Glitz

25

MODESTA MANOSDUROS, ISIDRO’S WIFE, told them she could describe the man, yes, and identify him if she saw him. An American with light hair, a narrow nose, skin so pale you could see his bones and the color of his veins… They told her to wait please, not yet. They brought her into the dark end of a room where five men stood at the other end with lights shining on them. They asked her if she saw the man she believed had been with her husband. She said, yes, that one, and pointed to Teddy Magyk. They dismissed the five men and asked her where she had seen this man before.

“I never saw him the way you think,” Modesta said.

The policemen looked at each other. “Then how can you identify him?”

“I don’t see him with my eyes.” She touched her forehead with one finger. “I see him here.”

They brought her into another room, an office, asked her to please sit down and showed her a photograph.

“My husband when he visited El Yunque with the American.”

“Have you seen this picture before?”

“No, never.”

“How do you know this is El Yunque?”

“I know El Yunque.”

“Did you know your husband was going there with the man you identified?”

“I know he did,” the woman said, “because this is my husband and this is El Yunque.”

The policemen looked at each other again. They asked her to remain seated in a chair that was uncomfortable and gave her coffee that was weak, like water. After talking to them for more than an hour, repeating everything Isidro had said to her about the man who was his prize, she was hungry and told them she wanted to go home.

An American who wore a beard offered to drive her in his car from Hato Rey to her house in Puerta de Tierra. He told her his name and said he was sorry about her husband. He drove slowly, making other cars blow their horns and pass them. Her husband’s car, when he owned it, was much larger and more comfortable. This car, the road was right there in front of them and the seat was small. She was thinking of her husband’s Chevrolet, which she had sold for 2,500 dollars, when the American asked her if she had enough money to live.

She looked at him now, to see into his bearded face, and told him yes, she had money. She had bought a color television and new clothes for the children.

He drove so slow…

“Why did you tell your husband to be careful of that man, Teddy?”

“Because he’s call Mr. Magic.”

“That’s only his name.”

“Yes, what he is.”

“But he isn’t magic, it’s his name. It sounds like magic.”

Yes, well? She said, “Let me ask you what you think they are going to do to him?”

“They’ll take him to Superior Court and put him on trial for murder.”

“Yes?”

“As soon as the district attorney has proof to show in court.”

“Yes?”

“And then, well, I think they’ll send him to Oso Blanco for life.”

“Tha’s what you think?”

She was wrong. This one didn’t know any more than the policemen. She was disappointed. But he was rich, he gave her money when they stopped in front of the house. Five one hundred-dollar bills and then five more when the children came out to see the car. He was generous, kind to her; so she said, “I’ll tell you something. You don’t think he’s magic?”

He shook his head at her. “No.”

“Then why are they going to let him go free?”

This time the Criminal Affairs investigators having lunch at El Cidreño would look over at the table-see, the same one, with the beard, still on medical leave but without his cane-and know what he was discussing with Lorendo Paz. Lorendo looking immaculate, as usual, and the bearded guy looking the same as before. Some of the investigators were discussing the same thing as Lorendo and the American detective: the fact that Teddy Magyk had killed the taxi driver, there was little doubt of it, but would be walking up Franklin Delano Roosevelt Avenue by six o’clock this evening. “We had him, on the Loíza ferry,” Herbey Maldonado told the man seated at the table with him, “and we let him go.” The American detective, look, had hardly touched his dinner. “I know how he feels,” Herbey said. The American detective was drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes today.

“You have to understand the influence of the district attorney in our system, in our preparing a case.”

“The clout,” Vincent said.

“Yes, the clout; that’s good.”

“He doesn’t want to try a case if there’s a chance he might lose.”

Lorendo shook his head. “No, he doesn’t want to see a defendant get off on a technicality, so he makes himself very objective looking at evidence. He doesn’t try this guy he’ll try somebody else, what’s the difference? This one, he sees more holes the guy can use to walk out than ways to keep him in… Come on, you know what I’m talking about. What else is new, man?… Even if we can show he took the picture, yes, at a place directly above where the body was found, how do we prove it was taken the day of the murder? What day was the murder? There’s no date on the print. The Fast Foto place, they say maybe they have his name somewhere, they’ll look. But it won’t prove nothing anyway. Okay, witnesses that can put Teddy with Isidro-”

“Me,” Vincent said.

“I have you. You saw them at a beach, not on a mountain. I have a doorman at the DuPont Plaza, he maybe saw them together once or twice. The only person I have who can positively identify Teddy is the victim’s wife, and she never saw the guy before today. You like to hear her testify?”

“She knows he’s getting off.”

“We should know it too, right away. Why didn’t we?”

Vincent didn’t answer.

“You say he bought a handcarved parrot at the rain forest gift shop and gave it to Iris. Oh, he did? What day?”

“Teddy’s gun,” Vincent said.

“We say is the murder weapon,” Lorendo said, “but we don’t find any bullets in the victim. Shot twice, only one exit wound, I thought we would have a slug for comparison.” Lorendo shook his head. “He was badly decomposed, two weeks or more out there, some of him eaten by animals. I don’t know what happen to it. But it’s the only chance we got to prove anything, if we find that slug. So I’m sending a crew out there again, have them go over the ground with their toothbrushes.”

“Can you hold him in the meantime? Lock him up?”

“No way. I can’t even hold him for the gun. You brought it, he didn’t. His lawyer would say, who are you? You have no jurisdiction. Teddy says it’s not his gun, he never saw it before, so… All I can do, tell him he can’t leave Puerto Rico until we finish the investigation. Put some men at the airport to make sure. Then stretch it out, uh? Maybe think of some other way. I don’t know, Vincent, it look good when we looked at it. We should know better, not get excited too early.”

“He did it,” Vincent said.

“You don’t have to tell me, I believe it. But we both been here before.”

“Too many times,” Vincent said.

“You had the feeling he wouldn’t be extradited, you said so. You had a feeling all along. So you bring him, maybe we’ll run him through, shut the door on him.”

“Maybe,” Vincent said.

“But it doesn’t work like that, here or Miami or Atlantic City, it’s the same, the bad guys have the advantage. I ask him if he like to plead. You know what he said?”

“I know he’s killed three people in the past three weeks,” Vincent said.

“Yes.”

They sipped their drinks, a silence between them within the clatter and voices in the restaurant. Lorendo looked over at a table and back to Vincent.

“You know Herbey Maldonado…”

“On the Loíza ferry.”

“Yes. Herbey says take him out there again and don’t bring him back. Is he kidding or not? Some of these guys-you know them yourself in Miami, they wouldn’t think twice about it, and they’re good guys.”

Vincent didn’t say anything.

“I hope,” Lorendo said, “you don’t have something like that in your mind. Not you, Vincent. Okay?”

Vincent didn’t say anything.

“Come on-you worry me. Please. Where are you?”

Here but not here. His dinner barely touched. Cigarette stubs in the tin ashtray. He raised his eyes to Lorendo.

“Never worry about anything that’s already done or you have no control over.”

“I believe that too, yes.”

“Never seek revenge…”

“Don’t even think about it, no.”

“It’s for losers…”

“Yes, because they can’t win.”

“But that’s what this is all about. He wants to pay me back. The cab driver learned something and he killed him. He killed Iris to bring me up there. He killed and raped a woman because he needed money or that’s what he likes to do and before that he did try to kill me.”

“Because you sent him to prison.”

“Because he’s crazy. Because he has nothing better to do. Who knows? I think I’ll ask him and find out. Have a talk with him.”

“Vincent…”

Again there was a silence between them, within the sounds of the restaurant.

“Let’s wait and see what we find,” Lorendo said.

“It would be self-defense.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Lorendo said. “Not the way you’re thinking.”

He drove out of that downtown Hato Rey business world to the tourist world of beaches and high-rise hotels, to Isla Verde and the resort that resembled a mosque.

“I go in there,” DeLeon said, “I feel I should have a prayer rug with me. You know what I’m saying? Kneel down in the lobby facing Mecca, which would be… that way.”

“That’s Miami,” Vincent said.

“Well, then over there somewhere. Where I used to live it was a hop to Mecca, though I never went there. Right here, this could be Egypt, except there’re toilets.”

Vincent sat sideways on a plastic lounge chair facing DeLeon stretched out on one, dark brown and white in white bathing trunks, looking toward the spade-shaped dome of the gambling casino. There were few people still at the pool. The sun, nearly through for the day, laid a flat light on the cement and on the ocean beyond the beach. They would talk about Teddy, leave him and come back, always with something to say.

“It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

“He’s getting smirky,” Vincent said.

“Acting up?”

Teddy had told the cops if they were going to make him stay here against his will they’d have to pay his hotel expenses. So the cops offered him an apartment that was in a tenement behind police headquarters, all the people living there on food stamps. Teddy looked at it-Vincent was told-held his nose and had them drive him to the DuPont Plaza; he’d use a card.

“He’s gonna sue us,” DeLeon said.

“He might.”

“Should bring him out here,” DeLeon said.

“I was thinking of that. How to work it.”

“See if we can figure some accident might happen to him. Trip and fall down an elevator shaft.”

They had arrived two days ago in the late afternoon and handed Teddy over to Lorendo Paz at the airport. DeLeon had introduced Vincent at Spade’s Isla Verde as a special guest-“Check the computer, man”-and here they were, until the computer told the manager to throw them out.

“Kidnappers Incorporated,” DeLeon said, “resting up between gigs, hoping to shit they don’t get arrested just yet. What’s the man’s name, Herbie?”

“Herbey.”

“I think he’s got the idea. One of those boys, they prob’ly do it for you. Take the motherfucker deep in the woods, man, lose his ass.”

“That’s not bad,” Vincent said. “If I knew where I was going-that’s an idea.”

“Be too easy just shoot him.” DeLeon raised up on his elbow to look at Vincent closely. “You know what you saying to me? You want to kill him, but you want to do it a way you can tell yourself you didn’t. What kind a shit is that?”

“I don’t want to kill him.”

“Mean you don’t want to come out and say it.”

“No. I’ve done it.” Vincent shaking his head back and forth. “I didn’t want to and I don’t want to do it again. I mean it.”

“I respect you, man, but what you doing you running a game on yourself.”

“Uh-unh, I did not want to shoot the guy.”

“I’m not referring to that one, I mean here, right now. I think, as you see it, you want Teddy to do it, expose himself, make a move on you. Then you can shoot his ass off not wanting to, swear to it, but still shoot his ass off.”

“I’ve thought of that.”

“But you make it hard on yourself, don’t you? Got to do it by some book. I never been this close to a good policeman, see how he thinks. You people strap guns, I always believe you like to use them. You don’t, what other way you see is there?”

“Scare him enough,” Vincent said.

There it was, the Mora theory of saving lives, and Buck Torres asks how you were supposed to know when it was working or not, in that moment before you shoot and save your own life or don’t shoot and maybe lose it.

“Get him scared enough to quit. Maybe even confess.”

DeLeon said, “You serious?” He said, “Shit. How you gonna scare him? Police up there, police down here, they try all kinds of ways to nail his ass and they can’t do it. Man must believe by now he’s got fairy dust on him. Isn’t nothing can touch him.”

“Mr. Magic,” Vincent said.

“He don’t look like but a reject, but he must have something going for him. Little homicidal motherfucker. The sneaky ones, man, are the worst.”

Vincent asked him what he was doing this evening. DeLeon said going to Old San Juan and do loop-the-loops. Vincent asked him if he’d make a stop on the way. “I’d like you to meet Modesta, the cab driver’s wife. See what you think.”

“Love to,” DeLeon said. “She a cute woman?”

Well, for a little round two-hundred-pounder smelling of laundry, her dress barely reaching her knees because of her size. Skinny legs with strange knots on her shins. A black-black African black woman, a silhouette in the doorway looking out to the street. She said, “Come. Please.”

It was a relief to turn around and go back outside, get out of the hot-grease smell of the place and the noise: the washing machine working, the electric fan blowing hot air, the television turned way up. Her kids were watching “Love Connection,” wanting to see if the young lady contestant had picked the computer programmer dude, the bartender dude or the car salesman…

Or none of them, DeLeon thinking, following Vincent and the woman outside into light once more, across the hardpack junky yard to the street, the woman saying, “I understan’ it now.”

“What’s that?” Vincent asked her.

“I dream of riding in a carriage without no horses, a black one,” she said, approaching DeLeon’s limousine. “I sit in it as you speak to me. If you would turn on the radio music, please, and the air condition…”

DeLeon looked at Vincent who gave him a look in return as she waved to neighbors and got in the back seat, Vincent following her in. She rolled the window down and waved some more as Vincent asked her how she knew Teddy was going to be released. She stopped waving and seemed surprised at the question.

“Because he’s Mr. Magic. I told you that.”

“That’s why he’s free. But how did you know it? How did it come to you? In a dream?”

“I come in my head. Also the police tell me.”

Vincent said, “Oh.”

DeLeon, half-turned behind the wheel, taking all this in, saw Vincent look at him-no expression but disappointed. What did the man expect? Vincent must have been hopeful though. He said to the woman then, “Do you know what’s going to happen to him now? I mean now that he’s free?”

“I don’ know that unless I see him.” The woman raised a hand to her neighbors. “If I see him, maybe I can tell you. I don’t know.” She turned from the window to look closely at Vincent. “But be careful of him.”

When Vincent looked at him again and nodded, DeLeon picked up the blue canvas bag from the front seat and handed it back to him. He watched Vincent take out the stainless steel urn.

“Do you know what this is?”

The woman reached out to touch the urn with the tips of her fingers. She began to stroke it, gently. DeLeon saw her eyes close.

She said, “I see a girl… falling from the sky.”

DeLeon felt chills and thrills and saw Vincent’s eyes, alive, come at him again.

The house was in the same neighborhood where Iris had lived, an upstairs flat like hers with paint peeling from the shutters and dirty walls. A weak light was on in the ceiling of the living room where two women and a skinny PR guy in an undershirt were watching “Love Connection.” One of Teddy’s favorite programs.

Teddy was in the kitchen doing business with another skinny PR guy who wore a snappy little straw down on his eyes and a dirty T-shirt. The kitchen was separated from the living room by a counter, so Teddy could hear “Love Connection” even when he wasn’t looking at it. At the same time he was telling the PR guy in the kitchen no, he couldn’t use a whole baggie, all he needed were a few joints. When the PR guy heard this he acted impatient, like Teddy was wasting his time.

He had given a busboy at the DuPont Plaza ten bucks to recommend this house. Get anything you want there. Anything? Anything.

Teddy believed the girl was nuts to have picked the car salesman, a show-off type with long sideburns in this day and age. They’d had their date and were now telling Chuck Woolery, the “Love Connection” host, all about it. How the car salesman’d had car trouble, Jesus, and was two hours late to start with. Then had taken the girl to a Japanese place where the girl said she was totally turned off by all that yukky stuff. The audience liked it when she said raw fish and hot wine were not her cup of tea. Then Chuck Woolery gave the audience his innocent look and asked the asshole car salesman if the evening got any better, if there was any romance. The asshole car salesman, backstage, but on a screen there on the show, said, well, he had given her a pretty good kiss goodnight…

As Teddy was saying to the PR guy in the snappy straw, “See, I don’t know how long I’m gonna be here. Maybe just a couple days and I can’t take weed home on the plane with me. Can I? Why don’t you roll me five joints? I bet you roll ’em they’re like tailor-made.” The PR guy got out a shoebox…

Teddy could see himself on that program talking to Chuck Woolery. Chuck asking if the date was a success and him saying, well, she didn’t go for the raw fish too much, Chuck, but she sure raved when I put the meat to her. See what old Chuck’d say to that.

The women and the skinny PR guy in the living room were discussing the date in Spanish, arguing, yelling at each other. While the PR with the snappy straw had his shoebox open and was showing him other products would be good for a short stay. Cocaine, percs, ludes… It was time to make his move. What he’d come for.

Teddy looked up from the box and said, “No, I don’t think so. I’ll tell you what, though.” He took 200 dollars worth of folded twenties out of his pocket and got set to peel them off one at a time. “I bet you got a gun you could sell me. A pistola. Am I right or wrong?”