Smoke (10 page)

Jesamyn noticed that he shifted between referring to his sister in the past and present tense, as if he were struggling with hope and despair.

“When was the last time you saw her?” asked Matt.

“Saturday night. I was heading out with my boys. She was staying home. The baby was making her tired. Alonzo kept calling, wanted her to go to the clubs. She kept telling him no, she didn’t want to. He kept calling. After a while, she stopped answering the phone. As I was leaving, I heard him say on the answering machine, ‘I’m bringing the Escalade to come get you, bitch. You
best
be ready.’ That’s how he talked to her, man. And she just
took
it.”

“No signs of struggle here at the apartment?”

“
Shit
,” he said, drawing the word out. “I already told the police all of this.”

“As I mentioned, in the absence of any solid leads on Rosario, we’re reinterviewing people to see if there’s something we missed the first time around,” said Matt.

The kid sighed heavily, frustration and anger coming off of him in waves. He leaned back on the couch.

“No, it was neat and clean the way she liked it. All the lights were out. The clothes she was wearing when I left were folded on her bed. I figured she just changed and went out to avoid a fight.”

“What was she wearing when you left?” asked Jesamyn.

“Some, like, gray baggy nightgown thing. Ugly as shit but she said it was comfortable.”

“Okay,” said Jesamyn, jotting it down. “Is there anything else about that night that you remember?”

“I remember thinking I should stay home with her. That’s what I remember,” he said, the tears rolling now. “I should have stayed home with her.”

He started to sob and Matt moved over to him, placed a hand on his shoulder. It was kind of a risky thing to do but the kid had no visible reaction. After a minute, he looked up at Matt.

“I haven’t seen anything on television about her, you know that? That pregnant white girl in California? You couldn’t turn on the television without seeing her face. I haven’t seen one picture of my sister anywhere. A Latina girl from the projects goes missing, no one cares.”

Matt and Jesamyn stood silent for a second. There was no use arguing about it; they all knew the truth.

“We care,” said Matt finally. And Jesamyn knew how deeply he meant it. She loved him a little bit for that.

Y
ou were good with him,” she said in the car, as they pulled out of their space. They’d come back to the Caprice, surprised to see that it hadn’t been vandalized in any way. Often when you parked a patrol car,
marked or unmarked, in the projects you came back to find it covered with eggs or spray paint, maybe vegetables, whatever was handy.

“He’s a kid. She was basically his mother,” he said. “I feel for him.”

Baby Boy was the last of three reinterviews they’d done that afternoon and Mount was consistently kind and respectful, in spite of the abuse that was hurled at them. The next-door neighbor called them “pigs” under his stinking breath when they’d come to the door. A lot of cops would have reacted, but Mount kept calling him sir, speaking in that mellow way he had. Rosario’s best friend Angelica had taunted Mount about his height, wondering out loud if everything about him was so big. Mount had turned bright red but kept his respectful, easy manner. Jesamyn wondered, did it roll off of him or did he hold it inside?

“You’re a big softie,” she said, patting him on the knee.

The sun was hanging low in the sky, painting it a light pink and orange visible above the building tops.

“I gotta get moving,” she said, looking at her watch. “I told Ben we’d have dinner together tonight. Want to join us?”

“I’d love to, but I think I’m going to see what came back on that partial plate.”

She nodded. She knew Lily Samuels had never left his mind the whole afternoon. The case was with her, too, but not in the same way. It was weighing on Mount’s heart.

“Don’t sleep here again tonight, okay?”

He nodded. “I won’t.”

She didn’t believe him.

T
he search Matt ran on the partial plate and description came back with twenty-eight hits. Twenty-eight black SUVs with license plates beginning with H57 in the New York area. He made a quick scan of the list, plugged a couple of the names into VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database administered by the FBI, and through the New York system. None of the owners came back with any warrants or criminal records. Nothing else obvious popped. The only thing that caught his attention was a black Navigator belonging to a Michele LaForge that had a couple of outstanding parking tickets. He pulled up
her license photo, didn’t recognize her, but printed it anyway for the file. It was nothing; he knew that. He had nothing. Two weeks ago he could have followed up with every one of these people. Just poked around, saw what shook loose. Now, he’d be lucky if he could get to one or two a day over the next few weeks.

He rubbed his eyes when the computer screen started to swim. His frustration, the lack of sleep from the night before, and a totally shit day were taking their toll. It was time to go home.

“Sorry, Lily,” he said to her picture. He was wiped, no good to her or anyone. That was the thing about this job; you could just go and go until you dropped. You never felt right about going home to bed when someone was missing. You could never feel okay about just relaxing, chilling in front of the television, letting your mom cook you some dinner. You did it, you just never felt good about it. At least that’s how
he
felt. Jesamyn had something important in her life, Benjamin. Something that was equally important, more important than the job. She went home at the end of the day without guilt. He envied her that.

Last year he’d been diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer. His doctor, who’d been treating him since he was fourteen years old, had issued a stern warning about stress and its effects on the body, short and long term. So he’d quit smoking, stopped eating fast food, and took the medication his doctor prescribed. For a while, he’d even worked out, but that hadn’t lasted. He had started to feel that burn in his stomach again two nights ago. It was like an existential alarm. When he was pushing himself too hard, he got a painful warning.

He slid the file under his arm and lumbered down the stairs.

“Go home will ya’, Mount,” said Ray Labriola, a narcotics guy who passed him on the stairs. “You’re making the rest of us look bad.”

“I’m taking off,” said Mount, looking at his watch. Nearly nine. “Have a good one.”

“You too, brother,” said Ray.

The night was cold as he stepped outside, the street strangely quiet. A wind blew the fallen leaves around him as he walked to his brand-new Dodge Ram pickup. He slid into the comfortable leather interior with ease. It was the first vehicle he’d ever owned that didn’t feel like a ridiculously small clown car to him. He felt almost normal in it. He turned
the car on and all the dials and digital readouts glowed a nifty red and blue. Tiny ram heads lit up in various places. He loved his new car. He let the engine warm up as he took the cellular phone from his pocket.

“Mom?”

“Mateo! So late,” said his mother, her Greek accent still thick even after thirty-five years in New York. “Where are you?”

“Working, Ma. Whaddaya think?”

“I worry,” she said with a dramatic sigh. He knew she watched New York One News all night until she knew he was off duty. She waited to hear if any police officers had been hurt or killed. It had been worse for her when he was on patrol. She thought of detective work as “white shirt” police work, safe and intellectual. She meant “white collar.”

“I keep a plate for you.”

“Thanks, Ma. I’ll be a while still. Don’t wait.”

“We haven’t seen you in two days,” she said. “Remember your ulcer.”

“I know,” he said gently. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He heard his father’s voice and could picture him lying beside her in bed, the television on. “Tell him not to forget alternate side of the street parking tomorrow.”

“You hear, Mateo?”

“Yeah, Ma. I heard. Good night.”

Every night, his father felt compelled to remind him to move the car from one side of the street to the other lest he should get a parking ticket. Every night since he got his first car.

He lived beside his parents in a two-family house in Brooklyn. So while he wasn’t
exactly
a thirty-six-year-old man who lived with his parents, he kind of was. They had separate living spaces but his mother still did his laundry, cleaned his place, and cooked most of his meals. This, he perceived, was yet another mark against him in the dating arena. His younger brother, Theo, lived two row houses down on the same block with his pretty wife, Anne, and his two fantastic kids Maura and little Mateo, named after his uncle.

He dialed another number and then rolled out of the lot.

“Ms. Strong,” he said when she answered.

“Detective, good to hear from you,” she said amiably. He heard victory in her voice. He liked her in spite of her smug attitude. He liked her confidence and determination, qualities he knew most men found unattractive.

“I have something for you,” he said. “Can I drop it by? Will you meet me on the street?”

“Sure,” she said. “Are you on your way?”

“I’ll be there in two minutes.”

S
he was waiting in front of her door on Great Jones Street when he pulled up, shivering in her leather jacket and jeans. He pushed the door open for her and she climbed inside.

“Big car,” she said. He figured her for one of those liberals who thought no one should be driving an SUV.

“I’m a big guy,” he said. She smiled.

He handed her the folder and told her what he’d learned from Thelma Baker that morning. Over the next five minutes, he related the salient features of the case, which wasn’t much.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked when he was finished.

Lydia Strong had burned him earlier. What she’d said about him caring more about his ego and protecting his turf than about Lily. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want her to believe that.

“I’m out of time. And so is Lily. Like you said, you have better resources than I do. I can’t give you my case file; besides, there’s nothing of much use to you there.” He nodded toward the folder. “Those are the first real leads I’ve had in two weeks and I don’t have time to follow up on them. Lily deserves someone to look into who was driving that car.”

Lydia looked at him. “She does. And I will. Do you want me to keep you informed?”

“Please,” he said with a nod. “Please do. I wrote my cell phone number in there. Don’t call me at the station. And I have a copy of that list. I’ll be following up on my own time, as well.”

“Just one question,” she said. “How much time did you spend looking into Mickey’s life?”

He shook his head slightly. “Her brother. Not much, really. Why?”

“Just wondering. There was a girlfriend. She and Lily didn’t get along.”

He shook his head. “I’ve been looking at Lily’s life, retracing her steps, talking to the people that knew her best. I did some cursory looking into Mickey’s life up there but I never met a girlfriend. Never came across anything that led me to believe his suicide and Lily’s disappearance were connected.”

She was quiet for a second but turned her gray eyes on him. She said slowly, “Other than that’s the reason she went up there in the first place.”

He thought about it a second. Then, “Right. But if I got hit by a car on my way to the grocery store, you wouldn’t go to the grocery store looking for the driver of the car that hit me.”

“Unless the driver was trying to stop you from getting what you were looking for at the store,” said Lydia.

He’d never thought about it that way. “Well,” he said, for lack of anything better coming to mind.

After a second: “Well, thanks, Detective. You’re doing the right thing for Lily.”

Something about the way the light from the streetlamp hit her then made her look very young—too young to be who she was. The light glinted off her blue-black hair and made her pale skin luminous. There was a simmering intensity to her that he recognized, a fierce desire to put the pieces together. He saw those things in her and he respected her for it. He didn’t know enough about her to know what put the fire in her. He’d heard rumors about a murdered mother but he didn’t know whether that was the truth or not.

She got out of the car then without another word, tucking the folder under her arm. He watched her cross the street. She was about five-six, five-seven with strong, straight shoulders. She walked with the confidence of a woman who knew how to take care of herself. She was lean but with a fabulous fullness about her hips and breasts. She looked strong, fit but he knew her body would be soft, womanly. So many women seemed emaciated to him lately, as if they were being strangled by this terrible need to be thin. His mother had always said, “A woman
who can’t feed herself, can’t love herself. And if she can’t love herself, she can’t love you.” He’d always thought it was kind of this funny mix of old and new world values; but that was his mother. Meanwhile, his cousins with their lusty Mediterranean bodies were forever battling their natural shape and curves, trying to fit into a society that wanted women to be as small and quiet as possible. He loved them for their big personalities, their passions, and their full bodies. They were some of the most beautiful women he knew.

He waited until Lydia was inside the door and then he pulled out into traffic.

He took the phone from his pocket and dialed. He listened as the phone on the other end rang, praying he wouldn’t get voicemail.

“Hello,” purred a warm female voice.

“Katrina,” he said, and the taste of her name on his tongue aroused him.

“Is that you, Mateo?” She sounded breathlessly glad to hear from him. But that was all part of the show, wasn’t it?

“Are you busy?” he asked.

“Never too busy for you,” she said softly. “When can I expect you?”

W
hat did he want?” asked Jeffrey as she walked back into her office. He was sitting on her couch, sifting through articles Lily had written in the last year pulled from LexisNexis. He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. They’d been reading for hours. They weren’t sure what they were looking for exactly. They just wanted to know where Lily’s head had been at before her brother had died. Lydia sat back down beside him and he dropped his arm around her shoulder. She rested against his body.