What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  I found them sitting quietly in the kitchen with the lights off. They had unlatched and opened the French doors off the kitchen in the event they had to run for it. I turned on the kitchen lights. Both men held Makarovs in their right hands.

  I made a gun of my index finger and thumb and said, “You can put those away now.”

  Slava holstered his and nodded at Smith to do the same. When Smith hesitated, Slava glared at him. Smith put his Russian-made semiautomatic away. That done, he was fidgeting with his fingers.

  I tilted my head at Smith. “You want to smoke, do it in the backyard.”

  Slava said something in a language that might have been Polish. It might not have been. I knew it was Slavic, but that was about all I knew. It must have meant “Go outside and smoke. I have to talk with my friend.” It must have meant that, because that’s exactly what happened.

  “You are following Slava tonight?” he asked, referring to himself in the third person, as he often did.

  I nodded. “Coney Island is beautiful in the rain.”

  He grunted, shaking his head. “Why you are doing this, following us?”

  I pointed out the door to where Smith was standing on the wooden steps leading to the backyard, smoking the hell out of a cigarette. “Him. I saw the look you two gave each other last night when he checked in. I have to protect the guests and he looked like trouble to me. Seems I was right.”

  “Or maybe you are only thinking you are right. Maybe this is not so.”

  “Well, after you two guys left the house on West Twenty-first Street, the guy with the torn jacket, he was shot.”

  “We are knowing this might happen. Goran, he is dead?”

  “Yes, very,” I said. “As dead as it gets.”

  Slava didn’t quite smile, but he conveyed a sense of satisfaction.

  “He was executed in cold blood, Slava. The killer put two in his head just to make sure.”

  “You have seen killer’s face?”

  “He was wearing a mask.”

  “Goran is a man who is deserving to die many deaths in ways much worse. This death was kind to him. He was not so kind.”

  I pointed back outside again. “Then what were you and him doing with Goran?”

  “I cannot say. Gus, once I am asking you to make me a promise that you will never ask about Slava’s past.”

  “I will keep my word. I won’t ask about your past.”

  Slava smiled at me with his ugly mouth.

  “But I can’t have the hotel guests put at risk. Will there be more violence?”

  Slava rubbed his thick, flat fingers against his stubbly cheeks. They made a rasping, sandpapery sound. The sound of Slava thinking.

  “Can maybe Mikel—that is his name—stay here?”

  “But his last name’s not Smith?”

  Slava laughed, shaking his head. “No, is not Smith.”

  “Not any more than yours is Slava Podalak?”

  Slava wasn’t laughing now.

  “If you want him to stay here, it must mean there is going to be more violence.”

  “Some maybe, yes. Goran was a terrible man, but we are meeting so he can make warning to us.”

  “Will my neighbors be in danger?”

  “Slava would not ask this if it would be making trouble for you or harm for your friends. I am swearing this on the souls of my ancestors.”

  “Okay, he can stay,” I said, “but he has to be out by the end of the month. We have someone interested in renting the place from May to September. Remember, keep him out of—”

  Slava raised his right hand. “No one will go in John Junior’s room. We have respect.”

  “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  I was wrong.

  “There is trouble from the past. What was being done to Goran, it is possible to be done to Slava and Mikel someday.”

  “There are people who would harm you?”

  “Many, but only some are having the right to do so. Not Goran or his people. They are wearing our shame. They are stinking of it.”

  “Shame.” There was that word again.

  “Look, Slava, I owe you. We are friends and you’ve never lied to me that I know of. Promise me that what you’re telling me tonight is the truth.”

  He put his huge right hand out to me. “My handshake is my word to you. No one of your neighbors is being hurt and the blood that has come to Brooklyn tonight. It is coming for many years.”

  I shook Slava’s hand.

  “I will collect Mikel’s things and bring them here. Maybe you should stay here, too, and not come to work for a while.”

  “Slava is losing his job, then.”

  I shook my head. “You call Alton and see if he can fill in for you. If he can, I’ll fix it with the boss.”

  “How you are doing this?”

  “I’ll tell him you had a death in the family and you had to go back to Poland. Even if he doesn’t believe it, he’ll accept it.”

  Slava shook my hand again and gripped my biceps with his other hand.

  “I’ll call my neighbors and I’ll let Annie know, too.”

  “I am owing to you much, Gus Murphy. I will repay for this.”

  I shook my head at him. “Just keep your word about keeping the neighbors and the guests safe. Yourself, too. Now, go have that cigarette with your pal. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “No.” Slava looked around the kitchen. He found a pen on the counter, took a dollar bill out of his wallet, and wrote a number down on the dollar bill. “Don’t call Slava’s number. Call this one.”

  When I got back into the Mustang, I turned the rearview mirror to face me. I stared at my reflection for what felt like a long time. I still looked like me. My hair had gone grief gray—that’s what my sister called it—but otherwise the same. Who the fuck are you, Gus Murphy? Who are you? I had asked myself this question many, many times in the last few years, but I don’t think I had ever felt further away from who I once was than I did at that moment. I once defined myself by my uniform, blue even under my skin. Now here I was, a witness to an execution, but hiding two men who were possibly complicit in the murder. I turned the car on and the mirror away. I would not find my answers here or in the mirror.

  10

  (MONDAY, EARLY MORNING)

  Sleep wouldn’t come to me. It was like that sometimes on days off because of my night-bird schedule. Even when I worked the door and security on weekends, downstairs at the Full Flaps Lounge, I often didn’t get to bed until five or six. Some nights, like tonight, it was about adrenaline and a busy head. I watched TV and saw all the reports on the execution-style murder in Coney Island. None mentioned a Kona blue Mustang backing down the block, nor did they mention anything about the victim beyond the fact that he was a man between fifty and sixty years of age.

  It didn’t sound as if anyone had witnessed the whole incident except the killer and me, though that might not mean anything. The cops might well have a witness, maybe several, but they weren’t going to announce it to the world, certainly not to the media. There was always holdback to help sort out the crazies. And detectives were, by nature, withholders, very proprietary and territorial. Their cases became their cases because they were judged on their ability to close them and make for nice statistical reports. That’s what law enforcement was all about these days: statistics. It was impossible for me to make firm judgments about what the cops actually knew and didn’t know, but if a few days went by without me getting a visit from the NYPD, I’d be clear of it.

  I got tired of listening to the reports for anything new and watching SportsCenter. I’d already squeezed all the available joy out of the Yankees’ win and the Mets’ loss. I got tired of the same four walls, the cheap art, and the popcorn finish of the ceiling above my be
d. If there was a major downside to living in a hotel room, it was the claustrophobic nature of it. The walls close in on you. They just do. I couldn’t imagine doing time; what a prolonged nightmare life in a cell must be. So I threw on my Kirkland jeans, slipped on my beat-up old Nikes, and went downstairs to the business center in the lobby.

  The lobby was just how I liked it at this time of morning: empty, silent. It would be hours before jets could use the runways at MacArthur again and there were no restless guests roaming about. Martina, the new night desk clerk, was in the office to the side of the front desk. I didn’t hear her stirring in there, so I figured she was napping. I didn’t know much about her yet and she didn’t seem anxious for me or anyone else to get to know her. She fit right in. Night work at the Paragon was for people with secrets and stories not to tell. The lobby itself was okay, if you didn’t look too closely. Some places were frayed around the edges. Some were just frayed. The Paragon lobby was like that. Frayed. The sofa cushions were no longer cushiony. The chairs were unsteady. The decor, dark granite and terrazzo, mirrors, and big fake potted plants had grown chipped, dull, and dusty. I guess the Paragon was a pretty dumpy hotel, but the rooms were clean and cheap. And for me, there was comfort here.

  At least Kurt, the boss, had gotten some updated computers and connected us to a speedy network. I put one terminal to good use, first reading whatever reports I could about the murder in Brooklyn and then going back to my reading on the murder of Linh Trang Spears. It was an early morning for murder. There was nothing new on Goran’s execution. I didn’t guess there would be.

  I reread some of the stuff on Linh Trang I had gone over earlier and then moved on to what there was on the alleged murderer. There wasn’t a whole lot. What there was wasn’t pretty. Rondo Salazar was, to put it mildly, a real piece of shit. A soldier in the notorious Asesinos gang, he’d been in trouble with the cops since he was eight years old. But when I saw the photos of him doing the perp walk and then in his jail jumpsuit, I thought there had to be a mistake. I’d been expecting a big, broad-shouldered tough guy with a thick neck, arms like tree limbs, and dead eyes. Yet the man in the photos above his name was a little skinny guy who couldn’t’ve been five-foot-six. He had the tats. You could see them everywhere his skin was exposed. His eyes were buggy, nervous eyes, crazy eyes.

  I knew better than to judge a man’s potential for violence by his size or the bug in his eyes. The toughest motherfuckers I’d ever come across were little men, but it wouldn’t have taken a big man to subdue a slight girl like Linh Trang and stick her. A sharp knife and a violent heart were all that was required. Still, for all the details on Salazar’s violent past and his trouble with the SCPD, there was little on his motive for killing Linh Trang. Only some speculation that he had admired her from afar and that when he approached her, she had rejected his advances. This seemed mostly the concoction of a Newsday reporter. When the investigating detectives were asked about it, they weren’t exactly effusive.

  “No comment.”

  Which didn’t mean they thought the reporter was wrong. All it meant was there was no need to establish motive because they had him on blood and tissue evidence. His attack had been so brutal that he had cut himself in the process. His skin cells were found under Linh’s fingernails. And when they arrested Salazar, he had scratches on his face and cuts on his hands. It was as neat and clear-cut a case as any detective could dream of. No need to establish motive if you had the embarrassment of evidence the SCPD had.

  The media was different, though. For them to wring as much mileage out of it as they could, they needed a motive. The more salacious or squalid, the better. So they speculated, based on the scant fact that Linh Trang and Salazar were the same age and had attended the same elementary school for a few years. That was the thing about the media. They could throw questions out there and make them sound like answers. Had poor little Rondo from the wrong side of the tracks had a crush on the cute Asian girl since they were kids? Had his crush turned into an obsession? Had the obsession turned finally to violence? There was no evidence for any of it, but neither party was available to deny it. Linh Trang was dead and Salazar hadn’t volunteered to comment. According to all reports, Salazar had not spoken a single word about the crime since his arrest. Not to the cops. Not to his court-appointed attorney. Not to his family. Not to anyone.

  I understood Micah Spear’s frustration. At least I thought I did. It was all very tidy in a clinical, statistical sense, but utterly messy and unsatisfying in a human sense. Oh, I understood that very well. And it all came back to that haunting question: Why? It was our curse and salvation as animals, the need to understand. Do birds need to understand? Do ants? Do they grieve? Some animals do. Elephants do, but do they haunt themselves with Why? And are they luckier for their big brains and what Bill Kilkenny would call their souls? I wasn’t so sure.

  When I stepped out of the business center, the first light of day was reflecting off the brown mirrored windows of the tech company building across Vets Highway from the Paragon. I finally felt drained and ready for a few hours of sleep. I had dinner with Maggie to look forward to, but some other less enjoyable things to do between now and then. I rode up to the second floor, and when I stepped back into my room, the claustrophobia was gone. The only thing closing in on me was sleep.

  11

  (MONDAY MORNING)

  I made some phone calls and left some messages before heading out. Downstairs, I stopped by Kurt Bonacker’s office to square Slava’s temporary absence with him. Like I thought he would, he accepted my explanation. He didn’t believe it. Kurt was a smart guy. Some people think smart people are the ones who ask all the questions all the time. My experience was that the smartest people know when to shut up and shake their heads yes. Kurt was like that. He trusted me. The explanation about Slava’s dead relative was just something he could hang his hat on if the need arose.

  I waved at Felix on my way out to see Annie. She always got a bit crazed when we discussed 11 Pinetree Court. Less so now, but it was always better to discuss stuff about the house with her in person. Early on, after we’d split up, when I’d moved into the Paragon and she’d taken Krissy to live with her brother in East Setauket, our conversations about the house were fraught with all sorts of baggage not directly related to the house. There are smooth divorces, but no such things as easy ones. Ours was neither, but the one thing we had agreed on was our refusal to sell the house. Our attorneys were not pleased.

  Although we both knew neither one of us could carry what was left of the mortgage and afford not to live there, Annie hated renting the place. I didn’t much care for the idea myself, but since I was the one shelling out the monthly payments, the reality of the situation hit me the hardest. Her one condition for renting the house was that we padlock John Jr.’s old room, keeping it as it was on the day he died playing pickup basketball in East Northport. I thought it was kind of creepy, like something out of a gothic novel. Creepy or not, who was I to not indulge her grief? She had indulged mine. I had forced her to bury our son in a small graveyard in Smithtown so I could keep him close to me even though there would be no room for the rest of us to join him. I would not be budged on that. She would not give on the room as a kind of shrine and time capsule. It was a way for her to keep her son alive in her heart.

  Then last year, when the house was broken into and ransacked, the shrine had been defiled. Annie and Krissy had worked hard to put the room back as it was, but just as there was no bringing John back, there was no recapturing the untouched nature of the room itself. After her initial anger had worn off, Annie had softened her stance about the possibility of selling the house. Until she came all the way around, I wouldn’t press her on it. She wouldn’t like the fact that I was renting the house on a weekly basis. Didn’t think it attracted the right kind of people. If she only knew! I believed Slava when he told me there would be no trouble at the house. He was a man of his word. It was th
e rest of the world I was less certain about, so I didn’t want Annie or Krissy anywhere near the place until Slava and Mikel were gone.

  The radio went silent in the car, replaced by the ringing of a phone. I picked up.

  “Gus Murphy here.”

  “I know who it is, you prick,” said Al Roussis. “I’m the one who called you.”

  “Well, the one who returned my call, if you want to get technical about it.”

  Al Roussis was an old friend. Sometimes a reluctant one. We’d spent years together at the Second Precinct. More important, he was a Suffolk County Homicide detective.

  He’d already run out of patience with me. “What? What is it now?”

  “Linh Trang Spears.”

  There were a few seconds of dead air as Al searched his memory.

  “Last November,” he said, his voice softening. “Her body was a mess. Something like twenty stab wounds—”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “If you know so much about the case, Gus, what the hell do you need me for?”

  “We can talk about it over lunch if you’d like.”

  More dead air.

  “The last time you bought me lunch, someone tried to shoot you in the head. You’re a dangerous man to eat with.”

  “But an inexpensive one for you. We’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Zin’s Deli by the mall,” he said.