“Looking for us,” said Lieberman.
“Us, Jeanine, the boy. One of us should find him, Abraham.”
“Take it, Father Murphy,” said Lieberman.
“You’re lookin’ at me like maybe I’m gonna do something you’re not gonna like, right?” asked Emiliano Del Sol, expecting no answer but the one in the eyes of the very black man with the little beard who sat before him. “I mean am I right or am I wrong? I know that look. Like this a little. You tryin’ to look tough, macho, pew dentro de su corazon, tiene miedo, verdad?”
“What you want from me, man?” asked Christian Velde, holding a cup of coffee to his lips, ordering his hands not to quiver. “And don’t talk to me in no Spanish. I don’ understand no Spanish.”
They were in the Dominica Pierre Jamaican Restaurant on Howard Street and the place was empty except for El Perro, two of his Tentaculos, Carlos and “La Cabeza” Manulito, and Velde. Carlos and La Cabeza stood next to the booth at which El Perro and Christian Velde faced each other. In front of Velde was a deep-dish sweet potato pie and a white telephone.
The restaurant was long and narrow with five booths along the right and six tables lined up on the left going to the back of the restaurant where the kitchen was.
Someone in the place was cooking. It smelled sweet.
“What’s that shit you’re eatin’, man?” asked El Perro, pointing at the plate in front of Velde.
“Sweet potato pie,” said Christian, wishing now that he had brought someone with him, at least Henri Gommier and his 9mm Ingram Mac 10, the sight of which would make most Spanish piss ants crap in their pants and run for the doors, cursing.
Velde, however, was a smart man who had survived forty-three years as an extortionist and drug dealer by knowing how to gauge those who opposed him. If Henri were here, Christian was sure he would have to kill these three and get the hell out of the States fast. But Henri was not here and Christian had come for his payment and a bite to eat in his favorite restaurant in what he considered a safe neighborhood, his neighborhood. These Mexicans were crazy to come here, but it was clear to Christian that they were, indeed, crazy, at least the one across from him about whom he had heard but never until this dark moment met.
El Perro reached over and dipped his finger in the custardy dark brown dish in front of Christian. Then El Perro stuck his finger deep into his mouth, extracted it, swallowed, and pronounced, “Not bad shit, man. Jorge, we take seven or eight of these things with us.”
“With my compliments,” said Christian.
“That’s O.K.,” said El Perro, reaching over for another fingerful of pie. “You gonna do us a bigger favor.”
“A bigger favor?” Christian said, sliding his sweet potato pie across the table and handing El Perro a fork.
Christian had heard about the mad leader of Los Tentaculos, his temper, his changing moods, the people he had maimed or murdered for good reasons and for no reason at all. He had also heard that El Perro had a patron in the police.
Christian looked up at the two young men standing next to the booth, blocking any thoughts he might have of exiting or being seen by anyone hurrying by on the street.
“It’s cold out there, man,” El Perro said, shaking his head and talking with a cheek full of pie. “I’m tellin’ you. You know? And I got guys out on the streets, on the phones for I don’t know how many fuckin’ hours. How many hours, Jorge?”
“Little over four,” said La Cabeza.
“I gotta tell you somethin’,” El Perro whispered, leaning over the table. “You look fuckin’ great.”
Christian nodded and touched his small dark beard. As always, he was well dressed, conservatively dressed, a businessman on his rounds patronizing a favored restaurant. His suit was a three-piece charcoal from Polo, his tie a perfect swirled silk paisley with matching socks. His shoes were custom made.
“I gotta tell you somethin’ else,” said El Perro, wolfing down the last of his pie and looking at Christian’s coffee.
“Baptiste,” Christian shouted, “bring my guests some drinks. Coffee, Mambi?”
“Coffee,” El Perro said, looking at the kitchen and nodding to Carlos, who turned to face the kitchen door, his hand under his coat.
“Baptiste is the owner,” said Christian.
“Espew que si,” said El Perro with a grin.
A heavy black man in a white apron and cap pushed open the door almost instantly. He carried a tray with three steaming cups. Baptiste’s eyes did not meet those of Christian or the three men. He set the cups down, dried his hands on his apron, and hurried back to the kitchen.
“Pick one,” said El Perro, pointing up at Carlos without looking at him.
Carlos pointed to one of the three cups.
“Drink it,” El Perro said to Christian Velde.
Christian smiled. “You think I keep cups of poisoned coffee in the kitchen here?” he asked.
“I don’ think nothin’. I think you gonna drink that coffee.”
Christian nodded, reached for the coffee, and took a sip. It burned the roof of his mouth and his throat, but he downed the entire cup in four gulps.
“We wait now to see if I die?” asked Christian.
El Perro reached for another cup and downed it, ending with a deep, satisfied sigh.
“Jorge,” El Perro said, his eyes never leaving those of the Jamaican. “Bebe.”
La Cabeza took the cup and drank.
“I’ll get another cup for …” Christian began turning his head toward the kitchen.
“No,” said El Perro. “Carlos needs his hands free. He can’t think about more than one thing at a time, you know?”
Christian nodded. “How can I help you?”
“We been drivin’ for four hours, seein’ people, businesses, restaurants, bars. We been talkin’ serious to people from the Islands, from places like … tell the man, La Cabeza.”
Jorge stopped drinking and rattled off, “Barbados, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Haiti, Dominica, Martinique, Trinidad …”
“Basta,” said El Perro, holding up his hand.
Christian thought the madman across from him was truly remarkable. He had not blinked once nor turned his eyes away from Christian from the moment he had eased into the booth.
“Jorge’s got a memory on him,” said El Perro proudly.
“Impressive,” said Christian.
“We’re lookin’ for a big fool black guy from the Islands,” said El Perro. “Guy’s name is George. Couple people say maybe they seen him. Lotsa guys named George. But this morning, my George, he got himself a fur hat like those Russians. One, two people think maybe they seen this George with another black guy. Good-lookin’ guy. I wanna find George and this guy. These people I been talkin’ to say you can maybe help me find them.”
Christian nodded wisely. “What did these two do?”
“Killed a guy and shot una mujer con nino.”
“You mean a pregnant woman?”
“That’s what I jus’ said.”
“That’s bad luck,” said Christian.
“Fuckin’ A when we find him,” said El Perro, crossing himself. “We gonna save him one of those prostrate operations like my old man he had to have. We gonna make him eat his own cojones.”
Christian Velde was quite sure that the lunatic meant exactly what he was saying.
“I’ll make some calls,” Christian said. “Sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
“Nada,” said El Perro, looking around at the paintings on the walls. All of them were by the same artist, dark women in colorful Islands dress, some of them with baskets on their head or in their arms. All of them happy, happy.
It took five short calls by Christian. When he hung up on the fifth call, he looked up at the three men and said, “Don’t know George’s name. The other man is Raymond Carrou. From Trinidad. Good looking. Goes to night school. Likes chicks. Black white, slants. You name it. Has a straight job.”
“He changed careers this
morning,” said El Perro with a broad smile.
“I got the name of a few places he hangs out, place that he works downtown. I maybe can get his address if I look around.”
“Look around,” El Perro said.
Christian nodded, carefully removed a leather-bound notebook from his jacket pocket, opened it, and with a gold-plated fountain pen began writing in clear, precise block letters. Los Tentaculos stood silently. Someone opened the restaurant door. El Perro did not look up, but Carlos and Jorge turned. The couple, both white and dressed for business, looked at the dark men facing them and exchanged a few words before they turned and left, trying to make it look as if they had forgotten something or wandered through the wrong door.
“Here,” said Christian, tearing out the sheet and handing it to El Perro.
“Gracias,” said El Perro, starting to rise as Christian carefully screwed the top of his pen back on and placed pen and notebook in his jacket pocket.
“Two things more,” said Christian as El Perro handed the sheet of paper to Jorge. “One, you owe me.”
“Verdad,” said El Perro.
“Two, you don’t front me again. Never. You front me again and we’re at war. Comprende?”
“Comprendo,” said El Perro.
“I’m gonna tell some people that if someone does me, they find you and put you down even if they have to bomb every Mexican restaurant and apartment building in the city.”
El Perro was grinning now. He nudged Jorge, who joined him in the grin.
“Hey,” El Perro said over his shoulder, walking away from the booth as Carlos backed away with him keeping his eyes on both the kitchen and Christian Velde. “I think I come back here sometime for those pies. Maybe we run into each other. Maybe the stuff you give me is bullshit and we talk some more.”
“It’s straight,” said Christian, adjusting his tie.
“Pienso que si,” said El Perro, moving out of the door Jorge opened to the swishing noise of Howard Street.
“I like that guy,” said El Perro when they were back in the new blue GEO Prism they had come in. El Perro changed cars every month or so, always different from one another so no one could get a fix on what he rode in.
He sat in the front seat next to Jorge who drove while Carlos sat in the back so he could have plenty of room if he needed to use his weapon fast or drop it out of either window.
“Yo tambien,” said La Cabeza in the backseat.
“I think maybe we give him a favor sometime and give him his war, too,” said El Perro. “El viejo Lieberman, I think maybe now he owes Los Tentaculos a big one.”
“Where are the arresting officers?” Fiona Connery asked Nestor Briggs as he made his way through lockup on the way to his locker.
“Who?” asked Nestor, looking at the frail redheaded girl from the public defender’s office. She wore a no-nonsense skirt and jacket but she still looked too young to be a lawyer. Too young to go to high school.
She was playing weary, put-upon, overworked, all of which she certainly was, but Nestor had other things on his mind.
“Lieberman and Hanrahan,” she said.
They were in the small alcove where two rooms were reserved for lawyers and clients in the lockup. The alcove smelled of paint and steel. The room in which Jean Tortereli sat smoking and waiting for Fiona Connery smelled no better and was no more inviting, with just a small table and four chairs. No windows.
“Out,” Briggs said. “A Murder One. Miss, I’m not working lockup anymore and I’ve had a hell of a day. So if you’d just …”
Nestor tried to walk around her but she cut him off with her briefcase.
“Tell Lieutenant Kearney that if I don’t see a statement or talk to the arresting officers, I’m filing for false arrest.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” said Briggs, and he went through the door marked MEN’S LOCKER through which she could not follow him.
Fiona checked her watch. She did not date often. In fact, she hadn’t had a date in more than three months. Or was it four? The job, the caseload for which there weren’t enough hours in the day, the fatigue, not to mention that she hadn’t been asked until yesterday, all contributed to her limited social life. Amend that, she thought. My nonexistent social life.
The minutes were flying and she had to get home, change, put in her contact lenses, and be ready in little more than an hour. She lived only fifteen minutes away in a cheap but clean apartment in Albany Park a few blocks from North Park College. Paul Nathan was not Mel Gibson, but he wasn’t Charles Durning either, and he was smart, polite, and a successful doctor who had testified on behalf of one of her clients a few weeks ago. She could live with a little baldness. She couldn’t go on living without a date.
Fiona tucked her notebook under her arm, adjusted her glasses, and went into the conference room, where Jean Tortereli looked up at her.
“Well?” asked Tortereli, her businesslike exterior definitely wilting with each hour of uncertainty.
“I’m going to try to reach the lieutenant in charge, get him to dismiss charges,” Fiona said, sitting and folding her hands, forcing herself to speak slowly. “However, I doubt if he will dismiss the charges. Nor do I think a judge will dismiss until the case goes to prelim tomorrow.”
“So, I sit in here and rot?” Tortereli said.
“And, I must tell you, the chances of your walking away from this one without doing some time are remote,” said Fiona. “You’ve got two priors. Lester Wiggs, who I am not representing has a long list of priors. The two detectives who handled the arrest are veterans with clean records and they were principle parties to the felony.”
“I can’t believe this,” Tortereli said with indignation.
“Believe it,” said Fiona. “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise much. We can plea, maybe get you off with probation, but you’d have to agree to testify against Lester Wiggs. No guarantees.”
Fiona held her breath and succeeded, she was sure, in not looking anxious or looking down at her watch.
Jean Tortereli looked down at Fiona angrily, her red, recently repainted lower lip quivering. She reminded Fiona of Snow White’s stepmother.
“I’ve got to think about it.”
“My guess is that the same offer is being made to Mr. Wiggs. His lawyer is Peter Michaelson. He was a classmate at DePaul. Same criminal-law classes. Since Wiggs’s sheet is longer than yours, the state attorney’s office will probably accept your offer of testimony. If he does, they put it to Mr. Wiggs and Mr. Michaelson and Mr. Wiggs is advised to plea to a lesser offense. You don’t tie up a court date, the time of the public defender’s office, and the cost of holding you.”
“I’ll do it,” Tortereli said, reaching for the package of cigarettes she had left on the table.
“All right,” Fiona said, standing slowly and tucking her notebook into the briefcase her mother had given her when she graduated two years ago. “I make a call. You’ll stay in here tonight if you sign some papers, or you can get taken to the women’s lockup at County.”
“Here,” said Tortereli. “I’ve heard about County.”
“I’m fairly confident, if Mr. Wiggs pleas, that we can have you on the street with no charges by tomorrow afternoon. Questions?”
“What if he tries to pull me down with him?” Tortereli asked, shaking her head and trying to light her cigarette at the same time.
“His lawyer will advise him not to,” Fiona said. “It wouldn’t do him any good since you’d both start increasing the ante and telling more than the police already know.”
“So, you’re saying I should hold something back if I’ve got it, something that will keep Lester from trying to take me with him?”
“I’m saying what I’ve said,” Fiona answered. “You can interpret it as you wish.”
“O.K.,” said Jean with a big sigh.
“Good,” said Fiona. “I’ll see you early tomorrow.”
Fiona didn’t wait for any more conversation from her client.
She opened the door and called for the lockup turnkey, who ambled over from wherever he had been taking a rest.
If she hurried, Fiona had just enough time to fill in the waiver of transfer of Jean Tortereli, leave a message for Kearney, and get home in time to be ten, fifteen minutes late for Peter Nathan, tops.
George was standing on the hill at the Eastern Market in Port of Spain. His mother was on an outcrop of brown rock from which a thin waterfall tumbled musically down to the stream. She was leaning over, elbows on her knees in her white dress, to get a better look at the old woman by the stream. The old woman was cutting leaves from a dachine plant. His mother would get some leaves and mix them with crabs, okra, and herbs to make callaloo soup.
George smiled in delight, his tongue going over his lips in anticipation of the meal. About thirty people, all of them black, most of them women, looked down at the old woman in black cutting the dachine leaves with the help of her sons.
Around George on the hill were his aunt, his sister, and people he didn’t know, all of them watching the cutting of the dachine leaves.
There, a woman stood wearing a black dress with white circles, with a matching bandanna. There, a woman in a purple dress with a white lace collar that left her smooth brown shoulders and back showing. Below, a man in a straw hat stood with his arms behind his back next to the stream. There was a large colorful basket at the man’s side, a basket, George knew, that waited for the leaves.
A woman in a purple dress and a purple bandanna stepped in front of George. He tried to move to one side, but she moved too. He moved to the other side. She followed without looking back, continuing to block his view.
There were too few moments like this to have a thoughtless woman ruin them. George grew angry, instantly angry. He looked to his mother but she was still leaning over trying to watch the old woman cut the leaves. Everyone but George could see. An “Ahh” escaped from the crowd, but George did not see what caused it.
His heart was pounding with fear and anger as he approached the woman in front of him. A small push and she would slide down the wet rock, get out of his way. His hands went out. He could see them. They were not the hands of a man. They were the thin brown hands and arms of a small boy. The fingers were almost touching the woman now. The smell of callaloo was sickening now. George’s knees were shaking and he was afraid he would fall and everyone would turn to him and laugh.
Lieberman's Day Page 14
