He and Torres were on the fourth floor now. Vega squinted down the darkened hallway. “So, where’s this computer I can make a copy on?”
Torres led him into a room and flicked on the light. He turned on a computer with two DVD slots. It looked old and painfully slow.
“It’s going to take a couple of minutes to warm up,” said Torres. “How about you come eyeball what I’m building on the roof. It’ll just take a minute. By then the computer should be ready for action.”
Vega hesitated.
“Listen, carnal.” Torres was clearly getting frustrated with him. “You think I like being on lockdown like this? You got creds with me, man, but that only goes so far. You need to step up your game, you dig?”
“I hear ya.” Vega would have to wait for that dinosaur to power up anyway.
The door to the roof was up six short steps. The passageway felt cold. Torres rummaged around in the pocket of his puffy down jacket for a key.
“A key?” asked Vega. “I thought all these exits were supposed to have emergency push bars?”
“Some of my students were playing hooky on the roof. It’s better this way.” Torres unlocked the door and pushed it open. A blast of cold air fanned their faces as Vega stepped outside.
“It’s not finished yet,” Torres apologized.
It looked barely started from what Vega could see. The nearest sides of the roof were enclosed by chain-link fencing but the far side was still open. There was no gym equipment, only bundles of metal joists and rods piled near a ventilation shaft and blanketed in snow.
“It’s—nice,” said Vega. It was freezing is what it was. He wanted to go back inside. The heavy steel door slammed shut behind them.
“See?” Torres slipped his key back in the door and turned the lock. “I can lock and unlock the door from both sides to ensure no one gets up here without my permission.”
“That’s great, Freddy. So listen. Maybe we should—”
“Look at this view, man. You ever see a view like this?” Torres swept a hand to the unenclosed part of the roof. Sturdy tenements stood shoulder to shoulder, their grimy facades dressed up in the twinkle of traffic lights and neon signs. Even the high-rise housing projects took on a certain dark majesty set against the hazy accumulation of all that wattage. Vega wanted to appreciate it but all he could feel was the needles of ice pricking his face and the flakes of snow melting into his hair.
Something that sounded like a sheet of ice snapped behind him. Vega turned. At Torres’s feet, he saw glittering shards on the compacted snow.
“What the—?” The DVD lay like a broken Christmas ornament between them.
Torres pulled a .380 Beretta out of his pocket and pointed it at Vega’s chest. “It’s loaded, Jimmy. Trust me, in this neighborhood, it’s loaded. I know you’re not packing. You wouldn’t have run from that mob just now if you were.”
Vega’s insides burned with a mixture of rage and confusion. He couldn’t believe the man who’d saved his life so many times could betray him so completely now.
“You’re on the DVD.” Vega had to say the words to believe them. “You killed my mother.”
“Didn’t want to, carnal. I swear. I tried to talk some sense into her on the phone that night. But all she kept saying was ‘Turn yourself in. Get your head right with God.’ I was outta options.”
His mother’s final phone call. It wasn’t to speak to Martha. It was to speak to Freddy. A slow dawning crept over Vega. That’s why his mother had an appointment with Detective Renfro in the Bronx homicide division. Luisa Rosario-Vega had evidence that Freddy Torres was involved in a murder, Martha’s words at the nursing home came back to Vega:
You know what you did, yes? So does Luisa. And he knew.
“Donna.” The name felt like a prayer on Vega’s lips. Snow covered his shoulders and slipped inside his jacket. He felt the chill all the way down his spine. “She didn’t fall from that window, did she? You pushed her.”
Torres’s face tightened for just a moment and then turned smooth and slack. Something went dead in his eyes. Vega felt as if a serrated spoon were digging out the lining of his stomach. Finding out about Donna was almost worse than finding out about his mother.
“Why, Freddy? For chrissakes, why? Donna never hurt anyone in her life.”
Torres’s voice turned steely when he spoke. “Who did you ever have to look after in your life, huh, Jimmy? You didn’t have a drunken father you had to protect your mother from. You didn’t have a sister with Down syndrome you had to watch all the time. It was all on me. Everything was always on me! And then my mother’s Alzheimer’s hit and I saw the future. I was going to be saddled with two dependents. Two! My mother and my sister. Their care was going to bleed me dry. Until the day I died, I would never be free. Jackie ran away. She got to live her life. When was it my turn?”