Sunrise Highway Page 5

  “I guess that answers what I was trying to ask before.”

  “Which was?”

  “Did you put in your diaphragm, when you went in the bathroom?”

  “Mind your goddamn business.” She started eating with her fingers, not needing to be anybody’s example of shining motherly grace right now.

  “That’s not my business?”

  “How did we get off on this anyway?” she asked, kicking her bare legs like a bored twelve-year-old in a classroom. “We were talking about my case.”

  “Right.”

  She could tell without even looking at him that he had that hangdog expression he got when he was disappointed by her.

  “You want to talk about one of your cases?” She went back to gnawing on her chicken leg. “That’s fine. How’s health care fraud?”

  “It’s the same. More X-rays ordered that nobody needs and more pills prescribed than anyone needs to take. Everybody’s ripping everybody else off, and no one’s going to prison. But we’re prosecutors so we prosecute.”

  She turned back to the plate and squirmed some more, thinking she should have at least taken out the diaphragm before she started eating.

  “Anyway, I don’t feel like talking about my work,” he said.

  “Fine.”

  She hoped this wasn’t about to turn into one of those conversations. Sometimes he was more like the girl in the relationship, the way he always wanted to talk about family and where this was going. It was one of the things she liked about him sometimes, and one of the things she couldn’t stand at others. He was thirty-six years old and still had dinner with his folks at the same pasta place on 86th Street every Sunday night. Hung out with his two sisters and his brother voluntarily. Went to freaking struffoli parties at their houses in New Jersey and Westchester, where they made wine and pastries and played with his rug rat nephews. And never talked about work.

  Everyone was so nice to her, which made it even worse when she didn’t know what to say around them. And that, in turn, made her resentful because it meant she had to try to change her behavior and be just as nice when she didn’t really feel like it. In her family, people had their own orbits. Which was why her father was in prison for life. Her mother was at the assisted-living facility, senile at sixty. And her baby sister, who’d idolized her so much that she’d lost seventy pounds so she could look more like Lourdes, had gone off her meds and disappeared to God knows where. And that was the gene pool Mitchell wanted her to dive into.

  Part of her thought it would be nice—to be like the couples with kids on TV. But another part of her said, “Fuck that, daddy.” Her life was where she wanted it right now. She was a good detective, who helped other families. Then she got to go home and fuck her boyfriend on the couch and eat chicken with her bare hands.

  “So what’s the next step?” Mitchell exhaled, resigned for now.

  “The bosses from our department are talking to the bosses from Nassau about forming some kinda half-assed serial killer task force so they can step on our lawn and supposedly we can step on theirs. B.B. says I shouldn’t beef, since I already got IAB looking at me. But I don’t trust those white-bread suburban motherfuckers.”

  “And what does the ME say about eliminating the possibility this Rockaway woman could be your sister?”

  She finished stripping the meat off the bone and dropped it on the edge of her plate. Then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She waited for him to criticize her manners, then bowed her head in silent gratitude. My man gets me sometimes.

  “Nothing definitive for at least a couple of weeks.” A little appalled at herself, she reached for a paper towel. “I told you I let them swab me, right?”

  She dabbed her lips, worrying he’d realize it was Rakesh who did the swabbing and get jealous. He’d been a little suspicious when she mentioned her visit to the ME’s office the other day. Instead, he came over and stood close behind her. She could feel his warm breath drying the curls on the back of her neck and found herself yearning for his hands on her breasts.

  “I’m sorry, Lourdes. I know how hard this is for you.”

  “It’s all right.” She used a different paper towel to wipe defiantly at a wet spot forming in the corner of her eye, damned if she’d use the same one with the chicken grease. “I’m not crying or anything.”

  “Of course not.” He kissed her behind the ear. “You’re holding up better than I would have. But whenever you want to talk about it, I’m down.”

  “Nah, I’m over talking. What do we got in our queue for streaming?”

  “We’re caught up on Master of None and Longmire. Any interest in that Handmaid’s Tale?”

  “Yeah, fuck that dystopian baby mama shit. I’m not about it. I think I’d rather have sex again.” She looked over her shoulder and undid the top two buttons of her shirt. “Can you handle that?”

  He held up his hands as she turned around. “Could we at least take the cuffs off this time?”

  6

  JUNE

  1977

  At close range, Kenny was struck, again, by the difference between the boy’s puffy features and the hungry roaming intelligence under his hooded lids. It was as if there was an older, more sharply observant man hidden inside the younger, more somnolent one. The eyes danced over the top of the menu, quick and alert, scanning the prices, monitoring Kenny’s expression and reading the face of each person who came and went.

  “Can I get a drink?” Joey Tolliver asked in a low deadpan, keeping the menu up like a barrier so he could continue to watch without being seen.

  “No.”

  “Why not? I’m about to turn eighteen. I got my driver’s license and everything.”

  “Look where we are.”

  They were having a victory lunch at a steak house called the Brazen Fox, just around the corner from the county courthouse. White tablecloths, brass rails, Budweiser and Schaefer at the taps, Jimmy Carter grinning on the TV in the corner. It was one of the prime gathering spots for the men who held the real power in this part of Long Island. The county executive often held staff meetings at a booth in the back and had hosted the governor here. Council members and assemblymen hovered around the salad bar. William Rattigan and a half dozen other detectives from Homicide were carousing loudly at the bar. And the district attorney himself, Philip O’Mara, the great Irish tenor, was holding court at his banquette, accepting congratulations from minions about the sudden unexpected conclusion to one of the most horrendous and notorious murder cases in the county’s history.

  “Look around,” Kenny said. “These are people who can do you a lot of good in your life. Do you want to make the wrong impression, by being seen drinking at lunch?”

  The boy loosened his tie and brushed at hair that was no longer covering his ears. Normally he would have been at his high school graduation today. But circumstances being what they were, Joey had to appear before the grand jury today instead, previewing his testimony as the prosecution’s star witness in the Kim Bergdahl murder case. And, Kenny Makris had to admit, the boy had risen to the occasion splendidly, answering questions in a clear forthright voice, meeting the eye of each grand juror, telling the story of seeing Delaney Patterson in the woods in such vivid, believable detail that as soon as word had leaked to the defense about what he’d said, Patterson’s lawyer had immediately asked for a meeting in the judge’s chambers and had accepted the prosecution’s plea deal of a twenty-five-year-max sentence in lieu of rolling the dice and facing a potential life term at the end of a public trial.

  “They’re drinking at lunch.” The boy glanced toward Rattigan and the other detectives raising mugs and importuning waitresses.

  “They’re cops. What do you expect?” Kenny shrugged.

  “And he’s drinking.” Joey turned his attention to the DA, who was raising a glass of champagne with his family and subordinates, his red face a stark contrast with his centurion’s helmet of white hair.

  “A lot of people from the o
ffice are here. He wants to share in the good feeling about the result.”

  Joey’s acne-marked cheek bulged out from the pressure of his tongue poking against it, then sunk back. “So why aren’t you drinking?”

  “Maybe I’m trying to set a better example for you.” Kenny unfolded his napkin and set it on his lap.

  After a rough start, he’d started to like the boy. An outsider from Queens, like himself. And not a natural easy presence either. But someone who had to work for respect. They’d bonded when they learned they’d both been wrestlers at some point in high school, though Joey was of shorter and bulkier stock. They both understood that winning was not about the ability you were born with, but about practicing and refining, feigning and anticipating, and recognizing opportunities where others just saw dead ends.

  “I see a lot of promise in you,” Kenny said. “I know you had it rough growing up sometimes, but this is a time to turn it around…”

  The boy’s eyes became distant, as if he was thinking of something else. Possibly the fact that neither of his parents had accompanied him to court. The father was supposedly a fine man on the job, Rattigan had said. But don’t ask what goes on at that home.

  “You could do a lot with your life.” Kenny leaned forward. “We’ve managed to keep your name out of the paper, by taking the plea instead of going to trial. So you can be anything that you set your mind to. A lot of young men like you go into the military and get straightened out…”

  A small burl formed in the corner of Joey’s mouth as he returned the stare, present again. “I did do good for you with the grand jury, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, of course. You were quite helpful.”

  “Helpful?” The corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that made him look a good ten years older. “I made your whole fucking case and spared you the time and expense of a public trial. Which you could have lost.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “You know it’s true.” The eyes grew steadier. “I put that black dude at the scene at the right time and the right place for you. I gave you the details about him brushing leaves and twigs off his hands as he walked out of the woods. And this morning I threw in that thing where I heard Patterson saying, ‘Shut that white bitch up,’ didn’t I?”

  It felt like the table they were sitting at had started to list and some of the implements had begun to imperceptibly slide toward Kenny.

  “All you were asked to do was tell the truth. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s all you did.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The boy turned away from him, just in time to see the DA raising his champagne glass in tribute and gratitude to the two of them.

  “He’s running for reelection next year, isn’t he?” Joey said. “Is it his sixth or seventh term? Must be—what do you call it?—a ‘feather in your cap’ too.”

  Kenny paused; what kind of teenager followed local politics this closely?

  “I only care that justice was done,” Kenny said.

  “Sure you do.” Joey reached for a breadstick. “Everyone wins now.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Kenny found himself smoothing the wrinkles from the napkin on his lap and looking around for the waitress who was supposed to take their order.

  “Mr. O’Mara wins because this was a big case and everyone was freaking about the fuckin’ moulies coming here from the city.”

  Kenny was about to argue but the DA was already undercutting him by giving Joey a thumbs-up and a vaudevillian wink.

  “And the cops are happy because my testimony shored up their shitty case so it wasn’t just squeezing some black dude’s balls in the basement to get the phony-baloney ninety-four percent confessions,” Joey said.

  At the bar, Rattigan was yukking it up with his fellow detectives, pretending to stick his leg out to trip Patterson’s defense lawyer, Malcolm Epstein, who was beating a hasty retreat with his to-go order. Then Billy the Kid mock-attempted an unauthorized seizure of a passing hostess in a short black dress. Good thing the press weren’t here to see that.

  “And I know you won because I saw how everyone swarmed you and congratulated you after the defense threw in the towel,” Joey said. “You got it made now, don’t you?”

  Kenny pursed his lips and raised his water glass, as if the point was too absurd to address. But the reality was that as soon as the plea deal was announced, Phil O’Mara had taken him aside and told him he was looking for a new executive assistant. The same position the DA himself had held before he was first elected some twenty-seven years before. A change that would make Kenny the second-most important person in one of the most important prosecutor’s offices on the Eastern Seaboard, and therefore, by his calculation, a step closer to being one of the most powerful men in all of American law enforcement.

  He took a deep drink and put the glass down. “I guess you think you’ve got it all figured out then. Don’t you?”

  “I didn’t do so good in school.” Joey was brandishing his breadstick like a cigar. “But I know people.”

  There it was again. That thing that had bothered Kenny before. The old man within the young man. Every time he’d convinced himself that Rattigan was right, that this was a good kid who’d just made a few mistakes and was trying to start over with a clean slate now, he got the sense that this was also someone who could see to the bottom of other people too quickly, who could recognize the darkness in them and feel his way around inside it.

  “So what is it you want?” Kenny asked, trying to tip the table back into balance.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You seem to think you’ve read everyone else’s tea leaves, but what is it that you’re after?”

  “I don’t know.” Joey bit the breadstick in half. “Maybe I’m just saving up for a rainy day.”

  Another of those perfectly natural things that the boy said, which made Kenny sit and chew his nails afterward, trying to parse it out. Who thought about rainy days at this age? But what did it matter? The case was done and justice had been served, stubby fingernails and all. Rattigan was right. This wasn’t The Bells of St. Mary’s and he’d never met a priest who could sing like Bing Crosby.

  Meanwhile, the DA had been joined at his table by his wife, Renata, and their son, Brendan, who was wearing a blazer and gray flannel slacks for the same high school graduation ceremony that Joey had missed to go to court this morning. O’Mara stood up, shook his son’s hand, gave his wife a chaste kiss on the cheek, and then brought his family over to the table where Kenny was sitting with the boy.

  “All’s well that ends well, eh?” The DA slapped Kenny on the back. “Nice work, gents.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Kenny was chagrined to notice that instead of standing, Joey was looking down, perusing the cocktail list.

  “Yo, Brendan,” he muttered. “How was graduation?”

  “It was all right.” Kenny noticed how the DA’s son averted his gaze, to the diploma under his arm. “You didn’t miss much. Lot of speeches.”

  Kenny hadn’t realized the boys were classmates. Brendan seemed so much more clean-cut and appropriately innocent for his age. A pale, earnest-looking lad with his mother’s high forehead, a rep tie picked out by his father around his neck, and an eager smile that seemed to assume intentions as honorable as his own coming back at him. Born to the manor, so to speak, as the son of the district attorney. With a clearer path to a brighter future. No wonder the two young men could barely look each other in the eye. They were a study in contrasts. Brendan almost embarrassed by his privilege and Joey almost certainly humiliated at the reminder of missing an important milestone in his high school career because he’d been at the courthouse, instead of following Brendan across the stage to collect his sheepskin. The boy was still just a boy after all.

  “And you.” The DA put a hand on Joey’s shoulder, all hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie. “I hear you made quite the impression, young man.”

  “You mean with the grand jury?” Joey muttered.
“I thought that was supposed to be, like, secret.”

  “Well, no public trial means no one needs to know about the role you played.” O’Mara nodded. “So what are your plans for the future?”

  Joey slowly put down the list, looked at the DA with his family, then over at Rattigan, who now had his arms around two waitresses at the same time, and then glanced with cursory interest at Kenny.

  “I was thinking of doing what you guys do,” he said.

  The DA offered his hand and then nodded at Kenny. “Make sure you buy this young fella lunch today. On our office. Anything he wants.”

  He hooked his arms through the elbows of his wife and son and strode back to the underlings at his table, like he was leading the Easter Parade.

  “Now can I get a real fucking drink?” Joey Tolliver asked.

  7

  AUGUST

  2017

  “B.B., my brother, I’ma break it down for you, a-ight? We ain’t in Brooklyn no more.”

  This wasn’t even Queens with its modest redbrick multi-family dwellings and cement front yards that Lourdes had started to price out. This was Long Island. God-given White People Country. Still bristling with Make America Great Again signs nine months after the election. The island that seemed more like the mainland. Flag county. Nimbyland. Ranch houses and Queen Annes. Blue skies and boats in driveways. Backyards that deserved their own zip code a half mile from broke-ass wood-frame ghettoes with pit bulls snarling at the meter readers. Supercuts and vape shops. Giant liquor stores and mega nail salons. Best Buys and Targets. Tanning parlors and Delta transmissions. Lexuses and Infinitis flying past Mexican laborers trudging alongside the expressway in paint-spattered clothes and work boots. Houses that had yellow flags with pictures of geraniums in flowerpots like gardening was a political cause, ten minutes from homes that hadn’t been fixed since Hurricane Sandy five years ago.

  “Don’t knock it.” B.B. nodded as they came off Sunrise Highway and passed two young cops in a Nassau County police cruiser. “I’ll be with NYPD thirty-five years next month. The guys probably have ten years between them and they’re both making more than either one of us ever will, including overtime.”