It was a human skull, mounted upon a pillar of bones around which a red velvet cloth had been partially tied. A gold-sequinned scarf covered the head, leaving only the eye sockets, the nasal cavity, and the mouth exposed. At the base of the pillar finger bones had been placed in an approximation of the pattern of two hands, the bones adorned with cheap rings. Beside them, offerings had been placed: chocolate, and cigarettes, and a shot glass containing an amber liquid that smelled like whiskey.
A locket gleamed in the flashlight’s beam, silver against the white of the bone pillar. I used a rag to reach out and take it in my hand, then flipped open the catch. Inside there were pictures of two women. The first I did not recognize. The second was the woman named Martha, who had come to my house in search of hope for her child.
Suddenly, there was an explosion of light and sound. Wood and stone splintered close to my right arm, shards of it striking my face and blinding me in my right eye. I killed the flashlight and dropped to the floor as a small, bulky figure was briefly silhouetted in the door-less entrance before ducking back out of sight. I heard the terrible twin clicks as another round was jacked into the shotgun’s chamber and a man’s voice uttering the same words over and over again. It sounded like a prayer.
“Santa Muerte, reza por mi. Santa Muerte, reza por mi . . .”
Faintly, just above his words, I caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs below as Angel and Louis ascended, closing the trap. The gunman noticed them too, because the volume of his prayers increased. I heard Louis’s voice shout, “Don’t kill him!” And then the gunman appeared again, and the shotgun roared. I was already moving when the trestle table disintegrated, one of its legs collapsing as the shooter entered the room, screaming his prayer over and over as he came, jacking, firing, jacking, firing, the noise and the dust filling the room, clouding my nose and my eyes, creating a filthy mist that obscured details, leaving only indistinct shapes. Through my blurred vision, I saw a squat, dark form. A cloud of light and metal ignited before it, and I fired.
10
The Mexican lay amid the ruins of the trestle table, the discarded sheets tangled around his feet like the remains of a shroud. One of the paint cans had opened, showering his lower body with white. Blood pumped rhythmically from the hole in his chest and into the paint, propelled by the beating of his slowly failing heart. His right hand clutched at the wall, crawling spiderlike across the brickwork as he tried to touch the skull on the altar.
“Muertecita,” he said once more, but now the words were whispered. “Reza por mi.”
Louis and Angel appeared in the doorway.
“Shit,” said Louis. “I told you not to kill him.”
Dust still clouded the room, and the contents of the hole in the wall were not yet visible to him. He knelt beside the dying man. His right hand clasped the Mexican’s face, turning it toward him.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me where she is.”
The Mexican’s eyes remained fixed upon a distant spot. His lips continued to move, repeating his mantra. He smiled, as though he had glimpsed something that was invisible to the rest of us, a rip in the fabric of existence that permitted him to see at last the reward, or the punishment, that was his and his alone. I thought I saw wonder in his gaze, and fear, even as his eyes began to lose their brightness, his eyelids drooping.
Louis slapped him hard on the cheek. He held a small photograph of Alice in his right hand. I had not seen it before. I wondered if his aunt had given it to him, or if it were his own possession, a relic of a life left behind but not forgotten.
“Where is she?” said Louis.
Garcia coughed up blood. His teeth were red as his lips tried to form the imprecation one final time, and then he shuddered and his hand fell from the brickwork and splashed in the paint as he died.
Louis lowered his head and covered his face with his hand, the picture of Alice now pressed to his skin.
“Louis,” I said.
He looked up, and for a second I didn’t know how to continue.
“I think I’ve found her.”
The Emergency Service Unit was the first on the scene, responding to the “shots fired” alert from the dispatcher. Soon I was looking down the barrels of Ruger Mini-14s and H&K nine-millimeter submachine guns, trying to identify surnames and badge numbers in the confusion of lights and shouts that accompanied their arrival. The ESU cops took in the killing room, the dead Mexican, the bones arrayed in the apartment, and then, once they realized that the action was over for the evening, retreated and let their colleagues from the Nine-Six take control. I tried to answer their questions as best I could at the start, but soon lapsed into silence. It was, in part, to protect both me and my friends — I did not want to give away too much until I had a chance to compose my thoughts and get my story straight — but it was also a consequence of the image that I could not shake. I saw, over and over, Louis standing before the gap in the bricks, staring into the skeletal face of a girl that he had once known, his hands poised before her, wanting to touch all that remained but unable to do so. I watched him as he drifted back to another time and another place: a houseful of women, his days among them drawing to a close, even as another was added to their number.
I remember her. I remember her as a little baby, watching over her when the women were cooking or cleaning. I was the only man who held her, because her daddy, Deeber, was dead. I killed him. He was the first. He took my momma from me, and so I erased him from the world in retaliation. I didn’t know then that my momma’s sister was pregnant by him. I just knew, although there was no proof, that he had hurt my momma so badly that she had died, and that he would hurt me in the same way when his chance came. So I killed him, and his daughter grew up without a father. He was a base man with base appetites, hungers that he might have sated on her as the years went on, but she never got to see him or to understand the kind of man that he was. There were always questions for her, lingering doubts, and once she began to guess the truth of what had happened, I was far from her. I disappeared into the forest one day when she was still a child, and chose my own path. I drifted away from her, and from the others, and I did not know of what had befallen her until it was too late.
That is what I tell myself: I did not know.
Then our paths crossed in this city, and I tried to make up for my failures, but I could not. They were too grievous, and they could not be undone. And now she is dead, and I find myself wondering: Did I do this? Did I set this in motion by quietly, calmly deciding to take the life of her father before she was born? In a sense, were we not both father to the woman she became? Do I not bear responsibility for her life, and for her death? She was blood to me, and she is gone, and I am lessened by her passing from this world.
I am sorry. I am so sorry.
And I turned away from him as he lowered his head, because I did not want to see him this way.
I spent the rest of the night, and a good part of the morning, being interviewed by the NYPD in the Nine-Six over on Meserole Avenue. As an ex-cop, even one with some unanswered questions surrounding him, my stock had some value. I told them that I was given a lead on the Mexican’s apartment by a source, and had found the door to the warehouse open. I entered, saw what the apartment contained, and was about to call the police when I was attacked. In defending myself, I had killed my attacker.
Two detectives were interviewing me, a woman named Bayard and her partner, a big red-haired cop named Entwistle. They were scrupulously polite to start with, due in no small part to the fact that seated to my right was Frances Neagley. Before I arrived in New York, Louis had arranged for a nominal fee to be paid into my account by the firm of Early, Chaplin & Cohen, with whom Frances was a senior partner. Officially, I was in her employ, and therefore could claim privilege if any awkward questions were asked. Frances was tall, impeccably groomed even after my early call, and superficially charming, but she hung out in the kinds of bars where blood dried on the floor at weekends and had a r
eputation for stonewalling so hard that she made titanium seem pliable by comparison. She had already done a good job of simultaneously distracting and frightening most of the cops with whom she had come into contact.
“Who tipped you off on Garcia?” asked Entwistle.
“Was that his name?”
“Seems so. He’s not in a position to confirm it right now.”
“I’d prefer not to say.”
Bayard glanced at her notes.
“It wouldn’t be a pimp named Tyrone Baylee, would it, aka G-Mack?”
I didn’t reply.
“The woman you were hired to find was part of his stable, right? I assume you spoke to him. I mean, it would make no sense not to speak to him if you were looking for her, right?”
“I spoke to a lot of people,” I said.
Frances intervened. “Where are you going with this, Detective?”
“I’d just like to know when Mr. Parker here last spoke to Tyrone Baylee.”
“Mr. Parker has neither confirmed nor denied that he ever spoke to this man, so the question is irrelevant.”
“Not to Mr. Baylee,” said Entwistle. He had yellowed fingers, and his voice rumbled with catarrh. “He was admitted to Woodhull early this morning with gunshot wounds to his right hand and right foot. He had to crawl to get there. Any hopes he ever had of pitching for the Yankees are pretty much gone.”
I closed my eyes. Louis hadn’t seen fit to mention the fact that he had visited a little retribution on G-Mack.
“I spoke to Baylee around midnight, one A.M,” I said. “He gave me the address in Williamsburg.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“Did he tell you that I shot him?”
“He’s all doped up. We’re waiting to hear what he has to say.”
“I didn’t shoot him.”
“You wouldn’t know who did?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Again, Frances interjected.
“Detective? Can we move on?”
“Sorry, but your client, or your employee, or whatever you choose to call him, seems to be bad for the health of the people he meets.”
“So,” said Frances, her tone one of perfect reasonableness, “either slap a health warning on him and let him go, or charge him.”
I had to admire Frances’s fighting talk, but goading these cops didn’t seem like a great idea with Garcia’s body still cooling, G-Mack recovering from bullet wounds, and the shadow of the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center looming over my future sleeping arrangements.
“Mr. Parker killed a man,” said Entwistle.
“A man who was trying to kill him.”
“So he says.”
“Come on, Detective, we’re going around in circles here. Let’s be adult about this. You have a room torn up by shotgun blasts; a crumbling warehouse filled with bones, some of which may prove to be the remains of the woman Mr. Parker was hired to find; and two VCR tapes that appear to contain images of at least one woman being killed, and probably others. My client has indicated that he will cooperate with the investigation in any way that he can, and you’re spending your time trying to trip him up with questions about an individual who suffered injuries subsequent to his meeting with my client. Mr. Parker is available for further questions at any time, or to answer any charges that may be pressed at a future date. So what’s it going to be?”
Entwistle and Bayard exchanged a look, then excused themselves. They were gone for a long time. Frances and I sat in silence until they returned.
“You can go,” said Entwistle. “For now. If it’s not too much trouble, we’d appreciate it if you let us know if you plan on leaving the state.”
Frances began gathering her notes.
“Oh,” added Entwistle. “And try not to shoot anyone for a while, huh? See how you like it. It might even take.”
Frances dropped me back at my car. She didn’t ask me anything further about the events of the night before, and I didn’t offer. We both seemed happier that way.
“I think you’re okay,” she said as we pulled up close by the warehouse. There were still cops outside, and curious onlookers kept vigil with the TV crews and assorted other reporters. “The man you killed got off three or four shots for your one, and if the bones in the warehouse are tied in to him, then nobody is going to come chasing you in connection with his death, especially if the remains you found in the wall turn out to be those of Alice. They may decide to go after you for discharging a weapon, but when it comes to PIs, that’s a judgment call. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
I had retained a license to carry concealed in New York ever since I left the force, and it was probably the best $170 I spent every two years. The license was issued at the discretion of the commissioner, and in theory he could have denied my application for renewal, but nobody had ever raised an objection. I suppose it was a lot to ask for them to let me go around shooting the gun as well.
I thanked Frances and got out of the car.
“Tell Louis I’m sorry,” she said.
I called Rachel once I was back at my hotel. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything’s fine,” she said.
Her voice was flat.
“Is Sam all right?”
“She’s good. She slept through till seven. I’ve just fed her. I’ll put her down again for an hour or two now.”
The line went quiet for about five seconds.
“How are you doing?” she said.
“There was some trouble earlier,” I said. “A man died.”
Again, there was only silence.
“And I think we found Alice,” I said, “or something of her.”
“Tell me.”
She sounded suddenly weary.
“There were human remains in a tub. Bones, mostly. I found more behind a wall. Her locket was with them.”
“And the man who died? Was he responsible?”
“I don’t know for sure. It looks like it.”
I waited for the next question, knowing that it had to come.
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. I could hear Sam starting to cry. Rachel hushed her.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I’ll be back soon.”
“It’s over, right?” she said. “You know what happened to Alice, and the man who killed her is dead. What more can you do? Come home. Just — come home, okay?”
“I will. I love you, Rachel.”
“I know.” I thought I could hear something catch in her voice as she prepared to hang up the phone. “I know you do.”
I slept until past midday, when I was awoken by the ringing of the telephone. It was Walter Cole.
“Seems like you had a busy night,” he said.
“How much do you know?”
“A little. You can fill me in on the rest. There’s a Starbucks over by Daffy’s. I’ll see you there in thirty minutes.”
I made it in forty-five, and even then I was pushing it. On my way across town, I thought about what I had done, and about what Rachel had said when we spoke. In one sense, it was over. I felt certain that dental records and DNA tests, if necessary using Martha’s DNA for comparison, would confirm that the remains found in Garcia’s apartment were those of Alice. So Garcia was involved, and may even have been directly responsible for her death. But that didn’t explain why Alice had gone missing to begin with, or why Eddie Tager had paid her bond. Then there was the antique dealer Neddo and his talk of “Believers,” and the FBI agent Philip Bosworth, who appeared to be engaged in an investigation that mirrored, at least in some way, my own. Finally, I was aware of my own unease, and the sense that there was something else moving beneath the surface details of the case, weaving through the hidden, hollow caverns of the past.
My hair was still wet from a hasty shower when I sat down across from Walter at a corner table. He wasn’t alone. Dunne, the detec
tive from the coffee shop, was with him.
“Your partner know you’re seeing other people?” I asked him.
“We have an open relationship. As long as he doesn’t have to hear about it, he’s cool. He thinks you shot G-Mack, though.”
“So do the cops over at the Nine-Six. For what it’s worth, I didn’t pull the trigger on him.”
“Hey, it’s not like we really care so much. Mackey just doesn’t want it coming back to haunt him, someone hears we sicced you on him.”
“A couple of people pointed us in his direction. You can tell your partner he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
“‘Us?’” said Dunne.
Damn. I was tired.
“Walter and me.”
“Right. Sure.”
I didn’t want to get into this with Dunne. I didn’t even know why he was here.
“So,” I said, “what are we doing here: testing muffins?”
Dunne looked to Walter for an ally.
“He’s a hard guy to help,” he said.
“He’s very self-sufficient,” said Walter. “It’s a strongman pose. I think it hides a conflicted sexuality.”
“Walter, with all due respect, I’m not in the mood for this.”
Walter raised a placating hand. “Easy. Like Dunne said, we’re trying to help.”
“Sereta, the other girl — it looks like they’ve found her too,” said Dunne.
“Where?”
“Motel just outside of Yuma.”
“The Spyhole killings?” I had watched some of the news reports on TV.
“Yeah. They’ve identified her for certain as the girl found in the trunk of the car. They kind of figured that anyway, since the car was registered to her and a section of her license survived the fire, but they were waiting for confirmation. It looks like she was still alive, and conscious, when the flames got to her. She managed to kick in the backseat before she died.”
I tried to remember the details.
“Wasn’t there a second body in the car?”
“Male. He’s a John Doe. No ID, no wallet. They’re still trying to chase him down with what they have, but it’s not like they can put a picture of him on milk cartons. Maybe on BBQ charcoal come the summer, but not until then. He’d been shot in the shoulder and chest. Fatal bullet was still in him. It came from a thirty-eight, same gun as they found on the Mexican who died in one of the motel rooms. They were operating on the assumption that he might have been the target of a botched hit. Guy was tied up with some pretty bad people, and the Federales down in Mexico were real anxious to speak to him. Now, with this Alice thing up here, maybe there’s another angle.”