Same Difference, page 14
‘Go to the end,’ she said. ‘You’ll see another door painted blue. Open it and you can walk up to the street level. Don’t touch anything along the way. Good luck.’
Eliza gave a quick nod and immediately started down the stairs. I stopped and looked at the librarian, who was still holding the door open.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very understanding.’ I started through the door, then stopped and looked at her. ‘Why shouldn’t we touch anything?’ I asked.
She looked surprised at the question. ‘Library property,’ she said.
Once I was through the door she let it close and I heard her turn the key in the lock behind me. I thought I might have heard a man’s voice talking to her but I was already on my way downstairs to a floor that was clearly below the street. I didn’t even touch the hand rail on the way out. When a librarian tells you to touch nothing, you touch nothing.
The floor downstairs wasn’t terribly distinctive. It wasn’t even like the dank basement where we’d found Damien. It was clearly a storage area, possibly for books that had been taken off the shelves to make space for others. But the stacks here were plain metal shelving and they were covering every possible space save for a slim hallway down the middle to our right.
Eliza was already halfway down that corridor by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs and she wasn’t slowing down. Luckily I had considerably longer legs than she did and needed fewer steps to catch up. We reached the far end, with the blue door at its terminus, at the same time.
‘You ready?’ I asked.
‘No. Let’s stay in the library basement forever.’ It was going to be fun rooming with Eliza for a few days. Assuming we had a place to room.
I pushed the blue door open and found another set of stairs with a door at the top. The door had a window and sunlight was pouring through it. We hadn’t been down here a full minute and I already felt like I was digging my way out of a deep cave. We climbed the flight of stairs but once again I stopped at the top to assess the situation.
‘We have to be realistic,’ I told Eliza. ‘If there are cops out there and they’re armed and looking for us, we’re going to have to turn ourselves in.’
‘Maybe you,’ she said. ‘Not me.’ Swell.
I didn’t see any point in arguing, so I gave the best glance I could through the window, which was admittedly limited. I didn’t see any police but that didn’t mean they weren’t, at least, ten feet away. It was time to just open the door and take the plunge.
I swung the door open and insisted on going out first, so I could slam it in Eliza’s face if I saw anyone who might have it in their minds to shoot her. But all that drama had been for naught, which was a relief. There were no uniformed officers or, for all I could tell, plainclothes detectives outside this door to the library, which had left us on Lafayette Street heading toward Houston (and it’s pronounced HOW-ston in New York, not HEW-ston, like in Texas). We made the right turn on Houston and just kept walking.
‘Now what?’ Eliza asked, making it sound less like a request for directions and more like a challenge.
‘Now we go to the first drop-off point and see if Ken has rustled us up some accommodations.’
The problem was, despite there having been no cops keeping a watch on the Lafayette door to the library, we seemed to be walking into a rather imposing wall of men in bland suits looking at us and not, as is the Manhattan custom, at their phones or directly ahead, expressing the immense importance of their destinations.
‘We’ve been spotted,’ I said quietly to Eliza. ‘Do as I do.’
I turned on my heel and picked up my pace after pivoting to a perfect U-turn. But I didn’t break into a run; that’s almost always a mistake if you’re not being shot at. And a lot of the time when you are. I just strode somewhat more purposefully, which for someone my height can help make up ground in a hurry. But I had to make sure Eliza was with me every stride of the way.
She, trouper that she was, kept up but her breathing was getting a little labored. I couldn’t use the FaceTime trick to see behind me and gauge the cops’ progress. Frankly, I was surprised they hadn’t called out and ordered us to freeze already. After all, they thought at least one of us was a murderer.
I figured there was no point in continuing any pretense, so I stole a glance behind me. The cops – and they were definitely cops – were following but maintaining their distance. It was more like a surveillance than a pursuit and that was weird.
‘We can’t go to the drop-off point yet,’ I said. ‘Want to stop for an ice cream?’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘Actually, no.’
Van Leeuwen Ice Cream on Houston Street is a very classy scoop shop with some tables for those who prefer an indoor experience. And under these circumstances we definitely wanted that, despite what would seem logical.
‘The cops are after us,’ Eliza stage-whispered at me as we walked in. ‘Why are we going to a place where they have us cornered?’
‘Because they’ve had plenty of chances to stop us and they’ve chosen not to,’ I said in a normal voice. ‘I have a feeling we’re not running away from the police.’
I walked up to the counter – OK, the line, where I placed fourth at the moment – and waited for Eliza to join me, which she did. No one in New York had blinked in her direction. She was hardly the first trans woman anyone had seen in this neighborhood.
‘Then who are we running away from?’ she asked, still sort of dropping her voice to what she thought was a hard-to-eavesdrop level.
‘If we let them, I imagine the cops will find a way to show us,’ I said. I was now third in line and had already decided on brown sugar chunk ice cream because it had been that kind of day. ‘What flavor do you want? It’s my treat.’
‘I’m vegan,’ Eliza said, more as a challenge than a piece of information.
I pointed at the menu above the counter. ‘They can accommodate you.’
She looked up and scowled because her obstacle hadn’t stopped me. I get that a lot. ‘In that case, churros and fudge,’ she said.
Just about the time we were getting our ice cream (or in Eliza’s case iced-something) cones, a large man in his twenties entered the shop and looked around. He wasn’t looking at the flavor list and he wasn’t searching (no matter how much he wanted you to believe he was) for someone he had agreed to meet here. He took one look around the room and focused on two people.
I’m guessing you can figure out which two.
I took a lick of the ice cream, which was excellent. ‘Him,’ I told Eliza.
She was looking toward the napkin holders and had to turn her head to see who I meant. Her eyes grew wide and she took in a quick breath. ‘Julio,’ she said.
TWENTY-ONE
Julio did not look like someone named Julio, but that didn’t mean anything. You can decide to call yourself Rumpelstiltskin if you feel like it and I’ll go along. I’m not the most average person either. But Julio apparently was adamant about not being called Julio, and his looking more like a Chip or a Harper made that only more confusing.
‘Let’s take a table,’ I said to Eliza. ‘I doubt he came here to kill us in front of every cop in New York City.’
She was standing stock still and didn’t appear to have heard me. ‘Julio,’ she said again.
‘There’s nothing to be scared of,’ I told her. ‘If it comes to it, I can take him, but I don’t think it will.’
She turned her head and stared at me. ‘Are you nuts?’ she asked.
‘I don’t really think we have time to get into my mental health issues right at the moment,’ I said. A table had opened up near the door, which I thought was advantageous, and I made sure to sit down at it. Eliza, staring at Julio and looking massively panicked, followed out of what I assumed was a preservation instinct. At worst she must have figured she could hide behind me.
I was licking away with some enthusiasm while Eliza seemed to be doing the same out of a sense of responsibility. She never looked at the cone and didn’t register any reaction to the treat she was having. Some people just aren’t that into ice cream. And they think I’m a freak.
Julio strode – that’s the word for it – over to our table, and I kid you not, turned a chair around and sat on it backwards. If that was his idea of intimidating, it was going to be much easier to deal with him than I’d initially expected.
‘So, Eliza,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again. Who’s your friend?’ Yup, that would be me.
‘I’m Fran,’ I told him. ‘I’d shake your hand but I have this ice cream.’
‘That’s OK,’ Julio said. ‘I’m not sure I want to touch you anyway, big lady.’
Ooh, snap! ‘Good. Now why don’t you tell us exactly what happened in that basement with Damien. Because there are about thirty cops outside who’d like to know and so would we. Wouldn’t we, Eliza?’
‘Fran …’ Eliza was not as relaxed as I appeared to be.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Julio said. ‘I need to get the cops off my back and I noticed they’ve been following you around. I was trying to figure out why, but I guess it’s because they think Eliza here offed Damien in the Bronx. Did you?’ Now both of us were looking at Eliza, who had absolutely no color left in her face. None. If a person could be clear, it would have been Eliza.
‘What are you talking about?’ she croaked. A big drip of her vegan ice cream (that’s what they call it; don’t blame me) landed on the table. I wiped it up with a paper napkin. ‘Everybody knows you killed Damien.’
Julio, for all his size and bluster, looked insulted by the very suggestion. ‘Me? I didn’t have nothing to do with that. I mean, I figured the cops were following you because you did it.’
‘Why would I kill Damien?’ Eliza said. She was trying and failing to sound fierce, or at least calm.
‘I dunno. Maybe he made a pass at you and found out you’re not a girl.’
OK, that was crossing a line. ‘Walk it back, Julio,’ I said.
‘Don’t call me that!’ he snarled. ‘Nobody can call me that!’
When you find your opponent’s weak spot, you poke at it. ‘OK. I’ll respect who you are as long as you respect who Eliza is. That a deal?’
Julio, massive intellect that he was, took a moment to process that. ‘Yeah. OK.’
‘What’s your name, then? What should we call you?’
‘My name is Jules,’ he said with a completely straight face. Eliza just nodded.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Now we’ve established who everyone is here.’ I took another lick of the ice cream because Jules wasn’t worth losing any of it. ‘If you didn’t kill Damien, Jules, you can solve all our problems at once. Who did?’
Now, I’m not naïve. I knew exactly what Jules was going to say. He would deny any knowledge of the events surrounding Damien’s murder. But that wasn’t going to help anybody in this room and it wasn’t about to make all the officers of the law, who were out in the street hoping someone would come out shooting, go away. But in order to get the answers you need as an investigator, it is sometimes necessary to go through the motions in order. It’s a ritual of sorts. And that was what I did.
‘How the hell do I know?’ Jules said. ‘I told you I wasn’t there.’
I was almost down to the cone itself, which was of the waffle variety and looked delicious. I sat back in my chair to show how relaxed and unimpressed I was by Jules’s answer. ‘Come on, Jules. Lying isn’t going to fix anything.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Yeah, you are. We know you were Damien’s supplier for his little pill business on campus. We know that you sent some of your … friends … to follow him around and threaten him, to the point that Damien thought he could make one last stand against you. So he went to that basement and somebody wrapped an extension cord around his windpipe. OK then, explain how you had nothing to do with Damien being killed.’ I took a bite of the cone. Heaven.
‘I wasn’t there,’ he repeated.
‘Don Corleone wasn’t there when all those people got killed, and yet you knew he had a little bit to do with it,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to strangle Damien if you could get someone else to do it for you.’
Jules didn’t even pretend to be insulted. He just shook his head. ‘Not in my best interests,’ he said. ‘Damien was a good customer. He’s dead now and I don’t have a distributor in that area. It’s bad business. Nope, I didn’t want Damien dead.’
Eliza’s eyes were down to slits. ‘Yes you did,’ she hissed at Jules. ‘You went after Damien with some other guy because he was supposed to owe you money or something, and that’s why you told that guy to kill him. You said Mr Martin was coming for him. Who’s that?’
Jules let his face go cold; no longer was he the amiable, misunderstood guy who could be reasonable. His eyes bore into Eliza’s and his mouth went straight across the lower part of his face in a horizontal line.
This was Julio.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he growled. ‘I don’t know no Mr Martin. And the cops ain’t chasing me. They’re chasing you.’
He stood up and regarded me. As with many such men who hope to have some factor of intimidation over women, he regarded me mostly below the neck. Mistake after mistake, Jules. ‘I didn’t have nothing to do with Damien getting killed,’ he said to me. ‘If you want to talk about it, you let me know, hotness. But don’t bring this boy with you.’
Jules wanted to turn and walk out, having delivered his exit line, but I didn’t care for the way he’d treated us. I stood up and in one motion grabbed Jules by the belt and the shoulders and hoisted him over my head.
He was loquacious enough to let out a ‘Whoa!’ as he ascended. Eliza looked astonished, as did many of the patrons of the store, who turned to watch. Nobody had the wherewithal to get out their phones and start a video feed yet, which was good with me. I had to move fast.
Holding Jules over my head, I shook him a little. A small gun and a switchblade knife (a throwback!) fell on to our table. Eliza quickly confiscated them. But Jules was not taking this quietly, letting out a tirade of invective that would have made a Cockney footballer blush.
‘Hey, there are children here,’ I said to the man over my head, although there were perhaps two kids in the store. ‘You need to leave.’
I carried him, full arm extension, over my head to the street, where four cops, none with a weapon visible, were standing and chatting. They turned when they saw us and gaped.
Even Eliza, who had ridden down a building on my back, stared with her mouth open. ‘What are you?’ she said.
‘We don’t have time for that now.’
With one last grunt I tossed Jules into their midst, turned and grabbed Eliza’s arm. I did not say, ‘Let’s go!’ because that’s stupid. Eliza knew we weren’t staying for another cone. It was a shame to leave the two we’d had behind, though.
Before the NYPD officers knew what had (literally) hit them, we were around the corner and gone.
TWENTY-TWO
The coffee shop where we’d met earlier today was across the street from a small bodega, above which were three floors of apartments. Eliza and I, having assured ourselves that no officers of the law were on our tail, walked over to the bodega casually. ‘Go in and get a bottle of water,’ I told her, reaching for my bag.
‘I can pay for water,’ she told me, and turned to stomp inside the store.
‘Pay cash,’ I said.
Given a minute to myself in a place I wouldn’t be staying for more than that minute, I felt it was safe to check my messages. There were many from Ken, from before the diner meeting. There were two from Aunt Margie, who didn’t sound frantic, so they must have been from early in the day. There was one from a client wanting to know if her birth father was living under the name Pollitzer in Peoria, Illinois. And there were five from Mank, the gist of which came to: Where the hell are you and what have you gotten yourself into? But the last one included the disquieting addition, Turn yourselves in and I can help. I answered none and turned the phone off again. At least I was saving battery time.
I walked to the northwest corner of the building, where there was a loose brick in the façade, courtesy of my brother and his strong hands. Ken and I had agreed this would be one of our drop-off points for messages and, sure enough, when I pulled the brick halfway out I found a small piece of yellow paper, probably from one of the office’s legal pads, stuck behind it. My brother had come through with a note, if not a safe haven. That was yet to be seen.
I was unfolding the paper when Eliza walked out with a bottle of spring water and a Red Bull. Apparently she was in need of some energy. ‘Here’s your water.’ She held out the bottle and I took it, because that wasn’t a ruse: I actually wanted the water.
‘We’re heading uptown,’ I said. ‘My brother’s real-estate friend has actually come through.’
‘Imagine,’ Eliza said.
We decided – OK, I decided – not to take the subway because it’s too hard to extract yourself from a train if you find yourself in an untenable situation. Walking left us a lot of options. Eliza complained a little about the distance because we walking from the West Village to East 62nd Street, but she gave it up pretty quickly when she saw that I didn’t especially care if she was complaining; I just kept walking. If you can’t irritate someone, there’s really just no point.
It was something of a trudge but I didn’t want to have deep important conversations in the streets of Manhattan, particularly when it felt like every cop in the city was hot on our trail. You’d think they would have left a few guys out to track down jaywalkers or something. I nattered on for a while about how this was a great time of year to be walking in the city while Eliza studied her pink Skechers and opted not to answer.
