Chinatown Angel

by A. E. Roman

  “So why did Irving think that Benjamin molested Tiffany? Didn’t think you could drive Irving to kill Benjamin if he thought it was you?”

  She looked around confused. “That’s not what I wanted.”

  “It’s easier if you don’t lie,” I said.

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You and Pilar and Irving were good friends, right?”

  “Yes,” Olga said. “They were my best friends.”

  Tears welled up in Olga’s big black marble eyes. I felt sad then, and Olga felt like no suspect, in that moment, and it wasn’t phony, it was real. Her best friend was dead and another was in jail, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Me and Irving,” Olga said, “we had very different outlooks on the future. He was a socialist and, basically, I’m not. Neither was Pilar. But we all had a few things in common—we believed in poetry and art and music. We believed in friendship. I’m not a natural writer. Irving helped me write my first poem. He helped me realize that I don’t want to go to law school. I never did. My parents want that for me. Because I’m the smart one. But if I ever become a poet, I’ll always owe that to Irving.”

  I sat beside Olga. “He didn’t do it, did he? Where is the tape?”

  “Ask Irving,” she said. “It’s all up to him now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She folded her arms and rubbed her own shoulders.

  “Who killed Pilar?”

  “Nobody killed Pilar. She killed herself.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe she knew that no matter what she did—blackmail,

  threats, love—there was no way she would ever have Marcos. Maybe she realized she was a fool and couldn’t live with herself.”

  “Where is the surveillance tape?

  “Irving,” she said, shaking her head. “He has his own fate in his hands. He chose this, not me. There’s nothing more I can do. I wish there was, there isn’t.”

  “That’s bullshit!” I said. “Why do you hate Tiffany so much? And don’t tell me it’s because she broke your Hello Kitty doll when you were kids.”

  “What does a girl who has everything want?”

  “What?”

  “The one thing she doesn’t have.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “My sister is not as wonderful as everybody makes her out to be. There is no mystery as to why she ran away. It had nothing to do with Benjamin’s death. It had nothing to do with what he did or didn’t do to her.”

  “Because of Marcos?”

  “No,” she said, and made a disgusted face. “Why did she run away?”

  Olga left the room and came back with a letter on pink paper. She handed it to me.

  Dearest Albert,

  As terrifying an experience as writing this letter is for me, I’m going to be honest. Okay, then: I was happy that day, after our midnight movie at the Angelika, and you explained to me how a certain scene was shot in Touch of Evil. I want to say that it was good for me to kiss you that night, after you told me about your rotten childhood, to open my eyes and find you there.

  When I said that I had never been kissed like that before, I was being honest. Why did I run off when you asked me to speak in Chinese so you could watch my lips? No one has ever asked me to talk so that they could watch my lips move.

  I don’t believe this is happening.

  I have developed this ridiculous love for my sister’s boyfriend, an intelligent, passionate, filmmaker. An artist like me. My very own genius. I have tripped madly and willingly, irreversibly into the Albert.

  So if you can make time, can I get a chance to know you and to let you know me? Could you cast me in your life? In time, Olga will understand. I think. I hope.

  Tiffany

  TWENTY-FIVE

  On the day before I arrived at Rikers Island, Irving Goldberg Jones was declared a major suicide risk and placed in protective custody, where inmates are locked in their cells up to twenty-three hours a day. I called Samantha and she had arranged for me to see him at Rikers late that morning with a message I said I had from Tiffany.

  Irving walked into the interview room, cuffed and shackled, wearing an orange prison uniform, and didn’t say a word. The corrections officer nodded and left to stand outside the door. The room had a table and two chairs. Irving sat on a chair. I stood.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” I said.

  “What’s the message from Tiffany?”

  “How are you?”

  I noticed he had dark circles under his eyes. He stared at the ceiling of the room and said, “Buried alive.”

  “Thank you for talking to me.”

  “I’ve been stuck in a cell for twenty-three hours,” he said, passing his hand across his newly shaved skull. “If they told me that Adolf Hitler wanted to see me, my only question would be what kind of wine I should bring.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “Nice haircut.”

  Irving’s Afro was gone.

  “I’m worried about my parents,” he said.

  “Have you spoken to Tiffany or Olga?”

  “I spoke to Tiffany on the telephone once,” he said. “Since that time we’ve had no communication.”

  “Olga?”

  “Nothing. What’s Tiffany’s message?”

  “I’m gonna give you the short,” I said, putting one foot up on the metal chair. “Make it quick and dirty. You’re up shit’s creek with a toothpick, son. And I’m the last sign of dry land you’re gonna be seeing for a long time. I want you to get off your cross for a minute and tell me the whole truth.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “You confessed to a murder. A murder I don’t think you committed. Best case scenario, you get stuck in the system for a couple of years until they figure out what’s what. Worst case, you’re the next best thing they got to a suspect and you spend the next twenty years on a hard bunk, dreaming about revolutions.”

  “Nelson Mandela spent over twenty years in a South African prison.”

  “This ain’t South Africa,” I said. “And you ain’t Nelson Mandela.”

  “I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore,” he said, and stood up. “Thanks for the message.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t use your anger, kid. I’m saying don’t use it against yourself. Tiffany goes back to school and a regular life. What do you get? A couple of visits and a sympathy hug? Not even that. Ask yourself. Is this worth it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Benjamin Rivera molested Tiffany, right?” I said. “Yes.”

  “You killed him as revenge. To show her how much you loved her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s not what happened.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Tiffany wasn’t molested.”

  “Who told you she wasn’t?”

  “Olga.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “Marcos says she wasn’t molested, either,” I said. “Says the family knew for years that it was Olga who was molested but since it only happened a couple of times everybody decided to forgive and forget. That’s fucked up but I’m just the messenger.”

  Irving looked helpless, near tears. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “That thing on your shoulders,” I said, “is that a head or just a slab of meat with two eyes.”

  “It’s a head.”

  “Then use it,” I said. “A little booze. A little heartache. Damsel in distress. You run and get your shield and your horse and ride in for a rescue. I understand. But sober in a jail cell, floating in the East River between Queens and the Bronx in the world’s largest penal colony, knowing that you are alone and abandoned, that Tiffany is out there free while you rot in here, must give you pause.”

  He grabbed his head. “Lemme alone! Do you have a message from Tiffany or don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Tiffany is going to live happily ever after, Irving, and your life will be material fo
r a Bruce Springsteen song. Is that what you want?”

  “I like Bruce Springsteen,” he said.

  “You’re losing the thread, my friend. You’re a devoted martyr, I get it. But you got bad advice.”

  “I didn’t get any advice.”

  “That’s the worst kind,” I said. “They were your friends—”

  “I know they were my friends!” he yelled, his voice breaking.

  “Do you really think Pilar just slipped off her roof?”

  “Yes,” Irving said.

  “Let’s say Pilar was killed. Who do you think was in a New York frame of mind to do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why was Pilar blackmailing Hannibal and Josephine Rivera?”

  He sat back in his chair. “Pilar wasn’t a blackmailer. She was a romantic.”

  “Did Pilar have any enemies that might want to see her dead? Besides Hannibal and Josephine?”

  “No one killed Pilar,” he said.

  “Was it you?”

  “No! Why would I kill Pilar? And if I did, why wouldn’t I confess to that, too? I love Tiffany. She doesn’t love me. Why? I’m not perfect. I’m not rich. I’m not successful. I’m a worthless poet. I know. But I’d do anything for her. She put up with me and my stupid scribbling. She’s good. That’s why I love her. I wrote the trilogy as a way to get everything off my chest.”

  He stood up.

  “Did Tiffany tell you about Albert?”

  “What about Albert?”

  I placed Tiffany’s love note to Albert down on the metal table.

  He picked it up, read it, and looked devastated.

  “With friends like that,” I said. “Who needs enemas?”

  He looked it over again.

  “That’s the message. What do you think?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not stupid. You could’ve written that.”

  “Check the handwriting. You must know Tiffany’s handwriting.”

  I watched him as he reread the note. He looked away.

  “Where is the videotape? Where is the third story?”

  He looked like a zombie, like I had ripped the life-force right out of him. “I didn’t write the third story,” he said, looking at the air, at nothing, as if in a trance.

  “So who did write the third story?”

  He paused and snapped out of it and looked at me. He turned and called for the guard and mumbled, “I never wrote a third story. I never finished the trilogy. That’s what I meant.”

  But I knew.

  That’s not what he meant at all.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The first thing I heard was barking. The second thing I heard was my cell ringing. I woke up, fully dressed, after a long night of beer, Newports, and TV into the wee hours. I hoped it was Ramona calling about Irving’s trilogy and the possibility that there was another writer at Columbia who wrote the third story. I rolled over on my mattress and grabbed my cell phone. A male voice said, “Chico?”

  “Albert?

  “Chico,” Albert said. “What did Olga tell you?”

  “What?”

  I heard more barking. I said, “Where are you?”

  More barking.

  “Boo!” I yelled and sat up in bed. I saw Boo barking at Kirk Atlas, who appeared in my doorway. Kirk Atlas wearing a white sheepskin coat and a matching white baseball cap that said DOOMSDAY.

  “Bad time,” I said into my cell. “I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”

  I hung up. I grabbed the dog and locked him in the bathroom.

  I turned to Atlas and said, “What’s up?”

  “No hard feelings,” said Atlas. “You’re a detective. I get it.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I’m almost thirty,” he said. “I’m ready to get married, Chico. I want a wife. Someone I can trust. Children. House. Is that wrong?”

  Atlas sat down on my one chair. “Tiffany’s missing again.”

  “What about Kathy?”

  “I have big creative balls,” said Atlas, ignoring my question. “People don’t appreciate big creative balls. They want small creative balls.”

  “Can we stop talking about balls?” I asked.

  “I got a phone call from my cousin Olga saying that Albert is off somewhere with Tiffany. They’re seeing each other. I think he knew where she was all along. I think they’re having sex.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I want you to find them!” he said. “That short fat ugly little nothing two-face double-crosser will not end up with Tiffany.”

  “Why do you care?”

  He looked around my room, angry, confused, as if he wanted to smash something or someone but didn’t know where to start or why.

  “I don’t know,” Atlas said and sat back in the chair. “I don’t know why I care. I just do. He’s a smart guy. Didn’t have any advantages. He’s a fighter. He always treated me like I was nothing. When all I wanted was his respect. I used to look up to him, you know? All that stuff he knew about film. I looked up to him and he treated me like shit.”

  So that was it, years and years of secret competition with Albert Garcia. Years of eating Albert’s soup of contempt. Maybe Atlas secretly believed he deserved it, needed it to nourish his energy. And in the end, maybe Atlas saw only one last meal of victory, conquest over the burning derision that one boy fed him, a boy ten years older. A boy who loved movies, a boy with celluloid dreams, an older boy he may have loved and respected as a kid, like a big brother. And whose love and respect he needed and wanted. And couldn’t get.

  I saw in that instant that Albert Garcia had become, for Marcos, some kind of father figure. And now Marcos saw that he would maybe never get the chance to push Albert Garcia’s face down into the glory of his accomplishments. He would never defeat his father, real or made up. He would never shed Marcos Rivera and become Kirk Atlas. He would remain at the table of childhood, eating the sour soup of self-hate with a short spoon.

  Atlas dug into the pocket of his white sheepskin and counted out five thousand-dollar bills, placing them on my mattress. “That’s for you. Find Albert.”

  I stared at the bills.

  Pilar was dead. Irving in jail. Albert was gone. Tiffany was gone. Kirk Atlas was alone, handing me five thousand dollars in cash to keep him company on the deserted road he saw before him.

  I moved toward the front door. I motioned for Atlas to go. “I can’t do it. “I can’t work for you anymore. I’m full.”

  “Why not?”

  “Albert’s a friend.”

  “You’re not quitting on me, too!”

  “I am,” I said.

  Then someone pushed open my front door and in stepped Oscar Pena and Salvatore Fiorelli.

  “You know my new associates,” Atlas said. “Turns out my mother hired these two goons to watch out for me. I caught them snooping around my building. It’s funny how two big guys like this on your mother’s payroll will confess to almost anything when they’re looking at the receiving end of a .45. I called my mother, she was sorry and said that she would make it up to me. Said I could keep them for a while. My own personal bodyguards. Say hello, fellas.”

  Oscar gave me a little wave, Sal just nodded.

  “Let me shoot the bastard,” said Oscar.

  Oscar lifted his gun. Sal was standing behind him. Then I heard someone singing with a high falsetto voice, cracked and pitchy, “Oh, Chico!”

  “Nicky?”

  Nicky stood there, all dark and bearded, like a black lumberjack or a giant, stooped in the doorway, wearing a pea coat.

  His girlfriend Willow Mankiller Johnson was with him, carrying a red, black, and green backpack. She was tall, almost as tall as Nicky, a black woman with dark Indian eyes and long lashes, long thick black hair, looking like a reddish brown Pocahontas—wearing cowboy boots and a white cowboy hat with a red corduroy dress.

  If Atlas was a mini fridge, Nicky Brown was a meat locker.

  “You see, honey?” N
icky said to Willow from the door. “The old me would be committing some serious violence right about now and asking questions later.”

  “Your nose is in business that doesn’t concern you, dude,” Atlas said.

  Nicky stepped into my apartment. Willow was just behind his shoulder.

  “What’s going on, baby?” said Nicky.

  I waved. “Same ’ol, same ’ol.”

  “Step outside, monkey man,” Oscar said, pointing his gun at Nicky.

  “Monkey man?” Nicky laughed. He turned to Willow Johnson again and said, “And the old me wouldn’t even have asked for clarification. I woulda opened up a can of whoop ass as soon as his mouth hit the K. I’m sure he meant monkey in the best sense of the word. Maybe he heard about our bonobo research?”

  “Listen, gorilla,” Oscar said, stepping closer to Nicky with his gun. “Take that big black bitch—”

  Mistake. Nicky popped Oscar in the face so hard and so fast that sixty-six of his generations musta felt the pain. It sent him directly to the sandman, bouncing off my mattress and landing between my dresser and my chair. Knockout.

  Nicky looked over at Sal, who put his hands up and said, “You got it, chief.”

  “That was amazing,” Atlas said, staring at Nicky all wide-eyed.

  “Sorry about the trouble, fellas,” Salvatore said. He helped Oscar to his feet and then followed Atlas to the door.

  When they all left, Nicky slammed the door behind them, stretched his arms out and said, “You really know how to throw a party, Chico.”

  We came together for a hug, back-slapped and traded rough kisses on both cheeks.

  Willow, cutting Nicky off, kissed me on the lips and said, “Hello, Yankee.”

  Boo started barking from the bathroom and Willow walked to the door.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Nicky.

  “I gotta find Albert,” I said.

  “Listen, brother, I promised Willow I’d change my old ways. I’m gonna be a married man soon. Time to grow up and become Settled Down Nicky Brown. I gotta look for a job, maybe the Bronx. But before that, we go make some visits.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cool.”

  “Tell me more about that Hannibal Rivera the Third. Tell me more about that little Chinese girl at the Hunts Point Market. Ting Ting. Tell it slow. Make me angry.”