South by South Bronx

by Abraham Rodriguez

  For us, it was slow pace. Informers, alliances, betrayals. Endless surveilance. Took months to get inside, to know the workings and the players. It was all background scenes, establishing shots, and the long roll to end credits. That was my office, my street. My daily life for twenty years. Once there was an US vs. THEM story here somewhere. Once it was what I did for the South Bronx.

  “And the New York City Police Department?”

  I did what I thought was right. According to my training and my belief in certain principles. I put a stop to a gang. Nothing more, nothing less. But a lot of people didn’t think so. I stood my ground and I’m still standing right here. My wife and I even bought one of those new prefab houses on 156th Street and Kelly. As much of a quiet treelined street as I could get and still call it South Bronx. But connections popped like high-tension wires after Dirty Harry. Dancing, spinning, bursting sparks. Reminders of special non-status. What was I supposed to be doing if I quit being a cop? My wife and I were talking about having a baby, and three weeks in Mallorca ought to do the trick. It would be a gray slow time. Neither here nor there. Time to end things or get things started. A gold badge tossed on the captain’s desk. As movie-like an ending as possible.

  But so much for Mallorca and great escapes and movie scenes rolling to end credits. I had started smoking again. Swiped loose cigarettes from everywhere. Menthols, kings, filter tips, Chesterfield Regulars. I had just about every type of smokable tobacco squirreled everywhere I could reach like pocket like shelf like desk drawer always a loose one someplace for a sudden drag. And to sit sometimes and smoke them in rows as if waiting for someone to walk through that door. An armload of facts, irrefutable. Maybe they had sicced some dark yoruba spick cop on me. Parked outside my house. Getting to know habits, manner, style, face. The pebbles striking my window at 4 a.m.

  The agent had two bookends with him. Left them standing at the desk in the entry hall, faces impenetrably stone. Special agent? I expected older, salt-and-pepper hair, abrasive vocals. A face lined with experience and hassles, and not this young guy, hands sunk in the pockets of his long tan raincoat. I would have been more impressed had I caught him picking my lock or rifling through piles on my desk.

  I hadn’t even stirred my first cup of coffee. It rained buckets that morning and the wet was still in my bones. How I sat and started talking to him about cop life was beyond me. I didn’t have visitors for a reason. Didn’t have to scratch the surface much to strike a nerve. Nothing to hide, and that’s the best policy. How it all comes spilling out.

  “I’m Special Agent Myers,” he said.

  There was also that hunger for the raspy bite of that first cigarette of the day, which went with the first taste of coffee.

  “Detective Sanchez,” I said.

  A calm, sure grip. Smile so simpatico in that AMERICAN HEARTLANDS kind of way. To trust that face the moment you spot it on the screen. Should I say CIA? It never pays to say. People get riled over the silliest shit these days. Three simple letters in an e-mail like FBI CIA or FALN (that’s four letters), and suddenly there’s a background check and a black car with tinted windows following you around. Funny clicks on the phone. That guy outside the bodega who for some reason says, “Smile for the FBI,” as you head for your car. Too clean-cut to be a used car salesman. Too much energy for such a small space. Offered him a coffee and that was a mistake. Ripping those sugar packets and sprinkling sugar liberal, then stirring mad. Spoon clang clanging like the fucking bells of Rhymney. On top of which he asked me to close the door. By the time I got behind my desk, it felt like the room had shrunk.

  I guess I talked to him because I saw him as a cop from somewhere else—Washington, not South Bronx—another plane of reality where the power was stored. Maybe the feds had decided to step in and order a real investigation into what was happening here. It was an opportunity for me to talk to someone from OUTSIDE of here, OUTSIDE of this narrow confining orbit. To check and see if I was really going crazy. A new federal investigation would mean more new noise at a time when all was a vague limbo, not here not there. Good guys. Bad guys. A hazy blur. I don’t know now why I even bothered to raise my hand. I suddenly got the feeling from the deep silence that I didn’t want to talk anymore.

  “I know about your record,” Myers said. “You came highly recommended.”

  The best time to light up that first cigarette of the day is halfway through that first cup of the day. Had to be halfway, give the taste buds enough time to get saturated with coffee. The coffee would be the right temperature. My coffee was not yet at the halfway mark, yet I was already thinking about that cigarette. I was even thinking about what kind: a filterless Chesterfield. That rough, abrasive first taste of smoke. No filter to soften the hammer blow.

  “Detective Hanson at Four-Three. Detectives Peterson, Lemmings, and Bryan at the Four-O. The Bronx district attorney’s office. There wasn’t a single paralegal there that didn’t know your name. And your captain.” Vague smile. “He had quite a few things to say about you.”

  The open window faced a brick wall, a back alley of steel stairwells, and a basement grille. I was always going out there with Lieutenant Jack for a smoke, just standing on the grille and puffing away. Below were some glowy basement windows and hundreds of discarded butts. I was longing to go out that window.

  “I know pretty well about your current troubles,” Myers said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  I had the sense that I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. I had the sense that I knew deep down what he was after, and that troubled me. My seventh sip of coffee. As flaming burn as the first.

  “It’s very important that I find Anthony Rosario.”

  (Oh man. Another quick gulp of coffee.)

  Drug dealers are born with real names like regular people but they develop street tags, alter-egos. Rap-star comic book villain names like Destructo, MurderMan, Sniffles, Ace of Spade. Names I became so familiar with that it took awhile sometimes to register, to put the real name to a face. It was as if the real name was a secret, something hidden. It didn’t please me to hear Myers just blurt it out.

  “Spook? You’re looking for Spook?”

  “A.k.a., Spook. That’s right.”

  Silence. Deep cave.

  “What makes a special agent come all the way from Washington to look for Spook?”

  Standing ground again. Old habit. At first I thought he was here because of me. Now that he said “Spook,” I saw that it was still ABOUT me.

  “I’m involved in a top priority investigation. We’ve been following certain trails and one of them has led here. The things I’m about to tell you shouldn’t leave this room.”

  My fingers found a cigarette in a drawer. Totally unconscious. Automatic. Rolled it around. Thinking about that open window and no Spook thoughts. I longed for Lieutenant Jack, for his cynical laugh and the way he made trouble seem smaller.

  Myers pulled out a manila envelope from an inside pocket. He tapped it against a thigh, bit his lower lip. He handed it to me.

  “This is strictly confidential,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Are you aware that over the course of a month, Anthony Rosario deposited over ten million dollars in four different bank accounts?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Four accounts. A couple of names you might know. The other two are foreigners. Not from his organization. We were already watching them. They led us right to Mr. Rosario. We’ve been following the money since it came stateside.”

  I opened the envelope. Bank statements, phone records. Numbers dialed on Spook’s cell phone. There were two names I recognized all right, trusted Spook workers. The other names I did not know. The room was feeling smaller and smaller.

  “He floated the money into the accounts, then disappeared it. These two names.” Myers came around the desk to show me on the sheets. “They are known to us as individuals involved in a terrorist organization that has recently been waging a
n undeclared war against the United States.”

  Bank statements. Deposits. Withdrawals. Phone calls. Transaction slips. Footprints in the snow.

  “This organization has been flooding the country recently with money. Over the past six months we’ve snagged accounts in New York, Florida, Chicago, even Los Angeles. Closed a batch last month that used fake Social Security numbers. Unbelievable how banks let this stuff slip. A bunch of others we suspect but can’t touch because there are laws, laws, we have them, don’t we? And the more they protect people, the more these criminals use them to strangle us. We’re onto the bank thing, so now they’re trying to switch tactics. Last week we arrested two individuals using debit cards—individuals, again linked to terrorism—but every petty arrest we make generates a reaction. First, they were setting up accounts openly, with phony Social Security numbers. Expired visas, illegal aliens using debit cards … so we nail some. Now the method starts to change. Now they’re trying to launder the money in, approaching criminal elements who are highly skilled at it. We know they approached the mob.”

  Myers, standing by my desk, now staring at the window as if he had followed my eyes. I had the cigarette in my hand. I had my hand up to my face. To sniff the bouquet.

  “It was the mob that got us onto this thing to begin with. They told us right away. The mob is too patriotic to step into that. But a drug dealer … from the South Bronx? Who would even bother to look in the South Bronx? It’s a shift in tactics. Like an animal that’s aware it’s being hunted. It reacts, it shifts, it has a brain. We call that a conscious coordination of effort.”

  The half-point to my coffee had been reached. The coffee was at the right temperature. Myers, spirited and antsy, walked around the desk. It seemed like he hadn’t gotten to the worst of it yet.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my words tasting sluggish. “I’m having a hard time seeing Spook involved in this.”

  “I can understand,” he said. “But would you say his business has been so good over the past month that he would be making such a big deposit just coming out of jail?”

  I didn’t want to answer a question like that. My guts were tighter than a Dominican ass in stressed jeans. How didn’t I see something like this? Was I so fucking lazy? So we busted him two months ago, raided some sloppy operation, didn’t get much on him. Nothing that would stick when you have a good lawyer, and Spook had that. His “clean as a whistle” brother David made sure to hook him up every time.

  “But where’s the money from?” I felt testy, grasping for handhold along the ledge.

  “You don’t need to know that,” he said. He was by the window, peering out into the alley. His voice sounded somehow gentle. “Anyway, it’s not your fault.”

  “Why would it be?”

  Myers took his seat again. There was concern creasing his face. “That you didn’t know. You can’t blame yourself.”

  There was just the ticking of the clock. Our eyes met across a strange distance.

  “Unless you really do know every last little thing about the people in your files,” he said.

  It was one of those silent moments you replay later.

  “Nobody could,” I said, hollow.

  Myers gestured toward the flip-pad on my desk, which also came in the envelope.

  “Mr. Rosario met someone this last visit to prison. His name is Mounir. He’s from Saudi Arabia. We know him pretty well. He’s been especially talkative right now, since he’s scared his old friends are going to kill him. He’s the one who made the connection to Mr. Rosario. Just think: You’re this two-bit drug dealer who just got his ass busted on some shit charge, and here comes this stranger, offering you a chance to launder millions of dollars. What would your attitude be?”

  I wasn’t through rubbing my face shut.

  “I would go for it,” I said.

  “Okay, this is where it gets worse.” Myers leaned closer. “They’ll probably pay a certain amount for services rendered. Something reasonable for the trouble, but what if you start to think? Why take some small fee when you can have the whole ten million? Tax free. What if you think you can just run off with it, rip off a bunch of stupid foreigners, and disappear?”

  “Ah, shit.” The room felt too small, too tight. Even Myers had to stand up. Hands in pockets, he walked over to the window and stared across at the brick wall.

  “These people,” he said, “they’re psycho-killers with international connections. Fearless, well-indoctrinated, with goals and a purpose that goes beyond people. Mr. Rosario might have picked the wrong people to fuck with. It could be they’re tracking him down right now, him and everyone he’s connected with. This guy has really botched it up for us. We’ve been following this money trail for months now. If they get him, we could lose all of it. The money, the trail, the people it would have all led us to.”

  “Maybe the money already got where it was going,” I said.

  “No. It never got there. We know where it goes and it hasn’t reached point A. Mr. Rosario was just a pathway. He was not the final destination. This guy … Spook.” The way the name bubbled off his lips made him grin a moment, before his face creased up again. I read it like concern for Spook. All of a sudden that sick feeling, an old adrenalin kick from those “first love” years. That feeling that YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. That YOU have been chosen by providence to be at the right place at the right time to make that one special move. And maybe it was one of those big lies coming round to get believed in again. Or maybe it was just the goddamned truth. Staring me in the face as much as Myers. My destiny. My beginning or my end.

  “I really need to find Spook,” he said.

  My stomach was burning. My ears, my head. I stood up too. Fished out my cheap-ass lighter and stepped out through the window.

  “I think it’s time for a cigarette,” I said.

  8.

  blurry like this: swishy sudden camera movements at close range. shaky like hand-held. jump-cuts in elevator going down. heavy usage of drugs indicated, or: bad dream. to shake off one image replaced by another. to shake off another image replaced by

  he was there when the elevator doors opened, standing by the reception desk. looked amazingly well-pressed in his business suit, business suit, what dirty stinking business was it? he looked at his watch when he saw her. as if he would dock her.

  —what are you doing here? like she would walk right by him.

  —I didn’t come to see you, he said. had a way of chewing gum that brought some film to mind. robert blake, in cold blood. tapping with two fingers on the furry armrest.

  —but you said you wouldn’t, she said.

  —but you said you would help me, he said. you said you’d get back to me. it’s been three long days. you can’t expect the federal government to sit on its ass and wait for you to finish doing your makeup. the wheels are turning. if something bad happens, no, don’t turn away. if something bad happens, it’s your fault.

  —I’m working on it, she said. it’s taking time. I need more time.

  —time isn’t something we have.

  —I’ll talk to him about it today. I promise.

  —well, I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes already and he hasn’t come in. you don’t think maybe he got a tip from somebody, do you? you don’t think maybe he ran off?

  —he’s not guilty of anything. he has no reason to run.

  —since when is he the type to be late like this?

  (he took out a cigarette. had just about every type of smokable tobacco squirreled everywhere he could reach.)

  —there’s no smoking in here, she said.

  his kiss tasted like curdled milk.

  they were in an alley. service entrance stink. wire gates. packing crates. his hands squeezed her arms hard. she closed her eyes.

  —that’s not how you kissed me the first time, he said.

  —I was drunk the first time, she said.

  he laughed. she pulled his hands off. bloodstains on her blouse. everywhere he touche
d her. he touched her face.

  she ran. it was a long blurry hallway. water splashed in through cracks in the walls. she went up some stairs and pushed against a metal door. when it finally gave, water burst in. the streets were full of water. it was the great new york flood of 2001. the water was up to her waist and rising, brown brackish. people everywhere running, screaming. cars floated free and crashed into storefronts. dead bodies floated up in bubbles from subway entrances.

  it was new york but it wasn’t. it was park place, it was dupont circle. there was boston first federal savings bank on the corner. there was a T-train stop. people struggled to pack into its trolley depth even though it was already inundated. she fought her way through the water against the rising current. couldn’t tell new york, d.c., or boston. couldn’t tell uptown or downtown. she wanted uptown. manhattan was sinking. whenever she had been in that part of town and lost her bearings, she would check the horizon to orient herself against the world trade towers. she looked for them now, should have been visible. but they were nowhere in sight. a dented skyline. sideways swimming. looking for street signs. the buildings were not saying. she was swimming but not getting far. clear of buildings, she could make out the vast sweep of the atlantic ocean. just past the sinking skyline was europe. the eiffel tower, visible beyond the curvy waves. she was kicking through the cushiony warm wet, but the water was gelatin thick. she was sinking, a dark scramble into murk. she was fighting her way out of the dream. the airless dark pocket between waking and not waking.

  —where did you find her? a voice asked.

  —the feeling is that your life is like slides, the woman in the chair next to hers said in a man’s voice. someone slips in a new one while you pass out. you wake up someplace else.

  —she’s a dancer, someone said.

  —she’s a model, someone said.

  —she’s an actress, someone was doing her hair. she was at sarita’s, the beauty parlor, with the cotton-haired puerto rican woman who was a santera and gifted with insights. the place was packed. women in chairs everywhere talking spanish while blow dryers blew and spanish music spanished. sarita, snipping at her wet curls, paused as if receiving a message.