When the bumper tapped the cart, his partner laughed. “See, this is why we can’t have a nice car.”
All the parking spaces on East 115th Street were taken, and there was a beer delivery truck double-parked across the loading zone. The truck couldn’t unload in the space because it was occupied by a small beater with a fender made of Bond-O and a windshield full of tickets. So Raley improvised, parking nose out, bridging the sidewalk, front tires on the street, the back ones where the dirt and sparse clumps of grass met concrete.
East Harlem, El Barrio, had the highest crime rate in the borough, but that rate also had experienced a huge drop in recent years, roughly 65 to 68 percent, depending on whose figures you liked. Raley and Ochoa felt obvious, looking every inch like cops, even in plainclothes. They also felt safe. Crime rate notwithstanding, this was a community of families. They were experienced enough to know that low income didn’t spell danger. Ask people with experience in both places, and you’d be surprised how many felt a lost wallet had a better chance on Marin Boulevard than on Wall Street.
The pleasant warmth of the fall day was siphoning off and the evening was cooling fast. A clank of bottles made them turn. In front of Padilla’s place a man his age, about thirty-five, was stacking full black plastic garbage bags on the mound that ran along the street. He clocked the two detectives as they approached, but stayed with his work, keeping an eye on them peripherally as he went.
“Buenos noches,” said Ochoa. When the man bent to pick up his next garbage bag without acknowledging him, the detective continued in Spanish, asking him if he lived there.
The man flung the trash bag in a V he had created between his two other bags, and waited to make sure they would stay put. When he was satisfied, he turned to face them. He asked the two cops if there was some sort of trouble.
Ochoa continued in Spanish and told him no, that he was investigating the murder of Esteban Padilla. The man told him Esteban was his cousin and he had no idea who killed him or why. He said it loudly, gesturing with a large double wave of his palms to them. Raley and Ochoa had seen this many times before. Padilla’s cousin was signaling that he was not a snitch, to them and, more importantly, to anyone who was watching.
He knew it was probably futile, but Detective Ochoa told him there was a killer loose who had murdered his cousin, asking if they could just talk about it, inside, in private. The cousin said there was no point; he didn’t know anything and neither did anyone else in the family.
Under the harshness of the orange streetlight that hummed above them, Ochoa tried to read the man’s face. What he saw there wasn’t a dodge, it was theater masking fear. And not necessarily fear of the killer. This was about the eyes and ears that could be taking all this in at that moment on a street in Spanish Harlem. The Stop Snitching code was a more powerful law than any Raley and Ochoa could bring. As the man turned and walked in through the front door of Padilla’s house, Ochoa knew it was even stronger than wanting justice for the death of a relative.
Later On with Kirby MacAlister, a talk show in a wrestling match with Craig Ferguson and the Jimmies, Kimmel and Fallon, for the late-night after-crowd, was broadcast live out of a leased studio on West End Avenue. Its first five years on the air, the syndicated show had taped out of a former strip club in Times Square, a spit take from Letterman’s shop in the Ed Sullivan Theater. But when one of the daytime dramas moved west to LA, Later On jumped at the chance to show off its success by grabbing the soap’s stage and modern production offices.
In the lobby window, looking out on West End, Nikki finished her cell phone call and stepped over to join Rook by the security counter. “What’s our status?” she asked.