by Karen Ellis
“No,” Glynnie answers—an easy truth.
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” An uneasy lie. But she has to give Crisp a chance to find JJ and, if he does, get the kid somewhere safe. Somewhere as safe as this place used to be until Glynnie wrecked it for him. The twist of remorse in her gut returns, sharper than ever.
The detective stands there, looking down at Glynnie, and doesn’t speak. She has pretty eyes, blue, though they don’t really look at you. She seems to be looking more around Glynnie than at her. Strange. Reminds her of her brother, Aidan: super smart but somehow not totally connected. “A touch of Asperger’s” is what their mother says he has, but only when he isn’t listening. Saki blinks once, and Glynnie’s sure that’s what it is.
The detective spots the Beats lying on the floor, crouches to pick them up, and turns them over in her hands as if this, these headphones, is precisely what she’s been looking for.
“They’re wireless,” Glynnie tells her. “My folks gave them to me for graduation. I gave them to JJ.”
“That was nice of you.” Saki looks at her now.
Glynnie says, “I killed somebody last night.”
“Who?”
“Jerome. At the projects. Big white guy who wanted to rape me.”
The detective freezes a moment. This time she blinks twice.
“I want to ask if I can go home now,” Glynnie says. “But I have a feeling I know the answer.”
Saki leans over with the offer of a hand to help pull Glynnie off the floor. She accepts it, surprised by how relieved she feels, though she isn’t sure if this means she’s safe or in deeper trouble.
“We’ll need to go over to the station. I’ll call your parents and ask them to meet us there. They might want to get you a lawyer.”
“Okay.”
The detective makes the call, then asks Glynnie, “Ready?”
29
Lex doesn’t realize he’s been sleeping until the car becomes something else and he’s sucked into that middle passage between dream and reality. At first, the explosive crack makes no sense in the dream’s already sketchily incoherent story in which he is himself but not here, somewhere else, Moscow, maybe—yes, Moscow…in a square surrounded by colorful onion-domed buildings…and his father…no, a man…no, a mob of men, detectives, are berating him in Russian but also pelleting him with hard sharp bits of…stoning him, punishing him, trying to kill him for…for being gay, and pain riddles his whole body before concentrating in his…in his ear. It’s the stabbing sensation in his left eardrum that pulls him all the way out of the dream.
His eyes snap open in a panic of disorientation. Tinny music fills the car. His first thought, It’s a blessing I was sent out of gay-loathing Russia, is subsumed by the realization that he can’t hear out of his left ear. He jolts his head off the driver’s-side window, covers his ear with his hand, sucks in a deep breath, gets his bearings.
He’s in College Point. He fell asleep. Shit.
A chalky haze hangs just outside the car’s window and he knows, even before grabbing his Glock and stepping into the street and being hit by the familiar acridity, he knows that a gun has just been fired. He slips a finger over his trigger and shouts, “Police! Drop your weapon!”
“Cole—stand down!” A familiar voice it takes a moment to identify.
Jack Dinardo stands there, bull-faced, sweating, gripping a gun pointed at a man on the ground. A heavyset black man in a leather jacket. Lex’s brain stutters before it comes to him who it is: Rodrigo Rivera, on his back, wincing, leather ripped open at the shoulder, blood seeping onto the asphalt. The hand belonging to that shoulder rests palm up, fingers splayed. A Ruger lies to the side. Lex kicks it to the curb, far from Rivera, and looks at Dinardo.
“Lucky I pay attention,” the older detective says.
“This was the guy standing outside the station house?”
“I had a gut feeling and I was right—he followed you here.”
Sirens approach. Lex crosses over and pats his colleague on the back. Dinardo’s shirt is drenched with sweat, his breathing labored.
“I waited till he had his weapon on the glass,” Dinardo says, “right next to your head. There’s no question he was going to shoot you.”
Lex notices that his left ear still isn’t picking up much sound. “I owe you one, Dinardo.”
“You’ll help the next guy.”
Lex nods. He will.
“So, what’d he want with you?”
“I arrested his boss today. Seems he was pissed. This guy, he was the lackey.” Lex recalled how, frame by frame, the video feeds revealed Rodrigo Rivera’s subservience to Dante. “Loyalty’s a funny thing.”
“Stupidity, more like. Staking out an officer of the law at the station house?” Dinardo snorts. “I mean, who does that?”
Lex and Dinardo stand together and observe the transformation of a quiet street into a crime scene. The rotating pulse of blue and red lights. Yellow tape cordoning off the area. Techs hunched in floodlit darkness. Rivera being patched up and readied for the ambulance.
Lex looks up and notices a light in the second-floor window of Mo Crespo’s building and realizes that he slept through the man’s return.
“Well.” Dinardo smiles. “Like I always said: When I retire I wanna go out with a bang.”
Lex laughs. “And you did.” Mo Crespo’s window goes dark. “I need to get moving.”
Dinardo claps him on the back. “Good seeing you again. Try and stay alive.”
“You too.”
Lex crosses the sidewalk onto a patchy lawn, climbs the short stoop to Crespo’s building, and presses the buzzer for 2B. The second-floor window lights up again. After a moment, footsteps thump down the stairs and the front door creaks open.
Through the clear glass in the top half of an exterior storm door he finds himself staring at a face.
The face.
Carlotta is a wizard: her reconstruction nailed Mo Crespo right down to the wide mouth, the close-set eyes, the widow’s peak. Though she missed the dimple punctuating his chin.
“I didn’t see anything,” Mo offers, glancing beyond Lex to the commotion in the street. He has a tired voice that sounds underwater until Lex shifts his right ear forward.
“I’m Detective Lex Cole—I’m looking for your son.”
“My son.” Spoken tentatively. “Does it have something to do with that?” He points at the street.
“It does, in a way. May I come in?”
“You called me before, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
Mo steps aside in the shabby common hall to make way for his visitor. The storm door clatters shut behind Lex. He follows the father upstairs.
Lex is surprised to discover that a person as successful as Wilson Ramsey, at least according to online sources, lives in a studio apartment at the far edge of an outer borough, but then again, the man drives an Uber so can’t be flush from his creative work. A bed in one corner, drawing table in another corner, strip kitchen against a wall, stained armchair facing a television perched atop a dresser. It’s exactly the life Lex feared for himself before he met Adam. He feels a tug of compassion for this lonely man: a man who once had a wife and child, who left them. Lex reels in his sympathy.
Mo offers his visitor the padded chair at the drawing table, takes a folding chair from against the wall, and sets it up for himself. Before sitting, he asks, “Can I get you something? Tea, water, juice?”
“No, thanks.”
Mo sits. “Was someone killed outside tonight?”
“Not killed. Shot. If anyone was getting killed it was going to be me, but my colleague stopped that from happening.”
“You must be shaken.”
Was he? Mostly, Lex was upset about his ear. He’d try to see a doctor in the next day or two, find out how bad the damage is. He says, “I’m fine.”
“You said you’re looking for Titus.”
“That’s
right: you don’t know that he calls himself Crisp.”
“Crisp,” Mo repeats with a slight smile. “Crisp Crespo. He must have a sense of humor.”
“He had quite a night last night. Quite a few days, for that matter. A lot has happened and I’m trying to understand your son’s role. He may still be in some trouble.”
“But he wasn’t hurt?”
“We’ve had indications that he’s okay, but afraid. Mo, you once knew a man named Dante Green.”
Mo’s hands tighten over his knees. “What about him?”
“The guy lying on the street outside? He works for Dante.”
A twitch of alarm across Mo’s face. “Tell me what’s going on, Detective. Please.”
“Dante’s accusing Crisp of shooting, and killing, a man named Jerome Bailey. You know him?”
“Is Titus the kind of boy who would do something like that?”
“All the evidence so far says no.”
“I don’t know any Jerome Bailey.”
“Rodrigo Rivera?” Thumbing in the direction of the window.
Mo shakes his head. “Dante Green, though—he’s bad news. Mean and stupid, the worst combination.”
“We’re trying to figure out how and why he got to Crisp. Do you know anything about Dante’s life since you left the Houses?”
“No.” Mo pauses, then adds, “Last week, I picked him up in my Uber. I didn’t know it was him—his picture was a crown, he didn’t use his real name. He got into my car and—” Mo shakes his head.
“You turned state’s evidence on him back in the day.”
Mo nods. “Yes, I did.”
“So he’s got a beef with you.”
There’s a flash in Mo’s eyes when he asks, “Did he go after my son?”
“We still don’t know if Dante looked for Crisp, or if they crossed paths and he figured it out.”
“Last week in my car? He asked me to join his crew. I should have done it; I should have said yes. Maybe he would have left Titus alone.”
“Well, twenty-twenty hindsight is an excellent thing,” Lex says. “Unfortunately, no one has it.”
“Twenty years ago…twenty years ago, I got out.”
“By marrying Katya.”
He nods. “I fell in love. Moved out of the Houses. Had a kid. Then I fucked it all up. I wasn’t there when they needed me. I’m not there now.”
Lex waits out a pause.
“I had to go,” Mo says. “They needed more than I could handle, and I was in a downward spiral. I was chasing the dragon—you feel me?”
So that was it: Mo was a heroin addict, he’d fallen into that tempting abyss, let his life go to ruin. “Yeah,” Lex says. “More than you know.” The mere thought of it triggers a shiver of craving mixed with dread. A sharp memory of heavenly release and its hellish aftermath. Gratitude that, so far, he’s won against the packet in his pocket—though it calls him still, he can’t deny it. “What about Katya? Was she aware?”
“No, I don’t think so. She just thought I was an asshole, which I was.”
They share the uneasy laugh of a discomfiting truth.
“I’m clean now, if you’re wondering,” Mo says. “But the shame doesn’t go away.”
“She thinks you went underground to avoid paying child support.”
“Nah.” Mo starts to tear up and squeezes his eyes to stop it. “I did my best work when I was high, that’s the ugly fact. Published a lot in those days. When I cleaned up, the work stopped. Everything stopped. I stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her any of it, couldn’t bring myself to face the kid.” He pauses, then says, “This explains something: she tried calling me today. It was the same home number from always. I recognized it. I answered, but no one said anything.”
Lex tells Mo, “Katya was at the station house all day. If someone called you from the home landline, it was probably Crisp. What time was it?”
Mo crosses the room to pick up his cell phone, Wilson Ramsey’s cell phone, from the kitchen counter. “Six eleven.”
“Yup, that’s about the time he dropped in at home before taking off again. Left his mother a note—they’re tight, you know. She did a good job with him.”
“He called me?” Mo tears up again. “He called me and I hung up the phone.”
Lex feels the pull of compassion, and tries, really tries, to push it away. Then he thinks of how he might have felt if his mother had still been alive after all these years. The answer comes to him easily: scared, but also grateful. And if someone intervened to bring them back together, he’d have been grateful for that too.
30
Crisp can tell from the pungent aroma of spicy ground meat and peppers that their sixth-floor neighbor made galumpkis for dinner tonight. His stomach flips with sudden hunger, despite the earlier meal.
JJ hangs back when they approach the apartment door.
“It’s okay,” Crisp assures the younger boy. “My mom and grandparents are always getting on me for never bringing home any friends. They’ll be happy to meet you.”
“Why don’t you bring friends home?”
Crisp shrugs. “I just live so far out. Most of the kids I know from school don’t want the schlep.” Knew from school, that part of his life now officially over, the next part still undetermined, as far as he knows.
“This feels funny,” JJ says. “Maybe I should head back.”
To where? “Smell that?”
JJ closes his eyes. Inhales.
“Mrs. Napora’s famous stuffed peppers. I have an in with her. If she’s got any leftovers I could get her to give us some later.”
Crisp keys open the front door and, together, the boys step inside.
“And who is this?” Babu appears at the first sound of visitors.
“Hi, Babu.” Crisp throws his arms around his substantial, impossibly soft grandmother. Squat, floral, gray, beloved.
“The stories I’ve been hearing—we thought we’d never see you again.” She gently lays a palm on his cheek and he feels balanced, grounded, home. “You brought a friend?”
JJ squeezes out a smile, a kind-of smile, more a sucking in of his lips. “Hi, ma’am.” He juts out a hand for Babu to shake.
But Babu doesn’t shake JJ’s hand so much as possess it, sandwiching it between both of hers. She crooks her ironic half smile that promises you she’s thinking something but you’ll never guess what.
“Do you have a name?” she asks.
“Janjak St. Fleur. People call me JJ.”
“Welcome to our home, JJ.”
Dedu appears and, right behind him, taking Crisp off guard, is a man who looks vaguely familiar: tallish and thinnish, with longish brown hair tucked behind his ears. Blue jeans. Cowboy boots. He looks a little too hipsterish to be hanging out with this family or in this building or, for that matter, in this neighborhood. Then Crisp realizes where he’s seen him before: he’s the cop from the video, the one who arrested Dante.
A cop, in their house.
His mind cartwheels through possible escapes, as if he could reverse time or un-bring JJ into what suddenly feels like a trap. After everything, will he be the reason JJ didn’t get away?
JJ makes a quiet move for the door. Crisp reaches out to grab his arm and hold him back. There’s no point now; it’s too late.
The cop surprises Crisp by laughing at something Dedu mutters half in Russian: “If it isn’t the bludnyy syn.” Laughing and listening with his head angled to favor his right ear, an old-person habit that strikes Crisp as strange for this not-old man.
“Detective Lex Cole.” The cop puts out a hand, introducing himself with an inexplicable friendliness that only pulls at Crisp’s nerves. “Really glad to meet you. You had your mother plenty worried last night.”
“Like his grandparents would have been,” Babu’s tone melodramatic with half-meant rebuke, “if our daughter hadn’t treated us like children and kept us in the dark.”
“She saved you the worry,” the detective responds
, though he didn’t have to. Crisp knows from long experience that his grandmother enjoys throwing verbal bombshells but never really expects anyone to take a whack at them.
“So, Crisp.” Dedu comes up close so he can look directly into his grandson’s eyes, the thick folds of the old man’s face gray and soft, familiar, treasured. “What’s this about a gun dealer?”
Just being asked that by his grandpa fills Crisp with shame. “I was not trying to buy a gun, Dedu. I swear.”
“I believe you, of course.” Dedu smiles. “But I had to ask.”
Detective Cole turns to JJ, the boy struck dumb in the presence of a cop, and looks at him with withering recognition. “Really glad to meet you too, JJ.”
JJ manages a stiff nod, his cheeks trembling, eyes blinking back fear. Crisp wants to take this boy into his arms and hide him, in full view of everyone, hide and save and protect him from what’s now inevitable. But he doesn’t; he can’t.
A rapid clip of footsteps announces Crisp’s mother’s presence in the apartment, and mortification paralyzes him.
Why didn’t he just go home last night instead of following Glynnie?
How could he have brought this on his family? Left them alone to fear for his safety, only to return as an accessory to murder.
Is that why the detective is here—to arrest him?
What are the chances that Glynnie really will admit what she did without trying to shift the blame?
What about Dante? Crisp can only imagine the lies the dealer will tell to save himself.
Stop.
Like a ray of sun in a storm of worry, his mother appears. The sight of her floods Crisp with relief; his smile comes on so abruptly he feels it could break his face. He raises his arms for the embrace he knows is imminent and she comes through, nearly gripping the breath out of him.
“Where have you been?” Her voice hot on his neck. “I’ve been going out of my mind!”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” He rubs her back in firm circles, the way she used to comfort him when he was little. “I’m sorry.”
And then he sees, standing behind her, another stranger, another man, this one painfully familiar though in Crisp’s conscious recollection they’ve never met. A man who almost matches Wilson Ramsey’s Uber photo but in person is something else: fleshy, worn, real.
