The cold room

THIRTY-ONE

On the way home that night, at her request, I took Adele to Beth-Israel Hospital’s emergency room, only a few blocks from my apartment. Just in case, was how she put it. I was relieved, although Adele claimed not to be in any real pain. I knew that a bullet stopped by a vest transmits energy forward into the body. Internal injuries are fairly common and deaths are not unheard of, especially when a round impacts the left side of the chest.

That hadn’t happened to Adele. Plus, she’d been well prepared. Not only was her Grade III-A body armor much heavier than that generally worn by cops, it was specifically designed to minimize post-impact trauma. In addition, when I examined Adele’s vest, I found a gouge running across the fabric. The bullet had struck at an angle and some of the force had dissipated as it slowed down.

We used our badges to get immediate treatment, but kept the cause of Adele’s injury to ourselves. A fall on stairs, a collision with the point of a cast-iron handrail, we just wanna be sure she’s okay.

A few minutes later, Adele was sitting on a narrow bed separated from a line of other narrow beds by a set of flimsy curtains. I was standing beside her when the doctor came in, a tall blond who seemed on the point of collapse. She listened to Adele’s story, then asked me to step outside while she conducted an examination. The wait was short, as was the message. Adele would go to Radiology for a few tests. It would be better if I returned to the waiting area.

‘Don’t worry,’ she assured. ‘I haven’t found any injury beyond the contusion. But let’s err on the side of caution.’

Then she was gone, leaving me with no choice except to comply. I’d been out-copped.

It was three o’clock on Sunday morning and the waiting room was fairly crowded. There was the usual collection of the wounded and the overdosed, along with a half-dozen women of varying ages, all accompanied by children. A wheelchair backed against the rear wall was occupied by a man so ancient he might have been a mummy. The old man sighed from time to time, though he never moved. Nor did his aide, who was asleep in the wheelchair next to him.

Adele came out an hour later. ‘All clear,’ she told me. ‘I’m just gonna have to suck it up and stop whining.’

This was news I was glad to hear. It was four o’clock in the morning. We were both dead tired and we weren’t going to get more than a few hours sleep. Still, I’d come up with an idea while I sat in the waiting room, a way to establish rapport when I interviewed Ronald on the following day. I wanted to know whether I could bring it off before I turned out the lights. I took Adele’s vest from where it hung on the back of a chair and slid it over my head. The vest was too small for me, which was why Adele had worn it, but I managed to fasten the Velcro straps. Though the fit was tight, I could breathe well enough.

As it turned out, we slept for five hours, until nine, then bolted down a hasty breakfast and got out the door. We were eager, the both of us. Personally, I had no thoughts of failure. Adele and I were going to play with Ronald Portola’s psyche. We were going to twist his mind until the truth popped out. We could not be defeated. It was all familiar stuff, remembered from my high school days when I’d competed on the swimming team. My coach, Conrad Stehle, was big on positive thinking. And I have to say, I won a lot more races than I lost. But I wasn’t good enough to win the big ones, the statewide competitions. Positive attitude or not.

David Portola emerged from the townhouse a little before noon, his trusty skateboard tucked beneath his arm. Adele and I were parked at a fire hydrant a mere fifty feet to the south, but David looked neither right nor left as he crossed the street, dropped the skateboard to the ground and vanished into the park.

Margaret Portola came out to hail a cab an hour later. As before, despite the designer frock, the gold jewelry and the strawberry-sized diamond on her left hand, the pitted cheeks and narrowed eyes gave her away. She was not the princess, or even the dowager queen. No, at best she was an ill-tempered wannabe.

Screened from outsiders by the misted windows, Adele was sitting beside me in the Nissan, on the passenger side. The humidity, if anything, was even worse than on the prior night, and it was again threatening to rain. Across the street, in the park, the leaves on a little stand of young maples all pointed downward, as if only awaiting the first touch of autumn to give up the ghost.

At three thirty, David Portola made his way back home. His mother followed a half hour later. Then all was quiet as the sun, an indefinite presence behind a ceiling of gray cloud, moved to the Jersey side of the Hudson River. Adele kept shifting in her seat. She’d made a quick foray in search of a restroom several hours before and now it was time to repeat the experience. The plan called for us to maintain the stakeout well into the night. From our point of view, the later Ronald came out, the better. As long as he did, eventually, come out.

The suspense ended abruptly when Ronald emerged, along with his mother, at five thirty. This was the worst possible news and I muttered a curse which Adele echoed. But then Margaret stepped into a cab and Ronald closed the door behind her, hesitating for just a second as the cab pulled away before walking in our direction. Adele waited until he was almost alongside the Nissan before she got out and flashed her tin.

‘Hi, Ronny,’ she said. ‘My name is Bentibi. I’m an investigator with the District Attorney’s office and I want to talk to you.’

I came up on his blind side, but didn’t display my shield. I was wearing Adele’s vest and the letters stenciled across my chest, NYPD, made my identity clear enough.

‘Detective Corbin,’ I said before repeating the essential message. ‘We need to talk to you.’

As I drew Ronald’s attention, Adele wrapped her hand around his right arm, her fingertips coming to rest in the hollow space between the bicep and the elbow. From this position she could execute, with a simple squeeze, what the bosses at the Puzzle Palace call a pain-compliance technique.

‘What about?’

‘What do you think?’ Adele asked.

Up close, Ronald Portola seemed incredibly soft. But he was not only unafraid, he seemed oddly comfortable. He stared directly into my eyes, and I stared back. Patience was, after all, my game.

Finally, Ronald turned to Adele. ‘I suppose I’m expected to ask for a lawyer,’ he finally said.

‘Why, did you commit some crime? Have you been messin’ with that rough trade again?’

Ronald made a small move, as if to leave, and Adele clamped down, squeezing hard enough to draw a little grunt of pain.

‘You’re disappointing me, Ronald,’ I said, stepping in. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure? Your basic curiosity? I figured you for a player, a man eager to walk that fine line between pleasure and pain. Was I mistaken?’

Ronald’s only prominent feature was the long, straight nose he’d clearly inherited from his father. He gave the tip of that nose a series of quick strokes, as if searching for a pimple. ‘I just know there’s more to this story,’ he said.

‘How about you and me all alone in an interrogation room? There probably won’t be anybody else around, not on a Sunday night. That means nobody to overhear our conversation, nobody to misinterpret the direction it might take.’ I put my arm around his shoulders and led him toward the car. He went more or less willingly, ducking his head as he slid onto the back seat. ‘I promise, Ronald, I’ll show you a good time. I promise.’

I walked around the car to get in on the other side. When I closed the door, I found Adele and Ronald locked eyeball to eyeball. Adele wore a half smile poised mid way between amused and sneering, her eyes so laid back she might have been looking at a freshly killed insect pinned to a specimen board.

‘Tell me,’ Adele asked, ‘because I’m dyin’ to know. How old were you when your mother started callin’ you “La Bamba”?’

Ronald’s eyes jerked open. He’d been blindsided, not only by Adele knowing his pet name, but also because she was a woman. In his world, a woman had always held the whip.

‘Ya know,’ Adele continued, ‘I just don’t get it. If you’d knock her on her ass, just once, she’d respect you. Just once, La Bamba. Just one fucking time. Then you’d be a man.’

‘I want a lawyer.’ Ronald’s head began to rotate in my direction, only to stop abruptly when Adele corrected him.

‘Don’t you dare turn away from me when I’m talking to you.’ She reached over the back seat to grab him by the chin, forcing his head back until their eyes were again locked. ‘First, you’re not a suspect, so you don’t get a lawyer. Second, you’re not goin’ anywhere until we’re finished with you. Do we understand each other?’

Ronald jerked his chin out of Adele’s grip, but didn’t look away. I could almost see the little gears turning in his mind as Adele regained both her contemptuous smile and her equally contemptuous tone.

‘See, here’s what I don’t get. My father liked to slap me and my brothers around when he was in a bad mood, which was mostly all the time. And I’m tellin’ ya, Ronnie, when you got beat up by my dad, you really got beat up. Now, when I was kid, what could I do? I hadda take it. But the day I graduated high school, I left his house. You hearin’ this? I didn’t have ten dollars in my purse, but I packed my things and left. Now here you are — twenty-four years old with a freakin’ trust fund — and you’re still livin’ with a crazy bitch who calls you La Bamba. How is that possible?’

‘Are you suggesting that I’m a faggot?’

‘Please, don’t hide behind that one. Gay has nothing to do with your spineless attitude, not a fucking thing.’

Suddenly, Ronald’s face lit up. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you’ve gotten your hands on Toad.’

‘Toad?’

‘Toad. That’s the name we have for the little creatures who hippity-hop through the house doing all those nasty chores the rich don’t have to do.’

‘So, you’re referring to Tynia Cernek?’

‘I’m referring to them all. They were all Toad.’

‘Does that include Mynka Chechowski?’

‘Toad, I’m afraid. Toad, Toad, Toad.’

Adele leaned over the seat and backhanded Ronald across the face, a really nice shot that spun his head around. I waited a few seconds, then kicked the back of Adele’s seat.

‘That’s enough. Start driving.’

Adele complied meekly, which brought a smile to Ronald’s fleshy mouth, a smile that revealed several blood-stained teeth. I gave him a little poke.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘didn’t I promise to show you a good time?’

The squad room at the Nine-Two was deserted when I led Ronald though the maze of corridors that fronted the little cubbyholes we called home. As I’d worked on Sundays in the past, I knew that only one pair of detectives was on duty. Who they were and what they were doing, I couldn’t say. I was just glad they weren’t at their desks, counting the minutes until they clocked out. Their presence wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it would have ruined the atmosphere.

‘In here, Ronnie.’ I opened the door to a small interrogation room, waited for him to enter, then followed, closing the door behind me.

About the size of a prison cell, the eight-by-ten room was everything Ronald could have wished for. Cracked floor tiles, tan walls, a recessed fluorescent fixture, a small table, three plastic chairs. There was even a sprinkling of dark stains on the wall. The stains resembled blood spatter, but were actually marinara sauce from a carelessly handled meatball hero.

Ronnie took the chair behind the table without prompting. He slumped down in the seat of his chair and crossed his legs. One arm dangled in his lap, the other played with his skimpy beard. I followed him around the table and dropped to one knee slightly behind him. Across the room, a one-way mirror reflected our images. Adele was on the other side of the mirror, watching carefully. Her role in the performance was not yet over.

I stared at Ronald for a long moment, allowing a half smile to play across my face. Despite the air of indifference, Ronald’s eyes, when I found them, were jittery. And why not? Adele had spoken Mynka Chechowski’s name aloud, so there was no doubting our ultimate purpose. A murder had been committed, Ronald knew the identity of the killer, we were here to make an arrest. For Ronald Portola, those were the only certainties. He couldn’t know, for instance, despite our assurances, that he was not the prime suspect, that ten minutes from now I wouldn’t put him on a bus headed for Rikers Island.