THIRTY-EIGHT

We weren’t quite to the Flatbush Avenue exit on the Belt when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number, but I’m such a curious bastard, I picked up anyway. It was a real flaw of mine that it was difficult for me to ignore a ringing phone or a knock at the door. Over the years I had done a lot of talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses and kids selling fundraising raffles. Someone once said your biggest weaknesses are also your greatest strengths. Might have been Ben Franklin. Might have been Charles Manson. I forget. Well, curiosity was an abiding weakness of mine. I could never just stand back and let it be. Wasn’t in my nature. I wondered about what would happen to my curiosity when I was dead. Where would it go? What happens to the energies that drive the engines that drive us? Do they just vanish?

“Is this Moses Prager?” a man’s voice on the other end of the line asked.

“You tell me. You’re the one calling this number.”

He repeated the question. “Is this Moses Prager?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Detective John DiNardo, NYPD.”

“And what’s this in relation to, Detective?”

That got Fuqua’s attention and he mouthed, “Who is it?”

I covered the mouthpiece and told him.

He shrugged his shoulders. “The name is not a familiar one.”

I could hear the detective talking, but couldn’t make out his words. I went back to him.

“I’m sorry, Detective DiNardo, I was interrupted there for a second. What’s this in relation to again?”

“Do you know a Maya Watson?”

“I might.”

His previously flat affect turned decidedly hostile. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. What’s this about?”

“This is a homicide investigation, Mr. Prager, and I suggest you stop fuckin’ around with me and answer the questions.”

“Is Maya Watson dead?”

There was silence on his end of the phone.

I covered the mouthpiece again and turned to Fuqua. “I think Maya Watson’s been murdered.”

He crossed himself, mumbled something in French, then asked for the phone. I obliged.

“Detective DiNardo, this is Detective Jean Jacques Fuqua of Brooklyn South Homicide, shield number 814. Mr. Prager is assisting me in an investigation that also involves Maya Watson. Mr. Prager will cooperate with you fully, I can assure you. Can you please tell me what happened? Oh … Suicide … Yesterday … How long had she been dead? … Three days … A neighbor … The One-O-Seven … On Parsons Boulevard … We will be there within the hour.”

“Christ,” I heard myself whisper.

Fuqua clicked off and handed back the phone. “Definitely a suicide, but you know procedure. It is treated as a homicide until other possibilities are eliminated and the ME makes the final determination. They found your number and messages on her cell phone. He was just doing his job.”

“Did she leave a note?”

“He did not say, but we will know soon enough.”

…

Detective DiNardo was a forty/forty man: forty years old with a forty-inch waist. He was counting the days until he could put in his papers, collect his pension, and move down to South Carolina. I knew a lot of John DiNardos when I was on the job. They were sort of the opposite numbers to ambitious guys like Larry McDonald and Jean Jacques Fuqua. For the DiNardos of this world, making detective third was as far as their reach extended. They were content to wear Walmart wardrobes, work the cases that came across their desks, and to get fat on fast food. That was fine. In the opera of the law, someone’s got to sing in the chorus. And the fact that DiNardo didn’t aspire to be Sherlock Holmes made him easier to deal with. To him Maya Watson’s suicide was an easy case to clear, so he had no qualms about sharing information with us.

DiNardo handed Fuqua two plastic, amber-colored prescription bottles in an evidence bag. “She swallowed about fifty of those. This was no cry for help. She meant to do the job right.”

Fuqua handed the bag back. “Why was there no report of her death in the media?”

“We didn’t put two and two together at first,” DiNardo said. “That thing with her and her partner letting that guy die, that was months ago. None of us made the connection. Only when I started digging a little did I put it together. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow.”

“Suicide note?” I asked.

“No need for one,” DiNardo said, handing me another evidence bag. “That’s the letter from the FDNY officially dismissing her. I figure it was the last straw and that was that.”

I wanted to argue with him, but what he said made too much sense. I had seen the way Maya had shut herself in and closed herself off. I had smelled the cigarettes and seen the cups and cups and cups of coffee. I had heard her talk about her unending grief over what had happened to Alta. Sure, that day when we went to Coney Island, she seemed better, feisty even, but I was no shrink. People killed themselves for all sorts of reasons, sometimes not very substantial ones. No one could argue that that was the case with Maya Watson. Her reasons seemed substantial enough to me.

It struck me, though, that her suicide had shut the door on the only lead we had. We might now never know what she was being blackmailed about, if Robert Tillman had been the man behind it, or if the blackmail had anything to do with Alta’s murder.

“Detective DiNardo, did you call all the other numbers in her cell phone in and out box?” I asked, not quite sure why.

“I did.”

“And did you get everyone on the phone?”

“Nah. I couldn’t reach one or two of them.”

“Would you mind giving me those numbers and letting me keep trying?”

“Not a problem. Let me get them for you.” He transcribed the numbers from the file onto the back of his card and handed it to me. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

Fuqua and I looked at each other and silently agreed that we had no more questions.

“Nothing I can think of,” I said. “Thanks.”

We all shook hands like captains at the center of a football field before the coin toss.

“Good luck with your case, Fuqua,” DiNardo said. “What these women did was wrong, but I don’t think either one of them deserved their fates.”

I changed my mind about DiNardo. He wasn’t like the guys I’d known on the job. None of them would have been thoughtful enough to look beyond their own gut reactions. The guys I had known would have looked at what had befallen Alta and Maya and said good riddance.