The Whites: A Novel

by Richard Price

  “Carmen, you’re here at night by yourself with the kids. What am I supposed to do, stay home from work and sit in a corner with a shotgun?”

  “I asked,” she said slowly, “do you want to do something for me.” Then, lowering her voice: “Your father? Today? He needs to be somewheres else.”

  “Like where,” Billy on full alert.

  “I don’t know, maybe it’s time for him . . .”

  “Don’t even say it.”

  “Billy, he doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know who he is. This maniac comes along . . . You want to talk about who’s vulnerable around here? You want to talk about the one person, the, the straw that’s going to break the camel’s back? Look, you said it yourself, you’re either working or you’re sleeping. One way or another you’re never here, and I can’t worry about him day in and day out, and frankly, with everything that’s going on?” again dropping into that heated whisper. “I can’t bear him right now. I’m sorry to be so . . . to be like this.”

  “What happened today, it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You want to kill him?” Billy’s turn to start tearing up. “I put him in a home he’ll be dead in a week.”

  “It’s called assisted living.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “Then let your sister take him.”

  “She hates him.”

  “Too bad.”

  “She’s got her hands full with her own mother-in-law.” Billy back to pleading.

  “She’s got her hands full, huh? Not us, though, we’re sailing to Tahiti next week.”

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell’s gotten into you?”

  “Get it through your head, Billy, we’re not going anywhere. You don’t want to put him in a, a, a place? Then you call your sister. She’s his child too.”

  “Sometimes you can be a stone bitch, you know that?” Billy instantly ashamed to have said it.

  Carmen at first looked struck, then furious, then left the room without another word, leaving Billy standing there, thinking, Why is he doing this to us?

  From the kitchen, Carlos started howling in fury, his older brother having just punched him in the stomach.

  Brenda Sousa, Billy’s oldest sister, showed up three hours later dressed in a snowflake-patterned ski sweater and stirrup pants, her face a moon of aggrievement. Her husband, Charley, a private investigator specializing in insurance fraud, a small quiet man who always seemed to be embarrassed about something, brought up the rear.

  Brenda marched up to her father in the kitchen without saying hello to anyone else, wrapped him in a brusque hug. “Hi, Pa,” kissing him hard on the cheek, then turning to Billy. “For how long is this.”

  “Jesus, Brenda, he’s right here.”

  “For how long.”

  “He’s your father, too.”

  “Did I say he’s not?” His sister always so angry.

  “Not long.”

  “How long is not long.”

  Carmen, having no belly for her sister-in-law, left the room.

  “I don’t know, Brenda, there was a guy out there who picked him up today, drove him into the city, and just dumped him on the street.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s not safe here.”

  “So how is he supposed to be safer by me?”

  “Because,” Billy took a breath, “whoever took him is after our family.”

  There, he’d said it.

  The NYPD Threat Assessment Team, two detectives named Amato and Lemon, arrived at the house two hours later. Carmen made coffee, then all four of them took seats in the living room, Billy and his wife on the brocade sofa, the detectives facing them in the matching chairs.

  “Who should we be talking to here,” Amato asked Billy. “You or your father?”

  “In terms of what.”

  “In terms of who might be out there with some kind of personal hard-on,” Lemon said.

  “You’re talking about previous collars?”

  “That or anything.”

  “Well, my dad’s retired twenty years, so whoever had a hard-on for him is mostly likely dead or bedridden.”

  The detectives stared at him, said nothing.

  “As for me, I mean, I put away my share of actors, but except for a few years in the Four-nine, I’ve either been with the ID Squad or in Night Watch, so . . .”

  “Any run-ins?”

  “With other cops?” Billy shrugged. “There’s guys I didn’t get along with, but never anything heavy.”

  “Can you give us some names?”

  “Honestly? I’d rather not. We all shook hands in the end.”

  “What’s wrong with giving them names?” Carmen asked, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

  “Because there’s not one of them I can’t pick up the phone and call myself,” he said. “Because there’s no need to bring up dead and buried beefs from back in the stone age.”

  “Then what’s the point of them being here?” she muttered.

  “How about off the Job,” Lemon asked.

  “I have no idea,” Billy still arguing with Carmen in his head.

  “Curtis Taft?” Amato’s turn.

  “What about Curtis Taft.”

  “You assaulted him in his hospital bed,” Amato said.

  “I’d say assault is a little overdramatic.”

  They resorted to staring at him again.

  “I don’t think he’s so stupid as to come after me or my family, but by all means, do what you have to do.”

  There was a pause as both cops went into their notes.

  “How about that shooting back when you were in anti-crime?” Lemon asked, still looking down at his pad.

  “What about it?”

  “There was a lot of press, a lot of angry people.”

  “It’s been over fifteen years, you’d think they’d have plenty to be angry about since.”

  Carmen, still looking away, shook her head in exasperation, Billy having to restrain himself from getting into another fight with her, this one in front of their Threat Assessment Team.

  “All right,” Amato said, rising. “We’ll put in a request for TARU to come out, mount a few cameras, and ask for the Yonkers PD to start running directed patrols.”

  “How soon for the cameras?” Billy asked.

  “Hopefully right away,” Lemon said.

  “What do you mean, ‘hopefully’?”

  “All we can do is put in the request.”

  An hour later Billy and Carmen were sitting on the couch, each with their arms crossed tightly over their chests as they pretended to watch something or other on TV.

  This was how the slow process of ending a fight always began for them, with a sullen agreement to tolerate each other’s presence while engaged in a nonverbal activity, during which, at some point, one of them would make a not-quite-spontaneous comment about something unrelated to the argument, something safe, delivered in an offhand monotone, that didn’t require a response but usually got one, also to be delivered in the same flatline tone. From there, the exchanges, always off the subject of the fight, would gradually begin to pick up speed until they were actually talking and that monotone was replaced by the natural oscilloscope of unself-conscious human speech. Formal apologies, if the situation really demanded it, usually came later in another room or, if they could get away with it, never, neither of them wanting to risk another potentially volatile encounter if it wasn’t necessary. But at the moment they were still in Stage One, the accumulation of stressed silence such that when the phone rang they both nearly levitated off the couch.

  It was Billy’s sister calling to complain that Billy Senior had no change of underwear in his overnight bag. That call was followed a minute later by another, this one to announce that he had no toothpaste, then another to bitch that he had no pajama bottoms, each “had no” apparently deserving its own individual call.

  “What the fuck is wrong with her
all the time?” Carmen said when Billy returned to the couch.

  “She thinks he didn’t like her when she was a kid.”

  “Only him?”

  The next time the phone rang Carmen leapt to pick it up. “I swear to Christ, Brenda, why do you always have to be such a pissed-off bitch . . .” Then: “Oh,” her tone downshifting. “I’m so sorry, I thought . . . Sure, he’s right here, right here.”

  Carmen extended the phone to Billy. “It’s somebody from Immaculate, Albert Lazar?”

  “Like I told you when I called, I would have been perfectly happy to come to you.”

  “No problem,” Billy said.

  Lazar had sounded like a wreck on the phone, like he needed to unburden himself, and Billy didn’t want him coming to the house and being subjected to the double-team tension of two freaked-out parents. He needed this guy to feel free to talk, and so he found himself in Lazar’s tiny home office in Sleepy Hollow, formerly the bedroom of his college-age daughter, the leftover floral-patterned wallpaper combining with the teacher’s visceral anxiety to shrink the already claustrophobic space to the size and feel of a sweatbox.

  “So,” Billy willing himself to be cool, “now that I’m here . . .”

  “Understand, I had no idea that you were a detective until you handed me your card yesterday.”

  “No reason you should have.”

  “This is kind of a long story.”

  “How about we start with the punch line and work backwards?”

  “Please, I need to tell it the way I need to tell it.” They were alone, Lazar’s wife and son watching TV one floor below, but he still seemed to feel the need to whisper. “Otherwise you’ll never understand.”

  “Any way you want.”

  Lazar stared at his hands, his kneecaps motoring.

  “So,” Billy said.

  “All right,” Lazar said, dropping his elbows to his knees. “All right . . . Last week?”

  Lazar’s wife came into the room with a bowl of freshly made kale chips, her husband smiling at her with get-lost eyes. He waited for the sound of her retreating footsteps to fade before starting again.

  “Last week? I had a few work meetings in Beacon, and I’m not really familiar with the town, but I was stuck there overnight and so purely out of boredom I took a walk and wound up wandering into a bar. Believe me, I hardly indulge, but I had a gin and tonic, and . . .”

  “And . . .”

  “Well, call me blind as a bat but I didn’t realize it was a gay bar until I ordered drink number two.”

  “OK . . .”

  “And I was so embarrassed that I just tabbed out and left.” Tabbed out, Billy thinking, not the expression of a fair-weather tippler.

  “It’s just that when I was going out the door, I ran into my neighbor, one of my neighbors, Eric, from right up the block here, and when I saw him I was so flustered about coming out of that kind of place all I said was ‘Be careful in there, I think something fishy’s going on.’ And he said, ‘Thanks for the warning, I’ll stay on my toes.’”

  “So this Eric . . .”

  “Eric Salley. Understand, I’m a very tolerant individual. I have no problem with him or anyone else being gay.”

  “Understood. So, this Eric Salley . . .”

  “Is trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” When Lazar had difficulty answering, Billy added, “Is he making trouble for you?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Maybe he’s tolerant, too.”

  “There’s nothing for him to be tolerant about.”

  “Understood.”

  “Look, I teach at a Catholic school in a working-class city.”

  “Right.”

  “A rumor gets started . . . Those kids are my life.”

  “You’re very popular, I know. But you’re having a hard time telling me what it is you want me to know, so let me just ask, is this Eric Salley the one I’m looking for?”

  “Looking for?” Lazar blinking in confusion.

  Billy looked off, trying to control his temper. The guy was in the closet and he was scared of being dragged out. And that was all that this was about.

  “So why am I here,” he said. “He’s trying to blackmail you?”

  “No, but to be honest I never felt comfortable around him, and now every time I see him he smiles at me like he knows me. From what I understand he’s lost his job and he’s this close to losing his condo. And I don’t want to go to the local police here, it would only make matters worse. So, I was wondering . . . is there any way, in your capacity as a New York City detective and the parent of one of our students, could you maybe have a talk with him before he does anything we’ll both regret?”

  “So Eric Salley was not the guy who approached my son.”

  “No, believe me, I would have recognized him from a mile away.”

  “How about you, are you the one?”

  “Am I the one, what . . .”

  Billy got up to leave.

  “So, can you help me?” Lazar asked.

  “I’ll make some calls,” he muttered, Billy-speak for Go fuck yourself, and then he was gone.

  Leaving everybody home alone like that . . .

  As Billy made his way back to Yonkers his anger toward Lazar started to fade. The guy had been terrified, had been carrying the burden of being who he was all his life and just couldn’t imagine surviving the exposure. But gay, not gay, or whatever else, Billy couldn’t imagine living his day-in, day-out life with a secret so heavy on his heart that the only viable alternative was some kind of oblivion.

  Sometimes he worried about Carmen having that kind of weight on her, some specific interior thing that made her so anxiously alert during the days and such a tormented thrasher at night, that made every therapy session he had ever attended with her feel like a complete waste of time, filled with sulky bluster and air-ball bullshit, that periodically and without warning dropped a black-dog mantle over her so profound that it might be days before she could bring herself to open the bedroom door.

  There were times when he wondered whether she had been sexually abused as a child and never told anyone or as a frightened teenager had abandoned an unwanted baby—that’s where his worst-case imagination came to an end—but one thing he knew for sure: if she could ever find it in herself to finally speak the name of her demon, she would most definitely survive. Her husband would make sure of it.

  Pulling into his driveway, Billy saw the silhouette of a stocky male prowling the lawn.

  At first he was too startled to move, then moved without thinking, bolting from the car to bull-rush the intruder from behind. As soon as he brought him to ground, landing on top of the guy in a way that forced the air out of both of them, a second figure came running from around the back of the house and bellowed, “Freeze!” while simultaneously blinding Billy with a fierce beam of light. At which point the first cop got up, turned to Billy, and punched him in the head.

  And so he was introduced to 24/7 direct patrol coverage, Billy talking as fast as he could to avoid being cuffed and thrown into the back of the Yonkers PD cruiser sent to protect his home and family.

  At three in the morning, when Billy entered the sickly bright all-night gas station mini-mart off Frederick Douglass Boulevard, the young kufied African cashier was standing behind the counter, a half-smile on his face as he posed with cops, the majority of whom were holding out beers or candy bars for him to ring up while their partners snapped away with iPhones. The Wheel had said robbery-homicide, body on the scene, but all Billy saw was the cashier, the clowning uniforms, and Stupak.

  “Where’s the body?”

  “Are you blind?” Stupak answered.

  Wading through the posing cops, he took a closer look at the cashier: the smiling kid was stone-dead on his feet, a dime-sized bloodstain barely discernible on the chest pocket of his thick burgundy shirt. On the counter to his right sat a half-eaten Hot Pocket, still steaming from the microwave; to his left was a coil
ed nest of wooden prayer beads and an accounting textbook.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Billy bellowed at the uniforms. “Everybody out.”

  Once they were gone, Billy took an extra moment to contemplate his upright victim, then had to turn away; staring into those unblinking yet still expressive eyes felt almost rude.

  “It’s like Madame Tussauds,” Stupak said.

  “You pull the store cameras?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “Any wits?”

  “Feeley’s in the back room interviewing the cabbie that called it in.”

  “Feeley’s here?” Billy surprised but not really, having figured that after their car talk, Gene would either start showing up like clockwork just to spite him, or he’d take to heart Billy’s suggestion to become a full-time no-show and never be seen again, a winning outcome either way.

  “Is Butter here?”

  “Give him a break, he just blew a big audition today.”

  “Playing what?”

  “Are you going to make me say it?’”

  “A detective, right?”

  Stupak walked away.

  “Hey, Sarge?” a uniform called out from the open door. “There’s a guy out here.”

  Billy stepped out to see a plainclothes detective in jeans and a hoodie leaning against the door of what he guessed was a dope-confiscated vintage Firebird. Behind the narc, two uniforms posted at the pumps were waving off all cars, at this hour mostly taxis pulling in to gas up.

  “Sorry to pull you out. I didn’t want to contaminate your scene in there.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “John MacCormack,” offering his hand, “Brooklyn North Narcotics.”

  “Excuse me,” Billy said, walking over to the uniforms at the pumps. “These cars pulling in?” he said. “They’re probably habituals, so start taking their vitals before you cut them loose, especially the hacks.”

  Moving back to MacCormack, Billy finally shook his hand. “So, John, what can I do for you?”

  “I need to know your interest in Eric Cortez.”

  “Come again?”

  “You ran his name yesterday? It raised a flag.”