The Whites: A Novel (28 page)

“Wait, this is after you first heard the
pop pop pop
?”

“Yeah.”

“So the
pop pop pop
was someone else?”

“Which
pop pop pop
.”

“The first. The one that made you go to the window.”

“Yeah.”

“Then the guy got out of his car and shot his trunk.”

“No, then the second
pop pop pop
. I didn’t see no one shooting, but the driver like jumped to the side of the trunk when the shots went off, and then the third
pop pop pop
was the driver shooting back.”

“Into his trunk.”

“Yeah.”

“Like what, returning fire?”

“Returning fire, yeah.”

“So like somebody was shooting at him from inside the trunk?”

“Could be,” offering the blunt across the oilcloth-topped table, Billy demurely passing. “Then he shot back.”

“So the driver came out of the car with a gun.”

“Didn’t I say that?”

“It was already in his hand?”

“I guess so.”

“What did he look like?”

“Who, the driver?”

Billy waited.

“I couldn’t say.”

“First thing that comes to your mind.”

Castro closed his eyes. “He had white hair.”

“An old guy?”

“No, he had white hair, you know, straight hair.”

“So a white guy?”

“Could have been.”

“Not Latino.”

“Could’ve been.”

“Black?”

“I don’t think so, but could’ve been.”

“So you didn’t get a look at his face?”

“Couldn’t see it, because it’s like a straight-down view from up here, that’s how I know about the hair.”

“Clothes?”

“Some kind of coat, I don’t know. Shoes.”

“How about the gun.”

“From the sound of it, I’d say a single-action .38 ’cause of the rhythm of the shots, you know,
pop pop pop
.”

“You know your firearms?”

Castro inhaled again, blew out enough smoke to announce a pope.

“Not really.”

“Tell me about the car.”

“Had a trunk, that’s all I remember.”

“So . . .” Billy hesitated, then: “No chance it could have been an SUV?”

“Could have been.”

“You know,” Billy leaned forward across the small table, “I asked you maybe ten questions, all I’m getting back from you is ‘could’ve been’s.”

“Hey, Officer,” Castro leaning forward right back at him, “I’m looking down six stories, three in the morning, high as a fuckin’ kite. I think I did pretty good here, wouldn’t you say?”

Milton Ramos

Marilys, watch!” Sofia shouted, blow-darting the torn wrapper hanging from her straw across the small table into her father’s chest.

“Don’t call her Marilys anymore,” Milton said.

“Why not?”

Marilys caught his eye: Go slow.

They had never gone out of the house as a threesome before, and this dinner at Applebee’s was something of a test drive. The waitress arrived with their dinner orders, Double Barrel Whisky Sirloin for him, Double Crunch Shrimp for the lady, and a Fiesta-Chopped Chicken and Spinach Salad for Sofia, who immediately went into a jaw-quivering sulk.

“How would you like Marilys to come live with us?” he said.

“Yah! Yah! Yah!” His daughter shouting up a storm again.

“Easy, easy,” he winced, although the din level of the room approached that of a machine shop.

“Can she sleep with me?”

Milton looked at his fiancée, a half-smile threatening to break across his face.

Scraping off the breading, Marilys put one of her deep-fried shrimps on Sofia’s plate. “So this is it, I’m not working for you anymore?” she said.

“Of course not.”

“But we’re not getting married until next month, you said.”

“So?”

“So I can work for you until then.”

“Are you serious? I want you to go home and pack your stuff. I’ll come by tomorrow with a van and move you in.”

“I have a lease.”

“Don’t worry about your lease.”

“So what do I do then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I do once I move in?”

“Nothing. You know, just be with me, take care of Sofia and the house.”

“Sounds like my job but without pay.”

Milton blushed. “If you want I’ll get you a housekeeper, how’s that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“All I’m trying to say is, you’ll never have to worry about money again.”

“I don’t want anybody working for me,” she said. “That’s crazy.”

“It’s up to you.”

Marilys stopped eating, stared at her plate. “I got a better idea.”

“What’s that.”

“Can I say?”

Milton waited.

“My mother.”

“Your mother.”

“If she comes to live with us, she can help me with Sofia and the baby. And she loves to clean.”

“Your mother . . .”

“All I have to do is go back and get her.”

“To Guatemala?”

“She’s never been on a plane before.”

Sofia quietly took a shrimp off Marilys’s plate, dipped it in the ketchup atop her father’s fries, neither of them reacting.

“You don’t want her to?” Marilys said. “It’s your house.”

“Our house.”

“Well, you’re the man of it, so whatever you say goes.”

Sofia took another shrimp, a handful of fries.

“Excuse me for a minute,” Milton said, then rose from the table, Marilys tracking him with anxious eyes as he made his way to the front door.

A wife and two kids, OK,
Milton mulling it over as he paced the empty parking lot.

But the mother-in-law . . . 

Then:
Think of it like this: drop the “in-law” part and that leaves you with “mother.”

Which, given that he had just lost his aunt Pauline, the closest thing he’d had to one, was not so bad.

When he returned to the table, he found Marilys, apparently having lost her appetite, feeding the rest of her breaded dinner to Sofia piece by piece.

“She’s good with kids?” Milton asked.

“She raised me. Raised my sons too.”

“How about otherwise.”

“Not great.”

“Pain in the ass?”

“Kind of.”

Sofia had become way too quiet, Milton wondering if it was ever possible to truly talk over a kid’s head.

To repeat . . . New mother, new wife, new son, all in one swoop.

Then, studying his already-child, working her way through the rest of his untouched fries:
New grandmother, too.

“All right,” he said, lightly slapping the table, “go get her.”

Marilys put a hand to her heart, huffed in relief. “When should I go?”

“How about tomorrow? I’ll cover the airfare.”

“I swear to God”—touching his hand—“if you don’t like her she can go right back, it’s not like she doesn’t have family.”

“Just go get her.”

“I can save you money on the tickets,” she said excitedly, “my cousin’s a travel agent.”

“Well, there you go,” wishing she’d gone and come back already.

Marilys leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth again, which this time made him tense up given that his daughter was right there.

“Oh, Milton,” Marilys saying his name for the second time in his life.

“Oh, Milton,” Sofia aped, her eyes as lightless as pebbles.

Later that night it took him most of a bottle of Chartreuse to work up the resolve to quit drinking. He had never been anybody’s idea of a light drinker, but since the day he first saw the adult Carmen in St. Ann’s, he’d gone completely off the rails, each night worse than the last, waking up every morning on the couch wondering how the one a.m. sports recap had morphed into cartoons.

Well, no excuse for that now, Milton pouring what remained of the bottle into the sink.

Still drunk on the liquor that hadn’t gone down the drain, he took to wandering the house in order to start reassigning rooms: his first wife’s sewing nook now a nursery for his son, the sometime fuck-pad guest room—no need for that anymore—going to his mother-in-law, as well as the nearest of the three bathrooms, hers alone. What else. Divide the den and make a playroom. All the hallway closets going to all the ladies. Then, running out of steam, he finally headed off for his own bedroom, walking in and seeing it for the first time as the gray cell it had become.

Chapter 11

A five a.m. after-hours bar shooting in Inwood kept Billy on the job until ten in the morning, and when he finally made it home at eleven, still pondering his interview with Ramlear Castro, he was startled to see TARU techs everywhere. To cover the block from intersection to intersection, they were mounting Argus cameras on telephone poles, as well as on the house itself, the buzz and whine of all this work chasing away any hope he had of immediate sleep.

Thirty minutes later, as he was standing at the kitchen counter flipping through the
New York Post
and sipping his morning Cape Codder, Pavlicek called. This time Billy picked up.

“You’re screening my calls?”

“What?” Billy too tired to come up with any coherent excuse.

“Look, I was just trying to reach out to apologize for getting so crazed on you yesterday. It’s just that I have so much shit raining down on my head right now I might wind up moving in there with you.”

“In where with me.” Looking out the kitchen window, Billy spotted Whelan and his sleepover date making out on the kids’ trampoline.

“Are you serious?” Pavlicek said quietly.

Christ,
Billy recalling that barren, echo chamber of an apartment with the stadium view.

“Speaking of which, I talked to my guys and I can have it ready for you day after tomorrow. All you’ll need are towels and sheets.”

“‘My guys.’ You’re always talking about your guys,” Billy stalled. “The only guys I have are my kids.”

“Yeah well, you have your squad, too.”

Billy put the phone to his chest. Just say it.

“Hey, John, I’m sorry to put you through all that trouble, but I talked it over with Carmen, and we’re going to make a home stand.”

Silence on the other end, then: “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, Intel sent over a Threat Assessment Team, TARU’s out there right now putting up cameras, Yonkers PD is running directed patrols, it’s like the fortress of solitude over here. It’s nuts to pull up stakes.”

Another bloated pause. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “I mean, given the circumstances.”

“Because you don’t sound like you.”

“Yeah? Who do I sound like?” Then telling himself, Don’t strain for jokes.

“You’re not ticked because I lost it over Sweetpea, are you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Is that why you weren’t taking my calls?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Billy said.

Whelan and his tenant, still in a kissing clinch, came into the kitchen through the rear door.

“I mean, how hung up are you over that skell?”

“John, I’m not hung up on him, I was just curious,” Billy said carefully. “And now I’m not. Listen, I got to go feed the kids, I’ll call you later.”

“Just another Smirnoff morning,” Whelan announced, nodding to the bottle.

“It’s either that or chloroform,” Billy said.

The tenant went silently to the refrigerator, took out the milk, and poured some into a saucepan that was already sitting on a back burner.

“Hung up on who,” Whelan asked.

“What?” Billy stalling once again.

“You said, ‘I’m not hung up on him.’”

“Sweetpea Harris,” Billy said. “He’s gone AWOL, and I think he bought the farm.”

“No shit,” Whelan pouring himself a coffee. “And John’s giving you grief over that? What for?”

Billy took another sip of his drink.

“Do me a favor and tell me something,” he said. “The other day, when I asked you why you were so hung up on Pavlicek . . .”

“Me?” Whelan reared back.

“You never answered my question.”

“What question.”

“Why you were all over me about Pavlicek.”

“How was I all over you?”

Billy stared at him. “Jimmy, do you know something I don’t?”