by Walter Marks
“Oh, well,” Kim said. “Let’s eat on one of those park benches.”
We retreated to the promenade and sat down on a bench.
We had no utensils. But I worked out a system — break off piece of bagel, use bagel to scoop out cream cheese, then wrap schmeared bagel with piece of nova. Eat and repeat until stuffed. We tore up the paper shopping bag and fashioned place mats and napkins.
Between bites, and sips of celery tonic, we chatted, looking across the river to the Palisades. I pointed out what I used to call my own twin towers — two fifty story behemoth apartment houses. Next to them was a row of Victorian private homes that lined Weehawken’s River Road.
There was a bright waxing moon, and we watched a red funneled tug towing a barge, steaming slowly upriver. It looked like a toy boat. Off in the distance we could see the twinkling lights of the GWB.
I let my arm rest on the bench behind Kim, wanting to hug her. But like a shy schoolboy I didn’t.
After we’d eaten, Kim looked at her watch.
“Well,” she said. “We’d better get going. I have to be up at seven, and my girlfriend’s waiting up for me.”
I nodded. We gathered the trash and dropped it into a waste can.
There were two bagels left. I stuck them in my shoulder bag and we walked back to the car.
I drove down West End Avenue and stopped in front of the Nurses’s Residence on 61st. The street was deserted.
“Kim,” I said. “How would you feel about...a goodnight kiss?”
“Um...I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“The thing is,” she said, “A kiss would definitely jump-start my motor, and...I hate starting something I can’t finish.”
“We could figure something out.”
“David, we’re in a car.”
“We could get in the back.”
She glanced behind her and laughed.
“Oh,” she said. “Guess that’s why they call ‘em jump-seats.”
Kim leaned over and ran her very hot, wet tongue around the inside of my ear.
“To be continued,” she said softly. Then she got out of the car and went into the dormitory.
WHOA!
CHAPTER 41
I drove down to 57th Street, turned right and took the ramp up onto the West Side Highway.
I was jazzed about Kim; filled with fantasies of lust, love, and a possible future with her. Then the image of Victor intruded, pulling me back to the reality of my life.
Am I fit to stay at Vanderkill?
If only I could get a resolution to the mystery of Victor Janko. But how?
Just past the bridge a green and white sign caught my eye. It read: Exit to Dyckman Street. Without making a conscious decision, I turned the steering wheel in the direction of the sign's arrow. It was as if a powerful magnetic force were pulling my car onto the exit ramp.
I found myself driving east across Dyckman. The people of the barrio were hanging out on stoops and street corners, escaping the stifling heat of the tenements. Salsa and rap music blared out of car stereos and boom-boxes in multi-ethnic cacophony.
As I passed under the elevated tracks at Nagle Avenue a subway train clanked and clattered above me. The racket made me lose my bearings and I felt like I was in a dream. I hit the brakes.
Then the train was gone. I was breathless, feverish. I pressed hard on the accelerator pedal, crossed under the tracks and then I saw it — the lights of the Dyckman Manhattan housing project.
I was being drawn irresistibly...to the scene of the crime.
I parked across the street and entered the project.
Maybe I can find Agnes Rivera’s ground floor apartment. Then I can check if there’s a street lamp near it, bright enough that Daisy could’ve seen her mother’s killer.
I soon realized it would be impossible to tell. The old cobra head street lamps were now augmented by newer airfield-type fixtures, and there were floodlights shining down from the roofs. Probably they were installed in the last few years to combat urban crime.
Dyckman Manhattan was a complex of apartment houses, each fourteen stories high, built of red bricks which time and city soot had muted to the color of dried blood. The buildings were clustered around a courtyard, criss-crossed by cement pathways with un-mowed lawns between them. In the center of each grassy area was a pile of gray schist rocks — some Housing Authority official's idea of abstract sculpture.
The area was notorious for gang killings and drug wars, but I had no sense of danger. A project police car passed, slowly patrolling the walkways. A sign forbidding firecrackers, loud noise, and the playing of music was being obeyed. I passed people sitting at concrete tables, playing cards or eating, teenage girls jumping in a serious game of Double Dutch, and a few elderly people, trudging along with canes or walkers. A group of four homies came towards me, dressed in red. Were those the gang colors of the Crips? No, the Bloods. No, Tommy Hilfiger. They were talking animated trash but paid me no mind. Then I saw a young woman pushing a child in a baby stroller. A shiver ran through me.
This is so strange. I came here without volition and with no clear purpose — just this powerful urge to see where Agnes Rivera met her death. I have no idea what that will do for me, or to me.
I came to an asphalt roadway. It ran in an oval around the interior of the project. I remembered the address in the NYPD file; something-or-other Dyckman Oval.
I decided to walk around the roadway, checking the house numbers — maybe I’d recall the exact address.
All the buildings looked the same. Their facades were scrawled with graffiti, and the windows of the ground floor apartments had metal grates over them. There were few air conditioners.
At the third building I hit pay dirt, but not because of the house number. I saw a large graffito of a Cross. There were other spray-painted slogans and signatures, vying for space on the brick wall. But the area around the Cross was untouched — apparently out of respect; on the upright part of the crux had been written R.I.P. And on the transverse were the letters A.R.
Rest in Peace — Agnes Rivera. I stared at the doorway, trying to imagine the hideous murder. But my mind wouldn’t allow it — I just felt a numbing sadness, which distanced me from the tragedy even as it drew me into it.
"She was a nice lady."
A wizened Hispanic woman in a wheelchair had stopped in front of me. "I seen you looking at the Cross," she said. "She was a nice lady, Agnes. And a good neighbor. Poor thing had a rotten life 'though, tryin' to raise up her niñita alone. And then gettin' sliced to ribbons by that punk kid who worked at the market. Maldito cobarde."
"Did you know him?"
"I wouldn't say that, but I saw him sometime at services with his mother. She belong to my church."
"How did he seem to you?"
"He never look at nobody, always shiftin' his eyes around, like...like he was scared of somethin'."
"Scared of what?"
"How do I know? Mira, why you askin' me all these questions?"
"I'm...an investigative reporter."
"TV?"
"Newspaper."
"Well, if you want to investigate, you oughta be talkin' to Miguel Encarnación at the A&P. He knew that Janko bastid real good. Worked with him. Miguel was a checker back then, but nowadays he's night manager of the store."
“So...he’d be there now?”
“Yeah. They open twenty four seven.”
"Where would I find the A&P?"
"Across the street, on Nagle."
I thanked the woman and headed for the supermarket.
Miguel Encarnación s office was a cramped cubicle at the top of a plywood stairway. It had beaverboard walls and a large plastic window from which the manager could survey his domaine of aisles and shoppers.
Encarnación was a short man with dyed shoe-polish black hair and a pleasant face marred by the lunar-surface residuum of adolescent acne.
I did the Hollywood producer bit again, handing
him my Paramax Pictures card.
He looked at it and was visibly impressed. “You know Tom Hanks?” he asked.
“Sure, I know Tom.”
“Love Tom Hanks. He’s everybody.”
“Everybody?”
“Yeah, like whoever he is in the movies, he’s like somebody you know.”
“Oh,” I said. “You mean Everyman.”
“Yeah. Except in ‘Philadelphia’, when he was just a maricón.
“Mr. Encarnación” I said. “The reason I came in from the Coast was to do research for a new film. It’s called ‘The Baby Carriage Killer’”.
“‘The Baby Carriage’... Jesus,” he said. “That happened right here.”
“Yes. I know.”
"This gonna be like that Son of Sam movie?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Son of Sam was a serial killer. Victor Janko wasn’t. This film will be a psychological exploration..."
"Psychological?" he said. "I love psychological. Remember ‘Psycho?’”
"Of course,” I said. “Listen, I understand you knew Victor Janko.”
"We went to Immaculata together.”
"What was he like?"
"Victor? He was a real momma's boy, a goodie-two-shoes, always actin' like he was better than you. What a joke. Up till around third grade he was still wettin' his pants, which made him smell like a piss-pot. And he kept braggin’ on his mother, sayin' she was better than the Brady Bunch mom and the Partridge Family mom, which was also a joke, because half the time his knuckles were bruised and bleedin' from where she rapped him."
"You think he was physically abused by his mother?"
"I know he was. Sometimes he'd bunch up his jacket and sit on it, which was 'cause his ass was sore from gettin’ hit."
"You think that had anything to do with what Victor did?”
Encarnación looked like he was about to speak, then changed his mind.
“What is it?” I asked.
His face grew tense. His brow furrowed like a contestant on a TV game show.
“What?” I said, pressing him.
“Nothin’.”
I knew he was concealing something.
“Mr. Encarnación,” I said. “How would you feel about being a creative consultant on my film?”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I want realism in this movie, so we’re shooting it on location — right here, not on some Hollywood back lot. You were raised in this neighborhood, and you knew Victor Janko, so as consultant you’d be giving us info on the details of the story.”
“What would I get for that?”
“Screen credit.”
“What’s that.”
“Your name up on the screen in big letters — Creative Consultant...Miguel Encarnación.”
His eyes widened. “Uh...what about money?”
“Mmm, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On how much information you give us. If you give us stuff we couldn’t possibly know, that would up the price.”
“How much?”
“Paramax pays top dollar, but I couldn’t say till I hear what you’ve got.”
“How do I know you won’t rip me off?”
“You have my word — if this movie gets made you’ll get whatever the Writer’s Guild deems fair compensation.”
He was hesitant. I pressed him.
“Look. If you don’t tell me what you know,” I said. “You can be sure you’ll get nothing.”
“Well...I do know things about the murder...stuff nobody knows.”
“Like what?”
He held back for a moment. “The truth,” he said. “I know the truth.”
I faked an intense coughing fit. “Water,” I choked out. “...please...water.”
Encarnación got up from his desk and put a paper cup under his office water cooler. As he did, I reached into my shoulder bag, found my digital voice recorder pressed the On button.
I sipped the water, then cleared my throat.
“...Sorry,” I said. “Summer allergies really get me.”
“Know whatcha mean.”
“Now, Mr. Encarnación. You were telling me about the murder?”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath.
“That day,” he said, “I was workin’ the checkout counter right next to Victor.”
He pointed through the plastic window at the store below.
“Counter number 2. There it is down there.”
I nodded.
“Well, you can see I’d have a pretty good view down aisle 3. I heard a guy yelling ‘bitch...you ballbustin’ bitch’ and I looked up and saw this dude shakin’ this woman real hard by the shoulders. It was Mrs. Rivera, I seen her in here a lot, always with her kid. Finally the guy lets her go and she comes down to Victor’s checkout counter. The little girl starts cryin’, freakin’ out ‘cause she wants some candy. Tell ya the truth, I think she was really shook about the guy hasslin’ her mom. After Mrs. Rivera left, Victor found this childrens’ book on the floor — the kid must’ve chucked it when she freaked. Victor went out after Mrs. Rivera but she was gone. So he came back.”
Encarnación stopped.
“Go on.”
He hesitated. “...Listen, in el barrio you learn to keep your mouth shut, mind your own business. I was scared to talk then and...I’m scared to talk now.”
“This is good stuff, Miguel. Top dollar stuff.”
“I know, but...”
I pushed on forcefully. “Who was the guy who hassled Mrs. Rivera?”
“All right, all right,” he said. “I knew the guy from the ‘hood...he was a nasty-ass punk...Leo the Lion they called him.”
“Leo the Lion.”
“Yeah. After Mrs. Rivera left, I look up the aisle...to the far end where we keep the housewares. I see this Leo guy boostin’ a big kitchen knife, y’know one that like comes in a plastic and cardboard package. Well, he slips it into his pants pocket, ambles around for a while, and then he bops right through my checkout, givin’ me a peace sign. I wasn’t gonna say nothin’...you don’t wanna mess with a mean muthuhfuckah like him.”
“You remember what he was wearing?”
“No.”
“Try.”
His face went blank. “Geez, it was a long time ago...what twenty years?”
“Fifteen. Look, I need details. Details are what’s gonna make this picture. Now, what did he have on?”
He shrugged.
“Do you remember a color? What color was he wearing?”
“...Green,” he said emphatically. “I remember now, ‘cause it was a couple days after St. Paddy’s day, and I was thinkin’ what was he wearin’ green now for? It was bright green, like a pool table. A sweatshirt, a heavy sweatshirt with some writin’ on the front.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know. Hey, I gave you the color.”
“Yes, you did.”
“That’s all I remember.”
“What about Victor?”
“Oh, well, Victor’s shift was over like twenty minutes later and he split.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“I figured he went home. But then when the cops nabbed him he had the book. I realized he must’ve gone to give it back to Mrs. Rivera. And right away he was a suspect, and y’know the cops don’ wanna be bothered, they too busy eatin’ donuts and takin’ payoffs, so they say let’s nail the bastard and be done with it.”
“You’re sure Leo was the killer.”
“Hadda be. Like they say in the movies, he had the motive, and whatdycall it? the opportunity, and...he had the weapon. Look, I wasn’t too crazy about Victor Janko, but hey, that little fruit was no murderer.”
“Mr. Encarnación. Thank you. You’ve given me a lot.”
“Look, I’ll be a consulter on this movie, but...I’d rather just take the money. Forget puttin’ my name up there on the big screen. That guy Leo ever sees this flick, I don’t want him comin�
� after me.”
“No danger of that. I know who Leo is — he’s Leo Hagopian. The cops just nailed him for attempted murder and he’s headed for a life stretch in the Joint.”
Encarnación nodded, not completely reassured.
“I’ll be in touch with you,” I said. “Soon as we set up our production schedule.”
“Any chance Tom Hanks’ll be in the movie?”
“We’re checking his availability.”
We shook hands and I left.
I felt bad about tricking him, but I had to do it. Later he might have to testify, but with Hagopian in prison he’d be in no jeopardy. And he couldn’t avoid a subpoena.
Anyway, it was Miguel’s moral responsibility to come forward. Had he done so fifteen years ago, Victor Janko probably would’ve gone free.
CHAPTER 42
I got in my car, took Nagle Avenue under the El tracks and followed it to the University Heights Bridge. The bright moonlight illuminated the old steel arch span, with its pot-holed pavement and ornate, turn-of-the-(19th) century ironwork railings.
I crossed over the Harlem River into the Bronx, then took the Major Deegan north, heading for home.
I kept thinking I should feel more elated. I had solved the mystery of Victor Janko. My instinct, my gut feeling was right ‑ Victor was not the murderer. But mostly I felt a sense of relief. Now I could get on with my life, do the job I was trained for, the work I loved doing.
Then there was Kim. I had a sense memory of her tongue fluttering around the rim of my ear and I felt a tremor of desire. Yes, there definitely was Kim.
With her, my emotional life would be back on track. And so would my running program. Yeah — soon as Kim gets home I’ll invite her to join me...in a little fun run.
There were still unresolved issues.
Will my recording of Miguel Encarnación be enough for Laura to reopen the case? With the recording as evidence we might be able to get Agnes Rivera’s body exhumed and find Hagopian’s DNA beneath her fingernails. Only a conviction of Hagopian for her murder will enable Victor to go free. (If Hagopian does get sent to jail as the real Baby Carriage Killer, I’d love to see how long he lasts in the general prison population.)
What about Stevie Karp? Will Victor ever be together enough to get the goods on him with my voice recorder?
