by R. G. Belsky
“Then the bartender knew you pretty well.”
“I was one of his best customers.”
“Does he remember what time you left?”
“The cops asked him that. He said no. He said he doesn’t pay much attention to the customers. He just pours drinks. It’s that kind of place.”
“So you have no idea what time you left the bar or what time you wound up passed out in that parking lot?”
He shrugged again. “Not much of an alibi, is it?”
I talked to Sledzec for a long time. Asking him about that night over and over again. Trying to find something—anything—to explain how Santiago’s tragic death might have been anything more than an accident caused by a drunk behind the wheel.
“The worst part of this is that none of it would have happened if I’d just kept my promise to myself that night,” Sledzec said at one point.
“You promised yourself you’d quit drinking?”
“Nah, I knew I could never keep that promise.”
“Then what was the promise?”
“That I wouldn’t drive drunk.”
“Except you did.”
“I guess . . . only, I’m still not sure how that happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t have my car keys that night.”
“Where were your keys?”
“I’d lost them a few nights earlier. At the same bar, probably. Doing the same thing. I didn’t try to get a replacement set, though, because I figured that it would be better if I couldn’t get behind the wheel the next time I got drunk. At least I wouldn’t get in trouble with the car again.”
“What happened?”
“The police said they found the keys in the ignition.”
“So maybe you left them there. You found the keys while you were drunk, then left them there again when you passed out in the parking lot. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Do you remember doing that at all? Finding the keys, then getting behind the wheel of the car before you blacked out?”
“I don’t remember anything at all,” Sledzec said sadly.
On the ride back to Manhattan, I went over and over my conversation with Sledzec in my head, trying to put together the strands of information he’d given me into some kind of coherent chain of evidence that made sense to me. I didn’t get all the answers I was looking for from Sledzec, but I got some of them.
Here’s what I knew for a fact:
Sledzec was a hopeless drunk, a wasted life of a human being who had nearly killed a little kid and eventually might have—probably would have—killed again driving drunk if he hadn’t been caught and sent to jail.
It was Sledzec’s car that had killed Santiago. Three witnesses saw it. They all got the license plate number. And Santiago’s blood and DNA on the front of the car confirmed Sledzec’s blue Buick as the car that had killed Santiago.
I also knew that the world was undoubtedly a better place without Sledzec walking around—and more important, driving around in it. I had no real sympathy for the man. I had interviewed a number of family members and grieving friends of drunk-driving victims over the years. That left me little compassion for a man like Sledzec who could run over a kid on his bike and blame it on an alcoholic haze.
Those are the things I knew for sure.
But here’s what I still did not know for sure.
I did not know for sure that George Sledzec killed Roberto Santiago.
The story about the lost keys bothered me. Sure, he could have made it up. Maybe even made up the story about blacking out and not remembering anything. Except I had checked the records before the interview, and Sledzec had told the same story from the moment he was arrested. Repeated it again in subsequent interviews with the cops and prosecutors. And stuck to it even when I talked to him now. Why do that? He’s already in jail, and will probably stay there for a long time no matter what he does or doesn’t admit to at this point. There was something else too. He acted and looked genuinely confused by what had happened and how his keys had wound up back in the car and how he had somehow managed to drive it.
That left only one other possible explanation, of course.
Someone else drove his car that night.
Someone who stole his keys, waited for him to pass out like he did most nights, and then used his car to run down Santiago.
Someone who had a motive for wanting Santiago dead.
Someone who could manipulate the evidence to make sure Sledzec got blamed for the killing.
Someone who always got what he wanted.
Chapter 47
THE BIGGEST MISSING piece to the puzzle of what happened to Victor Reyes was still Bobby Ortiz. Fifteen years ago, Ortiz had been named as a suspect in the Reyes shooting. He’d been detained briefly twice—once in the Bronx a few days after Reyes was shot, then again in Poughkeepsie several months later. After that he disappeared. He might be dead. Probably was dead. But I needed to find out what happened to him.
I started by going to his last known address in the Bronx. The one that had been in police records for him when the first bulletin went out naming him as a suspect in the Reyes shooting. The address was gone, though. I mean literally. There was a vacant lot where his apartment building had once stood.
Some people I spoke to remembered the Ortiz family. They said the father had left a long time ago and the mother died a number of years ago. No one was sure where Bobby Ortiz was or if he was even alive. They said he’d been a regular street presence a long time ago, but no one had seen him recently. There was also a sister who used to work as a clerk at a bodega a few blocks away.
The bodega was still there. So was the original owner, who told me he’d owned the business for nearly half a century. He remembered Erika Ortiz and she’d worked there for a few years after school and on weekends and vacations. He wasn’t sure exactly what happened to her. But he’d heard she had a couple of kids and moved to Manhattan. Somewhere around 116th Street, he’d heard, in Spanish Harlem.
There was certainly no shortage of people named Ortiz in Spanish Harlem. I called them all, asking for a Bobby Ortiz. It seemed like a wild-goose chase. Hell, she’d probably gotten married and didn’t even use the name Ortiz anymore. Everyone I did reach said, “Who’s Bobby Ortiz?” or “I don’t know any Bobby Ortiz.” Except one. She said, “I have no idea where Bobby is.”
The address was listed in the phone book. I wrote it down, took a subway uptown and, an hour or so later, knocked at the door. A middle-aged, dark-haired woman opened it.
“Are you Erika Ortiz?” I asked.
“Who are you?”
“I need urgently to talk to your brother Bobby.”
“Are you a cop?”
“I’m a newspaper reporter.”
“Doesn’t matter. I haven’t heard from Bobby in years.”
“So you said over the phone.”
She looked confused. Then it clicked for her. I was the one who had called her earlier.
“What does a newspaper reporter want with Bobby?”
“I’m doing a story that he figures prominently in. It’s about gang life in the Bronx. Growing up in that atmosphere and dealing with the violence on the street each day—”
“Bobby left that life a long time ago. He never talks about that anymore.”
“I thought you weren’t in contact with him.”
She didn’t say anything.
“It’s not a bad story. I think I can help your brother. I think he got a tough break. I want to make things right again. For him. For a lot of people.”
I handed her a plain manila envelope that I’d brought with me. It had Bobby Ortiz’s name on it. The envelope was sealed.
“Give this to your brother if you see him,” I said.
She shrugged. “I told you, I don’t know where he is.”
> “Just in case you run into him one day.”
She looked at the sealed envelope.
“What’s inside this?”
“Let’s just say I’m trying to pay off an old debt.”
I waited outside her building all night, but she never came out. Until the next morning. At about nine o’clock, she emerged and walked to a subway. She had the manila envelope under her arm. I figured she would have looked at what was inside. And I hoped she’d want her brother Bobby to see it too.
I followed her, keeping back far enough so that she wouldn’t spot me, until she got on a downtown train. I boarded the car behind hers, but picked a spot where I could see her from the window between cars without her seeing me.
She got off at Houston Street, then walked two blocks to a high-rise on Allen Street. There was a doorman on duty there. She spoke to him and handed him the envelope. The doorman opened the envelope and looked at what was inside.
It was a picture.
A picture of Victor Reyes, along with a short article about his death.
On the back of the picture, I had written, “I don’t think you shot him. I want to help prove that.”
Then they talked some more. Their conversation looked animated. Finally, she reached over and gave him a big hug. Then she left.
I waited until the sister was well out of sight. Then I walked up to the doorman and nodded. At first, he thought I was there to see someone else and started to open the door. But I stood there instead and pointed to the envelope and the picture and the article that he was still holding in his hand.
“You’re Bobby Ortiz, right?”
He looked flustered but bravely tried to recover. “No, I’m Ramon Martinez,” he stammered.
“I mean your real name. You’re Bobby Ortiz.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the guy looking to help you.”
“Help me how?”
“Technically, Bobby, you’re still a suspect in the shooting of Victor Reyes. Which means you’re now a suspect for murder.”
“Murder?”
“Victor Reyes died.”
I gave him a quick version of the events that had happened.
“I didn’t shoot Reyes,” he said.
“I believe you.”
“Then why did you track me down after all this time?”
I nodded toward the picture.
“Like I said, Bobby, I think I can help you. I think we can help each other. All you’ve got to do is tell me the truth.”
Bobby Ortiz had gotten out of the gang life. After the near miss with the cops in Poughkeepsie, he got scared and realized how lucky he’d been to escape. He was still wanted for a shooting. And so Bobby Ortiz disappeared. He called himself Ramon Martinez, bought enough phony ID material to back it up, and went straight.
He’d been working as a doorman at various apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn for more than a decade now.
He had a wife and a son and a good life, he told me.
Ortiz told me all this matter-of-factly as we sat in the lobby of the building. Maybe he always knew this day would come. That he couldn’t run far enough to get away from the life Bobby Ortiz had once lived and the things that he had done when he was running with that Bronx gang.
“Why did the police say you shot Reyes that night?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you maintain that it wasn’t you?”
“I couldn’t have done it.”
“Why not?”
“I was in jail when it happened.”
“Jail?”
“Yes. The perfect alibi. Or so I thought.”
A woman carrying a bag of groceries came to the door. Ortiz stood up, opened the door, and helped her with the groceries to the elevator. He gave her a big smile, she thanked him, and he came back to where I was sitting.
“The cops picked me up on the night Reyes was shot,” Ortiz said.
I remembered that Nowak had told me something similar. And the desk sergeant had at first said he remembered Ortiz being there.
“They probably picked you up as a suspect in the shooting.”
Ortiz shook his head.
“Before the shooting. I was in police custody at the time that Reyes was shot.”
“Why did they arrest you?”
“They were always hassling us gang members.”
“And you were in a gang?”
“You know I was.”
“Victor Reyes was a gang member too.”
“Yes.”
“What was the relationship at the time between your gang and Reyes’s gang?”
“We were pretty much at war with each other.”
“Which would have given the police a reason to think you had a real motive to shoot Reyes that night.”
“Except I didn’t do it.”
“Right.”
“I was in police custody that night, just like I said.”
“Do you remember the name of the police officer who arrested you?”
Ortiz looked uncomfortable now.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Anything about the officer you remember that might help us identify him to verify your story?”
“I don’t remember.”
I took out a picture of Brad Lawton and showed it to him. He looked more uncomfortable now. He didn’t say anything.
“I’m looking to help you here, Bobby.”
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“You don’t understand . . .”
“This is Brad Lawton,” I said. “He’s a police officer. A very important police officer now. He very well might be the next police commissioner of New York City. So what are you afraid of?”
Ortiz looked again at the picture of Lawton.
“Lawton was the one who arrested me that night,” he said.
“You’re not confusing that with another police officer—a beat cop named Nowak who picked you a few days after the shooting?”
“No, that was different. Lawton took me in on the night of the murder. Before it happened.”
“Well, if Brad Lawton arrested you and had you in custody, why didn’t he tell anyone that when you were named as a suspect in the Reyes shooting?”
“He didn’t want anyone to find out about our relationship.”
“What relationship?”
“I was his snitch.”
“You provided Lawton with information?”
“Yes. He’d pick me up from time to time on some trumped-up charge. It was a cover to pump me for information about what was going on in my gang.”
“And what did you get in return for this information?”
“Drugs.”
Ortiz said that when Lawton wanted information, he would pick him up and take him somewhere to interrogate him. Sometimes he acted like he was taking him into custody or questioning about some crime in order to avoid suspicion from any other gang members. He said that’s what happened the night Reyes was shot. Lawton had picked him up and taken him to an interview room at the precinct for “questioning.” That was the way it worked, he said. Lawton would find out what he knew and then release him, and everyone would assume it was just a normal roust by the cops.
“What time did Lawton pick you up that night?” I asked.
“About seven thirty.”
“And how long were you there?”
“Until close to nine, I guess.”
“Reyes was shot a little after eight.”
“That’s why I couldn’t have done it.”
I was pretty sure he was telling me the truth. It matched the account Nowak had given me earlier. And the desk sergeant told him he saw Ortiz in the station house too—or at least he said he did until s
omeone, presumably Lawton, got him to change his story.
“And then you got arrested again a few days later?”
“Yeah, some street cop pulled me in. Said I was wanted for shooting Reyes. That’s the first I ever heard about it. I didn’t understand what was going on. But then Lawton showed up and straightened everything out.”
“He let you go?”
“That’s right. But I was scared. I decided to get the hell out of there. I had a cousin who lived in Westchester County who gave me a place to stay. I hung around there for a while, pulled a few jobs, and scored some drugs. Until I got picked up by the Poughkeepsie police on a DUI charge. After I got out of there, I decided not to press my luck anymore. So I became Ramon Martinez.”
I had been writing everything he said down in my notebook as he talked. I scanned through the notes now, trying to put it all together in my head, trying to connect all the dots.
“Where did Lawton get the drugs that he paid you with for the information?” I asked Ortiz.
“I don’t know.”
“He never mentioned anything about that to you?”
Ortiz shrugged. “I just figured he picked them up off a shipment on the street somewhere. He was a cop. He could do anything he wanted.”
“How long did the arrangement go on between the two of you?”
“Close to a year.”
“That means he somehow had access to a lot of drugs.”
“He gave away a lot of drugs, to a lot of people on the street.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“Who else?”
“He was using Victor Reyes the same way.”
Chapter 48
I HAD ACCUMULATED A lot of facts, a lot of information, a lot of evidence in my investigation into the Victor Reyes shooting. Enough to do a story. Except I had no one to do a story for.
It was an issue that I’d tried to put out of my mind while I worked on the story. I needed to do that. I needed to act like I was still a reporter in order to think like a reporter and act like a reporter to do my job. I’d always disciplined myself that way. Just get the facts, get the information, get the evidence—and the story will take care of itself.
