Carmella turned back to me, placing a finger across her lips.
“My grandmother lives downstairs.”
I preferred her whisper to the devil’s.
We climbed a steep flight of unlit stairs. Cranky with age, the steps complained at each footfall. Carmella seemed not to notice. I think maybe my guilt had given me rabbit ears, that what I heard in the creaks and moans in the old wood were admonitions. I heard, but did not listen.
With laundry strewn on the living room floor, open Chinese food containers on the coffee table, Melendez’s apartment was sloppy and disorganized and not so very different from any other single, lonely cop’s. Though I had difficulty imagining Carmella Melendez ever being lonely.
Then again, I was probably confusing loneliness and solitude. She would have had all the company she ever wanted; but I understood better than most about loneliness in the heart of the crowd. It’s what’s inside that keeps us apart. Over the years, the secrets I kept had isolated me. And it dawned on me that the secrets I kept had pushed Katy away. Build a fortress well enough and it even keeps love out.
Sometimes, like at the grand opening party, the only other person I could see in the crowd was my father-in-law. We were alone together. I wondered if Carmella Melendez had secrets, too. For her sake, I hoped not.
“Drink?” she asked.
“Scotch.”
“I’d try the beer.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“It’s all I’ve got,” she said. “Come on in the kitchen. It’s neater in there.”
She was right. The kitchen was immaculate. More likely from lack of use than anything else. She noticed me notice.
“I can cook, but. .”
“No one to cook for. I know.”
“My grandmother brings stuff up for me sometimes and we eat together a few times a week. She’s getting old and is beginning to forget things sometimes. This way I can keep an eye on her.”
I sat down at the little round-top table as she fished two Coronas out of the fridge.
She handed me a bottle. “No limes, sorry.”
“I’m not a lime sort of guy.” I took a pull on my beer and waited. I’m not sure why or what for, but I hadn’t felt this awkward in a very long time. Melendez stood her ground, leaning against the refrigerator. Things were rapidly progressing from awkward to downright uncomfortable, when Carmella threw me the sharpest breaking curveball I’d ever seen.
“I want you to like me.” There was that whisper again.
“What do you think I’m doing here?”
“No. I want you to like me, Moe, not just want me. I know how to make men want me. That’s something I could do even before I knew how.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it. Just that I know I’m pretty.”
I got up and stood close to her, softly brushing her cheek with the back of my hand, tucking a wayward strand of silk black hair behind her ear. “You’re more than pretty, Carmella.”
Leaning forward, I rested my lips gently on hers. It was more a caress than a kiss, really, neither of us willing to take it further. Still, it was electric. Carmella slid her lips along mine and nestled her head in the crook of my arm and against my chest. She threaded herself through and around me, holding me desperately tight. I can’t explain it, but there was an old yearning in her touch, something way beyond simple attraction. When she finally relaxed her hold and looked back into my eyes, it was one of the most disquieting moments in my life. Guilt? No, not this time. I don’t think so. I recognized something almost frightening in the depths of her stare.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to ruin it,” she said.
“Ruin what?”
“This. . Us, if I tell you. .”
“If you tell me what?”
Now she completely freed herself, ducking under my arms, and walked away. Gazing out into the darkness through the little window above the kitchen sink, her back still to me, she said, “Remember the other day in the car on the way to Fountain Avenue when I was saying that getting my shield had nothing to do with my being Puerto Rican or my-”
“I remember. You were giving me a song and dance about being a good cop.”
“I am a good cop.”
“I believe you, but what’s this got to do with-”
“I am a good cop,” she repeated, trying to convince the both of us. “But maybe I did make a compromise I shouldn’t have. I just wanted that shield so bad.”
Yeah, tell me about it. “What kinda compromise? Who’d ya-”
“-fuck?” She turned toward me. “That’s what you were gonna ask, right? It always comes down to that-who I fucked to get ahead. I didn’t fuck anybody! This ain’t about pussy or passports.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. You’re right. So if that wasn’t it, what was it?”
“I knew about the wire in the interview room,” she said, looking anywhere but at me.
“How?”
“I put it there.”
“You what?”
“I put it there,” she repeated, head hanging low.
Now I understood her reaction when I told her about what was on the tape. She was worried about being found out.
“Whose idea was it?”
“Not mine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Chief McDonald. He put me up to it.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” I seethed. “The chief of detectives has a bug planted in his old precinct house and he winds up an apparent suicide, and you don’t think to say anything!”
“I knew this would ruin it.”
I was at her in a flash, my hands grabbing her shoulders and spinning her around.
“You’ve got a lot more to worry about than us, Carmella.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she growled, pulling out of my grasp. “I just wanted my shield. You can’t understand.”
I ignored that last part. “Okay, okay, let’s start from the beginning. When did Larry first come to you?”
“Technically, I went to him.” She took a long sip of her beer. “About eighteen months ago I got called into my C.O.’s office at the Seven-Seven and he told me to report to One Police Plaza.”
“And Larry Mac was waiting.”
“He said he’d been keeping his eye on me since I got outta the academy. Had my personnel jacket right in front of him. I thought he was going to put the moves on me, you know? I mean, it’s not like every dick with stripes or brass buttons hadn’t used a variation of that ‘keeping my eye on you’ line since the day I got on the job. What’s that look for?” she asked, noticing the smile spreading across my face.
“Believe me, Larry loved women, but you had to understand him. He was an ambitious bastard. If he saw a way you’d be of use to him, your looks would have become beside the point. That was just who he was. And if he saw you were hungry. . watch out! That was his talent, spotting people’s hungers. So what happened?”
“So he asked me if I thought I’d make a good detective.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said no, that I’d make a great detective.”
“Let me guess. He put a small box in front of you on the table and told you to go ahead and open it up. Inside, you found the thing you were desperate for, a shield, and Larry said something like, ‘Congratulations, Detective Melendez.’” I could see by her expression I’d gotten it about right.
“He said he might have special assignments for me from time to time.”
“But not right away. No, he would want to see if you could handle the job and the abuse you were bound to take for getting the bump so early in your career.”
“That’s some spooky shit, Moe, the way you knew him. You even say the words he said.”
“It was hard-learned, what I know about Larry. We came up together. So when did he come back to you with the special assignment?”
“About six months later, when I was in the One-Eleven, he asked me to do some minor crap. He had me check up on someone, another detective. I wasn’t supposed to say anything to anybody, no matter what. Then like a week later, two guys from-”