Today’s Optimo and its skunky contents came out of cash he got for doing a job for this guy he knew. He called the guy Jack but had no idea if that was the dude’s real name.
About a year ago, Jack had shown up with a tape recorder, asking questions about gangs in the projects. Most folks either laughed at him or gave him the stink eye, but Darrell saw an opportunity. He told Jack he’d talk to him as long as no one knew about it. They’d meet every once in a while at Tompkins Square. Darrell would talk and leave with some easy cash in his pocket.
Darrell figured the dude for a cop, but Jack never pressured him to name any names. Instead he’d just sit and listen while Darrell explained the difference between the genuine article, hard-core gang members, and poo-butt juvenile wannabes. And the various factions-Bloods, Crips, MS-13, Saint James Boys-weren’t about turf, like something out of West Side Story. With new condos and clubs popping up every week, there wasn’t no turf left to fight over. Instead, it was all about the rock. The chronic. The X. The horse. You name the drug, you could find it in the projects. And with each new condo or club, the market expanded, and there was more to fight over.
Sometimes Darrell would talk about stuff that had nothing to do with gangs or drugs. Life in the projects. Life on the streets. Just life. Jack would still pay him, and for a while Darrell wondered if maybe Jack was a faggot.
About eight months back, Jack stopped coming around. Then he showed up again yesterday morning with another job. This time Darrell had to do more than talk, but he also got paid a lot more.
The job wasn’t exactly legal, but Jack had learned enough about Darrell in their earlier talks to know he wasn’t squeaky clean. He just didn’t do any major thugging. As far as Darrell could tell, the police had their hands full. As long as he stayed away from drugs, gangs, and guns, he’d stay alive and out of prison.
After frisking Jack for a wire, Darrell did the job for the man, just like he asked, and gave him what he was wanting today in Tompkins Square. But something was off. It was like he didn’t believe Darrell the ten times he’d told the man he’d turned over all of it. Even after he gave him the gun he had bought for the job, just like the man asked. It was like Jack knew more than he could, like he knew Darrell had skimmed a little something for himself.
Fuck it, he thought, drawing another toke. It was only one little credit card. Dude’s probably some chicken hawk anyway. No way he could get a read on Darrell. No one ever could.
CHAPTER 31
LEON SYMANSKI LIVED on the first floor of a split-level duplex in Queens. Ellie and Rogan had been watching the house for twenty minutes.
“I swear,” Ellie said, “every time I’m in Astoria, I think of Archie Bunker. My father freaking loved that show. He’d watch the repeats at night, even though he’d seen them all five times. I’m sure it never dawned on him his daughter would be pulling a stakeout in the neighborhood where it was shot.”
“See, in our house, we loved the Jeffersons. That’s what I think about when you say Archie Bunker-that Mr. Jefferson had to be damn happy to get the hell out of Archie Bunker cracker town. ‘Well we’re moving on up, to the East Side.’”
“I never knew the words to either of those songs. I thought the first line of that song Archie and Edith sang was, ‘Boil the weakling millipede.’” Ellie wouldn’t normally burden another human being with her horrible singing voice, but she figured there had to be an exception for botched television theme song lyrics. “And I thought the Jeffersons went ‘to a beat up apartment in the sky-y-y.’”
“Now that’s just racist.”
“Oh, and in the bridge-”
“The Jeffersons theme song had a bridge?”
“My brother’s a musician. I thought it was, ‘Key lime pie in the kitchen, Bees don’t buzz on the grill.’”
“That is so damn sad.”
“What do you want? I was five years old. Oh, check it out,” Ellie said, tapping on the dash. “We’ve got something.”
Behind a screen entrance, a walnut door with a small stained glass window opened toward the interior. They couldn’t see inside the house. Seconds later, the screen door opened, and a woman with long, light brown hair emerged in a bright orange peacoat. She held the screen, continuing her conversation with whoever was inside, and then finally let it shut behind her when she turned to walk away.
They had the same reaction.
“She’s pretty young, right?” Rogan asked.
“Yeah, even with your self-proclaimed inability for cross-racial age identifications, yes, she’s young. Really young. My guess is early twenties, maybe even younger.”
“And really pregnant?”
“It’s hard to tell for sure under the coat, but, yeah, I thought the same thing.”
“Should we stop her?”
“No legal basis for it,” Ellie said. “She’s not in distress. And we run the risk that she makes a scene and tips off Symanski.”
They watched as the woman made her way down the street, turned the corner at Thirty-first Street, and took the stairs up to the elevated N train.
“Should we go have a talk with the man inside?” Ellie asked.
“Ready when you are.”
A MAN IN A PLAID FLANNEL house robe answered the door. It took him thirteen seconds after Ellie knocked. Long enough that she and Rogan exchanged a look and placed hands on their service weapons. Not so long that they unholstered.
She recognized Leon Symanski from his booking photo, even though the picture had been as old as the woman who’d left his house moments earlier. The man in front of her was less heavy and had thinning gray hair and whiskers on his chin. He had wrinkles, and his face was beginning to sag. But he also had the same broad nose and hooded eyes as the man who was arrested for sexual misconduct twenty years earlier.
“Leon Symanski?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“We’re detectives from the NYPD. Mind if we have a word with you?”
“What is this about?”
“It’s cold out here, sir. You think we could come on in?”
Symanski opened the screen door and stepped aside. The living room was small with a red brick fireplace and worn furniture. Ellie noticed two small framed photographs on the mantel, but could not make out the images from this distance.
“You work at a club called Pulse?”
Symanski nodded. “Did something else happen there?”