The Finishing School

7

COLD PINK LIGHT from the rising sun bounced off windows on the west side of Park Avenue as Melanie and Ray-Ray emerged from the building and headed for his car. While the Crime Scene guys finished up, they’d check out leads on Carmen Reyes. Bernadette had called a team meeting for 9:00 A.M. sharp. Melanie planned to have some answers by then.

As he drove, Ray-Ray radioed Carmen’s description to the DEA dispatcher for relay to other law-enforcement agencies. Melanie kept her mouth shut when he called it in as “subject wanted for questioning” rather than as a missing person. Her goal was to find Carmen, and describing the girl as the subject of an investigation might actually generate a meaningful response. It was better than calling her a runaway, certainly. Teenage runaways were a dime a dozen. With no evidence of foul play, the most the cops would do was put in a few perfunctory calls to hospitals and the morgue.

Melanie went through Carmen’s address book and read out the location where they could expect to find Juan Carlos Peralta. This early there was practically no traffic, and they whizzed across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. The East River below glittered cold and black, and the silver towers of midtown stood out like knives against the morning sky. In mere minutes they were cruising the mean streets of Queens looking for Peralta’s building.

“Okay, I have a gut feeling about this,” Melanie said, unable to keep silent any longer.

Ray-Ray said nothing, staring out at the street signs, fingertips drumming restlessly on the steering wheel. He didn’t seem the type to follow a hunch.

“Maybe Carmen’s getting a bum rap,” Melanie continued. “To me she reads like a nice, studious girl from a decent family. Plus, her little sister seemed really scared of something.”

“Think I like locking up Chinese people, ma’am?” Ray-Ray said, taking his eyes off the road long enough to give Melanie a disapproving look. “But I do it if I got the evidence. This girl is most likely involved. Or else why split?”

Ouch. Maybe he was right. On the other hand, maybe he was wrong. Imagination did not appear to be his strong suit. Melanie kept silent for a few minutes, leafing through Carmen’s address book, tiny, with a flowered cloth cover and worn, gilt-edged pages. There was nothing of interest in it other than the Salvadoran boy’s cell-phone number and address. Just a few relatives in Puerto Rico and a pen pal in Wisconsin named Heidi.

“Okay, forget Carmen. What about her sister? Didn’t she look scared to you?” Melanie asked.

“Scared?”

“Yes.”

“No. Not particularly.”

“Oh, come on, Ray-Ray, she definitely did!”

“She looked upset, ma’am. Natural reaction under the circumstances. You asked if she knew anything about her sister’s disappearance, and she replied negative. In fact, from what I observed, the younger sister believes this is a runaway situation.”

“She never said that.”

“She implied it. To my mind anyway. Granted, that doesn’t necessarily equal the Reyes girl supplying the drugs. There’s about a million reasons a teenage girl might run away. Maybe she just didn’t like being told not to date this Peralta kid.”

“What about Seward and Reyes? Didn’t you think there was something off in the timing there? Who called the police-and when?”

He shrugged. “Seward’s a rich asshole pulling strings. Reyes is your average member of any minority community. Doesn’t like the cops, worried about his job, so he lets Seward call. Nothing unusual as far as I can tell.”

“Yeah, well, I think there’s more here than meets the eye. We should look beyond the obvious.”

“Honestly, ma’am, I’ve never found much call to do that on this job. The obvious generally works pretty well.”

Ray-Ray slowed down and scanned the numbers on a series of rundown tenements. He pulled up across the street from one of them.

“That’s the place,” he said, jerking his head toward the building. “What do you advise we do?”

Melanie checked her watch. It was seven o’clock in the morning. “He’s probably inside. You knock and announce, then ask to interview him. If he says no, I run back to my office and type a quick subpoena while you sit on the house to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ray-Ray said.

They got out of the car and crossed the street. Plows had gathered last night’s snow into ugly gray mounds, now decorated with intermittent streaks of bright yellow dog pee. Ray-Ray tried the door, plate glass embedded with chicken wire, with a huge crack across it. It was unlocked. They climbed three flights up a steep, poorly lit staircase to Peralta’s apartment. It wasn’t lost on Melanie that Ray-Ray kept his hand on the gun at his waistband. Normally Melanie didn’t ride along like this. The agents went out, located the witnesses, and rendered them safe-translation: disarmed them-before bringing them back to the sterile sanctuary of her government office to be interviewed. But with an investigation this urgent, there wasn’t time for such niceties.

The door of Peralta’s apartment boasted a tattered poster of the blue-and-white Salvadoran flag. Ray-Ray raised his fist and rapped loudly with his knuckles.

“¿Quién es?” asked an old woman’s faltering voice after a pause.

“Drug Enforcement Administration. We’re here to speak with a Mr. Peralta, ma’am,” Ray-Ray said.

“ La Dea ! ” the old lady shouted.

From inside the apartment came the sound of pounding footsteps, followed by the screech of a window being thrown open. Ray-Ray lowered his shoulder to hurl himself against the door. Melanie grabbed his arm.

“Exigent circumstances!” he barked, looking at her accusingly.

He was right. They could hardly afford to wait for a warrant. A young girl was missing, and someone who might have information was escaping out a window.

“Go!” she yelled.

Ray-Ray threw himself against the flimsy door several times in quick succession until it burst open. Inside, curtains flapped in the wind as a dark head disappeared from view down a metal fire escape.

Ray-Ray blew into the room and out the open window. Melanie raced after him, leaning out the casement in time to watch him clamber down the fire escape in hot pursuit of his quarry. The dark-haired kid reached the end of the metal railing and jumped the remaining six feet or so, hitting the ground and rolling. Ray-Ray leaped right behind him, scrambled to his feet at the same instant the kid did, and lunged for his legs, yanking them out from under him. In a second Ray-Ray had the cuffs on him and looked up at Melanie with a huge grin on his face. She saw what Albano meant. Ray-Ray lived for this shit, you could just tell.

Melanie turned back to the room. They were entitled to search anything in plain view, incident to what was, if nothing else, a lawful arrest on immigration charges. Unfortunately, the only things she saw were a gruesome painting of Christ on the cross, a table with a half-eaten breakfast of cold tortillas, and a squat, prune-faced abuela in a shapeless polyester dress.

The old lady glared at Melanie. “Why you bother my Juan Carlos? He no sell drugs. He good boy.”

If there was one thing marriage had taught Melanie, it was that you could live with a person for years and still not have a clue what they were up to.

“Well, if he’s such an altar boy,” she replied, “why did he just jump out the window?”