The Exiled

by Christopher Charles

  He called Stone’s office from a pay phone in Forest Hills, dialed five times before Stone’s secretary answered.

  “Wes,” she said. “I was hoping you’d call.”

  “How are you holding up, Anat?” Raney asked.

  “Right now, I don’t have time to think,” she said.

  “What’s it like there?”

  “A feeding frenzy. I have a thousand voices shouting in each ear, and not one of them sounds human to me.”

  “Any chance you can slip away for a minute?”

  “I’d like to sprout wings and jump right out the window, but that isn’t going to happen.”

  “It’s important. And I can’t be seen near the courthouse. There are cameras everywhere.”

  “Does it have to do with who shot him?”

  “I think so.”

  “You have a lead?”

  “It could be nothing,” he said. “But I think it’s something.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  “A file.”

  “Hold on a second,” Anat said.

  Raney heard her talking to a male voice in the background, heard the male voice say something apologetic.

  “I’m here,” Anat said. “Sometimes interns feel more like untrained pets than free labor. You said you need a file?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose?”

  “Roy Meno’s. I don’t need all of it. Just the last month or so. Enough to see how Stone was tracking him.”

  “Meno’s, huh?” Anat said. “I can do that. Where do you want to meet? It has to be close. I can’t get away for long.”

  “There’s a loading zone on Park Place, in back of the Woolworth Building. I’ll be there with my hazards on.”

  “When?”

  “Forty minutes?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Try not to be late.”

  She was waiting for him when he pulled up, standing at the edge of the sidewalk and smoking an herbal cigarette. It was raining. She wore a slicker and carried an outsized umbrella. Her makeup was running. Her face looked blurred. Raney rolled down his passenger-side window. Anat shut her umbrella, leaned in.

  “You can sit,” Raney said.

  “I have to get back,” she said. “Not that I’m doing any good up there. How many times can a person say, ‘We have no information beyond what’s been reported?’”

  “It will get better,” he said.

  “When?”

  “When we have whoever did this in custody.”

  Anat looked at him as though he’d missed the point. The rumor was true, he thought: she’d been in love with Stone. She took a cluster of manila envelopes from her purse, set them on the passenger seat.

  “Meno was his big obsession,” she said. “I hope you’ll see this through.”

  “You might be the only one who does.”

  “I know. You’d better hurry.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “They’re going to put a cease-fire on all Stone’s cases until they can establish new oversight. That’s the phrase they used.”

  “So I won’t answer my phone for a while,” Raney said. “I’m in the field. It happens.”

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “I will.”

  Raney watched her walk away, her heels disappearing into pools of water. She didn’t bother to open her umbrella.

  32

  He knocked on Bay’s office door, kept knocking until he heard movement inside.

  “Who the hell is it?” Bay said.

  “Raney. You decent?”

  “Depends on your definition. Why didn’t you call?”

  “I did.”

  “Then I need a louder goddamn phone. Give me a minute. In fact, why don’t you make yourself useful and put on a pot of coffee?”

  “I brought you a cup,” Raney said.

  “Not that diner shit.”

  “No, sir. Brewed it myself.”

  The door opened. Bay stood there buttoning his pants with one hand, reaching for the cup with the other. The shades were drawn, the foldout bed unmade. Raney switched on the overhead light. Bay shielded his eyes, cursed.

  “So you and Clara are a thing now?” he said.

  “What gave it away?”

  “Hotel soap my ass. Now you’re bringing me homemade coffee.”

  “Not much of a morning person, are you?” Raney said.

  “This better be good.”

  “It is.”

  “So tell me.”

  “We’re headed back to Albuquerque.”

  “Goddamn it, Raney. When you come waking a man up at five in the morning you’d better give him all the information he needs to fully grasp the situation.”

  “I found him. He’s a widower. His son went to Mesa Heritage High. The son died. By overdose. It has to be him.”

  “Found him how?” Bay said.

  “Take a look.”

  Raney pulled a printout from his blazer pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Bay. Bay sat at his desk, slid on his glasses.

  “It’s an op-ed from the Albuquerque Gazette,” Raney said. “Almost exactly a year old. There are other articles, but this one spells it out.”

  Bay read:

  How Many Teens Have to Die?

  There is a sad fact we can no longer afford to deny: the state of New Mexico is in the throes of a major drug epidemic, and the majority of those afflicted are under the age of twenty.

  According to state police sergeant Peter Breakstone, more than three hundred teenagers in the Santa Fe–Albuquerque corridor die from drug overdoses every year, and that number is rising.

  “Drugs like heroin and cocaine are more accessible to our youth than ever before,” says Breakstone. “Dealers are lowering prices in order to compete with designer drugs like Ecstasy. Lowering prices means diluting the product, often with some toxic substance. At the same time, dealers are branching out, targeting affluent neighborhoods. In short, the problem is getting worse, not better.”

  Jonathan Grant, a seventeen-year-old Albuquerque resident who would have been headed to Carnegie Mellon University in the fall, is the most recent and perhaps the most highly publicized victim. An honor student from a solid middle-class background, Grant, who died after attending a Mesa Heritage High School precollege party in June, had ingested enough cocaine and diazepam to kill a 240-pound man, according to the state autopsy report.

  Three of Grant’s classmates were also rushed to Presbyterian Hospital. All three survived. Grant, who bought the drugs on the boys’ behalf, kept the lion’s share for himself.

  Grant’s father, former Navy SEAL Oscar Grant, has refused all interviews, instead issuing this statement through his lawyer:

  Jonathan was a model student, model son, and model citizen. He went to the wrong party with the wrong people. If Jonathan fell victim to the rise of drugs in our community, then so, too, can your child. While I do not want my son to be remembered as the face of a cause, I beg all parents to be vigilant, and I beg law enforcement to bear down swiftly and unequivocally on the criminals who kill our children for profit.

  Yet Grant, who served in both the invasion of Grenada and the invasion of Panama, has had his own public battle with substance abuse, and many will wonder if Jonathan’s relationship to narcotics was hereditary and thus isolated. Oscar Grant was arrested multiple times on drunk and disorderly charges in the late eighties and early nineties. Most infamously, he was arrested in 1993 following a bar brawl that resulted in the hospitalization of local television anchorman James Pass. Pass, in what Grant later called a “ratings stunt slash personal vendetta,” petitioned to get Grant treatment for psychological trauma suffered in the line of duty. Grant spent six months in a facility outside of Denver, Colorado—six months he later called “a complete waste of time.”

  Personal vendetta or not, waste of time or not, Grant’s record has remained clean since his release nearly twenty years ago, three years before his son was born. According to Warden Peterson
of the New Mexico Federal Penitentiary, where Grant served as a sniper until taking early retirement last fall, Grant was a model employee, doting father, and loyal friend. “You can look at Jonathan’s home life all you want,” Peterson said. “You won’t find anything to explain this away. Oscar kept his son on the straight and narrow, especially after Lydia died.” Lydia Hoffman Grant, Oscar’s wife, died of ovarian cancer just five years after Jonathan was born.

  Warden Peterson’s comments serve to bolster the essence of Oscar Grant’s statement: no one’s son or daughter is insulated from the drug infestation ravaging our community. To paraphrase Grant, it is up to us to be vigilant and act swiftly.

  “Goddamn it, that fits,” Bay said. “SEAL. Sniper. It fits all the way around. Except maybe for the teacher. Why kill him? Why torture him first?”

  “We found a bag of weed at Vignola’s house. There’s a rumor he shared with his students.”

  “The gateway drug? That’s a little thin.”

  “I’m thinking it went beyond that.”

  “You mean sex,” Bay said. “That would explain the belt buckle. You think Grant was acting on fact or paranoia?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No,” Bay said. “It’s funny: I remember when Grant was arrested. I remember feeling sorry for him. He saw some real shit overseas, and then that douche-bag reporter made a sideshow out of him.”

  Raney slid a second sheet of paper from his pocket.

  “I found a photo,” he said. “Of Grant.”

  Bay held it under his desk lamp, leaned close.

  “I’d call that stocky and bald,” he said.

  “He’s our guy,” Raney said. “He has to be.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “We show Rivera a lineup. An ID will give us enough for a warrant.”

  “About that,” Bay said. “I got some news I probably should’ve shared straight off. Like you said, I’m not myself at this hour.”

  “What news is that?”

  Bay pressed a button on his office phone. A dull male voice informed Raney that Rivera had passed away at ten the night before.

  “Goddamn it,” Raney said.

  He stood, paced the perimeter of Bay’s bed, grinding his palms together.

  “This fucks us,” he said.

  “By the time I heard it, I figured it was too late to call,” Bay said.

  “Rivera would have been dead whether you called or not.”

  “I’m thinking there’s another way,” Bay said.

  Raney didn’t seem to hear.

  “The prints at the Wilkinses’ house were all accounted for?” he said.

  “They were.”

  “And they wouldn’t have collected his DNA twenty years ago.”

  “No, they wouldn’t have.”

  “Then everything we’ve got is circumstantial.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Bay said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe I’m not the only one who’s groggy this morning.”

  Bay thumbed through a file on his desk, found the page he was looking for, laid it out beside Grant’s photo.

  “I had my tech friend print out Mr. Vignola’s FiftyPlus profile. You don’t have to look very hard to see a resemblance.”

  Raney moved to Bay’s side of the desk, stared over his shoulder.

  “Even the moles match,” he said.

  “Every one of them.”

  “You think that will be enough for a judge?”

  “We’ll type it up real pretty. Plus I know the right guy. He’s retired down to half duty. Mornings are for golf now, so if we get moving we can be there waiting for him.”

  Raney squeezed Bay’s shoulders.

  “You’re invaluable, darling,” he said.

  “What’s that, now?”

  “A line from a movie I used to watch with my father.”

  “Raney,” Bay said, “if you’re calling me a father figure, I’ll kick your ass.”

  Queens, July 1984

  33

  According to the surveillance reports, Meno spent Friday afternoons in the back room of a café on Steinway Street in Astoria. A door at the end of a wood-paneled hallway separated the room from the café proper. Sometimes the door was open, sometimes closed. Open meant the room was occupied by seniors playing cards or watching soap operas pumped in via satellite from the old country; closed meant Meno was holding court. Meno came and went through a rear entrance. The small lot off the alley was crowded with limousines and hidden by a seven-foot fence. No one who lived on the block had ever seen Meno, though everyone knew he was there. Older residents were grateful because he kept the Egyptians on the other side of 30th Avenue. Younger residents hoped he might one day do something to liven up the neighborhood.

  Raney passed through the alleyway behind the café, found unmarked cars at either end. There was a third car on Steinway across from the entrance, sitting in front of a fire hydrant, the windows rolled down, an elbow in a suit jacket resting on the driver’s-side door. Stone’s troops continued in his absence, at least for the moment. If they were there, then so was Meno. He must have thought it best not to break routine.

  Raney parked on a side street, strolled past the undercovers. There was no one he recognized in any of the vehicles. He bought a can of ginger ale at a corner bodega, walked back to his car, snapped open the lid and dropped in two benzos. He sat behind the wheel, drinking and listening to his conversation with Dunham one more time.

  He couldn’t bring the tape to Meno as Mike Dixon. Even if he hand-delivered Dunham’s head, there would be no reason to keep around a small-time thug with a history of betrayal. But if he approached Meno as a crooked narco—the first cop to reach out now that Stone was dead—he’d have something real to offer. Killing Dunham would be Raney’s initiation, proof that he was capable, hands-on. And the badge would be his armor. Meno wouldn’t risk offing a cop the day Stone was murdered.

  There was a third possibility: hand the tape to the woman behind the counter, tell her to pass it to Meno, then leave before she’d reached the back room. Lay low for a while and watch the bodies fall. But that would put the entire play outside his control. One or the other would be left standing, most likely Meno, though Dunham was resourceful and not nearly as reckless as Raney had been led to believe.

  He waited for the benzos to slow his pulse, then secured his gun in the glove compartment, slipped on a pair of sunglasses, and pulled an umbrella from the trunk though the rain had long since stopped. He took a deep breath, dug his badge and handcuffs from a compartment beneath the spare tire, dropped them in his blazer pockets and headed back to the café, umbrella angled toward the cameras.

  The front room was shabby, uninviting—poorly laid white tiles on the floor, dropped ceiling, holes in the plaster showing between posters of Italian soccer teams. The tables were empty, the back door closed. Raney shut his umbrella, took off his glasses, wiped his shoes on a cork mat. The old woman behind the counter looked up from her paper, seemed to doubt that serving Raney would alleviate her boredom. Raney held out his badge. She squinted at it through bifocals. The shield felt new again in his palm, awkward: He was Mike Dixon impersonating an officer.

  “Free,” she said. “Espresso, cappuccino—however you want. On the house.”

  “Grazie,” he said. “I’ll have a cappuccino, please.”

  The tables and chairs were plastic, like patio furniture. Raney sat while she worked the machine. He tugged a napkin from a dispenser, jotted down a quick message:

  Listen to this, then let me know if you want to talk. One voice is your nephew’s. The other is mine. I’m a cop. I’m sitting out front, and I’m not armed.

  He folded the recorder into the napkin, twisted the ends as though wrapping a Champagne bottle. The old woman peered up from behind the machines.

  “I have it ready for you,” she said.

  Raney stepped to the counter, blew into the foam, took a long sip.

 
; “Best in the city,” he said.

  She bowed her head.

  “You come here anytime. I take care of you.”

  “Thank you,” Raney said. “Can I ask for one small favor?”

  “Sì.”

  “Would you give this to Mr. Meno?”

  He handed over the recorder in its makeshift packaging. The old woman lost her smile, the creases in her forehead arching toward her scalp. Raney noticed for the first time that she wore a wig.

  “Chi?” she said.

  Raney pointed to the back door.

  “Meno,” he said.

  “Chi?” she repeated. “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t come here to cause trouble,” Raney said. “He’ll want what’s in this napkin.”

  She shook her head. Raney thrust out his badge so that the metal nearly scraped her glasses.

  “Tell him you had no choice,” he said.

  She ambled down the back hallway, recorder and napkin in hand, tapped on the door. No answer. She summoned her courage, knocked harder. The door opened wide enough for Raney to watch an elephantine man mutter a few disgruntled words before palming the recorder.

  The old lady returned to her post, gestured for Raney to wait. She took up her paper but didn’t seem to be reading it. Raney sipped his cappuccino. He felt her counting the breaths until he was either sent for or sent away. He wanted to ask who she was, what she had seen. A relative of Meno’s? His wife’s? Another of Dunham’s aunts? Raney imagined her hailing from some stone-and-mortar village where people still baked their own bread. A simpler place left over from a simpler time. The kind of place Raney suddenly longed for but knew didn’t exist: this woman was here, working for Meno; her life had never been simple.

  The door reopened. The man he’d seen earlier walked out, motioned for Raney to follow. The old woman watched them disappear down the hallway. Raney thought she might cross herself.