by Paul Batista
To her surprise, since he ordinarily worked the graveyard shift from eleven p.m. to seven a.m., Jose, her favorite staff member in the building, was operating the old-world elevator. As they rose slowly from floor to floor, with the chains and ropes straining above them, Jose said, “Julio called in sick today. So I get to substitute.” Julio ordinarily operated the elevator at this time of the evening. “But, you know, Ms. Rematti, I don’t mind the overtime.”
They stared at each other in the elevator’s confines. Unexpectedly, he said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Rematti, that you are going through so much now.”
She smiled. “Jose, thank you. But I’ve been through worse and I’m still on my feet. You are a good man.”
“If you need anything, I’ll be here all night.”
* * *
Inside her apartment, she took the Ruger from her commodious running pouch and walked through every room, opening all the closets. She was alone. She returned the Ruger to the pouch. She then stripped off all her damp running clothes, and, just as she was walking naked toward the bathroom for her shower, Raquel was seized by an unexpected impulse. Her computer was on a desk not far from the bathroom door. She sat on the chair in front of the computer, turned it on, and waited for the screen to emerge from its somnolence. Adroitly she typed in Google maps and then Orr’s Island.
Exactly as Michael had described it, Orr’s Island was a stony peninsula jutting into the waters of the Atlantic. She brought the peninsula, by hitting the zoom icon, so sharply into focus that it was as if she were flying over it in a helicopter in clear daylight. A big, windswept stone house—Michael’s house exactly as he had described it—occupied the outermost granite formation that extended into the white-capped, windswept ocean. The inner areas of Orr’s Island, connected only by a stone bridge to the slightly larger Bailey Island that in turn was joined to the mainland in Bath, had twenty houses on it. There were piers, lobster cabins, and lobster traps stacked along the water’s edge. Small harbors and inlets were everywhere.
For some reason she typed into the Google search engine Residents of Orr’s Island. She carefully looked down the lists of old English names such as Redwine, Coursen, and Pierce adjacent to each house, together with the dates the properties were purchased. The stone house on the property at the peninsula’s end was owned by James Honeycutt; it was purchased by his great-grandfather in 1888.
There were no O’Keefes on Orr’s Island.
* * *
Startled and unsettled, Raquel pressed further. Returning to the Google search window, she typed in the name Hunter Decker. Instantly his face appeared in an official Government photograph in front of an unfurled American flag. Below that was a brief Wikipedia article about him. She read it three times. Scion of a wealthy 19th-century industrialist family, graduate of Choate and Yale, and now the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Widely considered as a potential candidate for United States Senator from New York. His parents died when he was thirty-three years old in the crash of their Cessna off the coast of Nantucket where they owned a vacation home. He had inherited approximately forty million dollars.
And Hunter Decker never had any brothers or sisters.
* * *
Raquel immediately sent a text message to Michael O’Keefe: Why did you lie to me?
He never responded.
CHAPTER 48
RAO’S WAS ON First Avenue and 114th Street, an old-style Italian restaurant still in the heart of the never-rejuvenated and steadily decaying East Harlem. There was an era a century to seventy-five years earlier when East Harlem was a neighborhood crowded with new Italian immigrants, utterly safe because the Mafia controlled the streets. Then gradually, incrementally, after the Second World War the area from East 96th Street on the south and East 127th Street on the north and from upper Fifth Avenue to First Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s became known as Spanish Harlem. For the last several decades, it was known simply and neutrally as East Harlem, its geographically correct location in Manhattan.
But Rao’s had outlived these profound changes. To the north and south were rows of bodegas, candy shops, secondhand clothing and furniture stores, laundromats, tattered gas stations with signs on which were written “Flats Fixed” and one that read “Fats Fixed,” and storefront evangelical churches with neon signs announcing Jesus Saves in Spanish. Many of the places near Rao’s had through the years been looted or burned or defaced with meaningless graffiti.
But never Rao’s. Through some type of unwritten code or fear or enduring Mafia protection, Rao’s had a pristine storefront and awning, which had never changed for decades. The name Rao’s was still imprinted on the two windows flanking the main entrance. There was not a trace of damage anywhere on or in the restaurant.
Every night of the week, SUVs and black limousines were parked three deep on the street as drivers in black suits waited for their passengers while they ate and drank inside. There were many nights when Bill and Hillary Clinton ate there, as did actors, writers, and politicians. None of the vehicles was ever ticketed by the police, for even the Police Commissioner and the Mayor often ate there.
Oscar Caliente had started visiting Rao’s when he first arrived in Manhattan. Even then he knew it was a sacred place where no one was ever harassed. It was a sanctuary for politicians, for Italian dons, for well-dressed street gang leaders, for overlords of the drug trade. In fact, there had never been an arrest at or near Rao’s.
In time, as Oscar Caliente methodically and ruthlessly came to dominate drug distribution in Manhattan, Rao’s became ever more familiar and comfortable to him. He became one of the many prized patrons. Nobody ever discussed what he did for a living. He was simply Señor Caliente, as if that were a status in and of itself.
There were times when, to reward Hugo Salazar for an exceptional assignment or kill, Oscar took him and several other people, including two United States Congressmen, to supper at Rao’s. Hugo Salazar was so handsome, so charismatic, so obviously close to Oscar Caliente, that the drivers waiting on the street and sidewalk who were on Oscar Caliente’s payroll and who not only drove his entourage but served as his bodyguards, thought nothing of the fact that Hugo Salazar, obviously late for dinner, arrived in a yellow taxi. He walked quickly over the sidewalk, among the bored drivers, and into Rao’s.
Oscar Caliente’s customary table was a big circular one near the entrance. He never had dinner alone. Some of his guests were famous men and women, but always at least two men at the table had the sole task to protect him.
Dressed in his customary black, Hugo Salazar moved rapidly toward Oscar’s back. Hugo was utterly concentrated on the rear of Caliente’s head, where his carefully trimmed brown hair met the sleek collar of his silk shirt.
Caliente, about to slip a raw oyster into his mouth, detected a sudden look of alarm in the bodyguards’ expressions. He began to turn in the direction of the door. He never completed the motion and never tasted the oyster whose shell he held in his hand because Salazar’s razor sharp, sword-like machete entered Caliente’s skull effortlessly and its tip almost instantly emerged from Caliente’s throat as did gushes of projectile blood.
Hugo Salazar pulled the blade out of the still-quivering Oscar Caliente. He wiped the blood from the blade with two of Rao’s red-checked cloth napkins, and confidently left the fragrant restaurant. He strode along the sidewalk where the drivers languidly stood or leaned against their vehicles. Within ten seconds of plunging a sword into Oscar Caliente’s head and neck, Hugo Salazar was in a taxi at the corner of First Avenue and 114th Street. No one, he said aloud to the small, baffled Muslim driver, will ever kill me. I don’t give a fuck whoever he thinks he is. The driver, reacting as though he had a typical Manhattan maniac in the car, glanced once in the rearview mirror and then continued the trip to Riverside Drive.
CHAPTER 49
WHEN SHE HEARD the scraping noise behind the service door in her kitchen, Raquel was startled awake from the sleep she had managed to
achieve after sitting for hours on the sofa in her living room. She glanced at her cell phone. Just as she had been while at the computer, she was still naked. She had managed to cover herself in a thin wool blanket that was usually folded neatly on the sofa.
It was two a.m., a time of night when Jose went from floor to floor in the service elevator to collect the trash from the bins on each floor. A considerate man, Jose was usually as quiet as a phantom.
Not so tonight. The scraping at the lock to the service door, very noisy at first, stopped when a distinct click sounded as the lock sharply snapped open. She heard the door swing. That had never happened before, something Jose had never done.
From the sofa she asked, “Jose?”
A familiar voice answered, laughing, “Jose? Jose is on a coffee break with Jesus Christ.”
Instantly she recognized the voice. And at that moment, she saw Juan Suarez. In the hundreds of times she had been near him before and during The Blade of the Hamptons trial and then that final time in the federal prison in Brooklyn as he was awaiting deportation, this was the only time when bars didn’t divide them or guards separate them.
She covered her breasts with her arms. “How did you get in here?” she asked, trying to conceal both fear and anger.
“Don’t be worried,” he answered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“How did you get in here?”
“What does it matter? A man named Jose had the keys I need. I took them from him.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I let him know you were one of my oldest and best friends and that I was passing through the city and you wanted to see me. He said he would call you on the intercom. I said you’d be happier if I just surprised you. He said no. He was not cooperating with me. So I had to take his keys.”
“Is he dead?”
“I have the keys. He would not let them go.”
“He has a wife and three children.”
“He didn’t mention that. He should have thought about them when I asked for the keys.”
“You killed a sweet, innocent man.”
“Raquel, I only do the things I have to do. And to people who deserve it. You don’t.”
His voice had a soothing, almost simplistic tone. It was that voice—so low, so straightforward, so essentially seductive—that had first arrested her attention when she met him in prison before the East Hampton murder trial. She had found herself meeting with him so often both before and during the trial because of that voice’s inherent beauty and his compelling presence.
He walked calmly, as if gliding on velvet slippers, into her living room as she remained under the blanket on the sofa. He sat down almost casually on a nearby Eames chair.
“I never thanked you for saving my life.”
She said, “Would you please leave?”
“Do you know this is the first time we have ever met when we were just alone? We have never been able to speak freely until now.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you, except please leave.”
“You loved me, and I never touched you. If I touch you in the ways I know how, you’ll love me even more. You’ll be a very happy, happy woman.”
“That is not going to happen.”
He leaned back in the chair, looking utterly relaxed. “You are missing out on something you’d love, I promise.”
“I’m not interested. I never was.”
“You’re lying to yourself, Raquel.”
“No.”
“I’m going to kiss you. All the time we saw each other, we never had a chance to kiss. We both wanted that. You know it. I know it.”
“There won’t be any kisses. There won’t be anything.”
“I never forced myself on any woman, Raquel. And I’m not going to do that with you. I’m not a rapist—the other way around, women come to me.” He smiled at her, confidence dominating his every elegant, Cary Grant–like gesture and word. “You wanted to come to me. You do now. You know that.”
Fear was accelerating through her. Under the blanket her naked body began to quake. For only the second time in her life—the first was when she learned she was stricken with cancer—she was in the presence of a killer, and she was again uncertain she had any defense.
“Raquel, listen to me. You have no life now. Everything you have,” he said, waving a hand at the objects in the room, “will disappear soon. Baldesteri, Michael O’Keefe, and everybody you knew—all of them are in the process of ruining you. You’ll have no reputation, no money, no friends, no place where you would want to live. You’re a proud woman, Raquel, and even as we speak here together, the Internet is swarming with stories about what a lousy lawyer you are, a charlatan, a woman who wins cases by bribing jurors. There are already pictures of you, Lydia Guzman, and me on the Internet two weeks ago. We were a happy group.”
“That picture is a hoax. You know that.”
“I know that, Raquel. But that was not my doing. Nobody but nobody will believe you.”
“Whose idea was it, creating a fake picture to ruin me?”
“I can’t say. I need to stay alive.”
“Was it Decker’s idea?”
“Decker had too many ideas, Raquel. And, besides, he had so many ideas he is dead. So he has run out of ideas. He deserved to die.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“That doesn’t matter. They were people you know, who wanted to hurt you, too. Now they can never hurt you. I protected you. I owed you that. Now, you owe me.”
“What happened to the men who killed Decker?”
“I made them dead.”
“That’s a strange way to speak. You killed them?”
“I was with them when they died.”
Raquel knew, and had for a long time known, that this man was wildly unpredictable, a beguiling charmer; alluringly odd, opaque, but also, at all times, a dedicated, enthusiastic killer. Not all the physical beauty and attractiveness of this man, even his moments of extraordinary grace, could alter all that.
I have to save myself, she thought. Only I can do that.
“Do you know what a euphemism is, Juan?”
“No, but I understand what you mean. I was with Decker when he died. I gave that order, because I was ordered to do it. So even though I was there, I didn’t murder him.” He leaned forward, confident, reassuring, even affectionate. “We can leave together. I know places to go with you. I have money, more than enough, for us. You must have some money, too. Your life has all fallen down, and can’t be put together again. I can do that. No one can touch us.”
“Stop that, Juan. You’re here to kill me. So why not? Caliente assigned you to do that long ago.”
“He did. And I didn’t.”
“So why not now?”
“Caliente died before he could slip an oyster into his mouth. He called oysters his Viagra.”
“Caliente is dead? When?”
“Two, three hours ago, just before I came here. You’re alive and strikingly beautiful with your clothes off. Just as I dreamed.” He bestowed on her one of his beguiling smiles. “Caliente can’t do another thing.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Sure. He planned to have me wasted. But I reached out to him first. I couldn’t stand him from the minute he picked me out of a crowd and took me away from washing filthy dishes at the miserable Chinese restaurant on Second Avenue. And I needed to save you, too. Three days ago, he gave me orders again to kill you.”
“He was a busy man.”
“He had a lot on his mind. He had to be a different person all the time. Robert Calvaro was only one version of him. There were so many others.”
Raquel had dealt for years with men and women who were criminals. They shared one trait, no matter who they were, whether they were insider traders in securities, or powerful men who habitually used their positions to seduce women who wanted to be actresses or television personalities, or politicians.
Criminals, she knew, never changed. They carried with them forever, by instinct or genetics, the impulse to exercise the powers they had. Juan Suarez was a killer. He would, she knew, kill her this night no matter how many kind or engaging words he used. Like a drug addict, he loved his drug of choice above all else; and in his case, his drug of choice was to make people die.
Even under extreme pressure, Raquel was resourceful. She somehow had to grab the pouch she had used on her run and had dropped on her dining room table. It still contained her Ruger. Humor him for as long as you can, she thought, until you get the Ruger and use it.
She said, “The truth is from the moment I first saw you I wondered what it would be like to kiss you.”
“Let me show you.”
Trembling, she slipped the soft wool blanket off her entire body. She remained on the sofa, fully exposed. She had never doubted her own beauty. She detected an odor of sweat intermixed with perfume on her entire body. She hadn’t showered since her sweat-inducing run.
He was a large man, although slim, muscular, and powerfully built. But Raquel, a profoundly sensual woman who spent a lifetime since age seventeen in many sexual encounters with many different kinds of men, was repelled by Juan Suarez’ long-desired kiss. He loomed over her, carefully holding the sides of her head, pressing his warm lips against hers, and sweeping his tasteful tongue around her tongue. As she sat naked on the sofa under him, her eyes slightly open and struck by his glamorous face, hair, and body, she felt like vomiting.
And yet through years of experience, she knew how to kiss and touch as if in passion even at those times when she lacked anything genuine. She knew by instinct that her chance of living depended on seducing and deceiving him in the most basic sense: to make him, as crazy as he was, believe that erotic kisses and touches would gradually and ineluctably lead to her bedroom and hours of various lovemaking positions. That passionate movement to the bedroom would lead them close to the pouch in which her Ruger was concealed. It might be that this man, a man with climacteric passions, might be so focused on the thought of entering her that he wouldn’t react quickly enough as she seized the pouch and unzipped it to get the Ruger. As she knew, Juan was extraordinarily fast in his reactions, but, as she also knew, men’s lusts were deeply self-absorbed, stripping away all thoughts other than the touch of their naked bodies in bed, their experienced tongue in the folds of her vagina.
