“Because you can’t!”
Vega hated the harsh tone he had to use with his daughter. But Joy had never seen how quickly a crowd could turn into a mob. She’d never witnessed the venom people could unleash when they knew they’d never be held accountable. He had. In uniform, he’d broken up brawls that started out directed at the brawlers and ended up directed at him. It was scary, all that anger. Like a wall of water coming at you. He didn’t want to chance an encounter like that with his daughter by his side. He didn’t want to alarm her, either.
“Look—” Vega put his hands on her shoulders. He spoke in a calm and measured voice. “Everything’s going to be fine. It’s just easier for me if you stay here and I come back for you.”
“But you’ll be okay? You’ll keep your phone on?”
“Of course. I’ll call you when I get to my truck.”
He slipped back into his sunglasses and baseball cap. Disguise or no disguise, if anyone in that crowd had taken a good look at his personnel photo on TV or on any one of hundreds of Internet websites, he might as well be trailing a spotlight.
He left the church by a side exit. If he turned south and walked a couple of blocks before heading north, there’d be less of a chance he’d meet up with the protestors. He knew the neighborhood at least. He knew the pawnshops and check cashing joints with their brightly colored awnings and flashing neon signs in the windows. He knew the bodegas with their racks of cigarettes and forty-ounce malt liquors by the registers. He knew the narrow walkways along the sides of buildings that could sometimes take him from one street to another. If he could just avoid being recognized . . .
The cold helped. People didn’t hang around in the cold. Vega turned left and then right. All the blocks in this area looked pretty much the same. Each side of the street was walled off by five-or six-story buildings the color of sand or mud with fire escapes zigzagging down their fronts like slashes of graffiti. In the windows, Vega could see air conditioning units and crosshatched metal gates, many strung with Christmas lights, some of them already aglow in the fading afternoon light. A few of the buildings had marble embellishments around their entrances attesting to a much grander past. But most looked liked their residents—sturdy and long-suffering. Along the curbs, dented sedans, some with faded and mismatched paint jobs, were parked nearly end-to-end. Fire hydrants, lampposts, and spindly trees sprouted from the pavements—all gunmetal gray this time of year.
His phone rang in his pocket. Adele’s name was on the caller ID. He didn’t want to pick up and let her know where he was. On the other hand, he didn’t want her to worry if he didn’t answer.
“Hey,” he said breathlessly. “Can I call you back? I’m sort of busy right now.”
“Whatever it is can wait.”
Vega hoped the mob would be so accommodating. They were a block ahead of him, marching along the Grand Concourse. He saw raised fists and homemade signs. “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” they chanted. It was a large group—much larger than a simple press conference would suggest. Vega wondered if they’d picked up supporters along the way.
“Look, Adele—”
She cut him off. “We have to talk. Not in an hour or two. Right now. Dave Lindsey came by to see me this morning. He wants me to use my keynote speech at Fordham tomorrow night to call for a grand jury investigation into the shooting.”
Vega felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. “Sure. Why not?” he asked icily. “Why bother with all the niceties like due process, when it’s so much more fun to string me up by my cojones right now.”
“Jimmy, don’t get defensive. I told him it was a bad idea.”
“But you didn’t refuse.”
“I will refuse. But he’s technically my boss. I have to have a reason.”
“A reason? How about the fact that the ME hasn’t conducted the autopsy yet? How about the fact that ballistics and forensics haven’t weighed in? If I were one of your damned clients, would you and your zealot friends be calling for my head right now?”
Vega scanned the crowd one block over. He was close enough to read the signs. I CAN’T BREATHE! NO MORE FER-GUSONS! IS MY SON NEXT? Worse than the words—at least for him—was the fact that his departmental photo was plastered on great big two-by-four signs. So if anybody had forgotten what he looked like, all they had to do was look up.