nothing to do with any of that. They’re just out to get me. It’s a setup, to cover for what they did. . . .”

 

He saw her lids grow heavy; the more he talked, the less she wanted to hear from him.

 

“Look, I just need a place to stay for a little while. They had me down at the Bellevue shelter last night, and it was just too scary. All the guys in the other beds staring at me and the guards talking about me behind my back. I was afraid to go in the bathroom. It was like being in prison again, except worse because I don’t even have a cell to hide out in. I was just out in the open, where anyone could get me.”

 

“Well, you can’t stay here again.” Nita tucked a pen behind her ear. “My boss found out about it last time and almost fired my ass.”

 

“Then maybe I could go home with you, just for a couple of nights. I’ll sleep on the floor, I’ll sleep in the tub. I don’t care. . . .”

 

“No, baby, I can’t do that for you.”

 

He waited for her to explain, but she didn’t. Not even an excuse that her apartment was too small. She just didn’t want to be alone with him.

 

“Then I don’t know where I’m gonna go tonight.” He flapped his arms. “I can’t go back to that shelter. I’ll wake up with a shiv in my chest.”

 

“But what happened to your case? I thought you were going to go prove you didn’t kill that first girl and all that.”

 

“I tried, but I got kind of sidetracked. Things came up. I got a job, met a girl. Shit happens. . . .”

 

It was his own fault, he realized. If he’d been able to maintain that same 24/7 sense of vigilance he’d had in prison, he would’ve been all right. But no, he had to let his guard down. He had to let himself get seduced by an illusion. He’d forgotten he was still in the cage.

 

“Who was the girl?” she asked.

 

“What?”

 

“You said you got mixed up with a girl.” Her eyes narrowed on the little flesh-colored Band-Aid that had replaced the gauze on the back of his hand. “That’s not this other doctor they’re talking about in the news, is it?”

 

“
No.
Shit. Nita. Listen to what I’m trying to tell you, will you? I know everybody who’s been in prison says they’re innocent. But I’m
really
innocent.”

 

A bell rang from the kitchen pass-through and a cook appeared in the slot, pointing down at a garden burger on a bed of wilted lettuce.

 

“You gotta help me, Nita, I’m serious. You remember me from back in the day. I was a good boy. They got all these crazy ideas about what went on between Allison and me. Maybe you can just tell them that after I left her apartment I came downstairs and played checkers with you.”

 

“You want me to lie and say I was with you when she got killed twenty years ago?”

 

“We used to hang out sometimes, didn’t we?”

 

She shook her head, the net of lines slowly tightening over her face as if someone had pulled a drawstring on them. “I’m sorry, baby. I can’t do that for you.”

 

“Shit.”

 

He hunched forward and held himself. It felt like he had hot oil leaking from his guts.

 

Another waitress rushed up to the register and frantically started punching in numbers. A lady with twins in a double stroller cruised up with a check and a fifty in hand, forcing Hoolian to step to the side.

 

“Well, could you maybe front me a little cash ’til I get paid again?” he asked, raising his head up. “I’m between jobs, but I’m good for it. You know that, don’t you?”

 

“Julian, I’m barely scraping by on tips myself. Haven’t you been talking to your father’s union to see if you’re due any benefits?”

 

“I been trying, but those motherfuckers won’t return my letters or phone calls.”

 

“Then I don’t know what to tell you. . . .”

 

The cash drawer shot open with a jolt and the lady with the double stroller put her hand out for change.

 

Something. He needed
something
to hold himself together. He was getting so scared and paranoid that he no longer trusted his most basic perceptions from one moment to the next or his ability to react to things rationally.

 

The waitress started counting out singles and putting them in the lady’s outstretched palm.
Two, three, four
. . . It was inevitable. He was going back upstate, no matter what he did. He was just a dog, low and feral, only dreaming of being off the leash.

 

He thought of just grabbing the money out of the lady’s hand, knocking her down, and shoving the stroller out of the way as he ran out of here. Knowing full well he’d be caught by the time he reached the subway. But at least then it would be over. They would arrest him and send him away again, and that would be that. His destiny would be fulfilled. People would nod their heads sagely and say,
Well, of course.
And maybe then he could finally stub out that last little glowing ember of hope that had kept him from slipping all the way into darkness, like the guy in that old War song.

 

But then he felt a tug just below his waist, and looked down to see Nita stuffing a pair of folded twenties into his pants pocket.

 

“Get out of here,” she murmured as the bald-headed manager hurried by. “And don’t come back no more. You used me up.”

 

He pushed the money the rest of the way into his pocket, grabbed a fistful of stale mints from the silver bowl, and left.

 

 

47

 

 

 

FRANCIS EASED OFF on the brake, following the morgue wagon past the tombstone multitudes and out through the grand Gothic archway, leaving the eternal peace of Cricklewood Cemetery for the bumper-to-bumper hip-hop-and-holler cacophony of Fourth Avenue.

 

“So you were talking to Scottie Ferguson about this, huh?” He adjusted the rearview.

 

“He was standing there, videotaping the backhoe, and he asked me a simple question.” Paul fidgeted in the passenger seat. “You want me to say, ‘It’s business as usual’?”

 

“I just hate to think anybody’s trying to pass the buck here.” He turned the wheel, remembering how Paul had been pointing at him at the graveside.

 

“Nobody’s passing the buck, Francis. Don’t be paranoid.”

 

He followed the ME’s van down toward Fort Hamilton Parkway, headed for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Huge rattling oil trucks and minivans shot out of his blind spots on either side, veering dangerously close and cutting into the lane in front of him without putting their signals on.

 

“Paranoid is not necessarily a bad thing in this case,” he said, looking quickly over his shoulder. “Can you imagine what would happen if it got out to the press that we dug this girl up?”

 

“Hey, look out, you’re about to hit a traffic cone.”

 

“I see it.” Francis swerved.

 

“I’m just saying there’s no need for us to turn on each other.”

 

“Absolutely, Judge. If one of us goes down, the rest of us do.”

 

They stopped at a light before the tow bridge, the Gowanus Canal rippling its green scales below them. Back in the eighties, Francis had been on a barge with Harbor Patrol when they dredged out a corpse, everyone saying they were surprised it didn’t have fins after a few days facedown in that toxic brew. Now they were flushing out the greasy old vein, and supposedly there were already blue crabs and jellyfish down there, a whole new ecosystem beginning. This city. You could never really say any part of it was dead for good.

 

“So, what do you think?”

 

Francis watched the morgue wagon idling in front of them. “You mean if it turns out that the girl we dug up isn’t Allison?”

 

“I’m not afraid to tell you, I’m scared.” Paul pumped his leg up and down, as if he had his own pedals. “What if it turns out the mother’s been right all along that it’s somebody else’s remains?”

 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Could be a lot of other explanations.”

 

“Like what?”

 

Francis, listening to the vibrations of the engine, said nothing.

 

“What’s up with her anyway, the mother?” asked Paul. “She was always a little spooky, but what was that business about giving you the DNA in the handkerchief? I thought you got it from her on the sly.”

 

“I thought I did too. But I guess she was way ahead of me.”

 

“So you thinking she knows more than she’s been saying?”

 

“I’ve had a hintch for a while.” Francis stepped on the gas as the light changed.

 

“A what?”

 

“A hintch. It’s halfway between a hint and a hunch.”

 

“So, what is it? You still think there’s another daughter?”

 

“I was just looking at a box of medical records from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt from about a year and a half ago, when Christine Rogers was doing her residency in the ER there.”

 

“Yeah, and?”

 

“Could be nothing. But she was on duty the same night they brought Eileen Wallis in for eating half a bottle of Valium and chasing them with a couple of glasses of Bordeaux.”

 

He heard a loud thump from Paul’s side of the car but didn’t dare to look over.

 

“You’re shitting me.”

 

“I shit you not.” He moved the mirror once more and saw Paul looking nauseous. “Listen, it’s a big hospital and she wasn’t the doctor who treated Eileen that night. But it’s definitely bothering me. I got Rashid and a couple of the other guys trying to run down the staff and see if anybody saw these two talking to each other.”

 

“And what if they did? What would it mean?”

 

“I don’t know. Fuckin’ weird coincidence, if that’s all it is.”

 

They crossed over the bridge, the suspension shimmying as the tires rolled over the ironwork. It had been there from the start, Francis realized. Maybe not even a
hintch,
but a very slight
hitch.
He’d seen it for probably less than an eighth of a second twenty years ago when he’d asked Eileen if she wanted to view the body. A kind of momentary blankness that came over her. As if she were erasing one face before she came up with a more appropriate one to show the world.

 

“I’ll tell you one thing we are doing, though,” he said.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I called up Dr. Dave at the ME’s and asked him to run Eileen’s profile against Christine Rogers’s DNA.”

 

“What?!”
Paul’s seat vinyl squeaked. “You think
they’re
related?”

 

“Anything’s possible, man. She was an adopted girl, looking for her mother in the city. I’m still wide-open.”

 

“Oh shit.” The whole balance of the car seemed to shift with Paul sinking down into his seat. “Now you’re the one who’s scaring me, Francis. You got anything else you been holding back on me?”

 

“Nothing that comes to mind immediately.”

 

Two lanes were closed for construction ahead of them and cars began to merge recklessly. He lost sight of the morgue wagon behind an Access-A-Ride minibus for the handicapped.

 

“Don’t go nuts on me, Paul. I got no proof of anything. I don’t even have a theory yet. It’s just something to keep our eye on.”

 

“Hey, Francis.”

 

“What?”

 

“I think you just missed our exit.”

 

 

48

 

 

 

EVEN MORE JITTERY after spending a night trying to sleep on the A train, Hoolian showed up that morning at the offices of his father’s old union, Local 32BJ, just north of Canal, where the streets splayed out like the extended blades of a Swiss Army knife. With a certain amount of wheedling and brandishing of old letterheads and IDs, he managed to talk his way up to the twentieth floor, where the East Side delegates had their offices.

 

He wound up outside a gray cubicle, its flannel walls adorned with a “Justice for Janitors” poster and a pennant for the Coqui Soccer Club in Puerto Rico.

 

A heavyset man in a boxy suit sat behind a large desk with an old green doorman’s cap resting on the far right corner. He had a lumpy omelet face, glasses as thick as a World War I pilot’s goggles, and a ring that looked like it had been detached from a set of brass knuckles on his left hand. If he ever took his jacket off, Hoolian was sure there would be half-moons of sweat under his arms.

 

“Uh, Mr. Tavares?”

 

“Who wants to know?”

 

“They sent me up here from Payroll. They said you might be able to help me out.”

 

“Yeah, who’d you talk to down there?” The delegate’s eyes didn’t stray from his computer monitor.

 

“Carmen. She said I had to catch you before ten in the morning or after four in the afternoon, because the rest of the time you were out talking to the membership.”

 

“I’m going to have to have a word with Carmen.”

 

“Don’t give her a hard time.” Hoolian stepped into the cubicle and grabbed the back of a chair, trying to keep from getting swept out too quickly. “I’ve been bombarding her, trying to get a meeting. I just wanted to know about my father’s pension and benefits package.”

 

“What about it?”

 

“He worked in an A building on the East Side for twenty-two years, most of them as the super. I was trying to find out what the family was entitled to.”

 

“He still alive?”

 

“No. Died from emphysema and diabetes a few years ago.”

 

“Mother?”

 

“She’s been gone longer. Since ’70.”

 

“Then you got
nada,
my friend. There, that was easy.”

 

Hoolian squeezed the back of the chair with both hands, trying to take it in stride. This one little nugget of pride that he’d been protecting had just been stepped on and ground into dust. He looked at the doorman’s cap on the desk and had to bite the inside of his cheek, to keep from crying. Twenty-two years of service had no meaning, no value, no legacy that could be passed on to him.