“But I tried to find an obituary or something for him, and I never found it.”
“Oh. Maybe not, then. I think they ran a story about it yesterday because—miracle of miracles—they decided to bring charges against the woman. You know. The shooter.”
“Good,” Raymond said.
“That’s what I think,” Luis added.
Then nobody seemed to know what else to say.
“What time is it?” Raymond asked him.
Luis was wearing a watch, but his jacket sleeve covered it.
“A minute or two after four.”
“Any chance either one of you has a cell phone I could use?”
Luis produced one from his jacket pocket and set it on the table in front of Raymond.
Raymond thanked him and picked it up. Dialed his home number.
He felt immensely relieved when the call went to voicemail.
“Hi, Mom,” he said. “It’s me. I’m going to be late again. Just letting you know.”
Raymond stood in front of the door of Luis M. Velez on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. For the fourth time.
He knocked on the door. But this time he really didn’t expect an answer. He had to try, though.
He got what he’d been expecting: nothing.
He turned around and pulled off his backpack. Leaned back against the door and slid down until he was sitting on the carpet in front of Luis’s door.
The Luis.
It struck him that the Luis Project was over. He had been so looking forward to that day—when he could forever stop knocking on doors and talking to strangers. Now he wished it wasn’t over. Because what he had just heard, well . . . he would do nearly anything to live in a land where he still did not know it.
He took a spiral notebook of lined paper out of his backpack. Dug around for a pen but found only a pencil.
He braced the notebook on his knees and began to write a note. For Luis’s wife, maybe. For whoever might get it.
Dear Luis Velez’s family,
You don’t know me, but my name is Raymond Jaffe. I’m friends with Millie G, the lady Luis used to help for so long. I only just found out today, just now, what happened. I’ve been looking for Luis, because Mrs. G is worried sick about him, but now I guess I’m just looking for whatever family he left behind. Here’s my phone number, if you want to call me. If you do, I’ll really appreciate it. I have to be the one to tell Mrs. G, and I really hate that. I’m dreading that.
Then he stopped writing and realized he might be getting off track. What did Luis’s widow care that he had to break the bad news to someone? That was a pathetically small problem by her standards.
He looked up to see a woman standing outside her apartment door, right across the hall. Staring down at him. A large middle-aged black woman with beautifully braided hair and a loose, flowing muumuu of a housedress in a wild print.
“May I help you?” Her voice was deep and comfortable.
“Oh,” he said. “I was just leaving a note for . . . Luis’s wife.”
“Did you know Luis?”
“No. But I was looking for him for someone. Someone who was really worried about him because she didn’t know where he’d gone.”
“Not Millie!”
“Yes! Yes, that’s who I was trying to help by finding him!”
Raymond struggled to his feet, pushing his back against the door for support.
“Oh, Isabel will be so happy! She wanted so badly to be able to talk to Millie. To let her know what happened. But she didn’t know where Millie lived, and she couldn’t remember her last name exactly. And she didn’t have her phone number because Luis never backed up his phone.”
“Didn’t she get his phone back?”
“Oh, darlin’, there wasn’t much to get back. It was in his jacket pocket. And this son of a bitch who shot him . . . she put one of the bullets right through it. Just blew it all to pieces. All these shards of it in Luis’s side. Embedded. But we don’t want to talk about that. Do we? It’s just too horrible. Anyway, son, Isabel won’t be home for quite some time. How long, I don’t know. She took the kids and went to stay with her parents. It’s just a terrible time for her, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“You . . . wouldn’t have any idea how to get in touch with her there. Would you?”
The woman shifted on her feet slightly. Uncomfortably. First one direction, then the other.
“She gave me the number. In case there was some kind of emergency at the apartment. But I don’t see as I have a right to hand it out to anybody.”
“But you could give her a note. Couldn’t you? You could give her my number. And if she wants to call me, she will. Right?”
He quickly scribbled his phone number at the end of his note. Tore the sheet out of the notebook.
“Yeah,” the woman said, her voice sinking down into balance and comfort again. “Yeah. That I can do.”
When Raymond arrived home, his mother was setting the table for dinner. She raised her left hand, turned her wrist over, and made a big show of looking at her watch.
“You just made it,” she said. “But not with much time to spare.”
“Right. You got my message?”
“I did. Thank you for that.”
“I’m going to be in my room,” he said. “I have to look something up online. You’ll call me for dinner?”
“Once,” she said. “So keep the door to your room open. Also your ears.”
He walked away without comment. He had too much on his mind to want to engage with her.
He sat down in his room, in front of his desk. Woke up his laptop computer. Did a search for the New York Times. Entered the term “Luis M. Velez.” And there it was. Just like that. Everything he’d been searching for but hadn’t seemed to be there at the time. Right in front of him to read. To print. To share. It sank hard into his belly again that he was about to have to tell her.
He clicked on the headline link. It said, “Woman Charged with Voluntary Manslaughter in Fatal Shooting of Fellow Pedestrian.”