“No.”
“I think you’ll want to talk to me.”
“You do? Why’s that?”
“Because I know what you did.”
chapter 14 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 1
Huh, what, huh?
—Anonymous
How disconcerting really. Imagine looking someone directly in the face and seeing only your doubled image looking back at you. He wore those ridiculous mirror sunglasses that usually only state troopers are oblivious enough to wear. Against the skin of my chest I could feel my heart press. My entire body tightened into itself trying in vain to disappear.
“What, who are you?” I said.
“Detective Mondongo Assado,” he said extending his hand. I started to put my hand forward then pulled it right back when he again said “I know what you did.”
“Are you having some kind of mental difficulty Detective?” I said.
He smiled and seemed to think better of his approach. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be confusing or to sound adversarial either,” and that’s when I knew I was in trouble and needed to get my head out of my ass quickly.
“What do you want? I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s about a former client of yours, Ramon DeLeon.”
“Oh so you’re one of the geniuses helped get him killed?”
“So you know what happened?”
“Yeah I know what happened. He was cooperating with you guys and next thing I know he’s on the front page of The Post. Good work. I’ll be sure to steer some more clients your collective way.”
“Just curious, how do you know what happened?”
“How could I not?”
“What I mean is that you certainly couldn’t have told from the picture in the Post and I’m sure there are several Ramon DeLeons, so how did you know.”
“This might be difficult for a New York City detective to comprehend but most people can put two and two together and get four.”
“I see, so you had no inside information, just what you read in the papers?”
“Is this what you came to see me about? How I could know that the DeLeon killed was my DeLeon or should I say your DeLeon since he was cooperating with you guys and signed an agreement in which you collectively promised to protect him.”
“I had nothing to do with his cooperation as you know. I’m a homicide detective. And besides, from what I understand, he stopped cooperating well prior to his murder.”
“I see, can you blame him?”
“I’m more interested in what happened the night he and the others were killed.”
“Okay, well, good luck with that.”
“I thought maybe you could help me.”
“I’m sure I could.”
“Really? So you admit you have information?”
“None at all. But based on what I perceive to be the quality of you and your colleagues’ work, if put in charge of the case, I’m quite sure I could do better, meaning I could help you. That said, as you might have heard, I’m kind of on the other side of you guys so I don’t do much crime-solving.”
“Except that, as I said, based on my investigation, I think you happen to know a lot about this incident.”
“I think your exact words, twice, were that you knew what I had done. So what exactly is it you think I did.”
“I misspoke if I said that. Although it does occur to me that perhaps you better hope you’re right about my ability to solve crimes.”
“There’s no if you said that, that’s what you said. As far as what I know about what happened, I certainly don’t know anything that the DA and the detectives who were there for the meeting don’t know, so just talk to them. After that if you still want to talk to me, get me at work or through the DA.”
“Strange.”
“ . . .”
“Strange I said.”
“What is?”
“Just that if a client of mine was brutally killed I like to think I would want to assist in the investigation as much as possible. I don’t know how to interpret your reluctance, unless you have something to hide that is.”
“Or unless, as is the case, I simply know I have nothing to say that could help your investigation.”
“Well, with all due respect, you couldn’t possibly know that without talking to me about it.”
“So talk, you’re right, tell me what you know and I’ll try to be of assistance.”
He looked at me with those mirrors and said nothing. I felt better. I thought he would leave. That I would never see him again. That everything would still be good. Then he asked if I was hungry and when I shrugged added that we should get something to eat and discuss what happened, that it would be better than him going through the courts and compelling me to talk and that it would be a means of clearing myself of any suspicion, not that there was any he was quick to add. I felt a form of violence well up in me at the sound of those last words. I wanted to seize his face with my bare hands and tear it off his head. I smiled and said sure.
We went to a nearby diner no one ever went to where even the limited staff seemed surprised to see us and maybe unsure of what to do in response. We ordered and started getting food in record speed. I felt anger mixed with mounting fear.
“So you knew about this big deal that was going to happen Wednesday morning right?”
“What big deal?”
“Yes, this big exchange on 123rd street that resulted in DeLeon being killed in the street.”
“No.”
“You’re saying you weren’t at the meeting with DeLeon and the DA?”
“No I’m not saying that, but that’s not what you asked me.”
“Well wasn’t the deal discussed at this meeting, a meeting that was attended by only you and four others?”
“Not to my recollection.”
“You’re saying the deal wasn’t discussed?”
“A deal was discussed as I recall. But it wasn’t for any Wednesday morning and it wasn’t at 123rd street either.”
“I see, when was it for?”
“A Saturday I believe.”
“Where?”
“Not sure but on the West Side somewhere, Riverside Drive maybe, but not on 123rd that I’m sure of.”
“Why did you stay for the meeting?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I was Mr. DeLeon’s attorney as you pointed out.”
“So you had inside information about this high-level deal that would be going down right? With all that money involved.”
“I guess not.”
“What do you mean? You just said you were there didn’t you?”
“I was there, that’s true, but apparently I didn’t posses any true information since it appears that Mr. DeLeon was either lying to the DA or the upcoming meeting he was talking about was subsequently cancelled. Or are you saying it in fact went off in the manner he said it would?”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“Thought you wanted my help?”
“Did you know he was giving the DA false information?”
“So it was false? Intentionally so?”
“Yes, it was. Did you know?”
“No, how could I given that neither the DA nor the detectives apparently knew and they were certainly a great deal more familiar with the subject than I was.”
“Of course DeLeon could have confided in you that what he was giving them was untrue and it follows that he could have gone so far as to give you the true information.”
“That’s funny, you think our clients tell us the truth huh? They don’t do it when it would benefit them, what would’ve been the reason for doing so here? What exactly is your theory Assado? That I knew when the meeting was really taking place and went there and killed DeLeon so I would have one less case to worry about?”
“When was the last time you saw DeLeon?”
“I guess the day he was sentenced, the day after the meeting with the DA as I recall.”
“Did you ever talk to him after that?”
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“No, next I heard about it was the DA telling me he had lost him and would be asking for a warrant.”
“Did you tell the DA you had reason to doubt the information DeLeon gave.”
“No, that would assume I had a reason to doubt it.”
“So you believed it to be true?”
“I guess but I also didn’t give it much thought. It didn’t carry much importance to me either way. I just handled the cooperation, what happened after that was not really any of my concern. You sure you’re a detective?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just that some of your questions betray an almost complete lack of understanding of a defense attorney’s role in representing a CI.”
He shut up and ate. I mentally debated plunging my fork into his face. I ate but not really. I stared at him. He was older with gray facial hair that made his face look like a baseball glove that had been left out in the rain. Thin too. The skin under his black eyes sagged and every vein on his hands bulged like rivers on a relief map. After an interminable time . . . he looked back at me.
“You asked before about my theory,” he said. “I think that somebody knew about that meeting Wednesday, knew a lot of money would be there. Somebody not directly involved, someone neither of the parties gave much thought to, and somebody they certainly didn’t expect to see on the night of the exchange. I think that this person or persons broke into 410 123rd Street at the time of the meeting with the intention of stealing the money and that as a result things got a little violent leading to the death of DeLeon and pretty much everybody else there. I think they got the money. I think they killed some people. That’s my theory.”
“Okay.”
“Now I have to go soon and thank you for meeting with me but I do have one last question for you, which is what do you think about what I just said?”
“What I think? Well obviously I have no way of knowing whether or not yours is a good theory since I don’t really know any of the facts you’re basing it on.”
“True I guess. Tell you what. I’ll keep working this thing up, then we’ll talk some more. How’s that sound?”
“Annoying.”
“Maybe I’ll bring you some of the photos of DeLeon. You couldn’t see the face in the papers. As you probably know, he was shot in the face.”
“No, how would I know that?”
“Point blank range too. You can make out the face, that’s what people don’t get. Really half the face was almost unaffected. The other half of course looks like ground meat with occasional skin mixed in. His mother’s really counting on me to find the person who did this. His mother.”
“ . . .”
“I’ll bring you the pictures. Know what I think when I look at them?”
“ . . .”
“Do you know?”
“What?”
“I’m just grateful I had nothing to do with what happened to him or the other people inside that apartment you know? I’ll bring you the pictures of all of them. I think you should see them. What I mean by saying I’m grateful is this. For whatever reason I think we all carry around with us the results of our actions. They trail us like the train on a wedding dress. Trust me on this, I’m a lot older than you. I wouldn’t want that face, the one I saw in the pictures, following me is alls I’m saying.”
“ . . .”
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Yes I better.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks for the food.”
“ . . .”
“I mean it thanks.”
“Okay, we’ll talk soon. I’ll be back, we’re not done yet Casi.”
He stood up but didn’t leave. There seemed to be no reason to say anything anymore, to keep up any appearances.
It was quiet. Then a waitress started laughing.
He looked at me some more. I looked down and after a while heard him walk away.
I was the only person left in the diner who didn’t work there. I drank more coffee then left, walking home as slow as possible and avoiding the sidewalk cracks.
Back in my apartment I couldn’t remember the reason I had gone out. The only person I wanted to talk to was Dane but my phone was still broken. Now I realized what was going to happen to me in the very near future so I knew I had to hurry.
I put on slight music I could ignore and started to write. The type of this music I most favored they no longer made. Turns out they asked around one day and I was the only one enjoying it so they decided to just stop making it. Most of the bands that were making the music when this decision was made simply disappeared and got real jobs, the ones that survived made different music that appealed to more people. The result was that when I listened to that music it felt a bit like traveling to the past or visiting ghosts, and this despite the undeniable fact that a very healthy portion of the music I listened to otherwise was created a far longer time ago, by people long-departed, yet produced no similar feelings.
I wrote all weekend. I never left the house. I ate whatever was in the fridge and slept on the sofa when I was tired. Monday I went in real late so I spent almost three full days in that condition.
I wrote about how preteens had fixed it so that Kingg would fall on his head. How they did this because he looked and acted differently than them. I wrote that he began to have seizures following this head injury then attached and referred to the meager medical records we had in support. I wrote how Kingg hadn’t been in the greatest mental shape even before that and attached those records as well.
I included information about Kingg’s home life. How you couldn’t find his father if you combed the earth. How his mother never stopped working for a minute but never made more than legislative minimums her whole life before dying in wait for a new kidney. I described where they lived and how, and reminded the court of the kind of schooling the young Kingg received. I told them about the various live-in boyfriends of Ms. Kingg and the impressions they chose to leave on Jalen.
I cited cases, all asserted as persuasive not binding authority, for the proposition that we should not execute someone like Kingg. Aside from that I reminded them of what Jalen’s attorney had done. How he had sat there like a constitutionally-ineffective potted plant. A plant that couldn’t be troubled to have Kingg examined or to present the slightest evidence of an impairment that should have been obvious and this during a phase of the trial that amounts to nothing more than an invitation for precisely that information. I just kept writing and watched the thing grow to absurd proportions.
The day I had to return to work I woke up early and started writing again. Only at that early hour, working on very little sleep, I kind of lost my mind a bit. I wrote that certain things were leaving me nauseated. I said that judges made me feel that way. Not most of them but all of them. I said that you for example, the judge I’m writing this to, made me feel nauseated. The nausea came from understanding that people produced by every conceivable advantage got to decide whether someone like Jalen lived or died and what was worse was they never fucking seemed to decide that the person should live, that a person’s life, any person, was more important than whether some fat fuck at a country club thought you were hard enough on crime or whether you continue to get sufficient reelection campaign contributions you worthless retarded piece of shit. Why should you be allowed to decide anything beyond what you have for lunch you mental infant?
Nausea-inducing things like that I put in the actual brief. My fingers moved and the words appeared in the document. I felt sick. My head hurt so much. The room spun. I knew everything was going badly for me but felt powerless to change anything. I tried to vomit but couldn’t because I hadn’t eaten in so long, instead my empty stomach would dryly convulse, tearing my eyes and leaving a painful burning reminder in my throat.
I walked into the nearest suit and stumbled out the door. I knew then why my ear had stopped hurting. Whatever had previously haunted it had obviously moved to my brain. There it surely
lay, causing severe pain to the surrounding head and slowly spreading its dendritic margins until it would ultimately occlude the organ and my life entire. The steps I took down the stairs were wobbly and unsure and when I opened the door and stepped outside the cold made me feel sicker. At the bottom of the steps stood a man looking directly at my face. It was Detective Assado.
“Hello,” he said.
I walked down the steps and stood across from him.
“Are you all right?” he said. “You don’t look good at all.”
I looked at him but said nothing.
“I got those pictures you wanted to see.”
“I never said I wanted to see any pictures,” I said. “You were the one with the pictures.”
He started to take them out. I began retching again with nothing produced except more pain. Then I coughed a lot and when I spit out the results it looked like blood. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. I was bent over, my hands on my knees. I looked up at him, raising my head only slightly.
“Well I went through a lot of trouble to get these so I’m sure you won’t want to be rude.”
I stood up. Through the tears in my eyes he looked stroboscopic. He held the picture up for me to see the way limo drivers hold their signs up at airports. “What are those marks on your neck by the way? I meant to ask you last time.” When I ignored him he went on yapping like it was the most natural thing in the world to be so treated.
“I have to go,” I said.
“I need to talk to you some more actually. Let’s talk right here and get it over with.”
“It’s cold.”
“It’s not bad. I think it’s starting to warm up.” I sat on a step and put my face in my hands. What could I do, he kept talking. “See I think someone went in there that night and took the money.”
“What money?”
“The records we found indicate the presence of quite a bit of money. Money to pay for the considerable amount of drugs involved. Only while we found the drugs, mixed in among the bodies, we never found any money.”
“So?”
“So someone took the money. And it was a third party not directly involved in the transaction.”
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 71
