Last Night

by Karen Ellis

  Thinking he recognizes Rivera, Lex pulls up the security footage and fast-forwards to a clip showing Dante and the unidentified man walking the streets of Red Hook several paces behind Crisp as the boy pulls the suitcase. Lex freezes the frame and compares the second man with the two mug shots. It’s definitely him.

  Lex moves on, farther down and backward into the criminal record. Guns most recently, drugs farther in the past, stolen goods peppered throughout. A headache comes on suddenly; he grinds his jaw, forces himself to stay awake.

  His eyes stop on a name.

  He rereads it, and it doesn’t change.

  The record details an arrest and dismissal on a charge of narcotics trafficking. Green’s partner in crime on that caper: a juvenile with a sealed record who turned state’s evidence in exchange for having the charges against him dropped.

  Amos Crespo.

  There it is: a buried connection, and possibly a lasting grudge, between the ex-con stalking Crisp on the footage and another teenager nearly twenty years ago. Is that why Green tried to push Jerome’s murder off on Crisp, when all the evidence points against it? To deliver a sideways payback for an old grievance by fingering a snitch’s son? Lex screenshots the page and saves it to a new file on the desktop labeled amos crespo.

  He splits the screen again and plugs Amos Crespo’s name into the system, initiating a global search through the national law enforcement databases, a collation of criminal and government agencies on every level. Usually what happens next is the screen fills with information ranging from arrest records to driver’s license to voter registration to residence history to IRS alerts, the bureaucratic trail of modern existence that maps every life. Almost always, results populate like rabbits…unless the name hasn’t been used in a very long time. According to this, Mo Crespo’s official life ended seventeen years ago. Two years after his son was born. About a year after he walked out on his family.

  Lex sits back and tries to take that in. When Katya Spielman said her ex-husband disappeared, she meant it literally.

  The only information connected with Mo’s identity is three employment records from his late teens, from working a variety of lowly restaurant jobs, busboy and the like; he never made it to waiter, at least not on the books. After that, he must have found a cash source of income, and if it was illegal he was very good at not getting caught. No driver’s license. The second to last official record for Crespo is the family court approval for a garnishment of his wages by his former wife. The last record is an address on Staten Island where he lived for one year.

  Lex sits back and mutters, “Huh.”

  “What?” Saki asks.

  “Crisp’s dad knew Dante Green in the bad old days, but then went his own way. How’s yours going?”

  “Trying to figure out what’s happening behind Fairway when the cameras stop. I have a feeling that if I can find the boy, I’ll find Glynnie.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “Funny about those headphones,” she says.

  “The Beats? Yeah, I noticed. First she’s got them, then the boy does.”

  “They shared them, like friends. But then no one has them. They vanish.”

  “The boy lost them,” Lex ventures, “or left them behind somewhere. Aren’t those things expensive?”

  “Yup. The Dreyfuses are obviously rich.”

  “Maybe Glynnie doesn’t care.”

  Saki nods, but doesn’t look convinced. “So, Crisp’s father—where is he now?”

  “Looks to me like Mo Crespo went underground as soon as his ex put a garnish on his paycheck.”

  “Typical deadbeat,” Saki says, then rephrases: “Not typical—I shouldn’t have said that. No one is typical. But irresponsible, for sure.”

  The words ring: No one is typical. Lex has seen investigators lose their way by thinking small and shallow, caricaturing being one of the best ways to misunderstand someone you want to know better…or someone you might want to find.

  “I wonder,” he thinks aloud, “if Crisp going over there, to the Houses, had something to do with his father’s past association with Green. Or if maybe Green sought Crisp out for some reason.”

  “Could be.”

  Lex glances at the monitor, the dead end where Mo Crespo falls off the face of the earth and out of the Internet—it’s as if he never even went on the Internet after it was unleashed to the general public, not for anything, not even once.

  “Probably took an alias,” Saki says. “I had that on a case one time. Located him by matching addresses with any personal detail I could find about the real name.”

  “Details?” Lex mumbles. What does he really know about Mo Crespo? As a kid, he ran with a bad crowd, then turned against one of his own. He was married young to a girl he met on the subway. Moved to the other side of Brooklyn and became a father. Had some shitty jobs. Abandoned his family.

  “The mother still waiting downstairs?” Saki asks.

  “As far as I know.”

  “Must be torture.”

  “Think I’ll check in with her,” Lex says.

  He finds Katya alone in the public information office, sitting in a chair with her hands folded on her lap and her eyes closed, like a statue that almost looks human but can’t be, it’s just too still. He feels cold with recognition: that stony, helpless reserve; that tenuous plug on a simmering explosion.

  Lex sits down beside her. “How’re you holding up?”

  Her eyes flutter open, bloodshot with worry. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Do you have any pictures of your ex-husband in that album?”

  “Mo? Why?”

  “He used to know Dante Green, the man Crisp was with last night.”

  “At the Houses?” Her jaw drops. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I’d like to track down Mo, see if he can shed some light. But it looks like he fell off the radar seventeen years ago.”

  “Maybe he’s dead,” she says, bitterly. “That would explain a lot.”

  She leafs through the album until she comes to a snapshot of a young couple, slips it out of its plastic sheath, and hands it to Lex.

  He studies it: Katya with long hair, visibly pregnant, a broad smile, looking right into the camera. Beside her, a young black man in soft profile, also smiling, his arm draped around her shoulders, gazing at his bride.

  Katya shrugs. “He loved me, I guess. Back then.”

  “Can I borrow this?”

  She nods. “How much longer?” A crimp in her voice. “Will Crisp—” But she doesn’t finish. Lex understands how badly she needs to know that her son is safe; he also understands that what she needs may not be forthcoming.

  He assures her, gently, “We’ll find him.” Hoping that’s true. “Hang in there.”

  On his way back upstairs, Lex calls Carlotta, the tech.

  She answers right away. “Detective! I’m almost done with your face.”

  “Excellent. Listen, can you do up another one? I have a profile it would help to see straight on, and twenty years older.”

  “Zap it over and I’ll look at it right now. If it’s doable, I’ll send you both together.”

  “Thanks.” He stops in the hallway, holds the photo up against the wall, and takes a picture of it with his phone, wondering why things went sour between Mo and Katya. The image is on its way to Carlotta by the time he reaches the squad room.

  When he drops the photograph on Saki’s desk, she looks up, hits Pause, asks, “What’s that?”

  “Crisp’s parents before he was born.”

  She picks up the photo to look at it more closely, then puts it back down and yawns.

  “How many times have you watched that?” he asks her.

  “Twice all the way through. Now I’m jumping around, looking for a pattern in their movements. I think the boy is living somewhere near Fairway but it’s frustrating without an ID on him.”

  “Just heard we’re about to get the full face,” Lex tell
s her. “Hopefully that’ll help. Getting one on Mo Crespo too.”

  After a visit to the men’s room, Lex checks his phone and is pleased to see two new case files just added by Carlotta Sanchez.

  He opens the first one and the face that scrolls onto the screen is the one he wants most: Mo Crespo, staring right at him, contoured to evoke a man of about forty. A round face with slightly close-set eyes. Short salty hair and a widow’s peak.

  You’re a wizard, he messages Carlotta. Thanks for the quick turnaround.

  “Our faces are in,” he calls over to Saki’s desk. “Forwarding yours now.”

  “Thanks.”

  Working at the desktop, Lex feeds Mo’s image into a program that compares faces with ID photos from all city-run agencies, and presto. Face after face, name after name, it’s the same thing over and over for the past seventeen years.

  Mo Crespo’s image now belongs to a different name: Wilson Ramsey.

  He’s still in New York City.

  But every one of his records lists his address as a PO box at the central post office near Penn Station in Manhattan. No phone numbers come up anywhere.

  Lex pounds the desk and a stapler jumps.

  Saki looks over at him but says nothing; preoccupied, she returns to her own search, face-to-face now with the boy.

  Lex returns to the face of Mo Crespo/Wilson Ramsey. On the split side of the screen he runs a search for just the alias, which instantly produces nearly two million links. Seems the guy’s some kind of cartoonist, a graphic novelist with several books to his name and enough of a following to own a corner of the Internet. Lex clicks the first link, Wilson Ramsey | American Author and Illustrator | Official Page, and starts reading.

  24

  A tenderness in the boy’s eyes unnerves Saki. He seems to be looking right at her. She runs the face through the system and suddenly, just like that, he has a name: Janjak “JJ” St. Fleur.

  The information filling the screen tells his story, up to a point: undocumented except for school records, over a year ago his parents are deported and he turns up in the foster system—a first placement that doesn’t take followed by a second listed as his current address.

  Saki notices that, though his foster parents, Dov and Shoshi Nachman, live in Midwood, JJ continues to attend school close to the St. Fleur family’s last address in Red Hook. This in itself isn’t that unusual in a city where local schools are mostly a thing of the past—except that his school MetroCard history shows him commuting out of Red Hook, near Fairway, as recently as yesterday morning. And yesterday afternoon he rode the same bus back in the opposite direction. Interesting, she thinks: interesting and strange. Why didn’t someone, anyone, notice the discrepancy between the boy’s address and his daily route? Maybe not interesting or strange but just unfortunate—another example of a kid falling through the proverbial cracks of a broken system.

  She dials the number listed for the Nachmans. A woman answers with a harried-sounding “What?” A background cacophony of children’s voices, crying, whining, shouting, makes it difficult to hear.

  Saki introduces herself as “working for the city,” a basic truth, and says, “I’m calling to check in on JJ St. Fleur.” She waits for the answer, which seems to take too long.

  “JJ’s doing good,” the woman says.

  “Health okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Getting all his schoolwork done on time?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s good with all that.”

  “Any issues?”

  “None.”

  “Stay out too late? Give you any lip?”

  “This child’s a bookworm. He never goes anywhere. And he’s very…quiet.”

  “Gets to school on time every day? He’s got a long commute.”

  “Every day. He takes the bus down the street. JJ’s like clockwork.”

  “Your foster payments coming through on schedule?”

  “Yeah, no problem. Listen, sorry, my kids need me and I gotta go.”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  Saki is amazed at how flagrantly the woman lied—a mother, surrounded by children who depend on her. She makes a mental note to contact Social Services.

  She writes down JJ’s regular bus stop, sticks the Post-it in her pocket, and stands up.

  “Found my boy,” she tells Lex. “Who he is, I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “Janjak St. Fleur. Goes by JJ. He’s in the foster system.”

  “How old?”

  “Twelve.” She straps her fanny pack around her waist. “I’m heading back to Red Hook.”

  “Looking for him the old-fashioned way?”

  “Sometimes feet on the ground work best.”

  “Before you go,” Lex says, “check this out.”

  She stops to look over his shoulder at a split screen showing, on one side, the facial reconstruction image for Crisp’s father, Mo, and, on the other side, a long list of links for someone called Wilson Ramsey. She says, “You found his alias.”

  “The guy is kind of famous. He has this huge following, all these fans, there’s a lot written about him but he never personally puts anything online. He hides behind a PO box at the main post office. Can’t find a phone number anywhere.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t have one,” Saki suggests.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Well, call me if anything happens or if you need me.”

  “Ditto.”

  “And get some rest,” she tells Lex.

  “I’ll be fine.” He stifles a yawn, unable to resist even the suggestion of fatigue.

  “Your brain will function better after even one sleep cycle, four hours. That’s a fact.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” But still, he turns back to his screen.

  Saki heads out, knowing there’s no point trying to convince someone as stubborn as Lex.

  Fifteen minutes later, she’s in Red Hook, driving down Van Brunt Street. She turns onto Van Dyke and pulls to a stop near the end of the desolate block where JJ St. Fleur meets his daily bus. Other than a bike store, there’s just about nothing here. There are better bus stops nearby: one on Van Brunt, with all the stores and people, and one by IKEA, with all the employees and shoppers. But this lonely place is better if you’re trying to hide.

  She drives over to Fairway and parks in the lot. On the sidewalk, she pulls up the facial reconstruction she downloaded to her phone.

  She looks at his eyes, those dark wells, and is taken aback by the visceral need she feels, a hunger, almost, to find this boy. To find him for his own sake, with or without Glynnie. She won’t take her focus off the girl, of course, but now—now she wants them both.

  25

  Crisp jumps from thought to thought, from the prospect of Dante appearing again and then back to his father, always his father, a yearning stuck on repeat. Anxiety mounts as the ferry queue inches forward following the long hour he spent barricaded in a bathroom stall hiding from Dante.

  Giving in, he taps out a message to the car-hailing service, claiming to have left something important in car number 223, and would that driver please meet him at the Manhattan battery ferry landing in twenty minutes or as soon as he can get there. Wondering if, as the message will come from the King of Kings’ phone, Wilson Ramsey will even consider showing up.

  The Send whoosh rattles Crisp, and his ruthless thoughts loop in on themselves. He shouldn’t have sent it. But it’s too late to stop it now.

  He walks up the gangway onto the ferry. Climbs the stairs to the deck and sits on one of the white benches. Holds his breath while the vessel disengages from the dock and heads into New York Harbor, sun warm on his face. After a few minutes, he stands and walks over to the starboard railing, where he watches the ferry kick up foam en route to the southern end of Manhattan…and begins to breathe.

  He pulls out the phone to check the time, but the Galaxy has died again. He never should have held on to it this long anyway, knowing that Dante is after him. Crisp p
ulls back his arm and pitches the phone into the harbor. The water takes it with a gulp and a swallow, and then it’s gone.

  Behind him someone gasps. Someone else applauds. A child laughs.

  He stands there for the rest of the brief trip, watching the water churn around the boat.

  Crisp has never seen the Battery Maritime Building from this angle and its beauty takes him by surprise—the trio of moss green and pink arches restored to a nineteenth-century splendor. Gentle and welcoming. But still, his brain grinds: Will my father be waiting? Will Dante find me before I have a chance to find out? Should I ask for help—can I trust a cop? Or should I just make my way home? He tries to force his thoughts to settle somewhere, anywhere, but they won’t. Every decision now feels ripe with error.

  The ferry docks at the lip of the center arch and creaks to a halt.

  The passengers from the Governors Island side begin to file off. Crisp tries to hide himself in the middle of the group in case Dante or Rodrigo or both of them are out there watching, waiting. Across, at the entry dock, people are lined up to make the reverse journey—tourists, mostly, he guesses. People visiting a different New York, not his.

  His New York is what lies behind the restored facades and culinary gems, the gleaming skyscrapers and limousines.

  His New York is the one with rats on the sidewalk and old ladies haggling in broken English for a better price, where fitting yourself into a rush hour subway is an art and finding an apartment you can afford is a blood sport.

  His New York is the one you struggle to live in, not aspire to visit. The one where a father leaves a son and a mother fights to survive simultaneously in black and white and living color, where life can feel both unreal and too real. It’s a city where everything collides into a giant mess. Where avarice is celebrated and poverty is abided like a bad cold.