Raymond was sitting on an elevated train through the Bronx, most of the way to the Fordham University area—his father’s alma mater—when he realized that the next name on his list was also Luis M. Velez. He wondered if that was coincidence, or if they were the same person. Maybe he had moved, and that’s why he was never home at the Manhattan address. Still, you would think someone would be. The next person to occupy the apartment at least.
Raymond leaned over and glanced at the watch of a man sitting near him on the bench seat, and the man gathered himself and his newspaper and moved one seat farther away.
It was only twenty after three. But Raymond would have to keep an eye on the time today. He would have to find a pay phone and call his mother if he was going to be late.
Raymond got off the train at 183rd and walked to Andrews Avenue. Found the address.
He didn’t need to call up and have someone buzz him in, because a youngish couple was just coming in through the door with two bags of groceries each. They looked over their shoulders at him, smiled, and allowed him to come through behind them.
They climbed the stairs to the third floor more or less together, Raymond hanging a step or two behind. Then they walked down the hall in the same direction. It wasn’t until they had passed the second-to-last apartment that it seemed to dawn on them all at once. They were going to the same place.
Or maybe the couple thought Raymond was following them. Maybe they were regretting having let him in. They might even have been about to question him and his purpose in the building.
Raymond figured he’d better talk fast.
The couple stopped suddenly and turned to him, fixing him with questioning—and slightly nervous—gazes.
“Are you Luis Velez?” Raymond asked.
“Yeah,” the man said. “Can I help you with something?”
He was probably no older than twenty-five, with a short, spikey modern haircut that stuck up like a wave in front, just over his forehead. He had a corner broken off one very white front tooth. His wife—if she was his wife—was strangely tiny, barely five feet, blonde. Not Latina as far as Raymond could tell. Raymond watched her move a step closer to Luis as if for protection.
“I hope so,” Raymond said. “I’m looking for a guy named Luis Velez who used to come into Manhattan, over on the west side, and help this older blind woman. Millie, the woman’s name is. He kind of . . . disappeared. And I’m just trying to find him for her.”
Raymond waited. But no answer seemed forthcoming. He seemed to have stunned them with the question, but he could not imagine why. It was a pretty simple question. You’re either that guy or you’re not.
The woman’s mouth had fallen open. Luis glanced over and tried to catch her eye but did not succeed.
“So . . . ,” Raymond said.
He was hoping that simple word might prompt an answer. Restart the conversation.
He was beginning to suspect he had found his Luis. How could they be so startled by the question if they knew nothing about the situation? No, his question had seemed to trigger something in them. Something uncomfortable.
Meanwhile the one dirty window at the end of the hall threw a slant of afternoon sun on the three of them. Left their shadows on the plaid hall carpeting. Raymond couldn’t help noticing that those shadows did not move in the slightest.
“He used to go help this woman?” Luis asked. As though Raymond hadn’t just said so. “And then he disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Raymond said. “Right.”
“When did he stop showing up?”
“I don’t know to the day. But a little over three weeks ago, I think.”
Again Luis glanced over to catch the woman’s eye. This time she looked back. They exchanged a strangely freighted look with one another. Heavy with something. Raymond had no idea what, but it made his heart pound, and his stomach sagged with the weight of the thing.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Luis asked his wife, or girlfriend. Or whatever she was to him.
“I’m thinking maybe it was the Luis Velez who got killed,” she said.
It hit Raymond like a speeding crosstown bus. He actually felt the physical impact of it. For a split second he was surprised that it had not knocked him down. Then he reminded himself that it was not a real, physical thing. Except to the extent that it was.
“There’s a Luis Velez who . . . died?” Raymond asked, his voice sounding foreign and far away. Nearly unfamiliar.
You knew this. You knew. Why are you acting so surprised? You knew all along.
“I’m sorry you had to find out about it this way,” the tiny woman said. “I just blurted it out. I wasn’t really thinking. I do that all the time. Talk first, think later. It’s my curse. I’m really sorry.”
“Give us a minute to put our groceries away,” Luis said. “And then we’ll take you out for a cup of coffee and tell you what we know.”
He opened his apartment door with a key, and they both stepped inside, leaving Raymond to wait in the hall. Clearly they did not feel comfortable inviting him in. But it was okay. Raymond understood. People didn’t invite strangers into their homes. Raymond had been shocked by the people who had opened their doors for him. He was not shocked by this.
It wasn’t until they were seated in a small, mostly deserted café, their coffee and tea on the table in front of them, that Luis Velez opened his mouth to speak.
They had said nothing to each other on the walk. Not even simple introductions. Just a heavy silence.
If Raymond had been someone else entirely, he might have dragged it out of them on the way over. Screamed at them to spit out what they knew. But Raymond was only who he had always been. And besides, he was no more anxious to hear the details than this couple seemed anxious to tell them.
“It was in the paper just yesterday morning,” Luis said.
“Luis reads the Sunday Times like nobody I ever met before,” the woman said. “I’m not going to say he reads every word on every page, because I think that might take weeks. Do you get the Sunday Times? It’s huge.”