Speak of the Devil

23

I SLIPPED INTO THE COURTROOM AND TOOK A SEAT IN THE REAR PEW. There were twenty long pews in all, room for at least a hundred onlookers. Besides me, three people were present.

A woman had misstepped coming out the door of a sporting-goods store, where she had just purchased enough gear to tackle Everest on her own. Juggling all the bags had allegedly contributed to the misstep. She hadn’t seen the yellow tape on the edge of the step, nor the sign that read, BEWARE OF STEP, and she’d twisted her ankle. From what I could piece together, she felt she should have been given a verbal warning by the shopclerk or been encouraged to take the bags outside in two trips. Or maybe chaperoned out of the damn store in a miniature hot-air balloon. The ankle had somehow led to a neck brace (Exhibit A) as well as severe interference with the woman’s livelihood, which had something to do with the music-video industry. She was sitting at the plaintiff’s table, legs crossed, wagging a foot incessantly. The foot was adorned with no less than a four-inch heel.

The lawyer arguing the case for the sporting-goods store was named Lance Jennings. He had promised me on the phone that we could talk at ten-thirty. I was giving him until eleven. The judge called a break at ten-fifty-two. I introduced myself to Jennings.

“She’s wearing stiletto heels,” I said.

“Oh, I know. The champagne’s already cold on this one. I’m going to ask the judge to have her go up into the witness stand in those beautiful stupid shoes, then step back down. In front of the jury. I just know she’s going to wobble.”

We went to a coffee shop. “I don’t drink coffee anymore,” Jennings said, shooing my money away. “Acid reflux.” He asked for a cup of hot water and produced his own tea bag from a small container in his briefcase. “Green tea. I’m becoming a damn Chinaman.” I ordered a cup of the acid reflux.

I had told Jennings on the phone that I wanted some information about the Roberto and Gabriella Diaz divorce. After dunking his tea bag in his cup, the lawyer produced a blue manila folder from his briefcase.

“Sweet women marry assholes. Don’t ask me why. This Diaz was a real hard-on. Paranoid, a classic. Thought everyone was out to persecute him and rip him off. First thing out of his mouth in court was that his wife and I were ganging up on him and we were out to get him. I think he eventually included the judge in the conspiracy. Or maybe it was his own lawyer, I can’t remember. He would just go off. A real trigger temper.”

“I understand you were able to get a restraining order on him.”

The lawyer poked at his tea bag with a spoon. “Piece of cake. History of violence, no inkling of remorse. Plus, I was the prime witness to the beating he gave his wife.”

“With the vacuum-cleaner hose?”

“These were no love taps. It was hard plastic. The prick was really whipping her with it.”

“He supposedly also beat Gabriella with an iron.”

“She told me. This is a man who cannot be trusted with domestic appliances. When I intervened, he turned on me. I still have a buzzing in my ear from it. I’ll take it to my grave. The bastard.”

“So what did you think when you heard it was Diaz who shot up the parade the other day?”

Jennings answered immediately. “I felt good that I helped separate him from his wife and daughter. I felt maybe I saved their lives.”

“So then it didn’t surprise you?”

“The shooting? I was horrified, of course, like everyone else. But when I heard it was Diaz? That’s what you’re asking? What can I tell you, it made sense to me. This guy had rage, Mr. Malone. Serious rage. I feel horrible for the people he shot. I guess you can’t put out a restraining order to keep someone away from everyone else in the world. I guess that’s called prison.”

“Or the grave.”

“Right.” He took a sip of his green tea. “The final restraining order.”

I told the lawyer what I was looking for. Angel. I didn’t tell him why, only that I needed to track down Diaz’s former colleague. Jennings caught on immediately.

“You think this Angel guy was involved?”

“I don’t know if he was. I can only tell you it’s important that I locate him. I was hoping maybe you could help. But I’m guessing Diaz didn’t call in a gangbanger like Angel as a character witness at his trial.”

“That would be a good guess.”

“What about the woman? The one Diaz brought to your office, with the rose tattoo. Gabriella told me she and Diaz were an item. She also said she’s obliterated the woman’s name from her mind. She doesn’t want to remember it.”

Jennings smirked. “You mean the hot tamale? I had her called as a witness in Diaz’s assault on me. As I’m sure you can imagine, she was not too cooperative.”

“Hostile witness?”

“That’s one way of putting it.” He rifled through the papers in his file folder. “Here we are. Donna Bia. Ah, that’s right. The lovely Miss Bia. How could I have forgotten?”

I wrote the name down. “Have you got an address?” He did. It was in Brooklyn, not far over the bridge. I wrote that down as well. “Job?”

“The official term is ‘no visible means of support.’ Except take one look at this one, and the means of support is pretty damn visible. Miss Bia was a hustler from the word go. I’m not going to use the term ‘arm candy,’ but I could.”

“Candies like that usually prefer their arms to have some money,” I said. “Diaz sounds a little short in that department.”

Jennings shrugged. “Drugs are candy, too, and our Miss Bia had herself a big appetite. I’m pretty certain Diaz was into some low-level dealing. Aside from the candy itself, dealing lets you flash a decent-sized bankroll now and then.”

“How good do you think this address is?”

“Who can say? She might have made it up on the stand.”

I flipped my notebook closed. “At least Bia isn’t a dime-a-dozen name. I’ll find her.”

Jennings smirked again. “When you find this one, your fripping eyes are going to pop out. She’s a twenty-something wearing dresses built for a ten-year-old. Seriously, you’ll think she paints it on. I guess a person is supposed to lead with their strengths. This hellcat’s got ’em in spades.”

“Oh boy,” I said. “I can’t wait.”

Jennings sipped his tea. His gaze went deep into the liquid. “Hellcat,” he murmured again.

I TOOK A CAB OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. HELL OF A PIECE OF work, that bridge, with its towering cathedral-window supports and the swooping rows of cables. There’s a story that Annie Oakley and Diamond Jim Brady threw a big party on the roof of a bar down on Water Street in 1883, the night the Brooklyn Bridge was officially inaugurated. Legend has Miss Oakley shooting the hat off one of the attending officials as he came down from the bridge and was heading into the bar. The thing is, you read up on Annie Oakley, you get about a thousand shot-the-hat-off stories. Put me in her day, and I’d have simply removed my chapeau whenever I was in the woman’s presence. The way a gentleman is supposed to, anyway.

The address Jennings had given me for Donna Bia was just off Atlantic Avenue, near the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They call it BAM. Margo’s a big BAM fan. I’ve probably logged a dozen shows there with her. I saw one there once that featured a chunky man dancing in a wool skirt. That one didn’t exactly top my entertainment list for the year, but generally speaking most of the offerings are quality goods.

I stood on a warped porch and tried to shoo a cat away from my leg as I waited for someone to respond to my knocking. The cat had a bald spot near its tail and a mustache like Hitler’s. The house was pale green. Two stories, the second one sagging a bit. There was a red glider couch on the porch, losing a battle to rust.

Donna Bia didn’t live here. Not anymore. A plumber named Ray lived here. He answered my knock in jeans and bare feet, pulling on a dirty white T-shirt. The vibe he put out was that I was interrupting something and he was eager to get back to it. I asked him about Donna Bia, and he told me that he and his wife had bought the house from a family named Bia nearly eight years before. I showed him my PI license and told him it was a matter of life and death that I locate the Bias. He didn’t seem impressed, but he told me to hold on. He shut the door. The cat and I looked at each other for two minutes, then the door opened again and Ray handed me a piece of paper with an address on it. “The Bias called me a couple of years ago to replace an elbow joint.”

A woman had drifted into sight in the dark hallway behind him. She was in a fuzzy bathrobe, smoking a cigarette. I thanked Ray and accidentally kicked the cat as I turned to leave.

“Don’t sweat it,” Ray said. “The cat’s a menace.”

The Bia family had moved to an apartment building on Eastern Parkway, only a few miles from their old home. Specifically, Mr. and Mrs. Bia had moved there once the last kid had moved out of the house. I learned this from Mrs. Bia, Donna’s mother. She was a frowning square-shaped woman wearing a faded pale blue apron. Nothing about her suggested a hellcat had sprung from her loins. She said she had not laid eyes on her daughter in over three months. The name Roberto Diaz meant nothing to her. I told her that it was very important I speak with her daughter. She shrugged, then stepped into the kitchen, emerging a moment later holding a piece of paper. Today seemed to be piece-of-paper day. She handed it to me. “This is where she lives.”

I looked at the piece of paper, which bore a phone number: 917 exchange. Cell phone.

Mrs. Bia went on, “I had to give Donna a hundred dollars to give me this number. I told her if her father or me die one day, maybe it would be nice if she got a phone call. This is my own daughter. I have no idea where she lives. I don’t think maybe she lives anywhere. All the time Donna is growing up, she is beautiful, and people tell her she is beautiful, and they tell me what a good future she will have. But you have to make good decisions to have a good future. Donna is nothing but bad decisions. So now? As far as I’m concerned, she gets what she deserves. We gave her a pretty face and a nice home. What more can we do?”

I thanked her for her time and gave her my card. “If you hear from her.”

She slipped the card into her apron pocket. “I am not holding my breath.”

From the hallway, I tried the number. I was spilled into a voice mailbox. The recorded voice was yelling to be heard above a background din. “This is Donna! Not here. Leave a message and I’ll call you!”

I was tempted to leave her a message to call her mother. But I restrained myself.

THE MOVING COMPANY WHERE DIAZ HAD WORKED OFF-AND-ON WAS called U-Move. It was located in a cinder-block building off Fourth Street. A light-skinned black man shaped like a cheeseburger heard me out. His name was Rodney. He sat at a gray metal desk in a small cement room with a buzzing fluorescent light hanging overhead. A half-naked woman in gold boots glowered angrily from the calendar on the wall behind Rodney’s desk.

Rodney was working on a medium-sized pizza and a bucket of Pepsi. He offered me a slice of the pizza and seemed relieved when I turned it down. Rodney’s job seemed to be to answer the phone and put the caller immediately on hold. He did it as easy as breathing.

I didn’t exactly ask, but he explained how U-Move operated.

“We hire out a crew chief and a driver, that’s all. Crew of two. We figure out from talking to the customers how much stuff we’re gonna be moving. If it’s a big job, gonna take more than two, we pick up extra manpower. We call them cash crew.” Rodney plugged the hole in his face with a large bite of pizza, chased by a hefty splash of Pepsi. He continued, chewing as he talked. “Crew chief and driver are on the payroll. The extra manpower gets theirs in cash. Off the books. Less paperwork.”

This last statement was borne out by Rodney’s office. The only paper I spotted, other than the napkins on his desk, were the calendar pages below the half-naked woman.

Rodney folded a slice of pizza in on itself, lengthwise. I feared he would inhale the whole thing at once, but he didn’t. He chomped down on it.

I asked him about Roberto Diaz. Rodney remembered him.

“Sure, we used him sometimes. What a jerk, huh? Shooting up the parade like that? I had no idea the guy was like that. We’ve been sweating it they don’t find out and put the company’s name in the paper. That wouldn’t be so cool with the customers.”

“Did he work here on a regular basis?”

The fat man shook his head. “He was never on payroll. He was strictly cash crew.”

“How does that work? The cash crew. You just keep a list of available names?”

“Not really. We’ve got some, but that’s mostly up to the crew chief to hire out. They got friends or people they know. We tell them not to hire garbage, but a good crew chief isn’t going to hire garbage anyway. He’s the one who’s got to work with the guy.”

“You didn’t consider Diaz garbage?”

Rodney licked his index finger. It looked like he was licking a small sausage. “Nah. I mean, I didn’t really know the guy. Saw him a couple times. He came in here once and put his feet up on my desk. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t pull a gun when I told him to take them off. But he seemed okay. Nobody called in any complaints about him. Past that, I don’t care.”

“Let me tell you who I’m actually looking for,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of Diaz’s. A guy named Angel. You wouldn’t know anything about him?”

Rodney answered immediately. “Shit, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”

My heart hiccupped. “Is that right? You know Angel?”

Rodney nodded. “Bastard robbed one of our customers, better believe I know him. Son of a bitch walked off with a box of jewelry and a box of booze. The woman we were moving caught him red-handed. He was stashing them away in his car. All sorts of hell, believe me. This woman busted Angel, and he called her a cunt to her face. Sweet, huh? Her kid was right there. We had to do the whole damn move for free to keep from being taken to court.”

I asked, “How long ago was this?”

Rodney chased some pizza dust off his face. “I don’t know. Two years? It’s been a while. Maybe longer. Three years.”

“I’m guessing Angel was cash crew?”

“Totally. Guy like that?”

“You wouldn’t have an address for him, would you?” I asked.

Rodney shook his head. “I told you. No paperwork.”

“How about a last name?”

“Angel? Sure. Ramos. Angel Ramos. What’s up? Is he in some kind of trouble? He call someone else a cunt?”

“He stole something.”

“Yeah? What’d he steal?”

“A person.”

“Shit. How do you steal a person?”

“Usually with violence.”

The phone rang. Rodney strangled a napkin between his hands and picked up the phone. “U-Move. Hold on.” He said to me, “So you’re trying to find Ramos?”

“That’s right.”

“Hold on.” He jerked open a side drawer on his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. Finally, some paperwork. “Eight oh seven President. That’s in the Slope.”

“What about it?”

“We’re moving a family out of there today. Started at ten.” He checked his watch. “They should still be loading.”

“What’s that got to do with Angel Ramos?”

Rodney was finished with his pizza. He pulled a pack of Rolos from his shirt pocket and began picking expertly at the foil. “Angel’s brother is a crew chief. That’s how we got Angel in the first place. He’s running the job in Park Slope.”

My heart did another one of those hiccups. “Angel’s brother?”

“Yeah. Victor. He’s a good dude. Nothing like his brother, except…” Rodney loosened the top Rolo from the pack and popped it into his mouth. “They’re twins. Creepy as hell, man. They look completely alike.”