Running of the bulls

CHAPTER EIGHT

The van, a slate-blue Ford Spocatti picked up in Queens, farted little clouds of exhaust as it ribboned through the city.

It was rust-spotted and fender-dented, but its engine was strong and it drew no attention on these streets, which, Carmen knew, was the reason he bought it in the first place. He hit a string of green lights and sailed to 145th Street, just off the Harlem River, where he parked across from Maria Martinez’s tenement and sat waiting with the engine off for the police to bring her home.

Carmen rolled down the passenger window and watched the activity on the street. It was almost midnight and the sidewalks were alive with the homeless, whores and pimps, pushers and addicts, their sunken faces occasionally caught in the trembling headlights of passing cars. Here, the streetlamps were dark. The city refused to pay for bulbs that were constantly being smashed by gunfire. Instead, the major source of light came from a storefront, where a couple was freebasing coke.

“Stay here,” Spocatti said.

He opened the door and stepped out. Carmen looked in the side mirror and watched him move down the sidewalk until the shadows and the night slid over his back and engulfed him. She didn’t know where he was going or what he had in mind, but his trust in her had weakened and she was surprised by how much that bothered her. She’d been in this business seven years and she’d never been caught. Her hits were as daring as his, her reputation just as solid. She had nothing to prove and yet she obviously tried to impress him when she pushed Hayes out the window. Why? What was it about him that made her want to be viewed as an equal in his eyes?

What was it about herself?

She leaned against the seat. What had Martinez seen? Anything? It all happened so quickly, Carmen couldn’t be sure. She played the movie of her memory through her mind and saw only a badly edited, disappointing blur-Hayes kneeling, mouth bleeding, head lowered, falling through. Everything else was lost in the dizzying rush of adrenaline that had overwhelmed her at that moment and she realized now just how wrong she’d been to go against the plan.

She looked for him in the side mirror, but all she could see was a dim stretch of empty sidewalk fading into darkness. It occurred to her that being here was not about killing Maria Martinez or learning what she might have seen. Rather, this was about saving face, fixing the past, re-instilling faith in Spocatti, and moving on with what they’d been hired to do. If she failed? Spocatti might shut her out completely.

The door swung open and he stepped inside. Carmen cupped a hand over the interior light and waited for it to dim. She glanced down at his hand and saw in it a tiny plastic bag, a spoon, a syringe. He tossed it all onto the dash and looked across the street. “Anything?” he asked.

She looked at the gleam of that syringe and shook her head.

Spocatti reached for the bag and the warped metal spoon with its blackened tip. The bag was filled with white powder. Cocaine or heroin, she couldn’t be sure. He emptied it into the spoon and told her to hold it.

She held it.

He heated the spoon with a lighter. The powder liquefied and boiled. A curl of smoke swirled. He dropped the lighter in his lap, reached for the syringe, filled it.

He gave it to Carmen. “Martinez was once addicted to heroin,” he said. “Tonight, she saw a man commit suicide. She saw his head explode and she saw what was left of him while she was questioned by the police. She’s lost her faith in God and mankind. She’s tired. She lives in this wasteland. She works three jobs and still she struggles. No one’s going to be surprised if they find her pumped full of this shit.”

Carmen nodded. It would work. And then something-a glimmer, a flash of light-caught her eye and she looked across the street, where a patrol car was slowing to a stop alongside Martinez’s apartment building.

Carmen watched a woman open the passenger door and step out. She was a cop and she was immediately followed by the driver, a tall man in uniform. The people on the street parted and walked their separate ways. Maria Martinez, seated in the back of the cruiser, made her appearance last. She was still in her pale blue work uniform. She was saying something Carmen couldn’t hear.

And then Spocatti’s voice, low, closer to her ear than she would have liked: “This is a simple hit,” he said. “Nothing but an accidental overdose. Don’t disappoint me again.”

They waited for the police to leave before alighting from the van and moving across the street. Martinez lived on the second floor. Carmen followed Spocatti up two flights of stairs and down a dim hallway. The building seemed exhausted in the August heat, as though its slanting walls and sinking ceilings, desperate for relief, were trying to lean against one another for support. Here, the temperature was well past eighty and the air, heavy with humidity, stank of something sour.

Martinez’s apartment was at the end of the hall, last door on the right. Spocatti moved past it and stepped into deep shadow. He drew his gun, cocked the trigger and tapped his foot.

Carmen knocked twice on the door and waited. There was a silence followed by a woman’s voice, so high and thin that Carmen questioned whether it belonged to the heavyset woman who just emerged from the cruiser.

“What?” the woman called. “What is it?”

Carmen checked the hallway, saw in a thin tunnel of light a cat strolling in her direction-golden eyes flashing, white paws padding, tail held high against the stained wall. Dangling from the cat’s jaws was a mouse, its wiry gray tail flicking at the very tip.

“Mrs. Martinez?”

Silence.

“It’s the police, Mrs. Martinez. Could you please open the door? We need to ask you a few more questions.”

“Come back tomorrow.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“Me and my kid are tired.”

Kid…? “Please.”

Martinez started unbolting the locks.

Carmen glanced over her shoulder at Spocatti, but couldn’t see him in the shadow. She turned back as the door parted on its slender metal chain. Maria Martinez peered out, her mocha pudding face and bloodshot eyes stamped with fatigue.

In the room behind her, Carmen saw a pretty young girl sitting at the brightly lit kitchen table. The sight caused her to pause. She didn’t know Martinez had a daughter. The child had dark hair and dark skin, a narrow nose and a delicate build. She was sitting in a straight-backed chair, her eyes closed, face on the table, dead asleep. If Carmen had a daughter, it might resemble this child…

“Who are you?” Martinez asked. “You wasn’t just here.”

Carmen showed Martinez the badge Spocatti gave her upon leaving the van. “I’m Detective Martoli,” she said. “Chief Grindle sent me to speak with you.” She looked the woman full in the face and waited for some sign of recognition. There was none and Carmen questioned whether this woman had ever seen her. “May I come in?” she asked. “It’ll take just a minute.”

“Your minutes take hours. I wanna get some sleep.”

“It’s only a few questions.”

“I already told you people what I know.”

“The chief has a new lead. He wants me to discuss it with you. I promise this won’t take long. Three questions and I’m gone.”

Martinez glanced past Carmen to the very place Spocatti stood in shadow. She hesitated, moved to speak, but then shook her head and removed the metal chain. She opened the door. Carmen watched her face, tried to read her expression. Had she seen Spocatti? Wouldn’t she have slammed the door shut if she had? “All right,” Martinez said. “But only a second. I’ve got jobs tomorrow.”

Carmen stepped inside and glanced fleetingly at the child, who now was sitting up, her head bobbing, then lifting to dip again. She seemed oblivious to Carmen’s presence, as though she already was lost to the vague world of sleep.

Martinez closed the door and went to her daughter, moving easily, fluidly, not self-conscious at all. “Before we talk, my kid’s going to bed.” She scooped the girl into her arms. “She’s had it worse than I have tonight.”

Carmen nodded, pleased. She didn’t want the child here. Things would go smoother without her. “That’s fine,” she said. “Take your time.”

Martinez murmured something and left the room.

Carmen was about to follow but decided against it-Martinez only could go so far. She reached into her shirt pocket and removed the heroin-filled syringe. There was enough here to kill Martinez. But her child? No way.

And Carmen was happy for that. She’d never admit it to Spocatti, but she liked children. One day, she wanted to have a child of her own. There was no reason for this girl to die. Carmen was certain she hadn’t seen her. Unless she missed something, the girl appeared to be asleep the entire time.

She wondered if Spocatti would take that risk? If he were here, would he be willing to take the chance that Martinez’s daughter had seen him in the few moments they had shared the same space? Probably not. He’d kill her, too.

But how would the police view this? If Martinez’s death was to look like an overdose, she wouldn’t have given her daughter the drug. So, the girl could live.

She held the syringe at her side and moved to the center of the small kitchen, looked around and appraised the details that made up Maria Martinez’s life. Photos of herself and her daughter decorated the refrigerator door; a rainbow of dirty dishes rested against one another in the stained sink; a large plastic crucifix was nailed slightly askew to the wall above the kitchen table; and on the sweeping orange countertop, paperback books were stacked three deep, some so frequently read, their covers were torn or missing.

Carmen chose one of the books and turned it over in her hands. Her brother had been a voracious reader, sometimes finishing several novels in a week. But years ago, when AIDS stole his eyesight, it was Carmen who read to him, Carmen who sat at his bedside, Carmen’s voice that rose and fell along with the respirator that had become his lungs. Though twelve summers had passed since she buried him, she missed him fiercely.

She put the book down and stepped to the refrigerator. In one of the photos, Martinez was laughing, her smiling face wide as the sky. Did she know things that could ruin Wolfhagen? Was there something she wasn’t telling the police? Only a moment ago she had been reluctant to let Carmen inside.

Had she seen Spocatti waiting in the hall?

Carmen glanced at her watch, then turned to the doorway through which Martinez had carried her daughter. Ten minutes to put a child to bed?

She slipped the syringe back into her shirt pocket and left the kitchen. The living room was tiny, so dim it seemed almost gaslit. The brown, threadbare carpet was unyielding beneath her feet. There was a door in front of her, another off to her right. Both were closed. The air was slightly cooler here, as though somewhere there was a breeze. She listened but heard nothing in the adjoining rooms, no sounds of a mother comforting her child, no soft, murmuring voices. Just the breeze.

And Carmen knew.

Martinez had known who she was all along.

She lifted her pant leg and removed the gun strapped to her calf, opened the door to her right and glimpsed the empty bathroom before charging forward to the next door, which was locked. Locked!

She slammed her fist against it in frustration. She stepped back and kicked the door once, twice, but it wouldn’t give, it wouldn’t open, she wasn’t strong enough and it infuriated her.

Behind her, the front door crashed open and Spocatti rushed in. He called out her name, ran into the living room with his gun drawn, listened to her, glared at her and drew back a foot, slamming it hard against the metal knob.

The door gave easily-splinters flew like confetti.

Carmen groped for a light switch and turned it on. The bedroom was empty, sucked free of life. Beside the unmade bed was an open window, its pale yellow curtains lifting to expose a rusty black fire escape shining blue in the light of a waxing moon.

Martinez had taken her daughter and run.