Hipster Death Rattle Read online

  Petrosino wiped the cooling sweat off the back of his neck. “Are they home, do you know?”

  “Nah, nah,” said the doorman. He was in street clothes, having just gotten off duty when they came in. “They work regular jobs. But hold up, let me check.”

  Flores yelled across the wide vestibule to the doorman currently at the desk. “Hubert. You seen Mr. Steven and Ms. Erin leaving this morning?”

  “The guy did,” said the other doorman. “She did too, but not to work.”

  Hadid stepped toward him. “How do you know that?”

  “She left here just a little while ago, but with her dog. You know, Mr. Pee Pee.”

  “Deeogee,” Flores said. “That’s the name of their dog. We call him ‘Mr. Pee Pee’ ’cause—”

  Petrosino held up his hand. “I can guess why. Does she have a regular place she walks the dog? Maybe along the waterfront park?”

  Flores and the other doorman said they had no idea.

  “How long does she usually take to walk the dog?”

  “Hours sometimes,” Flores said.

  “All right. We’re going to do a circuit around the area,” Petrosino said to Hadid. “See if we can’t find her in the crowds.”

  “Too bad we can’t stay in here a few more minutes, huh?” Hadid said. He had his arms out, letting the cool air run over him.

  “I’d love to, but we’re not going to.”

  At that moment, Petrosino’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. “Dammit.”

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” Petrosino said.

  “We just got a lead on our ganglord Cortés’s location,” Tuchman said over the phone. “We’re having a meeting in a half hour to work out our game plan. I’d appreciate your presence.”

  “Right-o. It’s nice to be appreciated.”

  Petrosino moved to hand signal to Hadid to get names and details from the doormen. But he saw his partner was doing that already. They’d have to let talking to this Erin lady wait till later.

  “Yeah,” he said, turning his attention to Tuchman. “We’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Because of a particularly convoluted resume he had to edit, Tony couldn’t get to McCarren Park for pétanque until later in the afternoon. But he got to play two games and sweat three gallons under the fierce sun. It was hot enough to fry a chicken on the sidewalk, so he was tired and smelly and, since he had just paid rent, he rejected an invite for beers and decided to go home to shower and enjoy the best ninety-nine-cent ramen money could buy.

  He had just walked out of McCarren Park when a station wagon with fake wood paneling pulled up alongside him on Union Avenue. He would’ve kept walking, but suddenly he heard Latin.

  “Salve, Mr. Moran.”

  Tony leaned down to the open passenger side window. “Salve, Mr. Litvinchouk. How did you find me?”

  “It’s a lovely day. It’s a park. Homines transiliunt ubi saepes inferior est.”

  “Okay. So why did you find me?”

  “There’s nothing good on TV again, so I figured I’d get back to you.”

  “Get back to me?” Tony said. “I thought we were done.”

  “Yes, it seems I neglected to add that we had a super in the building at the time of Rosa’s disappearance. A man named Jorge Marte. He had the keys, and he certainly was capable of doing what you were saying.”

  “And?”

  “Come, take a seat. Take a load off.”

  Tony opened the door and sat down. The seat was warm. The car was warm. Papers littered the top of the dashboard. There was a bag of water bottles in the well of the passenger side, and in the doorway armrest was a peppermint candy and a large and gaudy bangle, decorated with a fire-breathing dragon.

  “I’ll drive around,” Litvinchouk said, “to get a breeze going.”

  Litvinchouk moved the car up Driggs Avenue, but the car wasn’t getting any cooler. Tony was conscious of the stink of his own sweat. And he smelled something else in the car—something he couldn’t place.

  Litvinchouk said, “I told you I wanted to talk with you privately, but you never called.”

  “Had a few things I wanted to look into first.”

  “I’m sure. By the way, who was that vivacious young lady you were with? A girlfriend?”

  “An ex,” Tony said.

  “An ex, huh? Did you love her or were you in love with her?”

  “Is there a difference?

  “Amor gignit amorem. Of course. I’ll tell you the difference. When you love somebody, all the little bullshit small talk she makes, how her day went, her new shoes, her new haircut, all that sounds like a knife in your ear. But when you’re in love, it’s music.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  They were stuck at an intersection. The light was green, but there were too many people crossing the street for the station wagon to move.

  “Look at this. So many people,” said Litvinchouk. “It’s as thick as Manhattan with the people. And with the traffic.”

  “Well, I wonder how it got this way.”

  “Is that intended to be a jab at me for my dabbling in real estate?” Litvinchouk smiled broadly. “You can’t stop change, Mr. Moran. One group replaces another group, and then that group is replaced and so on and so forth. ’Twas ever thus back to the Neanderthals. Why blame me for making a living on the way of things? Do you have any idea how much money they pay professors? That’s why I got into real estate.”

  Tony kept his eyes on the crowd. “So, you were saying about Jorge Marte?”

  Litvinchouk laughed and eased the car across the intersection.

  “Listen,” he said, “before I get to that, I wanted to say that I personally, as well as the entire very small Latin Department at Brooklyn College, was very disappointed that you did not major in Latin.”

  “That was fourteen, fifteen years ago.”

  “Yes. I understand this journalism you do is nice, I guess. I can understand the desire to right wrongs and change the world. I was young once, too. As my mother used to say, ‘De poetas, tontos y locos, todos tenemos un poco.’ But, let me put it this way—you have a very small apartment on South 3rd, yes?”

  “Now, how did you know about that?”

  “Building owners talk. Yours was a one-bedroom basement apartment that got chopped in half, did you know that?”

  “That explains the plastic standing shower.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to live in a bigger place, say a two-bedroom, full bath, laundry in the building, and maybe pay even cheaper rent? A place for a man, a place for a grown-up. And your mother, I understand she is having to leave her apartment that she’s been in very many years, am I correct?”

  Tony gave Litvinchouk a long look. “You know you are.”

  “It would be marvelous if she had a place, maybe in one of the new senior citizen housing facilities, where they have nurses come visit every day. That would be marvelous, wouldn’t it?”

  “Mr. Litvinchouk, I hate to say this, but it sure does sound like you’re working yourself up to a bribe.”

  “A bribe!” Litvinchouk honked at the car in front of him. “Ha! A bribe is saying I could give it to you. No, I was just conjecturing. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ That said, I could probably help you find places for you and your mother very, very easily.”

  Litvinchouk took a right on Metropolitan Avenue and drove toward the waterfront. But just before they got there, he took a left onto Wythe Avenue.

  Sweat poured down Tony’s back against the warm seat. “So, tell me, why are you doing all this ‘conjecturing?’”

  Litvinchouk stopped the car at the intersection, although there was no signal and no one crossing. “I’ll be honest with you. You were a mediocre Latin student. I remember most that you were lazy, you didn’t want to do the work. But you did seem to enjoy the language. That year the dean told us we had to have a certain amount of declared majors or we’d have to share our office. We came up one short
. We’ve been sharing with Mandarin and Russian for fifteen years now. I needed you then. I need you now. Don’t be a putz. Leave this business with Rosa Irizarry. You know she’s gone. You’re not going to find her.”

  “I know that. That’s not what this is about. I hate to sound corny—” Tony couldn’t believe he was going to say what he was about to say “—but there’s an element of justice i—”

  “Listen to yourself. Justice? Are you still so righteous so long after college? A knight in shining armor?” Litvinchouk started the car again, taking another turn. “Let me tell you what life is about, my friend, because it’s clear that no one else has. Life…life is eating well, having good things, and enjoying the good things you have. We’re all rats. The point is to die the happiest, fattest rat of all. Justice is nothing. All our labors are for nothing, Mr. Moran, not in the end. Surely, you’re old enough to know this by now.”

  Tony said nothing. He stared out ahead at the heat rising off the station wagon’s hood.

  “I can tell you haven’t had many golden opportunities in your life,” Litvinchouk said. “Here is one. I’m giving it to you.”

  They were passing under the Williamsburg Bridge, an erector-set-looking bridge Tony had seen every day of his life. He and his brother used to play stickball in its shadow. He hadn’t really gotten very far in the world, had he?

  “I just…” Tony said. “I just need to know if there’s anything else you can tell me about Jorge Marte.”

  It was a good thing he didn’t care about getting very far in the world.

  Litvinchouk sighed and made a turn and then another. Then he raised his voice. “He was a drunk. He was capable of anything when he was drunk.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Dead in an alley, probably. Believe me, I wish I knew.”

  Tony looked out the door and realized they were in front of his apartment.

  Litvinchouk waved his fingers and said. “Vale, Mr. Moran. Think about my conjecture.”

  “Va…thanks for the ride.”

  Tony opened the door to his apartment. It stank in there. Socks mostly. Maybe the garbage. Books, TV, three pairs of sneakers, more books. A tiny stove. A miniature fridge, mostly empty. A narrow closet he stopped using because of a leak from upstairs. He hadn’t ever taken the time to realize how absolutely shitty his apartment was. How absolutely shitty his life was. He could do nothing to help his mother. He had succeeded at nothing, had not garnered praise nor millions. He had done nothing with his life.

  Tony opened a bottle of beer and turned on the shower and sat down on the plastic shower floor under the spray to drink it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Erin’s boss had told her, “What are you doing here? Go home! Take a day.”

  And so Erin Cole had done just that. She was nearing her time to pop, to bring a new life into the world, and she had been feeling totally super crazy the last few days, and it must have totally showed. Stevie Weavie, her little Turkey Cutlet Lips, her Husband of the Century, had texted that it was a great idea for her to relax and go home during the day, and that she should just stay inside and catch up on their Netflix queue. So she went home to the Verge and was about to inhale a family-sized bag of sweet and salty popcorn.

  But then Deeogee, dear Deeogee, whined to be outside, and for the life of her she could not deny that dog! Plus, she had had enough of central air conditioning and needed to feel warmth on her skin, even heat-wave warmth.

  Plus-plus, she had something special planned for Stevie Wonderman. She would go to the supermarket and get him a nice filet mignon and cook it up for him just right tonight. She had always been a major carnivore, but the idea of a steak had been making her nauseous for months. But all of a sudden she was in the mood for red meat again: thick, rare, juicy with blood. Steveroonie had been such a worryhound the last few weeks, she wanted to do something nice for him.

  He had come home the other night, covered in sweat and smelling like beer, and he kept apologizing—“I’m so sorry I forgot the cupcake! I’m so sorry!”—but she barely even remembered asking him to get one, and she had brushed her teeth already, so what did it matter.

  And he had been so weird about seeing that attack—what was it, a month ago now already?—they had almost come close to having an argument. But it was past them now, and she just wanted to make him smile.

  She didn’t cook much—she liked to say the best thing she made was reservations. But she knew her way around the basics. She’d also get him some wine from that nice wine store on Bedford Avenue. So she packed her purse, with her gift-from-Daddy Taurus PT-111 sidearm tucked neatly at the bottom, leashed the dog, and left the apartment, armed and doglicious.

  When she got there, she saw there was a long line in the wine store, and she just wasn’t in the mood to wait.

  So, she kept walking on Bedford, knowing there had to be another liquor store, what with all the alkies in the neighborhood.

  She was approaching Metropolitan Avenue when she realized something. The bicycles. Steven had said something, but she was fading in and out of sleep at that point. All the bicycles had scared him. What a silly idea, she had thought. Everyone rides a bicycle around here, so why bother worrying?

  And if it was that man, the one with the machete, well, she was prepared. Daddy had prepared her.

  She realized that if he had seen them, she’d be the one he’d recognize. The pregnant blonde! Steven was cute, sure, but he wasn’t distinctive in any way. He didn’t have anything to worry about. She did.

  But she was prepared all right.

  But anyway, it was daytime. Nothing like that ever happened in the daytime. In this neighborhood! With this many people!

  Still, all the bicycles, it did make her wonder. That man could be any one of them. Look at that guy with the messenger bag. Oh, but he was black. Although she wasn’t sure if the man she had seen had been black or white, was she? Look at that guy with—what was that, a tuba?—on his back—oh god, call a taxi if you have to haul that thing around, that’s just not safe for the rest of us. Look at that asshole over there looking like Where’s Wal—

  The slash came across her face.

  Erin was shocked, didn’t believe it. It was daytime! The biker had come out of nowhere, stopped right in front of her. He had on a ski mask. A ski mask?

  She heard herself screaming. Why was no one helping? Why was no one stopping this? She heard Deeogee barking, but all his barks were just little yips and they never scared anybody ever ever.

  The man held his arm high. Not the belly, she thought. Not my baby, no no no.

  Then she thought about the Taurus PT-111 in her purse. The gun that was fully loaded. “Not heavy or gritty and easy to conceal.” The gun that was, despite advertising, a weight in her purse. The purse that was there on the sidewalk, two thousand miles away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Mr. Pak? Mr. Pak, I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

  Detective Petrosino stood over the man who sat on the floor in a hallway in Woodhull Hospital. An officer had brought in the ugly dog, and Steve Pak had grabbed it from the officer and was now hugging it tight to his chest.

  Pak picked up his head. “Have you found him?” he said. “Did you catch him?”

  “Mr. Pak, we, unfortunately, the perpetrator fled the scene…”

  “So, no, then. But how did he get away?”

  “After the, uh…he was up on his bike and away before anyone knew what was really happening. Some people thought they were filming a movie.”

  “Erin…” Pak buried his face in the dog’s fur.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Hadid, who had just walked over to stand next to his partner. “But your son is alive and well, and he’s waiting to see you.”

  The dog squirmed, but Pak said nothing.

  Petrosino leaned against the wall and slid down on to the floor next to him. It was going to cost his back tomorrow.

  “Mr. Pak,” he said, “listen, I know
this feels like…like the end of the world. But it’s not. I know it’s going to sound like…I can’t think of any other word but ‘bullshit,’ sorry, but that’s what I’m going to say will probably sound like to you, but, really, you’ll get past this because you have to…. Listen, you may not think I understand, but years ago my own wife was killed. By a very bad man. I loved that woman very, very much, more than life itself. And I didn’t want to go on. But I did. And so will you.”

  “What happened to the bad man?”

  Petrosino said, “Oh. He’s getting punished. He’s in jail for life.”

  Pak looked into Petrosino’s eyes for the first time. “You should have killed him. That’s what you have to do to the man who did this to my wife. You have to catch him, and you have to kill him.”

  Petrosino muttered, “Right-o,” and didn’t know what to say next. Hadid must have caught on and so he said, “Mr. Pak, rest assured we are doing all we can to make sure justice is done. And it’d be a good idea to talk to one of our counselors.”

  Petrosino nodded at his partner. “Mr. Pak,” he said. “I hate to do this now, but it’s important. We think your wife may have been attacked because of what you both saw, when a young man named Patrick Stoller was killed. I need you to recall as much as you can of that night.”

  “I barely saw his face.”

  “White guy? Black guy? Latino?”

  “White guy.”

  “Anything else? Facial hair? Tattoos?”

  “He looked white.”

  “Okay.”

  “He was wearing a hoodie. He took it off. But it was dark.”

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  Pak looked up. His face was crushed with pain. “He had an expensive bike, a suspension bike. It looked like a Sommet, very expensive. Black and silver.”

  Petrosino and Hadid looked at each other.

  “I know bikes,” Pak continued. “I did a triathlon before we got—before Erin and I were married.”

  “That’s good. That’s very helpful.”

  “It had a suspension fork and a dual suspension frame.”