“You believe her? About the movies?”
“Sebastian told me her story was bullshit,” Maureen said, “and Tanya was getting me there any way she could. But she took the camera. I watched her pocket it. I don’t know if he saw her take it or not.”
“I wish I had known about Tanya from the beginning. Especially if she was involved with Dennis.”
“I know, I know,” Maureen said. “But she’s a pill freak and paranoid about cops. She’s humiliated by this thing she was doing with Dennis. I thought she’d never talk to you without me easing her into it. I tried getting her to call you, I really did. She has your number. I tried to get her on our side.” Maureen shook her head. “I don’t know why she chooses Sebastian over you.”
“Because he scares her,” Waters said. “That gives him power over her. And they have a history. He’s the devil she knows. As far as she’s concerned, he’s a permanent fixture in her life. He can reach her anytime, anywhere. On the other hand, I’m someone from the outside, an unknown who will ask a few questions and leave her to Sebastian’s retribution. She doesn’t believe anyone can protect her. You. Me. Anyone.”
“I know the feeling,” Maureen said.
“What did I tell you back at your apartment?”
“That no one can protect me better than I can.”
“Right. Keeping secrets from the people trying to help you isn’t the way to protect yourself. A secret is what started this mess.”
“Like you don’t have any,” Maureen said. “Mr. Flatbush Vice.”
“Listen to me very closely,” Waters said. “I didn’t get your calls this morning because I was underground, literally. At the medical examiner’s office in Brooklyn, down in the morgue.” Waters set his mug down on the counter, turned it in place. “Maureen, the results came back on Dennis’s autopsy.”
“And?”
“Dennis was already dead when the train hit him. Somebody killed him, strangled him, and left his body on the tracks, hoping the train would cover up their dirty work.”
“You’re sure about this?” Maureen asked. “My God.”
“I’m positive. A body prone on the tracks can come through more intact than you might think. I saw Dennis’s eyes myself.” Waters tapped a fingertip high on his cheek. “Certain blood vessels in the eyes will burst during strangulation. Dennis had the red lights in his eyes. It’s a sure thing. He even had bruises on his throat. Dennis’s death is a homicide. I took over the case this morning.”
Maureen’s hands flew to her mouth. “Sebastian fucking killed him. Or had him killed.”
“Sebastian’s someone I’d very much like to talk to. And I intend to do that.” Waters put his hand on Maureen’s shoulder. “But you are my number one priority. We have to keep a close eye on you.”
A sudden thought struck her wide-eyed. “Holy shit!” She lowered her voice to a whisper when heads turned around the diner. “I’m a witness, aren’t I? In a murder case.”
“Yes, you are,” Waters said. “Tanya, too. At least according to you, Sebastian was extorting money from her homicide victim lover.”
“You know, I couldn’t figure that slick son of a bitch,” Maureen said, sitting up straight, wider awake than she’d felt in days. “The night I catch him with Dennis, he’s desperate for me not to talk, and then we’re on Dennis’s front lawn after Dennis is dead and he’s telling me no one will listen to me, no matter what I say or who I say it to.” She looked at Waters. “The whole time, silly me, I’m talking about the blow job and I’m thinking he is, too. But it’s not the sex, it’s not the papers he’s worried about, it’s you people, the cops. Because he knew outside the apartment that Dennis had been murdered. Because he did it.”
“That’s the direction that I’m leaning,” Waters said.
Maureen blinked at him. “But I’m not a suspect, though, right? I was one of the last people to see Dennis alive.”
“No, you’re not a suspect.” He waved the waitress over to refill his coffee. “We’re waiting for toxicology. Dennis may have been impaired when he was killed, but the marks on his neck show someone with stronger, bigger hands than yours strangled him.”
“What a psycho,” Maureen said. “I mean, you figure Sebastian’s a creep, he’s running for office, but this is seriously fucked up. At least now I can get back to my life. When are you gonna arrest him?”
“Not anytime soon. I have proof that Dennis was murdered. But right now I don’t have anything that says who did it.”
Maureen grabbed the lapels of her coat. “Me. I say who did it. I say he did it. Everything I told you isn’t evidence? It’s obvious.”
“It’s circumstantial,” Waters said, “is what it is. It’s hearsay. You know what that means, right?”
“I know what it means,” Maureen said. “It means the word of a waitress ain’t shit against the word of a pillar of the goddamn community.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Waters said, “it has more to do with who he is than who you are.”
“Or aren’t.”
“I believe you,” Waters said, “about everything. And what you know, what you saw is important. But this is different than you telling me some guy is selling dope on your corner. Sebastian’s the lead dog in the state senate race. My union is behind him. The mayor has his eye on him. It sucks, but that matters a lot. I can’t drag Sebastian into the precinct on a murder beef without Christ coming off the cross and pointing His finger at him. He’s protected. You have to understand that. Tanya’s not the only one in this city that won’t cross him. For your sake or for mine.”
“So that’s it, then,” Maureen said. “I’m out of luck ’cause I walked out of the wrong room at the wrong time. He’s got the mayor at his back and I’m living out of my knapsack with a target on my back. Out-fucking-standing.”
Maureen opened her wallet, took out a bill. She tucked a ten under her mug. Would the change make a decent tip for three hot chocolates? Cash was getting tight. She added a couple of wrinkled ones. Sebastian may have choked off my income, she thought, he may have me running scared, but I’ll be damned if he turns me into a shitty tipper.
“Nobody’s throwing you overboard,” Waters said. “I just have to be subtle. His people know I need some time with him. They know I need to talk to him about Dennis from the other night. He knows it, too. Remember, he was a cop. Law and order is the cornerstone of his campaign. He knows I can lean on him through the press. Believe me, it’s gonna be in tomorrow’s paper that Dennis was murdered. Sebastian doesn’t need rumors floating around that he’s stonewalling the cops on the investigation.
“He and I, we’re gonna be in a room together.” Waters stood. “And that’ll be a start.” He made Maureen think of a bear again, swaying onto its hind legs. “You lie low and let me work. No more secret missions.” His car keys jingled in his hand. “I’ll give you a ride back to your mom’s.”
Her mom. Shit. Maureen was half-glad her phone had died. Otherwise her mom would be lighting it up. “I’m not so sure I want to go back there right now.”
“I think you should talk to her.”
“She’s gonna want to help, and I want to keep her out of it.”
Waters frowned at the keys in his hand, disappointed. About what, her attitude toward Amber? Why did he care? And why did Waters’s disappointment make her feel guilty? Like she needed his approval.
“Where to, then?” Waters asked. “I need to get moving. I got a long day ahead of me.”
Maureen considered refusing the ride altogether, afraid that whatever destination she selected, Waters would take her back to Amber’s house anyway. But her transportation alternatives, either another bus with a broken heater or another creepy cabbie, didn’t appeal. “Actually, can you drop me at Cargo? I need to talk to John about a job. I got bills to pay. I don’t feel safe at the Narrows anymore. I won’t be going back there.”
“I think that’s wise,” Waters said. He swept his arm, letting her move first for the
door.
Crossing through the diner, Maureen watched Waters’s reflection in the windows. Not once did he try to check out her ass. Or maybe he was really good at it. Either way, she was impressed.
On the steps outside, Maureen stopped to light a cigarette. “So, I don’t know what it’s worth anymore, since we’ve moved on to murder, but I got descriptions of the guys that broke into my apartment.” She hung her smoke in the corner of her mouth, raised the collar on her coat. “The landlord’s kid, he came over and let them in, if you can believe that.”
Waters took a cigarette when Maureen offered, bent into her cupped hands for a light. “It’s against my health regimen, but what the hell.” He blew out smoke and patted his belly. “And why is this kid letting people in your apartment? I assume you asked him that.”
“Someone called his daddy.” Maureen led them down the stairs. They passed a young mother trailing two obese kids the opposite way, her nose in the air at their nicotine fumes. “They told him the cops needed in to my place.”
“In relation to what?”
“We didn’t get that far,” Maureen said. “I don’t think anyone but me is asking questions. But now his daddy’s threatening to throw me out because cops keep turning up at my place.”
“Did these guys turn out to be actual cops?”
“They had guns,” Maureen said. “Long coats and suits and ties.”
Waters, head down, nodded. “I had a feeling. Sebastian’s guys, I’d bet anything.”
“Rent-a-cops playing dress-up?”
“I doubt it,” Waters said. “He’s got a separate crew, ex-cops mostly, who do personal security. They guard celebrities, judges, politicians. Him. These aren’t the guys falling asleep in the driver’s seat in the mall parking lot, these are professionals. I’m sure they’re who leaned on your landlord. It was probably one of them driving the car outside the Narrows the other night.”
Maureen settled her hand on her stomach. She saw in her mind pairs of faceless men circling Staten Island in their dark cars, sharks orbiting a shipwreck, their lifeless eyes searchlights waiting to land on her. “I think I’m getting a headache. I never thought I’d say this to a man, but can’t you lie to me a little bit?”
“I need you listening to me,” Waters said, “when I ask you for the truth, when I tell you what to do. Understand?”
Maureen lit a second cigarette off the embers of her first.
Waters studied his own half-smoked cigarette. “It’s always such a let-down after the first couple drags. That’s why I never really got back to it.”
“It’s not that much worse for you than waffles and ice cream.”
Waters’s eyes got sad. He glanced over his shoulder at the diner, then back at her. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your dad. It was a shitty thing he did, to you and your mom.”
“That was a long time ago,” Maureen said. “Ages, it feels like sometimes. I guess my mom told you about that.”
“I was the one who told her,” Waters said, “when the search was called off. I didn’t put your name on it till I stopped by her place earlier looking for you.”
Maureen stared at him, his big round face awash in the past. “That’s some memory you got.”
“I remember you, too,” Waters said, “from that night. Standing on the stairs. Even then, just a little girl, I think you thought I was coming for you. Your hair was darker then, and all the way down your back. Your mother chased you upstairs, right before she went to pieces.” He squinted into the embers of his cigarette as if peering into a tiny crystal ball. “There are some things, some faces, that no matter how hard you try you can never forget.”
In the parking lot behind the Golden Dove, Maureen shivered at the passenger-side door while Waters tossed files, old newspapers, and foam coffee cups into the backseat, his arms churning as if he were bailing out a sinking rowboat. The man didn’t have company much, especially if he didn’t unlock the door first thing. Maybe hanging around this guy will make me into a detective, Maureen thought. I’m already thinking like one, for all the good it’s doing me.
As they drove down Richmond Avenue, Waters made idle chatter about the weather and the traffic. Soon, they swung onto the on-ramp for the expressway, heading north through the center of the island. As they sped past the old dump, Maureen pulled her legs underneath her. Waters had the windows cracked but the heater cranked. In her warm cloud, Maureen’s eyelids grew heavy. She felt safer than she had since stumbling out of Dennis’s office. Maybe she could ride around with the detective forever, curled up in the backseat. She’d promise not to make a sound. She slipped her hand into her coat pocket and wrapped her fingers around the cold ladybug.
Waters glanced across the car at her. “I saw you skip that drawer in your room. There are things you don’t want me to know about you, and that’s fine. I’m a cop. Everybody feels that way about me. My feelings don’t get hurt. But is there anything else involving Sebastian that you might’ve seen? Maybe something you saw or heard in the past? Someone else the both of you know?”
“I don’t know the first thing about that guy,” Maureen said. “I never met Sebastian before the other night, unless you count when I was, like, eight years old. Tanya’s the only person I know who might know details, and she’s out of reach. Her or Vic. The night of the fund-raiser, Dennis told me Vic and Sebastian knew each other.” She glanced across the car at Waters, trying to get a read on his reactions. “Maybe you know Vic, too, from back in the day. If there was vice happening, Vic was probably involved. As for me, looks like you’re stuck with the worst witness ever. I never even knew that Sebastian, Dennis, Vic, and Tanya all knew each other.”
“How long have you known Vic? How long have you worked at the Narrows?”
“Too long.”
“Seriously, how long?”
“Just over a year,” Maureen said. “So you’re wondering how I could know nothing about a place where I spend most of my time.”
“Pretty much.”
“So many people pass through that place,” Maureen said. “There’s not a lot that sticks.” She rose up in her seat. “I’m just a waitress. I don’t ask questions beyond What’re you havin’? I don’t poke my nose in other people’s lives. I go to work, put my head down, hustle my ass, and try to get home before sunrise without getting mugged or raped.” She turned her head to the window and blew out a long breath at her reflection. “Maybe it’s not much of a life but it’s exhausting.” She rubbed her eyes hard, like a little girl up way past her bedtime. “Cut me some slack, Detective. I’m just a waitress. And I’m tired.”
Waters dropped Maureen across the street from Cargo. After promising to go in right after her cigarette, she waved from the sidewalk as Waters drove away, the fear she’d hoped to leave in the car dripping like cold water from rib to rib.
Maureen slung her bag over her shoulder and took a seat on a bench facing the water. She could stay there for the whole afternoon, she thought. Sit and smoke, watching the ferryboats rumble to and fro between the island and the city, southern Manhattan drifting in and out of focus through the fog hanging over the bay. But the metal bench was ice cold and had chilled Maureen through her jeans in less than half a cigarette. She got up and walked to the railing guarding the drop-off down to the water. A few feet below her boots, the cold blue harbor swelled and fell like a breathing animal, bumping plastic bottles and paper cups against the rocks. Out on the water, Maureen watched a cloud of gulls circle a chugging, huffing ferry, the birds skating at the edge of the ferry’s black smoke, darting and diving for scraps on the observation deck.
Above her head, the wind off the sea tossed more gulls about like the abandoned gray and white pages of an exploded newspaper. When she threw her cigarette butt into the harbor, a gull dropped from the draft in pursuit. It hovered above the drifting filter, beating its sharp-angled wings and staring into the water with beady black eyes. Leaving the butt to soak and sink, the gull croaked its disappoin
tment and rose back into the air. “Sorry, kid,” she told the bird. “That’s all I got.”
Maureen looked over her shoulder at Cargo, the wind whipping her hair against her face. She wasn’t going in there, not yet. The St. George library was only a few blocks away. The library had computers. Computers she could use to look stuff up. Learn some things about hero cops in Brooklyn.
Maureen wrinkled her nose when she caught a whiff of something foul off the harbor. No, not from the water, she realized, from the street behind her. She turned as a homeless guy ambled up to her, stinking of body odor and cheap wine, mumbling some story about needing a dollar for bus fare to the shelter.
“The shelter’s two blocks from here,” Maureen said.
“Full. Gimme three dollars,” the guy said, “so’s I can take the bus to the other one.”
“What other one?”
“Whadda you care?” The guy glared at her, one eye closed, mouth turned down. “Fuck you, lady. I better not catch you on my bench later, ’less you want hell to pay.” He straightened his busted-up Yankees cap and walked away.
Maureen looked again at Cargo, thinking of heading back into the bar, hat in hand, groveling for shelter of her own. If it gets a few degrees warmer out here, she thought, watching the bum walk away, spitting at passing cars as he went, you may have to fight me for this bench.
16
“Miss, excuse me, miss.”
Maureen popped awake, drool wetting the back of her hands, the right side of her face hot, mashed, and crooked. She sat up, blinking into the face of a white-haired man peering down at her through bifocals perched on the tip of his nose. He had sculpted, snow-white eyebrows. A matching mustache twitched in the middle of his pink face. My God, Maureen thought, it finally happened. I fell down the hole and the White Rabbit has come for me. The alarm on his pocket watch rang and rang. He had his hand on her shoulder. The daylight through the windows was fading. How long had she been there?
“Cell phones must be turned off in the library,” White Rabbit said. He pulled his hand away. “Sleeping is also prohibited.”
The Devil She Knows Page 17
