by Blake Banner
“And is that where you would like to meet?”
“Yeah, that would be cool. Do you think I need to be afraid, dude? ’Cause I am a witness.”
I shook my head. “No, Am, I don’t think you need to worry about that. Are you at home now?”
“I will be in about three minutes, maybe two. No, I think maybe three…”
“Stay there when you get home. We’ll be right over.”
I hung up and Dehan said, “Am?”
“It’s a long story and not a very interesting one. Americano, milk with a dash of coffee. His father’s idea.”
“Nice.”
I stood and grabbed my coat. “I think it’s a waste of time, but he thinks he might have something. Let’s go talk to him.”
Am’s apartment was the ground floor of an ugly, yellow brick house at the top of Bryant Avenue. By the time we got there, the afternoon was growing old and the temperatures were turning from icy to glacial. A nasty gray light hung over everything and a wind had started to pick up off the water that was damp and frigid and found its way into every nook and cranny of your clothing. I hammered on the door while Dehan stamped and billowed big clouds of condensation.
The door opened after a moment and a big guy of about twenty-three or -four stood looking down at us. He must have been six three in his bare feet. His complexion was dark, but he had blond hair and blue eyes.
“Are you Am?”
“I am,” he said, apparently unaware that it could be amusing. “Are you the cops?”
“We are. This is Detective Dehan and I am John Stone. Can we come in?”
“Yeah, man, you can come in. I’m making hot soup. Do you want some hot soup?”
“No, thank you.” I waited. “But we would like to come in. It is very cold.”
He grinned and stood back. “Yeah, sure, man!”
We stepped into a short, narrow hallway with a door on the left and a door at the end that stood open. Light filtered out, along with a smell of chicken soup. It smelled good. He scratched his head, looked embarrassed and pointed at that door.
“I’m cooking… I’m making soup. I don’t know if I should leave it on the stove…”
I smiled, wondering how many more nuts I was going to meet that day. “Why don’t we all go into the kitchen? Then you can go ahead and cook, and we can talk there.”
“Yeah, man, that’s the plan.” He walked ahead, muttering, “…man’s got a plan.”
The kitchen, like the hall, was small and narrow, but it was clean and well ordered. There was a table against the wall with two plastic chairs. A window over the sink looked out to a backyard, where inky silhouettes of winter trees stood stark against a darkening, gray sky. Am went to his pot of soup, Dehan went and rested her backside against the sink and I leaned against the door.
“What have you got to tell us about Jose Robles, Am?”
“He was takin’ an interest in me, man. They was goin’ to reject my application at the university, you know? But he told them, no way, man. He could see I had ideas. So he said he wanted me. Now he’s dead.”
We were all quiet for a moment while he stirred his soup. Eventually I sighed and said, “I am really sorry about that, Am, but I don’t see how that can help us with our investigation…”
“I don’t know, but I figure, if me an’ him had a kind of special bond, you know what I’m sayin’? If you talk to me, then maybe you can, like, deduce why they wanted to kill him.”
I glanced at Dehan. She closed her eyes and shook her head. I looked back at him and was going to thank him for his time and tell him it didn’t work that way, but instead I heard myself asking him, “You live alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dad’s in Colorado. Don’t know where my mom is. She left when I was born.” He looked at me and grinned. “She was colored, and he didn’t like colored folk much. So he told her to git. Then he called me Americano ’cause he said I come out on the right side of brown.”
I frowned, vaguely aware his voice was changing. “You grew up in Colorado?”
He took the pot off the heat and poured some soup into a mug. He glanced at Dehan. “You sure you don’t want any?”
She smiled and nodded. “I’d love some actually. It smells great.”
So he poured us a mug of soup each and said, “We can go to the living room. It’s warm in there.”
I glanced at my watch. “We can spare half an hour.”
He had a fire burning in the grate and a couple of old, collapsed sofas that had been bolstered with blankets and cushions. He picked a corner opposite an old TV and smiled at us as we sat.
I sipped the soup. It was as good as it smelled. He watched me carefully and I nodded. “It’s good. How long have you been in New York?”
“Since I turned sixteen. That’s six years. It’s why I talk funny. I kind of pick things up and mix it all together. Jose said it was a survival mechanism. I integrate to survive.”
Dehan put her mug on the floor by her feet. “Your daddy teach you to make soup?”
“Uh-huh. He taught me everything. He taught me to survive.”
“So what are the ideas that Jose was going to help you with?”
He stared at his soup for a while, then at the fire. “You heard about the Tesla. And there are dudes out in Texas makin’ ’lectric motors from lithium ion batteries. They’ll go naught to sixty in one and a half seconds, man. And they will go two hundred MPH no problem. Problem those cars got though, is the battery loses its charge super fast. Fast as the car goes, that’s how fast it loses its charge. Now, I have ideas, good ideas, about how you can stop that happenin’, dude. And I told those ideas to Jose, Dr. Robles, and he said they was good ideas. An’ that’s why he wanted me in his class. I told him, I want to run my own company, dude, fitting kick-ass motors to classic chassis, you feel me? Gonna be wild and bitchin’. Tell you! He said, ‘Yeah, you gonna do that, Am!’ I said, ‘You know I am!’” He sighed. “Now he’s dead, I can’t do that.”
I shook my head. “He was helping you, Am, but it was always going to be you doing it. It may be more difficult now, but you can still do it. There must be other lecturers who can help you.”
“Like Hays?” He laughed. “Hays is even more crazy than I am, man.”
Dehan laughed. “Well, there you go! If he could do it, so can you!”
He laughed out loud. “Yeah, I like that. Right. If he can do it, so can I. Yeah, man.”
I sat forward. “Am, did Jose ever talk to you about guns?”
“No way, dude. Me an’ him did not agree on that score. I’m like my daddy. I believe in the second amendment, man. Ain’t nobody gonna take my guns away from me, not while I’s alive anyhow. But Jose was all about, if you give people guns, they will shoot each other. And I’m like, no man. You give people guns and they will not shoot each other! You see me? I been around guns all my life, I never wanted to shoot nobody. Now, these boys around here? Guns pretty much illegal in New York, right? Well they can’t wait to git their hands on a piece and shoot somebody!”
I laughed and shook my head. “You just can’t decide whether you’re a cowboy or a badass black dude, can you?”
“I told you, man. I talk weird.”
“So Jose never asked you for a gun?”
“No way. And if he had, I would’a said no. I ain’t givin’ no gun to a dude like him.”
“What about Agnes? She ever ask you for a gun?”
He hesitated. “I didn’t know Agnes all that well. Never talked to her much. I seen her around with Jose, we never discussed nothing deep. She was real shy.”
I nodded. “So was that something Jose specialized in? Lithium ion batteries?”
“Yeah, man. He was lookin’ at ways of replacing the liquid. That liquid can form dendrites, see? And they will kill the battery and maybe even catch fire, cause all kinds of problems. Now, you replace that liquid with another substance like glass, or other crysta
lline substances, or gel, it is gonna be, like, more stable and hold its charge much longer. Me and him, we use to have long conversations ’bout that, man. I had some cool ideas. He liked them. He told me I was a genius. I felt good about that.”
“I bet you did. Did he ever discuss his personal life with you?”
He frowned. “Like what kind of thing?”
“His relationships with women, girlfriends, friends and family…”
His frown deepened. “No, he never talked about nothing like that. All he ever talked about was science, and the big revolution that was coming. He said men like me and him were gonna change the world. He said one day we would make a car called the Robles-Americano, and everybody would be drivin’ the Robles-Americano. Charge it once a year, dude, two hundred and fifty miles per hour, naught to sixty in one second. Bad ass car, man.”
I smiled. “A bit faster than my old Jaguar. OK, Am, thanks for talking to us. And stay with the course, don’t you go dropping out. We’re going to be checking.”
He nodded. “Was it helpful, what I told you?”
“I think it might be, yeah. Hang loose, dude.”
He shook his head. “It sounds wrong when you say it.”
I pointed at him. “It sounds wrong when you say it too!”
He laughed. “I know.”
When we stepped outside, it was dark. The wind blowing in off the river now seemed to be driving invisible needles. We clambered in the car, I put on the heating and pulled out onto Hunts Point Avenue and headed for the expressway. After a couple of minutes Dehan said, “Can you please explain to me what just happened? Have we slipped into some kind of parallel universe where crazy is normal and we are the normal ones, who are crazy?”
I nodded. “Yes. That just about sums it up.”
“Oh, OK, that’s all right then.” She was quiet for a moment longer and then said, “Because I thought I just met a mixed-race cowboy who tries to talk like Hollywood’s idea of a black Bronx badass, and is in fact a genius who is going to revolutionize the world by creating a battery you only need to charge once a year.”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll tell you one more thing. If there is one guy in the world who could have got Agnes her gun, it’s him.”
“Yup.”
“Jose had this guy’s dreams in the palm of his hand.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Stone, he was creating another dependency, just like he had Agnes, just like he had Hays, he was making Am emotionally dependent on him… That’s what this son of a bitch did in life. He went through life making people dependent on him. That’s how he got his kicks. He was a bully. A bully who created emotional dependency.”
“That is what it looks like.”
“And I can see how Agnes’ jealousy could lead her to want to kill him, or Alicia Cobos, but what I cannot see, Stone, is why this kid, whose whole future depends on Jose Robles giving him a hand up, would provide Agnes with a gun! Why would he get Agnes a gun?”
“Why? Try rephrasing the question.”
“OK, OK, OK… What would make this kid give Agnes a gun…?”
“That is more focused.”
“He already said he wouldn’t give a gun to Jose, so the only reason he would give one to Agnes is if she was going to shoot somebody he wanted dead…”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s the only reason, but…”
“So what would make him want Jose dead?”
“That is a good question. And…?”
“Jesus!” She stared at me. “If he was stealing Am’s ideas. Why else would a guy like Jose Robles hang out with a kid like Am? And if he was using them in his research, they would become the property of the university and Am would be left out in the cold. That is one powerful motive for shooting somebody.”
I nodded and sighed. “It surely is, partner. It surely is…” After a moment I added, “What I am not clear on, though, is why he would want to talk to us.”
SIX
The traffic was heavy and slow-moving on the Bruckner Expressway, and the lights looked like boiled sweets in red and green and amber. My phone rang and I handed it to Dehan. She answered the call and said, “Yeah, Dehan.”
She listened for a bit and said to me, “It’s Joe, from the lab. He has something he says we’ll want to have a look at.” She looked at her watch. “Let’s go see him and call it a day.” She didn’t wait for me to answer. She said into the phone, “We’re on our way, Joe. With this traffic, it’s going to be half an hour at least.”
She hung up and put the phone in my pocket. Then she said, “So, the question I am asking myself now is, does Am know where Agnes is?”
“You made up your mind about this?”
“No, I am exploring the idea. But frankly, Stone, so far it is the only idea that seems to have any chance of taking us anywhere.”
“OK, so talk me through it. How does this work?”
She shifted in her seat so she was facing me and stuck her gloved hands between her knees to keep them warm.
“Our starting point is that Jose Robles is an egomaniac, who gets a kick out of making weak people dependent on him. This is something he does for fun, for pleasure. It is the only way he knows how to have close, intimate relationships.”
I glanced at her and frowned. “This is a theory, we have no evidence for this, except anecdotes from acquaintances.”
“Don’t interrupt. I know that. So, he gets into this relationship with Agnes. She is highly dependent and falls in love with him, or becomes obsessed with him, whichever. Maybe both. And the more dependent she becomes, the more cruel and dominant he becomes, to the point that he starts a relationship with Dr. Alicia Cobos, and flaunts it to Agnes.”
She went quiet. I glanced at her. “I know what’s stalling you here. Jose and Ali started this relationship, but she was not dependent on him. In fact, your gut instinct is that she didn’t even have sex with him. So you are wondering A, how does that relationship fit in with your theory? And B, what made her lie about having sex with him in the first place?”
She nodded. “Mm-hm…”
“Well, note the questions and come back to them later. Keep going, it’s good.”
“OK, fine, he gets into this relationship as a way of torturing Agnes. What he doesn’t realize is just how badly he is hurting her. The final straw comes when he tells her, get a cab, I am staying the night with Alicia. Then Agnes starts thinking about killing him.”
“OK, meanwhile…”
“Wait! Meanwhile, Dr. Jose Robles, whose field of specialization is lithium ion batteries, has discovered a student who, though decidedly odd, is gifted in the field of science. And Dr. Jose Robles, while claiming to mentor him, actually starts to steal this kid’s ideas and use them in his research. What he doesn’t understand is that this kid is an evil mixture of Colorado cowboy and Bronx badass. This kid grew up around guns and he knows a Sig Sauer p226 from a Glock 18 or a Desert Eagle. So when he realizes what Jose is doing, he approaches Agnes, discreetly, and plants the idea of revenge. He also facilitates the gun.”
“Problems: how does he approach her without Jose noticing? Also, how does he get close enough to her to plant such a radical idea and facilitate the gun? Bear in mind, with both of these questions, that she is with Jose all the time.”
“At first, Sensei, but remember that after a time, he starts to get bored with her and enjoys dumping her. We have heard of two occasions, but how many more were there? Remember also that Hays told us he and Agnes used to prefer to eat their lunch in the student canteen. It is perfectly possible that Am approached her during her lunch hour and spoke to her.”
“Yes, that is possible. We need to check it, talk to Hays again. I’ll tell you what I am having most trouble with.”
“What?”
“Am as an evil genius. He may or may not be a scientific genius, but you would have to be very subtle, and very good at manipulating people, to persuade them to commit a murder and take the fall for it
. I don’t see Am in that role.”
She was quiet for a long while, watching the cars ahead, with the amber light from the streetlamps washing over her face in a slow, steady rhythm.
Eventually we pulled off the expressway and turned onto Castle Hill Avenue and headed north toward Morris Park. Then she said suddenly, “I wonder how many Ams we’ve met. The name is a joke. First person of the verb to be. One minute he’s black Bronx, the next he’s a Colorado redneck… ‘I’m making soup, you want soup? I’m a bit weird and crazy, but I am also a loveable genius.’ He got us to go to him, so he didn’t have to step outside on a freezing cold day, and we didn’t even get his surname to check with the university.”
I handed her my phone again. “Call him. Get his name.”
I heard it ring a couple of times, then Dehan said, “Yo, Am, it’s Detective Dehan. Listen, we need your name. We have to fill out a report, and we can’t just call you Americano, right? What’s your surname?” She glanced at me, then said, “Nielsen? And that’s your permanent address on Bryant Avenue? Cool, Am, thanks for your help.”
She hung up, then made another call.
“Good afternoon, this is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD 43rd Precinct. We are investigating Dr. Jose Robles’ murder, and I need to confirm that he had among his students one Americano Nielsen, also known as Am Nielsen… OK, I’ll hold.” After a couple of minutes, she repeated the question, then: “He did? And he is now temporarily on Donald Hays’ list of students? Thank you for your help.”
She hung up and sat banging the edge of my phone on her thigh. “So, just for the sake of argument, humor me here: let’s say Am is some kind of shapeshifter…”
“A what now?”
“You know what I mean, one of those people who can just become somebody else, like Meryl Streep. In Death Becomes Her she’s this glamorous, sexy star, and then in Bridges of Madison County she is just like totally somebody else.”
“Oh, OK, I get the idea.”
“So just humor me, and imagine that Am is like that, he can take on any kind of personality he wants, and be totally convincing. And by using that very skill, on a highly vulnerable, suggestible Agnes Shine, he convinces her to kill Jose. Now, the million dollar question becomes, does he know where she went? I think that would have to be part of the plan. He would need to know where she was going, and where she was going to hide. I mean, she becomes a big risk and a loose end.”
