TWENTY-SIX

It wasn’t time to go to Detective Fuqua, not yet, anyway. So far I had some interesting, even compelling circumstantial evidence that pointed to Jorge Delgado, but nothing that would stick—as if anything would really stick to a dead man. Besides, I had a problem with things that came together too quickly and nested so seamlessly. People’s lives weren’t like model airplanes. They didn’t come with glue or parts that fit perfectly together according to the instruction sheet. They were sloppy, messy things full of competing impulses, conflicting emotions, and unresolved feelings. It had been my experience that unresolved feelings were like that undigested food people carried around in their gut: it festered and grew into the things that eventually ruined us, turned us ugly, and sometimes killed us. Unresolved feelings, I thought, were probably at the root of more pain and destruction than any other single cause in the history of humankind.

Twice before I had worked cases where the parts seemed to fit perfectly together, but the model came out wrong, all wrong. The first time was in the early eighties when Moira Heaton, a state senator’s intern, disappeared from her boss’s office on Thanksgiving Eve. After some digging, I thought I had her killer nailed. The other time was when I was looking for Sashi Bluntstone. The kidnapper and alleged murderer was practically served up on a silver platter like John the Baptist’s head. In both cases all the evidence—circumstantial and substantive—pointed one way and in both instances the evidence was wrong. I had been manipulated into taking what I had at face value. The prime suspects turned out to be false positives. So, no, I didn’t trust seamlessness and it didn’t escape my notice that on the same day I stumbled across Delgado as a suspect, I got that call from Nick. It doesn’t get more seamless than that. This time I wanted to be sure to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s before I shouted that the sky was falling.

It was a piece of cake finding out who the fireman was who had acted as the middleman between Delgado and Joey Fortuna. No need for me to go to Doyle and Devo for that. Fortuna had all but told me the guy was Puerto Rican and it wasn’t much of a leap to guess he had worked out of the same firehouse as Delgado. A few little lies and a few fifty dollar bills later and I had a name: Nestor Feliz. I waited outside the firehouse until Feliz’s shift ended and approached him as he opened his car door.

“Nestor Feliz?” I asked in that same antiseptic voice I used as a cop. It got people’s attention and it fucked with their equilibrium. He looked up, scared. Nestor had a guilty conscience about something. I held up my leather case that contained my old badge, but didn’t open it. Then I lied a bit about what was inside the leather case. “If I show you my gold shield, this will be an official conversation. If I don’t, we can have a nice little unofficial chat at a local bar and leave it at that.”

He stalled for time. “What’s this about?”

“Nestor, I can feel my fingers about ready to show you my shield.”

“Okay. There’s an Irish pub on Austin Street off Queens Boulevard.”

“I’ll follow you there.”

Parking was easier to find than usual in Forest Hills. Irony was, the pub Feliz had chosen was only a few blocks away from the 112th Precinct and I had little doubt that half the people in the bar with us were real cops, not retired old farts playing pretend. We found a quiet table in a corner. I bought Nestor a Bud and I had a Dewars. The alcohol was meant to prove this was all very unofficial.

“So, Nestor, let’s get something straight. I’m not looking to hurt you, but if you bullshit me once, I’m gonna come down on your head like a tornado.”

“What’s this about?” he repeated.

“Jorge Delgado.”

Nestor went from looking worried to angry. “He’s dead.”

“No shit! I know that. C’mon.”

“Georgie was a great fireman, a hero. Let him be. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Okay, fair enough. I’m gonna give you another name and if you say to me, ‘She’s dead,’ I’m gonna cuff you and march you down the street to the One-One-Two and book you. You ready? You understand?”

“Go ahead, yeah.”

“Alta Conseco.”

Now he went from looking angry to nauseous, which, in a way, was all the answer I needed. “I didn’t have nothing to do with that shit.”

I had to be careful here, because as much as I detested scum like Joey Fortuna, I couldn’t betray the deal Nick Roussis had made in order to get him to talk to me. It wasn’t important to me to know how Nick got word about Joey or with whom he had made the deal. You do business in New York City, you have dealings with all sorts of unsavory types. Ridiculous taxes and exorbitant fees weren’t the only reasons prices in the city were high. There were all sorts of invisible taxes and hidden fees too. Part of every dollar you spent on trucking or carting refuse or construction went into some gangster’s pocket and it wasn’t just the Mafia, the Irish, the Chinese, the Columbians, or the Russians anymore. Organized crime was a growth industry and everyone from the Indians to the Israelis to the Dominicans to the Haitians to the Vietnamese were looking for their taste. Don’t think for a second that Aaron and I were somehow above it. We weren’t. We knew where the money went and that’s why I couldn’t hurt Nicky.

“My bullshit-o-meter is starting to click away here, Nestor. Word on the street is that you were a middleman between a hitter and Jorge Delgado. I don’t have the hitter’s name, not just yet, but if I start digging around out there, I’ll find it and I’ll find him. He’s not gonna go down by himself, not for murder one.”

“Georgie was pissed at those two EMTs. When he got that way, there was no calming him down. I tried, I swear. I tried, but he just got madder. I made a few phone calls, that’s all. One guy took the job, but when the guy found out who Georgie wanted him to hurt, he backed out. When Georgie told me he offered the guy money to kill her, I told Georgie I was out of it. I mean, we was all mad at the two EMTs, especially us Puerto Ricans, but I didn’t want to kill nobody.”

“But how about Georgie? After you told him you didn’t want to be part of it anymore, did he let it go?”

“It wasn’t Georgie’s way to let things go. He was a stubborn man.”

“What happened when he found out Alta Conseco had been murdered?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know, Nestor? There goes my bullshit-o-meter again.”

“I mean I don’t know because Georgie took that week off.”

“Did he go away on vacation?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, he said he stayed home and did work around the apartment.”

“And when he came back to the job, how was he?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He was himself.”

“Was he still angry? Did he say anything, anything at all about Alta Conseco’s homicide?” I held up my hand. “Listen, Nestor, don’t even try to con me here. If you’re lying to me about this, I’ll know it, so think hard before you answer.”

Feliz bowed his head and mumbled something I only caught part of. I told him to repeat it loudly enough for me to hear.

“He said, ‘One down, one to go.’”