TWO

 

Carmella Melendez and I had gotten married for all the wrong reasons, but with the best intentions. Perhaps it might have worked out better the other way around. The fact is, it didn’t work out. Thankfully, we dissolved things before we could chew each other up or do any lasting damage. Well, before I could do lasting damage to her. I hadn’t been lucky enough to escape unscathed. I’d been a father to Carmella’s newborn for the first year of his life and although Israel—named for Mr. Roth—wasn’t mine, I was the first man to change his diapers, to dry his tears, to tickle his belly. I didn’t know what the now nine-year-old Israel remembered of me, if anything, but I could still hear him coo and feel his tiny fingers latch onto my nose as I cradled him in my arms.

My heart was thumping in my chest. My throat was dry. I hadn’t seen Carmella for the better part of a decade and we’d barely spoken since she moved up to Toronto. The one conversation we’d had was about her changing Israel’s last name to hers, thereby erasing all traces of me in the boy’s life. Yet the sight of her still made me weak, the hurt and baggage being beside the point. The nearly twenty years in age that separated us was as meaningless now as it was the first time we met as adults. She was a young precinct detective in those days and I was investigating a corruption and murder case in Coney Island’s Soul Patch. I didn’t know then that our paths had crossed before, when she was a little girl with a different name and that I had saved her from certain death. Then it struck me that I hadn’t saved Carmella from it at all. I’d only given her a temporary reprieve. I guess every day from the day we’re born is a kind of reprieve. I wondered if I too might get a reprieve or if my ticket had already been punched.

We hugged. It was a silent, awkward embrace, both too long and not long enough, too distant, but too close. I recognized the once familiar feel of silk when the wind blew her hair against my cheek. The back of her cotton floral-print dress was damp and the raw scent of her perspiration cutting against the grassy fragrance of her perfume was intoxicating. It made me want to give in to the moment. Still, as willfully indulgent as I’d been lately, this was neither the time nor the place. And frankly, I was pretty curious about what she was doing here at all. I put my hands around her bare, light brown biceps, gently pushing her away. I needed some distance between us and, at the moment, arm’s length was the best I could do.

And for the first time since I noticed her rounding the corner, I saw Carmella Melendez with my eyes instead of my heart. Her hair, once so impossibly black, was now salted with threads of gray. She was still fit and as perfectly curved as she had been in her mid-twenties, but some of the fierceness in her eyes had vanished and the sun-darkened skin of her face showed age beyond her years. There are all kinds of aging. Time ages us more gracefully than heartache. The lines in her face, around her eyes and mouth, were etched in tears, many tears.

“I hear Sarah is getting married,” she said, her voice flat and distracted.

“In Vermont in a few weeks, yeah. This party is for the people who can’t make it up there.”

“You must be proud.”

“Of course I am. I’ve always been proud of Sarah.”

“She has forgiven you for Katy’s death?”

“Let’s just say that the last case I worked helped Sarah understand that the fault lines can get awfully blurry and the closer you are to things the harder it is to assign blame.”

“That was the case of the little girl, the artist? You rescued her the way you rescued me once.”

“That’s the way the media played it, but it wasn’t like that at all. I’m not sure she wasn’t better off away from her parents. But what’s this got to do with anything, Carmella? What are you doing here? How did you—”

“It’s Carmella now, not Carm?”

“It stopped being Carm the day you left for Canada.”

“I had to go, for all of us. You know that. We were starting to hate each other and I could never let that happen. You only married me to get over Katy and to give Israel a name. Somewhere you know that is the truth.”

“How is he?”

She was young again, a beatific smile washing over her face. “He’s amazing, so smart, so handsome.” She reached into her bag and came out with an envelope. “These are pictures of him for you to keep. I could have emailed them, but I know how you are old-fashioned.”

“No, Carmella, not old-fashioned, just old. Thank you for these.” I slid the envelope into my suit pocket. “But you haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?”

“You have not changed, Moe. Still persistent.” Her smile changed, turning to rueful and sad. She was older again. “I always admired that about you. You never lost track of things no matter how confusing the situation would get. No, you have not changed.”

“Do any of us change, really, even if everything else changes around us?”

“You are very philosophical today.”

“I have my reasons.”

“With Sarah getting married …”

“That too,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“Carmella, for chrissakes!” I clapped my hands together in anger.

Her face turned dead serious. “I want to hire you. I need you.”

I laughed. “You don’t need me. You proved that when you moved up to Canada. Besides, you were the best detective and PI I ever knew. When we were business partners, you always did the heavy lifting. And if you can’t do it yourself, hire Brian Doyle and Devo. They run their own shop now.”

“No, not them. You.”

“Sorry, I can’t help.”

“You have to.”

“What the hell is so important that you come to me after all this time?”

I regretted asking almost before the words were out of my mouth. She took a small framed photo out of her bag and handed it to me. The woman in the photo looked a little like Carmella. She was older, heavier, but with the same fiery eyes and rich mouth. I handed the picture back.

“She’s lovely,” I said.

“My big sister, Alta.”

“I thought you didn’t have any more contact with the Consecos.”

“I did not. I don’t.”

“Look, Carmella, what’s this got to do—”

“I thought you might have heard. Alta was murdered last month. She was stabbed dead in the street outside a pizzeria in Gravesend.”

I’d grown up in Coney Island, not too far from Gravesend, and I don’t think I’d ever given the name much thought. Gravesend was just another neighborhood. I mean, you don’t say Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, or Brownsville and contemplate the origin of the names. They were neighborhoods with names, names like any other names … until now, until I found out there was a time bomb ticking in my belly. Tick … tick … tick … A long time ago in a cemetery, Mr. Roth told me that he didn’t want to be buried, that to be cold in the ground wasn’t for him. And now the time had come for me to think about that. I didn’t suppose it mattered. When you’re dead, you’re dead, but when you can see the end in sight, it does matter. Gravesend. For as long as I had left, I wouldn’t be able to hear the name again without considering its implications.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.

“I cut my family out of my life so many years ago and now …” Carmella was crying. “Here, take this.” She handed me a slip of paper. “Get back to your party. Give your family my love and wish Sarah all happiness. Call me, please.”

She was in my arms again and I was stroking her hair. When I looked up, Pam was standing a few feet away, glaring.

From the Daily News, May 6, 2009

Cold-hearted EMT murdered in Gravesend, Brooklyn

By Henry Leroy

 

One of two FDNY EMTs accused of ignoring a man who died of a stroke at a Manhattan bistro was stabbed to death outside a popular Brooklyn eatery. According to a spokesman for the NYPD, Alta Conseco, 48, of East New York was accosted by an unknown assailant or assailants in close proximity of the Gelato Grotto on 86th Street in the Gravesend section of the borough. Stabbed several times, she managed to crawl to the famous pizzeria where she collapsed. No further details about the attack were released. She was off duty at the time of the assault.

Conseco was taken to Coney Island Hospital where she was pronounced dead. On March 12, Conseco and another EMT, Maya Watson, made international headlines after witnesses claimed the EMTs ignored pleas for help from the bistro staff after Robert Tillman, a cook at the High Line Bistro, seemed to faint. When they were asked to help, the two off-duty EMTs are reported to have told the bistro staff to call 911 and then left. Both EMTs have consistently refused comment.

Conseco and Watson have been vilified by New Yorkers for what many perceive as a callous decision and a dereliction of duty. They were both suspended for thirty days and put on desk duty upon their return to active status. Both the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the FDNY have investigations pending.

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