The Whites: A Novel Read online

  Her boyfriend’s plaid bathrobe matched the fabric of the couch so well that Billy didn’t even realize the guy was in the room until he reached for his beer.

  “Hey, how are you.” Billy couldn’t remember his name.

  Lying flat on his back, the boyfriend made no effort to sit up or even turn to face him. “Superb.”

  Stacey stood mutely between them, looking first at Billy, then her boyfriend, then back to Billy, her face still tense and expectant.

  It was the collection of amber prescription bottles on the coffee table that first caught his eye. Then the edge of the butterfly bandage on the ridge above the boyfriend’s averted brow. Then the face full-on, as lumpy as a thumbed hunk of clay, his skin the color of overripe bananas, the sclera of one eye hemorrhaged to a neon red.

  “Did you call the cops?” he asked Stacey.

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “They came.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “What happened,” he asked the boyfriend.

  “Some gentleman must have come into the vestibule right behind me last night and . . .” He shrugged.

  “What did he look like, this gentleman.”

  “He was behind me.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Race, hair, clothes . . .”

  “Nothing.” Then: “It’s my own fault.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The boyfriend turned his face away again.

  “Why do you say that?” Billy’s voice sharper now.

  Stacey touched Billy’s arm.

  “What time was this,” asking both of them.

  “About one in the morning,” the boyfriend answered.

  “And where were you coming from.”

  “The Jaunting Car.”

  “What’s that.”

  “The bar where he first met you,” she said.

  “Were you there too?”

  “I left about an hour and a half before he did,” sounding embarrassed about it. No, not embarrassed, he thought, more like defeated.

  “Did anybody in there talk to you? Either of you?”

  “People in there tend to talk to themselves,” the boyfriend said.

  “Anybody giving you a hard time?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s ‘not really’ mean?” Billy getting hot again.

  “A seventy-five-year-old cirrhotic called me an asshole.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Call me an asshole?”

  “I’m trying to help you here.”

  “I appreciate it,” the boyfriend said carefully.

  “All right, let me make a call,” Billy said, this time by way of an apology. Gesturing to the opened beer, he said, “You have an extra one of those?”

  As Stacey headed to the kitchen, Billy retreated to a corridor off the living room and worked to get a handle on his rage.

  He tried to picture it: this guy stays to drink after Stacey—and not for the first time—is unable to coax him out of the bar and so just gives up and leaves. He continues to drink alone for another ninety minutes, waiting for happy, or bright, or successful to kick in, before finally giving up and herky-jerking his way home. And at one in the morning, he couldn’t have been more of a staked lamb out there, a street-dumb, self-hating smart-ass reeking of death wish, probably not even caring, once he got his load on, whether he was heading home or straight off a cliff.

  Fuck the mugger: what detective worth his salt wouldn’t want to strangle a guy like that himself? Victims like Stacey’s boyfriend made you feel like a nameless bit player in some narcissistic melodrama performed before an audience of one.

  Made you feel demeaned.

  Billy paced the short corridor, hating on the victim while trying not to give a thought to the person who had battered his face into a bloody stew.

  It couldn’t be him.

  Coming back into the living room, he ignored Stacey’s offered beer and went right at the boyfriend.

  “The guy who beat you, what did he take?”

  “My dignity.”

  Billy threw him a look.

  “And my wallet,” he quickly added.

  Then not him—unless he took the wallet to throw Billy off. But that would defeat the purpose, would obscure the message, and the message was the point, unless, unless . . .

  “All right, let me make a call,” he repeated.

  Before leaving, Billy looked around the apartment one last time; then, thinking once again how Stacey’s life might have turned out if she’d been a little less reckless with him, he added, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” she asked brightly, but she knew.

  Heading to his car, Billy called home and got no answer, not even the answering machine. He called again and got the same, which made him break into a trot.

  What was he up to.

  Billy had been expecting him to keep moving in deeper on his family, but attacking Stacey’s boyfriend—if he had attacked Stacey’s boyfriend—seemed to be about going outward, maybe going so far outward that he and everyone else would be going crazy wondering if it was still him, and if that, in fact, who the fuck knew, was his game plan, then who would be next? Millie Singh? His sister? Maybe one of Billy’s friends, or one of his friends’ spouses or kids, then after that, maybe going in deep again, and the next time he came after Carmen or the kids or his father—Billy flashing on the boyfriend’s bashed-in face—the outcome would be a lot more catastrophic than a vandalized jacket or a free ride to Harlem.

  Was this guy a genius?

  Or had Stacey’s boyfriend just straight-up gotten mugged . . .

  Either way he had Billy by the balls.

  A third fruitless call home while driving north on the Henry Hudson had him pushing eighty-five.

  Stacey called as he was flying past the Roosevelt Raceway. “Hey, you walked out so fast you forgot to tell me about the job.”

  “Turns out it’s not happening for a while,” he said, wanting to keep her and hers out of the line of fire.

  Pulling onto his street in the early dark of the evening, Billy saw a figure sitting motionless on the front porch of his house. Knowing that no cop patrolling the grounds would just take a breather like that, he glided to a stop a few driveways down, got out of the car, and began to cautiously make the rest of his way on foot. But apparently his tread was heavier than he imagined; sensing Billy’s approach, the figure slowly rose and then eased into a shooter’s stance. Pulling his own weapon, Billy carefully stepped back into the shadowed shrubbery, the numbing notion abruptly rising in him that it was too late, he was too late, and that everyone inside was gone. In sudden free fall, Billy mindlessly recited the roll call of his dead as he sighted his Glock, center mass, center mass, and was about to squeeze one off when Carmen opened the door behind the shooter’s back.

  “Dad, come inside, you’re going to get sick out here.” Then: “What the hell are you doing? Give me that.”

  “There’s someone out there,” Billy Senior said tentatively, allowing his daughter-in-law to bring him back into the house.

  Two hours later, Jimmy Whelan, accompanied by a small, nervous, near-mute woman, most likely another of his vertical harem of tenants, entered the house without knocking.

  “Jimmy!” Carmen kissing him while shielding the shiner side of her face. “I’m sorry, this is a total waste of your time.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Whelan said. “This is Mercedes.”

  The woman eyed the dinner dishes as if all she wanted in life was to clear the table.

  “What’s the matter with you,” Billy nodding to the grip of the Walther sticking straight up from behind Whelan’s belt buckle. “You never heard of a holster?”

  “If you conceal it, then no one knows you’re carrying and it defeats its own purpose. Hey! Chief Graves . . .” Whelan saluting as Billy Senior came into the living room. �
�Remember me?”

  “You’re that kid from Billy’s street team.”

  “I am that kid.”

  “You make detective yet?”

  “You bet.”

  “Where are you posted?”

  “Fort Surrender,” winking to Billy.

  “I never liked that moniker, it’s too cynical for my taste.”

  “Well, sir, we live in cynical times.”

  “What’s a rook to think?” Senior said. “‘Congratulations, son, you’ve been assigned to Fort Surrender.’”

  “You got a point there, boss.”

  “Well, keep up the good work,” the old man said, turning to the TV.

  Billy nodded toward the porch, and Whelan followed him out.

  “The gun was his?” Whelan asked after getting the update.

  “It’s his old service piece, I had it spiked the day he moved in.”

  Whelan briefly stepped over to the window. Peering into the house, he tried to catch the eye of his sleepover date, sitting on the couch next to Billy Senior.

  “Not for nothing and thanks for coming, but did you really need to bring the girl?”

  “She’s never been out to the country.”

  “You’re being funny, right?”

  “About what?”

  “All we have for you is a bunk bed.”

  “We’ll make do. So what else is going on.”

  Billy thought about bringing up Sweetpea, bringing up Pavlicek, then let it pass.

  “All right, my brother,” Billy wrapping him in a brief hug. “Gotta go.”

  Halfway to his car he stopped and turned. “Hey, let me ask you, Tomassi . . . Are you sure he was hit by a bus?”

  “Am I sure?”

  Pulling out his wallet, Whelan gestured for Billy to come back to the porch. “The American Express card,” he intoned, handing over a crime scene photo of his White, chest-crushed and staring up at the stars from beneath the front wheels of a Pelham Bay–bound number 12 bus. “Don’t leave home without it.”

  “Well, the other tape came in,” Elvis Perez’s voice in his ear, the Midtown South detective catching Billy on his cell as he was paying for his nightly speed bag at the Korean’s. “From the LIRR end?”

  “And?” Billy saluting Joon on the way out.

  “And it doesn’t really help us.”

  “Why not.”

  “There’s too much of a mob under the track information board. It’s like watching worms in a bucket. We can’t even ID Bannion until he separates out from the crowd, and by then he’s already spurting.”

  “You can’t track him in reverse and blow up the frames?”

  “Worms in a bucket.”

  Back at the office, the headline was that Feeley had reverted to being a no-show. Otherwise it was a next-to-nothing tour: a push-in robbery in Sugar Hill, a cabbie in the Meatpacking District getting beat on by two men after he had refused to take them to Brownsville. Neither required his personal attendance, so after sitting there in his office for a few hours listening to the Wheel effortlessly repel three more requests for the squad, Billy put Mayo in charge and headed up to the Bronx.

  502 Concord Avenue was an eroding brick single-family Victorian chopped up into multiple SROs, and at three-fifteen in the morning there were no lights on in any of the six windows that overlooked the lifeless street. But 505, directly across the way, was a six-story walk-up, and Billy counted three lighted apartment windows on the second, third, and top floors, meaning three possible habitual night owls, three possible witnesses to the possible abduction of Sweetpea Harris.

  Billy woke up the tenants on the second floor, an ashy-skinned middle-aged man, dumb with sleep, coming to the door in his boxers as a woman in the back of the apartment screamed like hell about having to get up for work in a few hours. On the third floor, the door was answered after five minutes of pounding by a moon-faced African in a wrinkled caftan, kufi, and busted slippers, this guy having no English to him, but the TV in his otherwise furniture-less living room was playing so loud that Billy couldn’t imagine him hearing anything out on the street short of an explosion.

  The sixth floor was the charm, the tenant, Ramlear Castro, a young, heavily inked Latino, his eyes pink with dope, coming to the door in sweatpants and a hairnet. Billy flashed his ID and Castro gave him his back, retreating into the apartment but leaving the door open for Billy to follow him inside.

  “May I?” Castro held up a blunt.

  Billy shrugged and a moment later the punky tang coming across the wobbly-legged kitchen table thrust him back into high school.

  “Yeah, so yeah,” Castro began, “I was up that night you said, and I was sitting right here, I like to write poetry here, and I heard like this pop pop pop, which around here don’t mean firecrackers, and I thought it was Timpson GCG throwing down with Betances Crew again. But when I looked out the window all I saw was this guy getting out of his car and walking to the back like he was going to open the trunk, you know, but he was coming up on it sideways, you know, careful, then pop pop pop again, the driver like jumping to the side, but I didn’t see no one shooting at him, I just heard the shots. And then after those shots went off, the driver just shoots his own damned trunk like he was putting down a horse, emptied the whole clip or whatever.”

  “Wait, this is after you first heard the pop pop pop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the pop pop pop was someone else?”

  “Which pop pop pop.”

  “The first. The one that made you go to the window.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then the guy got out of his car and shot his trunk.”

  “No, then the second pop pop pop. I didn’t see no one shooting, but the driver like jumped to the side of the trunk when the shots went off, and then the third pop pop pop was the driver shooting back.”

  “Into his trunk.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like what, returning fire?”

  “Returning fire, yeah.”

  “So like somebody was shooting at him from inside the trunk?”

  “Could be,” offering the blunt across the oilcloth-topped table, Billy demurely passing. “Then he shot back.”

  “So the driver came out of the car with a gun.”

  “Didn’t I say that?”

  “It was already in his hand?”

  “I guess so.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Who, the driver?”

  Billy waited.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “First thing that comes to your mind.”

  Castro closed his eyes. “He had white hair.”

  “An old guy?”

  “No, he had white hair, you know, straight hair.”

  “So a white guy?”

  “Could have been.”

  “Not Latino.”

  “Could’ve been.”

  “Black?”

  “I don’t think so, but could’ve been.”

  “So you didn’t get a look at his face?”

  “Couldn’t see it, because it’s like a straight-down view from up here, that’s how I know about the hair.”

  “Clothes?”

  “Some kind of coat, I don’t know. Shoes.”

  “How about the gun.”

  “From the sound of it, I’d say a single-action .38 ’cause of the rhythm of the shots, you know, pop pop pop.”

  “You know your firearms?”

  Castro inhaled again, blew out enough smoke to announce a pope.

  “Not really.”

  “Tell me about the car.”

  “Had a trunk, that’s all I remember.”

  “So . . .” Billy hesitated, then: “No chance it could have been an SUV?”

  “Could have been.”

  “You know,” Billy leaned forward across the small table, “I asked you maybe ten questions, all I’m getting back from you is ‘could’ve been’s.”

  “Hey, Officer,” Castro leaning forward right back
at him, “I’m looking down six stories, three in the morning, high as a fuckin’ kite. I think I did pretty good here, wouldn’t you say?”

  MILTON RAMOS

  Marilys, watch!” Sofia shouted, blow-darting the torn wrapper hanging from her straw across the small table into her father’s chest.

  “Don’t call her Marilys anymore,” Milton said.

  “Why not?”

  Marilys caught his eye: Go slow.

  They had never gone out of the house as a threesome before, and this dinner at Applebee’s was something of a test drive. The waitress arrived with their dinner orders, Double Barrel Whisky Sirloin for him, Double Crunch Shrimp for the lady, and a Fiesta-Chopped Chicken and Spinach Salad for Sofia, who immediately went into a jaw-quivering sulk.

  “How would you like Marilys to come live with us?” he said.

  “Yah! Yah! Yah!” His daughter shouting up a storm again.

  “Easy, easy,” he winced, although the din level of the room approached that of a machine shop.

  “Can she sleep with me?”

  Milton looked at his fiancée, a half-smile threatening to break across his face.

  Scraping off the breading, Marilys put one of her deep-fried shrimps on Sofia’s plate. “So this is it, I’m not working for you anymore?” she said.

  “Of course not.”

  “But we’re not getting married until next month, you said.”

  “So?”

  “So I can work for you until then.”

  “Are you serious? I want you to go home and pack your stuff. I’ll come by tomorrow with a van and move you in.”

  “I have a lease.”

  “Don’t worry about your lease.”

  “So what do I do then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I do once I move in?”

  “Nothing. You know, just be with me, take care of Sofia and the house.”

  “Sounds like my job but without pay.”

  Milton blushed. “If you want I’ll get you a housekeeper, how’s that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “All I’m trying to say is, you’ll never have to worry about money again.”

  “I don’t want anybody working for me,” she said. “That’s crazy.”

  “It’s up to you.”