Derailed

TWENTY-SEVEN

The phone call came maybe two minutes later.

Two minutes after I’d hung up with Deanna, after I’d stared at the picture of my family and thought that maybe I could make it all work out in the end.

The phone rang. And rang again. Darlene was probably down the hall swapping boy stories with her fellow executive assistants — which is what secretaries liked being called now in lieu of decent salaries.

So I picked it up.

There were over one hundred people who could have logically been on the line—much later, I counted them as an excuse for something to do. Everyone I knew, basically—maybe a hundred people, all in all, who could reasonably be expected to pick up a phone and call me. Not that I wasn’t expecting this call, of course. In many ways, it was the only call I was expecting. But I imagined it very differently. I imagined it was going to be Vasquez on the line.

But it wasn’t Vasquez.

It was her.

Only her voice was strangely reminiscent of another time, another place. That little-girl voice again. Terribly cute when it’s coming from a little girl, but nauseating when it’s not.

“Please, Charles," the voice pleaded. "You have to come here. Now.”

I was thinking several things at once. For instance, where here was. Her home, her office? Where? For another, I was wondering what it was that was causing her to sound like a frightened child again. Even though I knew what it was. I knew.

“Youhave to . . .Oh God . . . please, ” she whispered.

“Whereare you?” I asked her. A good logical question, one of the four Ws they teach in journalism. What, When, Why, Where? Even if I was asking it in a voice that sounded as panicked as hers. Even then.

“Please . . . he followed me . . . he’s going to . . .”

“What’s going on, Lucinda? What’s wrong?” Which, after all, was the real question here.

“He’s going to hurt me, Charles. . . . He . . . he wants his money . . . he . . .” And then her words got muffled and I could picture what was happening. I saw the phone being yanked out of Lucinda’s hand, the receiver covered by a large black fist. I pictured the room, which looked like the room in Alphabet City even if it wasn’t. And I imagined her face — even as I tried to avert my eyes, I did. Don’t look . . . don’t . . .

And then someone was speaking again. But not her. Not this time.

“Listen to me, motherfucker. ” Vasquez. But not the one I was used to. That phony ingratiating tone was gone, the carefully controlled fury. Fury had been let out for a stroll, and it was kicking up its heels and break-dancing on whoever got in its way.

“You thought you could fuck with me. You thought you’re gonna set me up? You miserable piece of shit. Me? You put some pansy in a car, and he’s gonna what? Kick my ass? You fucking crazy? I got your girl here, understand? I got your whore right here. Tell me you understand, motherfucker.”

“I understand.”

“You understand shit. You think you’re some kind of gangsta or something? You send some clown to fuck me over? Me? ”

“Look . . . I understand. I — ”

“You understand? You get your ass over here with the hundred grand or I will fucking kill this stupid whore. You understand that, Charles?”

“Yes.” After all, who couldn’t understand that? Was there anyone on earth who couldn’t grasp the gravity of that statement?

Now we were down to Where again. I asked for an address.

This time it was uptown — Spanish Harlem. A place I’d never been to except in passing while on my way to somewhere else — Yankee Stadium or the Cross Bronx Expressway.

I called Vital for a car. I opened my locked drawer and stuffed the money into my briefcase—I had it sitting there, waiting for the moment to arrive. I saw something else sitting there, too: Winston’s gun. For a second I thought about taking it with me, but then I decided against it. What, after all, would I do with it?

On the way downstairs I passed Mary Widger, who asked me if anything was wrong.

Family emergency, I explained.

In fifteen minutes I was traveling up Third Avenue. The car slithered, it squeezed, it maneuvered its way excruciatingly through an obstacle course of stationary refrigeration trucks, FedEx vehicles, moving vans, commuter buses, taxis, and gypsy cabs.

But maybe we weren’t moving as slowly as I thought — maybe I was simply picturing what Vasquez was going to do to Lucinda and thinking that I couldn’t let it happen again, not twice in one lifetime. It seemed that I’d look up at a street sign — 64th Street, for instance — and five minutes later I’d still be looking at the same sign.

Halfway through the ride, I realized the hand that was holding my briefcase had gone numb. I was gripping the handle so tightly, my knuckles had taken on the color of burnt wood — ash white. And I remembered a game Anna used to play with me, a kind of parlor trick — asking me to hold her forefinger in my fist and squeeze for five minutes, not a second less, and then release, always giggling as I tried to open my now paralyzed fingers. That was the way I felt now — not just my hands, but all of me: paralyzed. The way I’d felt back in that chair in the Fairfax Hotel. The woman I’d fallen in love with being raped not five feet from me, and I like a victim of sleeping sickness, able to perform all the functions of life save one. To act.

Eventually, the tonier sections of the East Side fell away. Boutiques, handbag stores, and food emporiums turned into thrift shops and bodegas as more and more Spanish words began showing up on passing storefronts.

The apartment building was on 121st Street between First and Second Avenues.

It was surrounded by a check-cashing place, a hairdresser, a corner bodega, and two burned-out buildings. A man selling roasted chestnuts and what looked like unpeeled ears of corn had set up shop in the middle of the block. Another man who looked suspiciously like a drug dealer was checking his beeper and talking into a fancy-looking cellular phone in front of the building.

I asked the car to wait for me. The driver didn’t seem very happy with the idea, but he had the kind of job where you couldn’t exactly say no.

“I may have to circle,” he said.

I didn’t answer him — I was staring at the building and wondering if I could make it through the door. There were three men loitering in the entranceway, and none of the three looked like anyone you’d ask for directions. They looked like three-fifths of a police lineup, men you don’t put your hand out to unless it contains your wallet.

And I was carrying more than my wallet today; I was carrying my wallet plus one hundred thousand dollars.

As soon as I eased myself out of the car, I heard the click of the door locks. You're on your own, they said. And I was; and on 121st Street between First and Second Avenues, I was pretty much the center of attention, too. I imagined that Lincoln Town Cars made very few stops here, as did well-dressed white men carrying expensive leather briefcases. The chestnut seller, the drug dealer, the three men guarding the entranceway of building number 435, all were looking at me like a hostile audience demanding something entertaining.

I didn’t know whether to run up the steps like a man in a hurry or walk up the steps like a man on a stroll, and I ended up somewhere in between — a man who’s not quite sure where he’s going but is still anxious to get there. When I reached the landing where the cracked asphalt was liberally scribbled with chalk and spray paint (“Sandi es mi Mami; Toni y Mali . . .”), I ended up acknowledging the three doormen the way most New Yorkers acknowledge anyone: I didn’t. I kept my eyes averted — on the doorstep, an island of worn tire tread separating brown cement from curled yellow linoleum.

“Hey . . .”

One of the men had said something to me. I was hoping the man had been addressing one of his friends, but I was pretty sure he’d been talking to me. A man wearing oversize yellow basketball sneakers and dress pants — all that I could actually see of him, since I had my eyes trained down by my feet.

I looked up into a middle-aged Spanish face that might have been okay behind the counter at McDonald’s, but not in the middle of Spanish Harlem with one hundred thousand dollars sitting in my briefcase. Besides, the face looked upset with me, as if I’d just complained about the Happy Meal having no French fries in it, and where exactly was the pickle on my burger?

I kept moving, continued to make like a halfback in the opposing secondary as I kept those legs pumping. Just about through the door, too — since the door was permanently half-ajar and offered no resistance.

“Whereyou going?”

The same man as before, speaking in heavily accented English, with the emphasis on you, the intonation important here, since I might’ve thought the man was being helpful otherwise: Tell me where you’re going and maybe I can help direct you there . No — the man was questioning my very validity for being there.

“Vasquez,” I said. The first thing that entered my head, besides Help . If you gave a name, it sounded aboveboard. Maybe they knew that name, and maybe they wouldn’t want to fuck with it. And maybe even if they didn’t know that name — Vasquez, who’s that? — they’d still be leery of poaching in someone else’s territory. A man alone was fair game, but when he wasn’t alone, who knew?

Anyway, it worked.

I kept walking through the doorway, and they didn’t stop me. There was no elevator, of course; I took the steps two at a time. Lucinda was waiting for me — He’s going to hurt me, Charles. Maybe the end was waiting for me, too.

The stairway smelled of bodily fluids: piss and semen and blood. I slipped on a banana peel that turned out to be a used condom and nearly fell down the stairs. I could hear ghostly laughter coming from somewhere I couldn’t see, the kind of laughter that might be funny or might not be. It was impossible to tell.

When I knocked on the door, Vasquez opened it. I got one word out before I was dragged in and slammed up against the wall. He slapped me across the face. I tasted blood. I dropped the briefcase onto the floor and tried to cover up. He slapped me again. And again. I said, “Stop it — I have it, there. . . there.” He kept slapping me, open-handed wallops that sneaked in between my upraised arms.

And then, suddenly, he stopped.

He dropped his arm, uncurled his fist, took a deep breath and then another. He shook his head; he exhaled. And when he finally spoke, he sounded almost normal. As if he’d just needed to vent his anger a little bit before coming back to himself.

“Shit,” he said, as if he were saying glad that’s over with. “Shit.” Then:

“You got the money?”

I was breathing too fast, like an asthmatic searching for air. My face stung where Vasquez had slapped it. But I managed to point to the floor. To the briefcase. The apartment had at least two rooms, I thought — I could hear someone from the room next door. A soft sniffling.

“Where is she?” I said, but my lip was swollen and I sounded like someone else.

Vasquez ignored me. He was opening the briefcase and turning it upside down, watching as stacks of hundred-dollar bills slithered across the floor.

“Good boy,” Vasquez said, the way you might to a dog.

I could hear her clearly now from the next room. The apartment — what I could see of it — had almost no furniture. The walls were streaked with dirt and scarred with cigarette burns. They were painted the color of yolk.

I said: “I want to see her.”

“Go ahead,” Vasquez said.

I walked through the half-open door, which led to the rest of the apartment. The room was dark, the window shades pulled down. Still, I could make out a chair against the back wall. I could see who was sitting on that chair.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She didn’t answer me.

She was sitting very still, I thought. Like a child on a church pew who’s been told repeatedly to be quiet. She didn’t look hurt, but she was sitting there dressed only in a slip.

Why was she in a slip?

I could hear Vasquez counting the money from the next room: “Sixty-six thousand one hundred, sixty-six thousand two hundred . . .”

“I gave him the money,” I said.

But maybe not soon enough. I’d said, Sorry, I don’t have it — and Winston had ended up dead and Lucinda had ended up here in her underwear. I wanted her to move, to answer me, to stop sniffling — to understand that no matter what had happened to her, no matter how many times I’d failed her, the end was within sight. I wanted her to walk across the finish line with me and not look back.

But she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t responding.

And I thought: I have to do something now . I’d taken Anna’s money, I’d gotten Winston killed, I’d let Lucinda be snatched off the street. I’d done this all to keep a secret, and even if Lucinda was one of the people who’d wanted me to keep it, I had to do something.

Vasquez walked into the room and said: “It’s all here.”

I was going to get out of here, and I was going to go to the police. It had gone too far. It was the right thing to do. Only, even as I told myself in no uncertain terms what was necessary here, even as I steeled myself for what would be an unpleasant—okay, even horrible—duty, I could hear that other Charles beginning to whisper into my ear. The one who was telling me how close we were. The one who was saying that what’s past is past, and now I was this close to getting out of it.

“Okay, Charles,” Vasquez said. “You did good. See you. . . .”

He was either waiting for me to leave or was about to leave himself.

“I’m taking her with me,” I said.

“Sure. You think I want the bitch?”

Lucinda still hadn’t said anything. Not one word.

“Maybe you better stay home from now on, Charles. Back in Long Island .” He had my briefcase in his hand. “Do me a favor, don’t try some crazy shit like before — you ain’t gonna find me anyway, see? I’m . . . relocating.”

And he left.

I stood there listening to his footfalls growing softer down the stairs, softer and softer till they disappeared completely.

I’m . . . relocating.

For some reason, I believed him, but maybe only because I wanted to. Or maybe because even Vasquez knew you could bleed someone only so much before the body was declared officially dead.

“I thought he was going to kill me this time,” Lucinda whispered slowly. She was staring at a point somewhere over my head. Even in the darkness I could see she was trembling. There was blood on the inside of her thigh. “He held the gun to my head and he told me to say my prayers and he pulled the trigger. Then he turned me over.”

“I’m taking you to a hospital, Lucinda, and then I’m going to the police.”

Lucinda said: “Get out of here, Charles.”

“He can’t get away with it. He can’t do this to you. It’s gone too far. Do you understand me?”

“Get out of here, Charles.”

“Please, Lucinda . . . we’re going to report this, and — ”

“Get out!" This time she screamed it.

So I did. Iran . Down the stairs, out the front door, back into the waiting car, feeling all the while one distinct, overpowering, and guilty little emotion.

Overwhelming relief.