The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 6

The Re-Coop didn't open until midafternoon, which, given most of its clientele, was still probably early. When Willy appeared across the street from its entrance, recognizing it not just from the sign but from the photograph he'd removed from Mary's apartment, it looked empty.

Of course, all the other buildings on the block looked empty, too. The Lower East Side was distinctive that way, one block being a bustling bazaar, merchandise spilling out onto crowded sidewalks already festooned with clothes and fabrics hanging from overhead signs, while the very next street was silent, closed up, and virtually lifeless.

Unlike Willy's old Washington Heights stomping grounds, though, the Lower East Side had been a catchment area for the poor and the dispossessed since its birth. And yet, perhaps for that very reason, it had also once thrived with life and creativity, with thousands of families jammed into single blocks, fomenting radical thinkers, social activists, and talents like the Gershwin and Marx brothers, Jimmy Durante, and Al Jolson.

But not lately. Nowadays, minus the spark of sheer numbers, that contradictory clash of creativity and despair had melted into something more numbing. While the occasional bustling street still flourished, especially on weekends, the overall neighborhood seemed locked in a permanent funk of poverty, drug abuse, and hopelessness.

The Re-Coop, in other words, was truly a product of its environment.

Willy crossed the street and walked through the door under the brightly painted sign-the only thing distinguishing this entrance from any of its equally dark and brooding neighbors.

That, thankfully, was where all comparisons stopped, however. Once inside, Willy was pleasantly surprised at the light and cheerful atmosphere that greeted him. The walls were colorfully painted and decorated, plants and flowers plentiful, and toys and children's books piled in the corners. It reminded him of an upbeat day-care center in some well-heeled suburb.

"How can I help?" a young woman asked from behind a reception counter. The only doors in the room, other than the one he'd just used, were located behind her on either side, and the front windows, so blank from the street, he saw now had been painted in, further ensuring privacy.

"Yeah. I'd like to talk to someone about Mary Kunkle." He did the routine with the quick flip of the badge.

"What was that supposed to be?" she asked, just as quickly.

He went to Plan B without a pause, pulling the badge back out of his pocket with a feigned sigh of exasperation and laying it on the counter before her. "It's a badge- Vermont Bureau of Investigation. No one's ever heard of us. I usually don't even bother showing it, but I thought you'd like to know who I was."

She peered at it carefully, patently unimpressed. "I bet. Looks real flashy. Why don't you wait over there?" She pointed to a chair near the front door. "I'll get somebody to talk with you."

She slid off her chair and disappeared through one of the back doors. Willy sat down and studied the room carefully, eventually finding the small surveillance camera he'd been expecting. Drug rehab centers came in all shapes and sizes, from the dreary dumps that made shooting up seem like a friendly alternative, to the cold, clinical, hospital look-alikes that reduced everyone in them to the status of a lab rat.

This place was the happy medium, had obviously been set up with serious cash, and would logically have a security system to protect itself. Willy waved at the camera.

Five minutes later, a black woman in her fifties with her hair pulled back in a bun appeared behind the counter. She was solidly built, dressed in no-nonsense, practical clothes, and didn't look as though she appreciated having her time wasted. Willy recognized her as one of the smiling people in the photograph-the one standing in the group's center.

"You were asking about Mary Kunkle?" she asked.

He stood up. "Yes. I used to be her husband."

She studied him silently for a few moments. Suddenly the front door opened and a pale, scrawny young man stepped in, stopped nervously in his tracks, and looked at them both. The older woman's face broke into a wide smile. "Hey, Tommy, good you could make it. Let me tell Dave you're here."

She then gave Willy a hard look, although she kept her voice artificially bright. "Why don't you come with me?"

Willy followed her through to a back hallway lined with closed doors and muted lighting. She stopped at one of the doors, stuck her head in, and said, "Tommy's here," before leading Willy to what was apparently her own office halfway down the corridor. Again, the environment was soothing, upbeat, pleasant, and well paid for.

"You guys must be pretty good fund-raisers," Willy commented.

The woman pointed at a comfortable armchair facing her desk. "Sit."

She circled the desk, settled behind it, and steepled her fingers just below her chin, so that she was looking at Willy as if he'd been pinned under glass.

"One call to the police department about that little trick with the badge and I could have you arrested."

"It's real," he said without emotion.

"It's also irrelevant, and it was used to intimidate. I don't like that."

"Okay."

"What do you want?"

"I wouldn't mind knowing who you are, for starters," he said.

She made no apologies. "I'm Rosalie Coven, the center's director."

She left it at that, letting the ensuing pause suggest that her question had been left unanswered.

He got the hint. "I'm trying to find out why Mary killed herself."

Coven's eyes narrowed slightly. "I was told it was accidental."

"Might have been. She still killed herself."

"Point taken. Why do you care?"

"Because I was married to her. Because I'm the only one they could find to identify her at the morgue."

"You also abused her when she was most vulnerable."

Was there anybody in this city who didn't know about that? he wondered. "Most vulnerable compared to what?" he asked instead. "I'm not asking for forgiveness, but I was pretty messed up, too."

"The devil made you do it?" she suggested sarcastically.

He saw where this was going, and knew he'd get nothing in return if he continued. "No," he conceded. "I did it all by myself, and while it sounds pretty lame right now, I've lived with it ever since."

Rosalie Coven stared at him for a few moments before asking, "What happened to the arm?"

"Job-related. I was shot."

"Long ago?"

"About ten years."

"Soon after you two broke up, if my memory's right."

"It's right."

For some reason she wasn't about to reveal, that seemed to thaw Rosalie Coven ever so slightly. The hands unsteepled and she pointed to a metal carafe and some cups on a filing cabinet by his side. "Pour yourself some coffee. It should be pretty hot."

He took her up on the offer, dexterously manipulating the process with his one hand. Coven watched him work, as if grading a test.

"You have doubts about how Mary died?" she finally asked.

"Don't you?" he countered. "So far, people I've talked to said she was on the mend."

Coven shook her head. "I've been doing this way too long to think that means much. You're an alcoholic. You should know."

"Still," he insisted.

She yielded. "I was surprised. I thought she was further along."

He felt the blood rise slowly to his neck and cheeks. "That's it? You had her on the wrong place on the graph? Too bad, but shit happens?"

The woman opposite him leaned forward and rested her forearms on the desk, staring at him intently. "Don't give me that, you little toad. You helped put her on that graph. You don't ever get to be self-righteous."

He held up his hand as if to stop her coming over the tabletop at him. "Okay, okay. Enough with the who's holier crap. Maybe I sent her down this road, and maybe you missed the signs and let her hit the ditch. So, we're both feeling guilty. Who cares? I just want to find out if it's true."

To pay Rosalie Coven her due, she took Willy's dismissal of her outburst in stride and seriously considered his last comment.

"She was one of the few I thought would make it."

"Were there any signs at all she was heading downhill?" he asked.

Coven shook her head. "Nothing. Everything was pointing in the opposite direction."

"Was there anyone here she was tight with? Someone besides you she might have confided in?"

"Louisa Obregon, everyone calls her Loui. They were very close. But I asked her about Mary, and she was as stunned as the rest of us." Coven looked at him sourly before adding, "Not that that'll stop you from pestering her anyhow."

He merely smiled back at her. "What's her address?"

"She lives in the neighborhood, like most of us." She scribbled the location on a piece of paper and handed it to him. "Here. It's probably a waste of time telling a cop this, but go easy with her, okay? She took this hard. She left work right after we heard and hasn't been back since."

Willy glanced at the address and slipped the note into his breast pocket.

Coven gave him a stern look. "I've done you a favor I normally never do, giving you that. You better not disappoint me."

Willy rose to his feet and crossed to the door. "Little late now, isn't it?" The address Rosalie Coven gave Willy Kunkle led him to a slightly improved version of Mary's building: more modern, less run-down, and on a street that didn't look so much like a depopulated, hundred-year-old daguerreotype. In fact, just standing in the lobby with his finger on Louisa Obregon's doorbell, Willy found the surrounding sounds of kids shouting and the smell of food on the stove a crucial vital sign, and a big difference from the stale silence of Mary's place.

"Yes? Who is it?"

"Is this Louisa Obregon?"

The slightly accented voice dropped a note into wariness. "Who is this, please?"

Willy chose his wording carefully, knowing he probably had only one shot at gaining entry. "I'm a police officer, Ms. Obregon. Rosalie Coven at the Re-Coop gave me your address. It's in connection to the death of Mary Kunkle."

There was no response, but the door lock buzzed him through.

He took the elevator to the fifth floor, stepped into the corridor, and heard the same voice call out, "Turn right. About halfway down."

He walked up to a barely open door and saw through the crack both a thick, taut chain and the dark, suspicious eye of a woman checking him out.

"You have identification?"

He put on his best manners while he reached into his pocket. "Yes, ma'am. I should warn you, though, I'm from Vermont. That's where I'm a cop." He held out his identity card and shield so she could read it, keeping one fingertip over his last name.

"The Vermont Bureau of Investigation?" she asked. "What do you have to do with Mary's death?"

"She was from there, as I'm sure you know. The nature of how she died has raised some questions we'd like to have answered."

As implausible as that sounded to him, it seemed to work for her. The door closed briefly, the chain was taken off, and Louisa Obregon let Willy in.

"What do you think happened?" she asked. "We were told it was an overdose."

"Nobody I've talked to seems to think she was back on drugs. I'm not saying it couldn't have been that way, but it does make you wonder."

A little girl in a flowered dress and bunny slippers appeared from around the corner and hugged her mother's knee. Obregon spoke to her quickly in Spanish and the child disappeared. Moments later, they heard the sounds of music leaking in from farther back in the apartment.

"Mrs. Obregon," Willy said. "Could we sit down someplace? I'd like to ask you a few questions about Mary."

But Louisa Obregon stood her ground. "It is Miss Obregon, and there is nothing I can tell you. Mary was fine up to the last time I saw her. She was happy and normal."

"I understand her finances were pretty tight."

Obregon laughed harshly. "Everybody's finances are tight. She wasn't in worse shape than anybody else, and things were going to get better soon."

"How so?" Willy asked, remembering Bob's comment that Mary had been hoping to move soon.

But Obregon wasn't very helpful. "I don't know. Maybe it wasn't true. I say the same thing all the time, too. But she liked her job, and she said she wanted to go back to school to become a drug counselor."

Willy sensed a softness welling up behind her resistant exterior and worked to expand it. "I can see why. It sounds like the Re-Coop saved her life."

It was an educated shot in the dark, but a lucky one. Obregon's eyes glistened suddenly at his words and she nodded vigorously. "Hers and mine both. And by saving mine, Teresa's, too." She pointed to where the music could still be heard in the background. "Mary and I couldn't have made it without Rosalie and the others."

Willy smiled sympathetically. "Rosalie told me everyone calls you Loui. Is that okay? Could you tell me a little about Mary before she turned herself around? What she was up to, who she hung out with? Anything would help."

Louisa Obregon gave in finally and half turned on her heel. "Would you like to sit down in the living room? Sorry I was a little suspicious at first. I don't have a great history with cops, and they don't cut people like me a lot of slack."

Willy followed her into a small, cluttered, but pleasantly decorated room. The childish music they'd been listening to was coming from a next-door bedroom. "I'm an alcoholic, Loui, sober nine years now. I'm not most cops."

She glanced at him over her shoulder, observing the crippled arm. "I noticed that. Have a seat."

They settled down in opposite corners of a sofa, their legs crossed. Loui folded her hands in her lap and looked up at the ceiling briefly. "Okay: Mary before she turned things around…" She stopped, sighed, wiped under one eye, and faced him with a wan smile. "It's tough, you know? I've lost so many friends this way, to drugs, or AIDS, or that whole world. You try to go on, count yourself lucky, think back over that friendship, and make it less than it was. You try to make the hurt go away. But it doesn't really work. It all kind of piles up inside."

Willy nodded, but kept quiet, trusting Loui to get where he'd asked her to go in her own good time.

She did after taking a deep breath. "I don't know too much. We met when we were being treated at the ReCoop. But she told me things, kind of now and then. Maybe that'll help."

"Give it a shot," he encouraged her.

"Well, you know she was from Vermont, of course, somewhere way up north. She didn't talk much about that, but she did tell me her family and her had stopped talking, and that she'd had a shitty marriage to some guy who abused her. He was a drunk, too," she added brightly, little knowing the accuracy of the comparison. "It was after she got divorced that she came down here."

"Why?" Willy interjected quickly.

"Why come here? I don't know. Bright city lights? She said she wanted to get away, make something of herself. I don't know too much else."

"There wasn't a guy?"

Loui Obregon smiled sadly. "There's always a guy, right?"

Willy retreated slightly. "Well, I didn't mean-"

But she cut him off with a wave of her hand. "No, no. You're right. I meant it. There always is a guy with women like us. We're like sheep. Rosalie tells us that all the time. Tells us to stand up on our own two feet."

Her eyes lost their focus as she stared off across the room. "But, you know, it's hard. Sleeping alone, sometimes with just a kid in your life. You get lonely. You want someone to put your arms around."

Willy compressed his lips slightly, uncomfortable with where this was heading. Gunther was good with shit like this, and Willy could hold his own, but he hated it.

"What was the guy's name?" he asked.

She blinked once and looked at him. "His name? I don't know. I mean, there were a lot of them. I guess there were. She was a pretty lady. And fun, too."

"You met some of them?"

"Oh. Well. I met one…no, two men. I don't know if they were, you know, intimate or anything. After Mary started going to the Re-Coop, her life changed, see? So there was less of that. That's what I meant about Rosalie talking to us. It wasn't encouraged, like they say."

"You catch the names of these two men?"

But she shook her head. "No. It was something like Bill or Dave or Paul or something. Not a name to remember."

"How about Andy Liptak?" he asked, thinking back not only to his talk with Bob, but to how his brother's name fit the short, bland coterie she'd just recited. "He ever come up?"

"Not that I remember."

He tried steering her back on track, disappointed. "Okay. So, she's moved to the city to live her dream. She sees a lot of guys. What else? What does she do for a job?"

"Not much that I know. She said it was like back home, but worse: waitress jobs, counter work, taking shit from other people all day and getting paid pennies."

"Where was she living then?"

"Brooklyn, mostly. Beats me where, exactly. She said she liked Brooklyn best, and that's why she lived there, so that's how I know."

"How'd she get into drugs?"

Loui's laugh was short and hard. "How'd you get into booze? Life stinks, you look for some relief. One thing leads to another."

Willy was growing irritated with the vagueness of her answers. Not a patient man by nature, he had to fight the constant urge to hurry things along, as if tarrying over a subject, or with another person, might get him caught out in the open.

"Specifically, though, do you have any names you can give me?"

She shook her head, suddenly angry, sensing his restlessness. "Cops. You don't care about Mary or me or anybody else. It's all about who your contact is. Making a bust. You treat us just like the people selling us junk."

Willy fought back the urge to agree with her. "Loui," he said instead, laying on the sincerity, "I know what it's like to be where you are. That's what drives me nuts. You fought your way back just like I did. I just want to keep going-getting the bastards that're feeding off people like us. We all do what we can to hang on to something. You've got Teresa, Mary wanted to be a counselor. I go after the scumbags."

He paused, judging her reaction, pondering his actual motivations at the same time, as if standing outside himself and watching two strangers.

Loui apparently bought his line, because she confessed, "That's not how it works, at least not in this city. You know your own dealer, but you don't brag about him. They're like a secret you got to keep to yourself or it'll go away. And they do sometimes. If I got busted and they squeezed me for my supplier, if I had somebody else's name, I'd give them that, not my own guy. You protect your source, and you don't risk it by talking about it."

Willy couldn't argue the logic, but he was still getting nowhere. He decided to help himself out by changing subjects slightly, defusing his own tension. "The ReCoop. They find you or you find them?"

"Both, kind of. They have ads around and people refer you to them. I got told about them by my priest."

"Fancy place, though. Doesn't look like the standard city services fare. They charge you anything?"

"No, no. It's privately supported-some foundation."

Willy was surprised. "One foundation? What's it called?"

"Like the place itself: the Re-Coop Foundation."

"You ever met anyone from it?"

"No. You'd have to ask Rosalie. She's the only one who deals with them."

Willy scratched his head. "Aren't they swamped, though? An upscale free clinic in a pisshole area like this? What's the catch?"

She shrugged. "I only volunteer there a few hours a week, sort of to pay back, you know? I couldn't tell you. There is an interview process. I don't think a ton of people make it through that."

Willy couldn't repress a sneer. "Right, and then they probably brag about how good their numbers are, since they screen their patients from the start. What a scam."

Once again, Louisa Obregon's face darkened. "What do you know? I was real sick when I went there, and so was Mary. They helped us out. Who cares if they don't take everybody? They work real hard on everybody they do take. Would you want to run a place like that and have to deal with all the psychos and slashers just because you let everybody in? Then nobody would be saved. They're good people and you don't know what you're talking about."

Perhaps lured by the tone of her mother's voice, young Teresa appeared in the doorway.

"Mama?" she asked.

Loui rose from her seat and comforted the child with a hug and some murmured comments Willy couldn't hear. From where she was squatting, Loui looked over her shoulder. "You should leave now. I told you all I know."

Willy got up also, feeling he'd dropped the ball. "I'm sorry," he admitted. "I lose sight of the good things sometimes. Maybe I've been at this too long."

Louisa straightened, sending her comforted daughter back to her room and escorting Willy back into the hallway. "It's okay. I wouldn't want to do what you do."

Willy tried one last question at the front door. "The reason I asked about the dealer earlier is that there was a bag of heroin next to Mary's body. It had a mark on it, a red devil. I was hoping you might know who sold that brand."

A crease appeared between her eyes. "I don't know about the brand, but you're wrong about it being heroin. Mary shot up speedballs last."

Willy looked her straight in the eyes. "You're sure of that? No chance she changed or decided to experiment?"

But Louisa Obregon stood her ground. "No, she wouldn't. She used to shoot heroin, back in the old days, but before she kicked everything, she only did speedballs. It was a thing with her, cutting the heroin with coke. She said she'd never do straight horse again."

Which made Willy wonder if in fact she had.