Hipster Death Rattle Page 11

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “Yes, you were,” she said. “I’d like to be there when you talk to him.”

  Tony gave her his scrunched-face incredulous look. “What the hell for?”

  “I have some questions for him myself.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m afraid you’ll be a little hostile.”

  “I don’t get hostile. I’m a Buddhist,” she said. “Mostly.”

  Tony shook his head. “Now who’s trying to be funny? I saw you punch a man so hard he threw up.”

  “I was sixteen, and he touched my ass. That’s not a fair example.”

  “Granted. I’ll let you know when I go. You ready?”

  Magaly pushed the door open and felt the humidity like a slap. And there went her hair again!

  Tony said he would walk her to her place, but she told him she had a bunch of stops to make first, people to visit. He said, “All right,” and left, and she walked home, knowing exactly what she was going to find. She felt it.

  And sure enough, there he was: Luis De Moscoso, pacing in front of her building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jesus Echeverria waited for his wife to come walking down the stairs of the elevated J line at a quarter to two in the morning. As usual, he waited at the corner of Marcy Avenue and Broadway, in the shadow of the elevated train, because he liked to smoke but he didn’t want to smoke in people’s faces as they went up and down the stairs.

  Every day, Jesus walked Carlotta home to the apartment they shared with her sister’s family. It could be bad at night, they both knew, and he wanted to make sure his wife was safe. He wasn’t worried about the slashing attacks he had read about in El Diario. Where he stood, livery cabs whizzed by all the time and buses were always going back and forth. Both sides of the block underneath the train were lined with ninety-nine-cent stores, clothing shops, a cuchifrito restaurant, a pizzeria, and a Chinese restaurant where the waiters spoke Spanish good.

  Jesus and Carlotta had recently emigrated from Guatemala, and Echeverria was still looking for steady work, instead of the piecemeal construction work he got from time to time. He spent most of his days and nights walking around the neighborhood, waiting for the time to go pick up his wife.

  During the day, she worked as a housekeeper in Manhattan, and at night she worked as a janitor, making eight dollars an hour. She usually came down the stairs at 1:30 a.m. She was late. He didn’t like that she wasn’t on time. Lately, she was laughing a little too much, and he had been getting suspicious that she had a boyfriend at her job.

  He waited at the bottom of the steps, looking up. He kept seeing the image of his wife with another man, probably that guy Marco she kept talking about. Marco this, Marco that. With every passing minute, Jesus got angrier. He felt like going back to his wife’s sister’s house and telling them what he thought of Carlotta. He walked to the corner and lit up a cigarette.

  He walked down Marcy Avenue and puffed heavily. Halfway down the block, he noticed someone riding a bicycle, way down on the other side of the elevated BQE. Delivery guy, he thought. They get paid shit.

  Echeverria turned from the wind, away from the bicyclist, to touch up his mullet with his left hand. He was mad now. He was going to yell at Carlotta like never before. This stupid country. You couldn’t trust any of the men. He didn’t notice when the bicyclist hopped onto the sidewalk and rode slowly, his wheels ticking, coming up just behind him.

  Echeverria’s hands were still up near his ears, gently tapping the spiky upper ridges of his hair, when the machete cut almost all the way through his left wrist.

  Another cut bit into Echeverria’s thigh, sending the rings of keys that hung out of his pocket flying.

  A third slash, backhanded from the bicyclist, cut open Echeverria’s face from chin to nose.

  Jesus Echeverria collapsed onto the street, halfway in the gutter. He was trying to hold onto his face with the one good hand he had left.

  The attack had taken less than ten seconds.

  Twenty minutes later, Carlotta exited the subway station. She waited at the bottom of the stairs for fifteen minutes, checking and rechecking her phone. Police cars and people were gathering at the corner behind her, so she went to take a look at what was going on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “What is it you want?” The voice on the other end of the phone sounded busy and a little obnoxious—and more than a little familiar—to Tony. “I’m very busy.”

  “Look, Mr. Litvinchouk,” said Tony. He was at his desk at the office, where he’d just finished a write-up on the closing of Gloria’s Spanish Food. He had been spending far too much time at his desk lately, as far as he was concerned, and away from the pétanque court. But he’d done four revisions that morning for Bobbert, so at least more money was coming his way. “I’m calling from the Williamsburg Sentinel. I’d like to discuss the disappearance of your former tenant Rosa Irizarry.”

  “Aha. I see. No need to get testy, sir.”

  Tony took the phone away from his face and smirked at it.

  “To be frank,” Litvinchouk continued, “I am not sure I’d have anything new or interesting to say that has not already been reported.”

  “That’s fine,” Tony said. “You don’t have to be interesting, and it won’t take long. I can record you over the phone if you prefer.”

  “Why don’t you come over now then?”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now, yes. What? Why not? It’s Thursday night. I don’t like anything on TV on Thursday night. I insist.”

  Tony looked at the phone again. Then he said he would be there and tapped off. Then he remembered his promise to call Magaly. Maybe she’d be busy with her crazy life. But she surprised him. She said she would meet him there.

  “Don’t be late,” Tony said, but she’d already hung up.

  The night had cooled off from the day, and so the long walk to the Litvinchouk’s house was humane. The landlord lived in the Hasidic section of Williamsburg, an area that seemed to exist separate from the rest of the neighborhood. Little trash. Little noise. The Hasidic men walked about in long black coats, hats as big as sombreros, and sideburns that ended in Shirley Temple curls. The Hasidic women went about wearing wigs, plain dresses, and a fear of strangers. The area lay around an open-cut section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, brownstones, projects, and new low-income housing, many with enclosed attachments on the balconies. No Puerto Ricans, no Italians, no Irish, no hipsters. In his shorts, sneakers, and T-shirt, Tony felt out of place.

  He looked ahead and saw someone else who was out of place. If he didn’t recognize the sway of her hips, or the giant purse she carried, the hair was a giveaway.

  “Ms. Fernandez,” he said, catching up to her.

  “Mr. Moran.”

  They rang the bell at Litvinchouk’s building, a brownstone that matched all the others on either side of it and across the street.

  A woman opened the door. She wore a scarf over a dark brown wig. Tony extended his hand for her to shake, but she ignored it. Instead, she turned and told them to follow her.

  In not-quite-a-whisper, Magaly said, “The women can’t shake a man’s hands. Don’t you know that?”

  “I did know that. Damn, I forgot.”

  The apartment was in back, beyond the staircase. Old wallpaper peeled off the walls in the hallway. Tony smelled food, something very oniony.

  Several children ran in and out of the doorway. The boys wore vests and sported brown curls on either side of their faces. The girls wore neat dresses that to Tony looked like Girl Scout uniforms.

  As soon as they walked into the apartment, into the kitchen, Tony recognized the man sitting at the kitchen table. “Mr. Litvinchouk, from Brooklyn College!”

  “Mr. Moran,” said that man at the table. “I thought the name was familiar. Mea culpa. I didn’t know it was you on the phone.”

  Magaly seemed shocked. “You two know each other?”


  “This is my old Latin professor.”

  Litvinchouk rose to shake Tony’s hand. He said, “Sumpsi te in studiis latinis mansurum.”

  Tony hesitated for moment, then answered, “Volui scilicet pecuniam lucrari.”

  “Ergo diurnarius factus es!”

  “IIuvenis atque stultus eram.”

  “English, please,” Magaly said.

  “Sorry,” Tony said. “Now you know how I felt back at Iris’s place.”

  Litvinchouk was a short man with a thick brown mustache that grew wildly under and, it seemed, from within his nose. He wore a yarmulke atop a head of steel-gray hair, a yellowed white shirt, and black pants with frayed edges. To Tony’s eyes, the man hadn’t changed an atom since he’d last seen him senior year. A boy in curls sat next to him, and a schoolbook and paper were open in front of them.

  “You have lots of grandkids,” said Tony.

  “Hah. You’d think so,” Litvinchouk said. “But these are my own children. Eight are here. Those are the ones at home. I have two more in college and two who are professionals. I have six grandchildren, but they’re with their parents.”

  Magaly said, “Your wife must get exhausted.”

  “My wife—she’s an eternal source of sunshine. She’s unstoppable. I couldn’t live without her. But you wanted to ask me about Rosa, correct?”

  Tony put down his recorder and turned it on. “Yes, well, there were some allegations—”

  “Did I ever tell you I grew up in Los Sures?” said Litvinchouk. “I’ve lived in this area all my life.”

  “I remember your saying that,” Tony said. “So have I.”

  “Hah! Where?”

  “South 3rd and Bedford. So did Ms. Fernandez.”

  “I was on Havemeyer Street,” Litvinchouk said. “We could have been neighbors. My mother was Puerto Rican. Can you believe that? It happens.”

  “That must’ve been some courtship,” Magaly said.

  Litvinchouk nodded. “Let me tell you something—when I grew up, this neighborhood was rotten. Rotten. Gangs, bums, tough guys. And I got it from all sides. The Puerto Ricans hated me. The Jews hated me. There was crime, there was filth.”

  “And what do you think of it now?” said Tony.

  “There’s still crime. There’s still filth. That’s the way the world is, my friends.”

  “So what happened—”

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told the police. She was a good tenant, very nice lady, for the most part. If you got on her bad side, forget about it. One time she threw a broom at me when I was walking down the stairs.”

  “Why did she throw a broom at you?” Tony said.

  “It’s been so long I don’t remember. But that’s neither here nor there. I knew her for many years. But while I co-own that property and continue to receive income from it, I no longer manage it.”

  “Tomasello Management does that for you,” Magaly said.

  “You got it, young lady. They’ve handled the building for more than ten years. All the trouble that Rosa reported, that was from them.”

  She went on (and Tony heard a sharpening knife in her voice): “So you had nothing to do with harassing her, trying to get her out of the apartment?”

  “If I knew they were doing anything illegal, I would have severed my relationship with them.”

  “Did you ever check up on them to find out?” she said.

  “Check up?” Litvinchouk said, raising his voice a little. “Why would I sign a contract with someone I needed to check up on. Understand: Tomasello has been doing business with me for years and years. I felt no need to check up on him.”

  Magaly jumped in. “Rosa reported harassment for years. And then there was the fire. You didn’t think you should check up at that point?”

  Litvinchouk smirked and looked at Tony. “She’s a live one, this one.”

  “And a half,” Tony said. “But she’s right—what did you do after the reports of harassment?”

  “That I checked. Of course. And I saw nothing amiss. A few roaches, a mouse or two. Nothing out of the ordinary in this city. The fire was a simple accident that anyone of Rosa’s age could make.”

  “How did it start?”

  “Something she left on the stove caught fire. A loaf of bread or something. Rosa—”

  Again, Magaly jumped in. “She hadn’t even been in that room. She just came back from visiting a friend and only went into the kitchen when she smelled the smoke.”

  “Old people forget. Look at me—I forget things all the time. This morning I forgot where I put my watch and I still can’t find it.”

  “That fire was deliberately caused by someone else,” Magaly said.

  Litvinchouk shook his head. “A New York City Fire Department inspector found nothing.”

  “Fire inspectors are bribed all the time!” she said.

  “Magaly.” Tony put a hand on her knee. She pulled it away. “Mr. Litvinchouk, I have to ask straight out: Did you have anything to do with Rosa Irizarry’s disappearance?”

  “Absolutely not,” Litvinchouk said.

  “You would admit though that with her gone, you would be free to rent her rent-controlled apartment at a market rate, which is considerably more than what she was paying?”

  “I wouldn’t try to lie to you. Yes, I would make more money, but I loved Rosa as a tenant. You can’t beat a good, clean, responsible tenant. They’re worth more than gold.”

  Magaly harrumphed dramatically.

  “Can I ask you then if Tomasello Management Corp would have any reason of their own to harass her?”

  Litvinchouk smiled and looked at an invisible spot on the table. He rubbed it back and forth. Then he looked up. “Listen. I think I answered all the questions you need. We’re done, I think. After all, you were a great student, but let’s face it, you’re not the Wall Street Journal.”

  “Ouch,” Tony said.

  When he went to shut off his recorder, Litvinchouk put his hand on his. “One thing, my friend. I’ll tell you one more thing. Off the record. Because she was a nice lady, good people, buena gente, I didn’t tell the cops this.”

  “What?”

  “A few weeks before, she had hit the number—not the legal type, you understand, the local Spanish lottery. She won a lot of money. At least ten thousand dollars.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I loaned her some money, years ago. All of a sudden she paid it all off about two weeks before she disappeared. She was so happy, she let it out how she got it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell this to the police?”

  “Well, two things. One, maybe when they found her she’d get in trouble for gambling. Two, I don’t want them taking me for a Shylock.”

  “Thanks. Thank you.”

  “Remember: Off the record!”

  “Vale, Mr. Moran! One more thing. Velim in auribus tuis loqui.”

  “Quando?”

  “Te vocabo. Volo tibi soli loqui.”

  “Okay. Vale.”

  Outside, Tony walked fast to keep up with Magaly, who was walking stiffly and quickly back toward the Southside.

  “So, what did you think?” he said.

  “Oh, your Latin professor knows more than he’s saying. And what was all that at the end?”

  “He wants to meet me. Alone.”

  Magaly threw her hands up. “That sexist son of a—”

  “You said he knows more than he’s saying. Obviously, there are things he doesn’t want to say in front of you. Maybe it’s because of your gender. Maybe it’s because you came in ready to arrest him. And you work for a local advocacy group, so he probably sees you as an unfriendly adversary.”

  “I wanted to hit him,” she said.

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “You know, even if Tomasello had some reason to harass Rosa, I think this guy would still be liable. I’ll have to check.”

  “Okay,” Tony said. “Let me know. Even though, I have enough for a story now.”


  “Enough? But this is just the start. Don’t you want to know the whole deal? Don’t you want to find her?”

  “Hey, what is this? I’m going to find out what I can, but my job is not to find her but to bring more attention to Rosa’s story, so the cops can do their job.”

  “I can’t believe you. The cops are not going to bother. Some little old Puerto Rican lady in Williamsburg. They’re more concerned with keeping the white yuppies safe.”

  “Is that really fair to say? Now who’s being cynical?”

  “Tony, you’ve been out of it for too long. You play with your bocce—”

  “Pétanque.”

  “—whatever. You slack around. You don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I know what’s going on. I just don’t—”

  “You don’t care, yes. I get it. Like you said, you’ve always been that way. What can I say? I guess you really haven’t changed at all. Listen, I have to be someplace. Good night, Chino. Get home safe.”

  “Let me walk you home.”

  “Please,” she said, storming away, her hair bouncing. “I’ve got pepper spray.”

  “Pepper spray expires,” Tony said. “And if the wind catches—”

  “No worries. If someone tries to attack me right now, I’ll just kick their ass.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Magaly liked to tell herself that although she was only one floor away from her parents’ apartment, she had at least moved out of the tiny bedroom she had grown up in and now lived independently, except for those two, three, four, five times a week she felt too tired to cook and went over for dinner. Her Titi Cecelia had had an apartment upstairs on the fifth floor, a cozy 2BR, heat and hot water included, and, if you leaned your entire torso out the window, a pleasing view of the Williamsburg Bridge. Titi Cecelia knew she and her kids would be moving to Florida, so years before she left she put Magaly’s name on the lease, and once she flew south, Magaly inherited the apartment. So now she had a place of her own, a place a whole family used to occupy that was now hers to fill with books and plants and the odd sock or underwear on the floor. She felt slightly guilty to have so much space, but she told herself she needed it, more figuratively than literally, but still.