Cover Story

by Gerry Boyle

  Maria Yolimar’s sister apologized for not being dressed. She worked at a laundry, she said. She worked all night. I nodded, noting that there was something childlike about her, that she was one of those people who, when asked a question, felt obligated to answer.

  But then, before I’d even asked a question, she turned gray.

  “You’re the man who—”

  “Who knows the other man. That’s right. And that other man, the one they say killed the mayor, was investigating Julio’s case. He asked me to look into it. He thinks there’s an important story about something that happened.”

  The older woman looked at me and leaped off the couch toward the children. Maria Yolimar’s sister stood and her feet thumped on the floor. She looked toward the phone, then back at me.

  “I’m not here to hurt you or frighten you. I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

  “But you . . . on the TV—”

  Maria Yolimar’s sister looked at me and took a step back. The older woman herded the children into the bedroom and closed the door.

  “Please, don’t be afraid,” I said, holding my hands up, still clutching the notebook. “I didn’t do anything. I just know him, the other guy. I’m just a reporter. I know him because I’m a reporter.”

  She looked bewildered.

  “I want to find out what happened to Julio Yolimar.”

  The sister didn’t sit down, but she didn’t run or call the police. She stood and I stood, too, and she answered my questions, perfunctorily at first, then more completely. The older woman stayed in the bedroom with the door shut.

  “He didn’t stab nobody,” the sister said.

  “The French doctor?”

  “He said it was a mistake. He told Maria, when he got out of jail, everything would be okay. He said to her what the police said was lying. He said he’d get out in a few weeks.”

  “What? On bail?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. Julio said to her, ‘Don’t sweat it.’ That was his saying, you know? ‘Don’t sweat it.’ He said it all the time. He’d say, ‘Don’t sweat it. Everything gonna be great. We’re gonna move to a big apartment.’ I didn’t believe him.”

  I wrote in the notebook. Looked up.

  “But he was right. Julio was telling the truth. He came home and he said, ‘They let me go. They got the wrong guy.’”

  “Was that true?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But he was released?”

  “I don’t know. He was home. Maria said he had money. He said they gave it to him for saying bad things about him that weren’t true.”

  “For damaging his reputation?”

  “Right.”

  I looked doubtful.

  “Did police come looking for him?”

  “No. Nobody came. But Julio, he liked people.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “He liked to talk a lot,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And he had this money. So Maria and him, they went out one night. Stayed out late, went dancing. And she said they were walking home and this car pulls up, and it’s a police car.”

  “A blue-and-white one?”

  “No. All black, but you know it’s a police car.”

  “Where was this?”

  “End of the street. Right here. ’Cause she told me, they stop in the park and . . . They’re like newlyweds, you know?”

  She broke off.

  “Could you leave that part out?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Well, she’s putting her clothes back on and Julio is already dressed and he walks up onto the sidewalk and this car pulls up and this guy says, ‘Hey, Julio. Hey, Yolimar.’ And he goes over and they talk for a minute. There’s two guys in the car. Two cops. Detectives. Maria said she saw them. From over in the dark.”

  “Right.”

  “And then Julio comes back and he says to Maria, ‘I’ll see you a little later.’”

  She acted it out, with different voices.

  “She say, ‘Everything okay?’ ’Cause she’s still thinking a little that he escaped. He says, ‘Fine. I just need to do something for these guys.’”

  “And he left?” I said, still taking notes, trying to get all of it.

  “Got in the car. That was it.”

  “What was it?”

  “He never came back,” Maria Yolimar’s sister said, arms folded under her breasts. “Nobody ever saw him again.”

  “What day was that?”

  “A Friday.”

  “No, I mean, what was the date?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Summer. I was working in the laundry. My first year, so I was fifteen.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “These your children?”

  “Yeah.”

  I scrawled the date in my notebook. Paused. The bedroom door opened a crack and the older woman peeked out.

  “But Maria called City Hall?”

  “Yeah, on the anniversary. It was her feeling of duty. She’s like that.”

  “But why the mayor’s office? One of the reports said she said she knew Johnny Fiore would know about it. Just because he’s district attorney doesn’t mean he knows everything about everything that happens with the police.”

  “He was in charge. He had to know.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to ask Maria.”

  “If I ask her, what will she say?”

  She didn’t answer. I smiled gently.

  “Just give me a clue. So I know whether this is worth pursuing.”

  She brushed at her hair. Picked at her eye. Then took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around herself tighter. She wanted to tell me. She would tell me. She just wanted to be asked again.

  “Just a hint?” I said.

  “Well, she will tell you, like she told me, she kissed Julio goodbye and she said, ‘Julio, why you working for the cops? After they lied.’ And he said, ‘Those aren’t just regular cops. They’re special cops. They work for Johnny Fiore.’”

  “The district attorney.”

  “That’s what he said. When’s this going to be in the paper?”

  “I’m not sure. Soon.”

  “What paper?”

  “The Times.”

  “You going to put my name in the paper?”

  “I’d like to. Do you mind?”

  She looked away, stroking her hair, suddenly self-conscious.

  “How do you spell it?” I said. “Is it M-A-R-I-A?”

  She pursed her lips. Wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “You’re Maria, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re not her sister.”

  Maria Yolimar stared at me, and after a moment, slowly nodded.

  There was a thump from the bedroom and then crying. She started for the door. I stepped to the window and looked down.

  The Range Rover was still there. The guys were under the hood of the Honda, their buttocks and legs showing. From the direction of Amsterdam, a blue car appeared. It was a Ford, a Crown Victoria. It pulled up to the Honda and stopped.

  One of the men from the Honda walked over to the big sedan. He leaned down and then back. The man stuck something in his shirt pocket and pointed toward 486. The car pulled away and beside the Range Rover it slowed, then continued up the street and stopped.

  A man got out. He was smallish and slim, wearing a baggy floral shirt and jeans. The car pulled away and turned at the end of the street, then stopped a hundred yards up the block, to my left. The first man was out of sight. As I watched, a second man got out of the car and crossed the street. He had hair cut short on the sides, long in the back. He was walking toward the building.

  It hadn’t taken them long.

  I turned back. Maria Yolimar was at my elbow.

  “You really think you can find out what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, still looking out.

  “Hard on everybody. His family, too. Not knowing.
’Cause they been through this twice. You don’t know if the person is dead or alive. It’s like those guys who never come back from Vietnam, you know what I’m saying?”

  I said I did.

  “Julio’s mother, she has Julio and she has her nephew, who she raised like a son, ’cause his mother died in Santo Domingo. He got arrested, too. Police said he killed this lady, but he didn’t do it. They let him out, but he never came home at all.”

  I listened, half turned toward the window.

  “So could you ask about him, too?” Maria Yolimar said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “His name’s Ortiz. Georgie Ortiz. But when they arrested him, they got it all wrong. They called him Muriqi.”

  24

  A chill ran through me, and when I spoke, the words came out in a raspy whisper.

  “Who did he kill?”

  “He didn’t kill nobody. The police lied.”

  “Who did they say he killed?”

  “Some lady from the hospital,” she said. “They said Georgie stole her car and shot her. Right in the face. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m sure. You don’t remember her name?”

  “No. But they said Georgie had the car and he brought it to the junkyard, but he didn’t.”

  “He didn’t have the car?”

  “Oh, he had the car. But he bought the car. They arrested him and said he killed her, and lied and said he was at the hospital. That’s where it happened.”

  “Why did they do that?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “ ’Cause the lady who died?” Maria Yolimar said. “She was married to a cop.”

  “Oh,” I mustered. “You know which cop?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Have you been reading all the stories in the paper?”

  “No. I don’t read the paper. I watch the TV, but usually it’s kids’ shows. Sesame.”

  “Right,” I said.

  I smiled, let the thread that connected me to Butch to Julio to Georgie just drift away. Maria Yolimar stopped talking and looked at me and then looked toward the bedroom. A child began to cry. She said, “I gotta go,” and walked to the door, pushed it open, and closed it behind her.

  I let myself out.

  Walking down the hall, I sorted through it.

  Yolimar and Ortiz were cousins. Both men were charged with murders that same summer, but were released. Both men had some contact, at least indirect, with Johnny Fiore, then Manhattan district attorney. Both men were missing.

  Had Butch made this connection? Had he gotten this far?

  I didn’t think so. If he had, Maria would have said so. If she’d realized that my friend, the same cop who was in the news for killing the mayor, had been involved in Georgie’s case, she wouldn’t have opened the door to me at all. So I was making progress, moving—

  Up the stairs, to the roof.

  It was flat and black and hot, strewn with stones and broken glass. I wound my way around chimneys, a water tank, flushed a nighthawk from its daytime roost. Keeping to the center of the roof, out of sight of the street, I walked to the end of the building.

  Between the buildings was a ten-foot gap, a yawning chasm. Close to the edge was a long plank, on which someone had sprayed the words the bridge.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  I swallowed hard and turned to the rear of the building to look for the fire escape. At the edge of the roof, I dropped to my knees. Peeked over. The rusted steel grating was ten feet below. If I hung by my hands, it would be a four-foot drop, and then I’d be on my way to the ground. Circle around, jump in the car, and go.

  Simple enough.

  The simmering tar was soft under my knees. I crawled along the edge until I was centered over the landing. I turned around and eased my legs off the roof, into the air. My feet waggled in space. I looked back. My knees were on the lip of the roof. I looked for something to grip, but there was nothing, just tar and gravel. I reached back and cupped my fingers over the edge. Inched my way off. Lowered myself onto my belly and looked back again, back and down—

  Saw the man from the car round the corner and look up, then duck back.

  I squirmed back onto the roof and rolled away from the edge. A back alley? What better place for me to be found, dead after a drug buy, dead after a mugging, dead because somebody wanted my fancy car?

  It happened.

  They knew I was on the roof now. Probably were coming up the stairs. One shove, no more problem. I scrambled up and, in a crouch, trotted toward the hatchway. Eased the door open and listened.

  Heard nothing. Then steps. More than one person. Deliberate and steady, climbing closer.

  I closed the door. Looked around. Saw nothing. Heard voices.

  Christ.

  I circled the roof and found a flattened beer can, ran back to the door and wedged it underneath. Then I trotted to the far end of the roof and stood, three feet from the edge.

  Two feet.

  I looked down five stories to a trash-filled alley and backed away.

  The plank was twelve feet long; it said so in faded lumberyard marker on the butt end. Eleven inches wide and an inch and a half thick. Probably stolen from a scaffold.

  I bent and picked it up. It was sun-bleached but solid. I stood and lifted it and gravel came with it as I swung it in the air, stagger-stepped toward the edge, and let it go. It came down with a bang. I knelt and shoved it farther across, until there was a foot of plank on each roof. I adjusted it so it was square.

  There was a bang on the door. Then another.

  I swallowed. Started across and the plank flexed under my weight and my foot caught the edge and I started to stagger, fell to a crouch, dived forward, and landed.

  One knee on the roof.

  Hands clawing at the tar and rocks.

  And then I was on.

  I turned.

  Both men were running across the other roof toward me. One had a gun against his leg. On my knees, I shoved the plank back.

  I heard it clatter on the ground as I scrambled backward, rolled to my feet, ran and dodged, behind one chimney, then another, heard a smack but no crack, no shot. Just a splock sound, then another, shots from a silenced gun. Then I was behind the shack that led to the stairway.

  The knob on the door didn’t turn.

  It was locked.

  But it opened when I yanked and I tumbled down the stairs, three steps at a time, then four, leaping with one hand on the rail, bursting into a hall where the doors leaned open and the ceilings had fallen.

  I leaped over trash, bolted in a door, and ran for the window. I looked out and there was a fire escape. I tried to open the window, but it was nailed shut, sprayed with graffiti. I took a step back and kicked through the glass, punching it out in chunks.

  I sliced my ankle but kept kicking until the hole was big enough. I crouched, kicked the bottom pieces free of the frame and glazing, and squeezed through, the glass slicing at my crotch.

  But then I was out and I half-dived, half-ran down each flight, the steps ringing like gongs, all the way to the second floor, where the ladder that had once dropped to the ground was gone.

  I fell to my knees, grabbed the bars, and swung. Let myself hang and dropped. Fell into garbage bags and wood and broken toys, lurched to my feet and ran along the chain fence until I came to a place where it had been ripped open.

  I squeezed through, ran down another alley, and came out on the next street, where I slowed and walked up the block toward Broadway, blood seeping into my shoe.

  I was standing in front of a liquor store at Broadway and 169th Street, next to some guys who were hanging out. Two of them were drinking beer from cans in paper bags, talking and laughing. A third was using the pay phone to return incoming calls to his pager. They wondered what I was doing there and I wondered, too.

  Donatelli and Ramirez pulled up to the curb and the man at the pay phone hung up and started up the block. The other men lowered their bags. I walked to
the car and got in the back.

  “Nice neighborhood,” Donatelli said. “Whatcha got, a death wish?”

  “Nobody bothered me but white guys,” I said.

  Ramirez turned and looked at me.

  “Now what is this story you’re trying to tell us?”

  I stared back.

  “Is it me, or do you seem skeptical?”

  “Chased you onto a roof and shot at you?” she said. “In the middle of the day? Even around here . . .”

  “And the gun had a silencer,” I said.

  “And you were helicoptered off the roof in the nick of time.”

  “I walked across a plank to the next building.”

  Ramirez turned and snorted.

  “Hey, I can show you. Amsterdam and 165th. Halfway down the block. It’s number 486. It was on the list.”

  “What list, McMorrow?” Ramirez said.

  “The list of people. People in the cases Butch was looking into. Cases that didn’t get prosecuted in the summer of 1988.”

  Donatelli pulled into traffic. Neither of them said anything.

  “He was working on this,” I said.

  Donatelli yawned.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Ramirez looked out the window.

  “And Dave Conroy knows about it. I heard him talking about it at the courthouse with that guy from the DA’s office.”

  No reaction.

  “They said they’d stake out the places I’d be going. They knew about it before, but the college professor, the one whose wife was almost killed by Lester John, he called them.”

  “This is a case from ten years ago?” Donatelli said, turning off Broadway onto a cross street. “Why’s he calling them now?”

  “Because I went to talk to him.”

  “Yeah, well, you show up at my door asking off-the-wall questions about my wife’s ten-year-old murder, I might call somebody, too,” Ramirez said.

  “She wasn’t murdered. She’s in a vegetative state.”

  I could feel Ramirez roll her eyes.

  “Yeah, well, that’s about how I feel,” Donatelli said. “Two hours’ sleep in two days.”

  “You getting much sleep, McMorrow?” Ramirez said.

  I looked at her, the taut lines of her perpetually angry face.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you were up all night with that artist woman.”