Sara put her hands on her hips and turned toward Baltazar, her mouth a slash.
“We have the murder weapon,” Baltzar responded defiantly.
The door opened and the public defender hustled in, a stocky woman with a butch haircut. “Mr. Ibanez, I’m Lisa Thorgard, your public defender. Please don’t say another word. Detectives, do you mind?”
Sara looked at Baltazar. He shrugged. They left the public defender to her client.
“Roy, once they match the so-called murder weapon with the striations on our two decaps, you’ll realize you’re barking up the wrong tree. I mean, use your noodle, for God’s sake. How in the world could a dirtbag like that get into Bachman’s shop in the middle of the night? Bachman would never let him in.”
“You think Bachman knew his killer?”
Siry stood to one side, his unlit cigar tracking the conversation like a boom mike.
“Yeah, I do. In both cases, the killer took a rare sword. Does that guy look like a sword collector to you?”
Baltazar began to crumble. “Okay. Okay! But he did maim two people on the bus! We got a dozen witnesses.” “Good for you.”
There was a shriek and a scuffle from the interrogation room. Baltazar opened the door to fmd Ibanez straddling Thorgard, who was down on the floor tiying to defend herself against his blows. Baltazar immediately applied a headlock and dragged Ibanez off the terrified public defender, while cutting off his air.
“Don’t kill him!” Sara warned, rushing to help Thorgard, who was sitting up and coughing.
“I, uh, I think Mr. Ibanez would really be more comfortable being represented by an attorney of color,” she
coughed. Sara helped her to her feet and out of the room. Baltazar emerged a minute later and shut the door.
“He’ll be all right. We’re gonna put him in lockup until you straighten out your attorney differences.”
“He didn’t scratch you or bite you, did he?"
“No, I’m all right.”
“What about you, Thorgard?”
The public defender searched herself. Her jacket was scuffed, but she was otherwise all right.
“We lucked out,” Sara said.
“No crap you lucked out,” Siry said. “Baltazar, the next time some nut job confesses to a murder, try to get some independent corroboration. You know-evidence? Know what I mean?”
“Sony, chief.”
“If it were that easy, I’d have retired long ago.”
Raj was at his desk when Sara returned to the bullpen. “What’s happening with the video tape?” she asked.
“We have secured the cooperation of Ravensoft Graphic Imageworks. I sent the tape over to them. They will isolate the image and work up computer models of weight, height, and right or left-handedness.”
“Who are they?”
“They are just as the name implies,” Raj replied in his sing-song lilt. “A company that deals in graphic and computer imaging. They are most famous for the bloody popular video game, Soldier Of Fortune.”
“Do you mean ‘bloody,’ as in literally drenched in corpuscles, or ‘bloody’ in the British sense, as if to imply emphasis or feeling?"
“The latter,” Raj replied without batting a lash.
Sara batted Raj on the shoulder. “Bloody good work. Keep me informed. Anybody wants me, I’ll be home.”
Lupe Guttierez lived in a first floor apartment at Waubeska Place, with her mother and younger sister in one of the units that had been taken over by Section Eight. Lupe didn’t understand the law, but at some point the landlord had forfeited forty percent of his building. It had been a complicated decision, resulting in the first decent housing for the Guttierez family in memory.
Lupe was hell on wheels. Streetwise and sophisticated, she looked far older than her fifteen years, and had been busted twice, once for shoplifting and once for whacking another girl over the head with a garbage can in a dispute over a boy. Now she was with Jorge and he was going to make her a star, the way Tommy Matolla made Mariah Carey. Jorge was getting his act together to buy a recording studio, and he was going to feature Lupe as his first release.
Lupe’s mother, Bella, thought Jorge was bad news. She warned Lupe that Jorge was just going to grease her descent into hell, but mothers had been telling their daughters that since the world began, and they still ended up with sons-in-law they didn’t like.
Lupe lay on the bed she shared with her sister Syreeta, earphones connected to the boom box Jorge had given her, listening to Christina Aguilar wail. The walls of her room were papered with posters: Destiny’s Child, Jennifer Lopez, Jay-Z, Shakira, even Madonna, who was older than Lupe’s mother.
Lupe knew the cop lady was a witch the moment she laid eyes on her. Lupe had always been gifted that way, even Bella had to agree. Once, when she was five, she woke screaming in the middle of the night, terrified of a fire. She roused the whole house, and her mother was quite angry at the time until the living room sofa, on which a visiting boyfriend had been smoking a joint, exploded into flame. Prescient. That’s the word her homeroom teacher used in class when Lupe had raised her hand one day and asked if they were about to see a film on sexually-transmitted diseases.
Why yes, my dear, however did you know that the teacher asked. I just knew Lupe replied. She knew other things as well-that Mr. Mayer the shop teacher was having an affair with Mrs. Anderson, the librarian. That the comer crack dealer would be dead that night of gunfire. Back in the fall of 2001, Lupe refused to go to school one day, with a feeling of impending doom. That had been September 11th.
When the witch with a badge appeared, Lupe could tell instantly. So sweet. So cute. So butch in her Joe Rocket jacket. She had the boys twisted around her little finger without even trying. But she didn’t fool Lupe. Not for one second.
She fooled Jorge. He was mucho macho, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the ladies. Lupe had learned at an early age that men were fickle beasts, and would dump you in a New York second for someone prettier, sexier, or younger. What really galled Lupe was that the witch was older! She had to be in her thirties, at least! And Jorge was making a fool of himself over her, as if she were a fine young fox like Lupe.
Okay. Lupe had to admit that the witch lady was a looker. Maybe even a stunner. But that could have been the magic. Strip away her protections, she was probably a hunchback. Further proof she was a witch: she kept a familiar in the form of a large gray cat, which Lupe had observed from the stairwell. Knowledge was power. Toward that end, the teenager had taken to following the witch, whenever possible. That’s how she learned the witch usually entered and exited the building through the rear door on Prospect Place, across from the medical center. That’s how she learned the witch rode a motorcycle that she kept in the medical center garage.
Further proof she was a witch: The ease with which she’d brought down Hector.
It was true that some girls could fight. Lupe could fight. But no girl, no matter how tough, could bring down someone like Hector, veteran of countless street brawls, and the harshest weapon in Los Romeros’ arsenal. Not that Los Romeros were evil. They were gangsta wannabes. They bought their drugs retail from Los Te-colotes. Some of them even had jobs.
There was only one way to fight a witch: with witchcraft. Lupe decided to pay Estrella a visit.
Taking off her earphones, she turned the boom box off, got off the bed, and went to her secret place in the closet. She pried up the loose floorboard and dug around, brushing aside insect larvae, rat feces, and dustballs, until she found the crumpled Chivas Regal bag in which Jorge had given her a heart-shaped locket. She reached inside the bag and closed her hand around the wad of bills she’d been accumulating, mostly by snatch-and-grab at the street fairs. Lupe was fleet of foot, and if she spied easy prey, mostly the elderly, waving their billfolds or purses, she would swoop down like a hawk, grab the booty and be gone so fast, they usually never got a good look at her. Sometimes they fell down. That was their problem. Incapable of empathy, Lupe n
ever envisioned a day when she would be old and feeble.
Two hundred and twelve dollars-more than enough to convince Estrella to lay a terrible curse on the witch. Lupe examined her Citizen watch, another gift from Jorge. It was 9:30. Her mother was stoned out of her skull on muscatel, watching videos in the bedroom with the jerk-de-jour. Syreeta was in the living room watching Powerpuff Girls. Not for Lupe-not tonight. She had to keep a clear head to deal with Estrella. Popping off the screen, she let herself out her bedroom window, hanging from the sill and dropping the three feet into the garden, lovingly maintained by the geezers, who were always complaining about her depredations. Big deal. It was just a stupid garden. She never looked at it, anyway.
Lupe caught the Atlantic Avenue bus to the Long Island Terminal, then switched to the Fourth Avenue Bus, which took her to the waterfront. She’d learned about Estrella from Jorge, who let her accompany him once when he had to put a hex on Los Tecolotes, who'd jumped two Romeros the day before, putting one in the hospital. At least they didn’t have guns. Jorge didn’t use a gun, either. He paid Estrella two hundred dollars to hex the Tecolotes, and a day later, two of them were shot dead in a drive-by by the Kingston Posse.
Lupe had always respected Los Tecolotes. In fact, Bobby Chacon, their Warlord, made no secret of his admiration for her the last time they’d met. Had she told Jorge that Bobby Chacon told her she was a fine fox and wouldn’t mind taking her out, it would have meant war. She held that in reserve, just in case.
Lupe got off the bus by the big red warehouse and walked toward the freight yard, which fronted the river.
Estrella lived inside the freight yard, in a switching box that hadn’t been used in years. There were more ways into the switchyard than bulls to cover them. Lupe’s favorite was through a hole in the hurricane fence, concealed behind a steel shed. She was barely able to squeeze through, scratching herself slightly in the process.
The switchyard covered about a square half mile, and used to belong to the New York and Pennsylvania Railroad, but had since been taken over by the city as a storage and repair facility. Old subway cars now occupied most of the rail space, and served as a canvas for the many area gangs. It was practically a daily show, with gangs sneaking into the yard nightly to spray their tags over their rivals’ and establish their own. Sometimes, the tagging battles led to death. The railroad bulls didn’t even have green cards, and mostly stuck to their shack playing poker and running out back to get high.
Estrella the Witch subscribed to a potent blend of San-teria and animism known as Gounj’go, which she’d brought from her native Santo Domingo. The switching box was located in an isolated part of the yard, on a gravel bed near the waterfront, next to a Con Ed transfer station that emitted a loud hum night and day. Estrella had lined the wall closest to the transfer station with aluminum foil to keep out harmful radiation. “Bad vibes,” as she put it.
It was ten at night as Lupe picked her way across the plain of gravel, broken glass, and rusted rails in her black BKs, heading toward the transfer station and the little corrugated steel hut that was studded with odd objects designed to hold evil spirits at bay. She had dressed to impress in black Danskin leotards and pearl earrings, clutching her Nike backpack. Los Romeros didn’t carry purses. She made her way through an army of fifty-gallon drums oozing a yellowish green fluid that stung the eyes. When she was ten feet from the open steel door, a harsh voice emanated from within.
“Who go dere?”
“Estrella, it’s me, Lupe, from the Waubeska Projects.”
“I know you, girl. You come in here, tell Estrella what you want.”
The door made a hideous creaking noise as Lupe forced it open to permit her entrance. Inside, the floor had been covered with wooden pallets; these, in turn, had been covered with a myriad of carpets and scatter rugs, some salvaged from the street, some purchased at St. Vincent de Paul, some given in trade, so that the net effect was that of a trampoline. This type of floor did not permit normal furniture, so Madame Estrella made do with a variety of cushions, mostly sofa bolsters swiped from furniture on the sidewalk waiting to be loaded into a truck.
Madame Estrella’s pirated power line gave her light: several low lamps, and six candles provided illumination. Estrella reclined on a futon covered with bedspreads in one comer, smoking an American Spirit, using a hubcap as an ashtray. Nearby, a small cube refrigerator hummed. A color television crouched on a packing crate. Beneath it was a DVD player and a stack of DVDs including Eyes Wide Shut and Bring It On. Estrella’s ferocious cat Duran crouched in one corner, yellowish eye regarding Lupe as she moved hesitantly on the spongy floor.
“Sit down. You got man trouble. See it in your face, girl.”
Lupe slumped on the sofas. Was it that obvious? No.
Estrella was a witch! It wasn’t as if she were parading around with a cuckold sign on her forehead. Besides. Girls couldn’t be cuckolds, could they? No. Just chumps. And fools.
“My man Jorge is seeing a witch from the police department!” she blurted.
Madame Estrella looked up, regarding her through turquoise catseye glasses. She’d made her mouth up like a Ferrari F-40, crimson lips revealing alloy teeth. “I know dat Jorge. He got de wandering eye, girl, you know dat when you take up wit’ him. What make you t’ink dis cop a witch?”
“I can see it! The way you taught me. Here.” Lupe thrust forth the bag of personal belongings she had so patiently gathered by waiting in the basement garbage room, combing through countless loads of disgusting trash until she had identified her prey by the discarded promotional flyers with the witch’s name on the label. “Here are some of her personal things. If you feel them, Estrella, you’ll know, too.”
Estrella took the clear plastic bag of discarded flyers, used cotton swabs, a discarded Lady Schick, with no change in expression. She held the bag beneath her nose and smelled the contents. She reached behind her and snagged a sterling silver platter with run-off grooves for the gravy. It was stained dark gray. She dumped the contents onto the platter with a muffled clunk. Duran got up from his cushion and padded forward. He must have weighed thirty-five pounds. One ear had been torn off in battle. He sniffed a cotton ball, batted at it with a paw, yowled and scrammed.
“You is right,” Estrella replied. “She a witch, all right, and she very powerful, Dat she be a cop, too, dat is furder evidence of her power. Normally, I would not touch dis witch. But I know you. I know Jorge. I no like see him get sucked into her circle of evil. I help you cast a spell on dis witch. But you must go furder. I cannot do dis alone. Before I continue, I ask you, you got two hundred dollar for Estrella?”
Lupe reached into the backpack, dug around until she found her coin purse. She drew it out, snapped it open and took out two hundred dollars in tightly packed twenties. Three weeks of grab and runs at the Saturday markets. She could always make it back.
Estrella counted the money, folded it back up and stuck it down her bosom. It was safe there. No one but a crazy person would reach down there. “Okay. Dis what you got to do. I use dis material you bring me to cast a spell. You get your best man and plan an ambush. Dis woman not like udder witches. Not like udder cops, for dat matter. She very powerful. We must launch double attack. Me from here, your best man from dere.”
Lupe’s smooth forehead scrunched into a relief map of Afghanistan. “Where am I going to fmd a best man? I tol’ you, my boyfriend is seein’ her! That’s why 1 came to you in the first place!” Her voice took on a whining, querulous quality.
“Ho, girl, you tink dis be easy? You tink a witch of dis magnitude just poof, go ‘way? I take great risk helping you. You tink she not know when I begin to cast my spell? Dat is why you must distract her wit an all-out attack! Wit a man! Not some little girl. You unnerstan’ what I’m saying, or am I talking to de wall?”
Lupe nodded sullenly. “I hear you.” Frantically, she wracked her brain. Where was she going to get a man to take on this lady cop? She couldn't go to Los Romeros-the
y were loyal to Jorge and would certainly tell him.
That left Los Tecolotes. Los Romeros’ closest rivals, and a force to be reckoned with in Upper Brooklyn. Head Tecolote Bobby Chacon had the hots for her. And he hated cops.
Afghanistan morphed into the Gobi Desert. A plan began to form.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Sara arrived at the sword polisher’s a half-hour early. She’d decided to take the bike, and stash it in his workshop. Earlier, she’d cased the alley and discovered that she could bring the bike in through a back door.
She left the bike at the head of his stairs, chained to the railing. That was only temporary. Left there, the bike would be picked clean, leaving nothing behind but one wheel, sans tire.
The door chimed pleasantly as she came in. Kopkind emerged from the hall, wearing canvas coveralls, face flushed. He beamed with pleasure as Sara shook her auburn hair free of helmet head. .
“Hi! Sorry I’m early. I decided to bring my bike.”
“You ride a bike? You mean a motorcycle?”
“Yup. Can I stash it in your workshop? It’s not very big.”
“Of course. Bring it around to the alley and I’ll unlock the gate.”
Sara left her helmet on the counter, went back outside, unchained her bike, pushed it over the curb and thumbed
the engine. Passing a Harley guy going the other way she gave the Sign and he responded. She zipped halfway up the block, down the tight little alley made even tighter by the de rigueur illegally parked trucks until she came to the concrete wall directly behind Kopkind’s shop. Kopkind stood with his back against the open steel door as she rolled the bike in without getting off. Inside was a common area serving the Feldstein Gallery and the apartments above. She wheeled the bike through another steel door propped open with a hard rubber wedge, then into the back of Kopkind’s shop. It was a crowded area with racks of swords on the walls, a series of locked steel cabinets. In the center of the room was a peculiar installation resembling two miniature sawhorses fitted together to form a platform. It was made of sturdy redwood, and cross-braced, with its legs splayed outward for maximum support. A rectangular gray stone was clamped in place on a slanting board, facing a bucket of water. A balans chair, one of those Swedish devices on which you sat on your thighs and knees, faced the apparatus.
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