Ray nodded.
“It’s over Cruz. I guarantee you, these mopes are gonna do hard time and a lot of it.”
Ray nodded again.
“Can I talk with them?” he asked.
Woods laughed.
“Not in a million years.”
He walked back across the street, and Izzy sidled up next to Ray.
“What you gonna do now?” he asked.
Ray shrugged.
“Kill them,” he said. “Come on.”
Izzy cringed. He didn’t want to be an accomplice to murder, but he looked at Ray’s face and knew the only other possible role was victim.
*
Late that afternoon, with the city still broiling at nearly one hundred degrees, the precinct prepared to transfer prisoners to The Tombs in Manhattan. The converted city bus had a few prisoners in it already from other precincts and the 48th added a half dozen more including Green and Garcia. Ray and Izzy watched from beneath an underpass across the street. Ray hadn’t said a word in hours. Izzy preferred it that way. Now, however, he felt the need to speak.
“They’re going downtown,” Izzy said.
“Get on that bus,” Ray said.
“What?”
“You got a message to deliver.”
Izzy thought about refusing for a second, maybe less.
“Give a hundred dollars to that cop up near the door, and he’ll let you on,” Ray said.
He pulled a hundred dollar bill from his pocket and handed it over.
Carver and Woods stepped out of the precinct at the moment Israel Mendoza stepped back off the bus. Carver spotted him and intercepted him.
“What were you doing on that bus?”
“Just talking,” Izzy said.
“Bullshit.”
“Swear to God.”
Izzy used an index finger to cross his heart. Detective Woods looked past Izzy and called a uniformed officer over.
“You let this guy on the bus?”
“He looked like he half belonged,” the officer said. He was the same guy who’d been ready to fall asleep at the Santiago apartment.
“What did he do in there?” Carver asked.
“Made some kind of announcement. That’s all.”
“Great. You got any idea what he said?”
“Not a clue,” the officer said. He put his hands up like he was offering to allow Woods to frisk him.
“You didn’t even bother to listen?”
“I don’t speak spic. What was I supposed to do? Get a dictionary?”
Woods waved this officer away.
“I know a little Spanish,” Carver said. “Maybe I can ask around in the bus, see what he said…”
Woods rubbed his forehead a moment, wasn’t sure it would be worth the effort.
“Sure, go ahead,” he finally said.
Three minutes later, Carver was back.
“Nobody’s saying a word.”
“Figures.”
“Can I go now?” Izzy asked.
“You want to tell me what you said in that bus?” Woods asked. He was expecting to be rejected and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Instead, he got a surprise.
“Sure,” Izzy said. “I said ‘Ernesto Santiago was the padrino of Ray Cruz, but Ray Cruz doesn’t hold a grudge. He will take care of the family of Sammy Green and Jose Garcia.’” Izzy smiled.
“That’s it?” Carver asked.
“That’s it.”
Craver turned to his partner. The bus closed its doors and started to pull away.
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Carver said.
Woods shook his head.
“How do you think Cruz is going to ‘take care’ of Garcia’s family?” he asked.
It took a second, but Carver understood. Then it was his turn to shake his head.
“But if he was planning to kill the family, Israel here wouldn’t share that with us. Right, Izzy?”
Izzy nodded.
“Ray’s not going to kill anyone,” Izzy said. “Least not those people.”
Woods glanced over to where Ray was still waiting, his hands in his pockets. He waved to get Ray to come over.
“You realize that if Green’s family or Garcia’s family has any trouble tonight, I will personally kick down your door and haul you in, don’t you?”
Ray nodded.
“I ain’t doing nothing to nobody,” he said. “I gotta go home, shower, get dressed.”
“Got a party tonight?” Woods asked.
“Wake.”
Ray and Izzy walked off leaving the detectives standing out in front of the precinct.
“You want to follow him?” Carver asked.
Woods thought a moment, then shook his head.
“Ray Cruz may be a heartless son of a bitch, but he’s not dumb. I doubt we got half the message Izzy took into that bus, but there’s nothing we can do to change that.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go home,” Woods said.
It wasn’t until they reported for work the next morning that they heard about how Garcia murdered Green in The Tombs, strangling him with an undershirt in the middle of a huge holding cell with thirty other prisoners.
“Then he ran for a cinderblock wall and put his head down at the last second.”
“You can kill yourself that way?” Carver asked.
“Worked for Garcia.”
Around noon, one hundred degrees outside and almost as bad inside, Captain Delaney came out of his office and congratulated the detectives.
“That’s how I like to see cases closed,” he said.
“We didn’t visit these guys,” Woods said.
“Somebody put the fear of God in them,” Delaney said.
He slapped Woods on the back then went back to his office.
“Do we talk to Cruz about this?” Carver asked.
“And say what?” Woods answered. “ ‘Great job scaring those guys to death’?”
Carver thought about debating the issue, but a call came in to his desk and he took it. A liquor store robbery needed attention. He scribbled an address on a scrap of paper and shrugged into his suit jacket as he and Woods headed for the door.
This story was first published in CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE. Editor Jennifer Jordan was kind of enough to select it. The murder is based on a true story from my neighborhood back when I was young – two men killed an elderly couple that had been hiding stacks of cash in a Hoover. They went from the murder scene to a car dealership and were caught literally red-handed.
Padrino
The envelope was thick, and as soon as Ray Cruz got into his apartment, he dropped all the others on the kitchen table and tore it open. There was a letter five pages long and six fifty dollar bills.
Strange that the letter started with “hope you’re doing fine.” Ended with “We need you. Now.”
The three hundred dollars was more than enough for a budget seat on a plane to Puerto Rico where his sister lived. The letter told him to buy a one-way ticket. There was work for him to do.
Esmeralda Cruz, a widow going on five years now, was waiting for him alone when he got off the plane in San Juan. She gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Brother,” she said.
They walked to the car talking about how hot it was in Puerto Rico – Esmeralda apologizing for tropical weather – even though things were worse in New York City because it was February and freezing.
The car ride was going to be a full two hours or more to the city of Mayagüez. They rolled the windows down, and Ray stuck his hand out to catch the breeze as it flowed by.
“You should see her,” was the first to the point thing Esmeralda got out. “The police cried for her in the hospital. It’s been nine days, but she still looks like a mess.”
It hit Ray hard to hear this about his niece and goddaughter. He had known this was waiting for him in Puerto Rico. The letter had been vague, but when he was needed, it was usually because someone had been h
urt.
“It was that hijo de la gran puta, Oscar. Lives a couple of blocks away. Thinks he’s something. Same type of jodon Cheo and I moved out of New York to avoid. If Cheo was here…”
Esmeralda pounded the steering wheel of the Impala once. Cheo had been a good man; Ray liked him. Not really a brawler or anything, but he didn’t take bullshit from people. He took care of himself and his family. Nobody would have messed with his fourteen year old.
“The police ain’t doing shit. You’re her padrino. You’re all we got. What happened to her, that can’t slide. Understand?”
Ray understood. He thought about it a moment. Wanted to know what he was getting himself into. Not that he wouldn’t get into it, but it was nice to go in with open eyes.
“How old is this Oscar?”
“Who gives a shit?” was Esmeralda’s first answer, but then, “I’d say he’s in his early twenties. Was already out of high school when Cheo passed.” She crossed herself at the mention of death.
“Kind of guy to carry a gun? Hang out with people who do?”
“He’s a punk. I don’t know about a gun. Maybe. Friends? I’d slap anyone of them and they’d all run away crying.”
“And you know how I can find him?” Ray asked.
Finding Oscar wasn’t a problem. Oscar was everywhere. Street corners in the morning, park in the afternoon, a series of stoops for the evening.
“I’ll talk to him,” Ray said as they pulled up in front of Esmeralda’s house. “I’ll catch up with him tonight.”
That was hours away. First, there was visiting Luz Maria, fourteen years old, just filling in, but with her eyes raccooned, her nose and lower lip busted and her wrist in a cast. It disturbed Ray to see her the way she was. She had a smile that lightened his soul on most days, but as soon as he walked into her bedroom, she started sobbing, and Ray’s eyes teared until he couldn’t see her or the chair he wanted to sit in and had to feel for it with his hands.
“How you feeling?” Ray asked in Spanish that had a heavy Nuyorican accent. He wanted to ask about the man who did it, about Oscar, but that would have been impolite.
Luz Maria couldn’t get the words out. Ray pulled his chair up to the side of her bed and put an arm around her, she wrapped her arms around his neck, the cast scrapping him. It was a while before she could say what happened, and it wasn’t as clear a story as her mother had told him.
“Was it Oscar?” Ray asked.
His niece looked up at him.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Ray looked into her face, tried to read it. With the knot in her lip, and the tears choking her, her voice hadn’t told him anything. With the bruises on her face, he couldn’t be sure. He’d known women who’d protected their abusers. It happened.
Luz Maria told what she remembered. Out at night, argument with Oscar. She walked away. Fifteen minutes later, near home, a rock to the back of her head – she showed stitches in her scalp – some time crawling, then unconsciousness.
“Would anyone else do this to you?”
Luz Maria thought for a moment before saying she had a necklace on – a thin gold chain with a gold cross – when she was attacked. Now it was gone.
“It’s the one you gave me,” Luz Maria said, looking into her lap, but Ray couldn’t remember ever giving her a cross.
When she looked up at him again, Ray nodded. A junkie might have beaten a girl almost to death for enough for a quick fix. Wouldn’t be the first time.
A few words about her staying strong and getting better and how the bruises would work themselves out and the stitches weren’t noticeable, then Ray stood up.
“Where are you going?” Luz Maria asked. There were tears welling up again.
“I’m just going to talk to Oscar,” Ray said.
“Are you going to hurt him?”
“Do you want me to hurt him?”
Luz Maria looked down at the broken hand in her lap. She nodded. It was enough for Ray.
There was a tiny bodega at the end of the street, and Ray bought himself a beer there, carried it in a paper bag with the top of the bag twisted tight over the neck of the bottle. He sat in the park, watching Oscar with his friends, another girl on his arm. Oscar was tall, maybe even six feet, but he was thin. He clearly led the bunch around him – life of the party. At eight in the evening, the sun gone down, Oscar left the park alone walking quickly. Ray left his bench to follow.
In a just about deserted street, Ray caught up to Oscar, swung hard, and hit him in the back of the head with the bottle. Oscar said something but fell to his knees, and Ray straddled him, swinging twice more, hitting him, ringing his bell. Ray quickly felt the younger man’s waistband – no gun.
“We gotta talk, Oscar,” Ray whispered into Oscar’s ear.
He hoisted Oscar to his shaky feet and walked him five steps to Esmeralda’s car. It was there that Oscar decided he had to struggle, but the bottle showed him the error of that particular way.
“I want to talk with you about Luz Maria,” Ray said.
“I don’t know any…” Oscar started, but Ray stopped him with a smack from the bottle.
Oscar was bleeding freely. His nose and lip were busted open. The back of his head was matted. He was breathing hard though Ray had done all the work so far. Ray stuffed him into the passenger seat.
“Tell me what happened to Luz Maria,” Ray said three minutes later on a road leading away from town.
Oscar complied, his hands up in supplication, Ray’s free hand holding him by the shirt collar.
“I swear to you mister. I don’t know what happened to her. We argued, she left. That’s it. I don’t know who attacked her, and I don’t know why. You have to believe me.”
Instead of believing him, Ray got the bottle he’d been holding on his lap and slapped Oscar in the face.
Ray drove for an hour. After a while, Oscar stopped asking questions or saying anything. They pulled up at a beach, rocky and deserted. Ray turned to Oscar.
“You try anything, and I’ll shoot you.”
“You have a gun?” Oscar asked and Ray hit him with the bottle.
“For asking stupid questions.”
It was a long night for Oscar and it came to a sudden end.
Ray parked the car in front of his sister’s house an hour before dawn. He was near exhausted when he crept into the house. His sister was waiting up for him.
“You talk to Oscar?” she asked.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and teary. Her hair was part pulled into a bun.
Ray nodded to her.
“You hurt him?”
Ray rolled his eyes, but said nothing. It was enough for her.
“I want to see him tomorrow. See if he’s still smiling,” Esmeralda said.
“You won’t be seeing him tomorrow,” Ray answered.
“You killed him?”
Ray didn’t move a muscle or say a word, but Esmeralda sighed, relieved, drawing her own conclusion.
“He got what he deserved,” she said.
Ray shrugged.
“He didn’t do it, though.”
Esmeralda had nothing to say to this. Ray went into the room that had been set aside for him during his stay and closed the door.
Early in the afternoon, Ray emerged from his room, no look of rest on his face.
“Who did it?” Esmeralda asked him as soon as he sat to a bowl of cereal.
Ray shrugged.
“So maybe it was Oscar,” his sister tried. Ray shook his head.
“Trust me,” he said. “He would have told me.”
She thought of asking how he could be so sure, but then she knew what he did for a living.
Back in the street in the afternoon, Ray tried hanging out near places where his niece hung out. He paid one teenager fifty dollars for information but that got him nothing but fifty dollars poorer. He bought pizza for another teen and a six-pack of beer for another. Everybody had heard of the attack. Everyone assumed it was some drunk nee
ding quick cash and seeing an easy target. Probably true, Ray thought, but that didn’t excuse anyone. He ended the night smushing a homeless man’s face into the concrete of the sidewalk until he gave answers Ray could believe.
“Anything?” Esmeralda asked when he came back at midnight.
Ray shook his head.
“Tomorrow,” she told him, but he was already closing the door of his room.
In the morning, as Ray ate cereal, a policeman knocked at the door. Esmeralda answered.
“Just checking on Luz Maria,” the officer said from the door.
Esmeralda let him in and knocked at the door to Luz Maria’s room, making sure she was decent before letting him in. As the officer waited, he looked at Ray, not letting him go with his eyes. Ray got that a lot, but usually it was detectives, not uniformed cops, and usually they were older. This one looked fresh out of the academy, like he still cared and took things personally. Like Ray was a personal insult. Ray kept chewing.
A few minutes later, the officer left after a few words with Esmeralda.
“He said you didn’t look right,” she told her brother. “I told him you were a cousin.”
Ray nodded. No need for the police to know anything about him at all.
That evening Ray caught a break. He had been wasting time, money and his last reserves of patience on teens who didn’t know shit about shit, when down the counter from him at a joint that sold pizza and fried chicken he saw a girl that made him look twice. Maybe Luz Maria had healed and walked out of her room. It wasn’t her though she had the same light smile. Almost.
And she had a gold cross with the body of Christ hanging from it. The chain it was on was thin, but twisted gold, not links. He remembered it. The necklace had been in the shop window of a little store in the Bronx until about five years earlier when he paid a hundred solid for it, and brought it on a Christmas visit – a trinket for his niece.
“Can I ask you something?” Ray said, getting the girl’s attention.
She looked him up and down, knew she shouldn’t be talking to a man like him, he could only be trouble, but decided the place was packed with people and there couldn’t be any real danger.
“What?”
Killing Ways 2: Urban Stories Page 4
