and so it was with me. It was injuring my knee all those years ago that started the flood.
Escobar put more distance between us with each stride. Time was I could have reached around behind me and come up with something to make him think a little harder about running away. Problem was that in spite of my scent, I wasn’t a cop and I wasn’t going to pull out my. 38 on a busy Greenwich Village street. For all I knew, this was a misunderstanding, that Escobar might have been an illegal alien and thought I was an immigration agent. Half a block into the chase, I stopped running and watched Tino Escobar disappear into the crowd and the fallen darkness. Even without Escobar, I had made progress. Robert Tillman was now something more to me than an innocent corpse and I had the contact information for the two women who worked at Kid Charlemagne’s. I didn’t know how things would play out or if it would help explain why Alta and Maya had let Robert Tillman die. I didn’t know a lot of things, but for the first time since Carmella had asked for my help, I felt close to an answer. I felt it in my bones.
THIRTY-SIX
I knew something was up. Pam was standing just inside the door when I walked into my condo. It wasn’t that she hugged and kissed me. It was the way she hugged and kissed me: tentatively, almost shyly, as if we had an audience. And when I stepped out from the little alcove between the front door and my living room, I saw Carmella. She was sitting on the couch, a half-finished glass of beer in her hand.
“You two have to talk,” Pam said, heading for the bedroom door. “I’ve got some calls to make.”
We waited for the bedroom door to close and for the other to speak. I wasn’t in the mood for a test of wills or Carm’s mind games, so I just spoke.
“You show up in New York unannounced. You leave without notice. Then you come to my house without letting me know you’re coming. You’re just full of surprises these days.”
“Do you love her?” Carmella asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “She loves you, you know?”
“None of your business. Move on.”
“You’re mad at me.”
“I’ve been mad at you for nine years. You left me, remember?”
“No, you are mad because I took Israel back home. I had to get him back to school. That’s all.”
“It’s not why you’re here, though, is it? You’re not here to talk about why I’m mad at you or to talk about Israel or even about me and Pam.”
“Then why am I here?” she asked, her tone smug.
“To tell me to forget it, to stop looking for Alta’s killer.”
Carmella wasn’t very often speechless. She was now. I don’t know that she was conscious of it, but she kept opening and closing her mouth, groping for something to say like a landed fish gasping for air.
I pressed her. “Isn’t that right? You want me to stop, don’t you?”
She couldn’t look at me. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I also went away to think a little. I realize it doesn’t matter if I find out who is responsible for killing Alta. It was a foolish idea. My sister is dead and I can’t make things better between us. I cannot make right my turning my back on her.”
“You were never much good at lying to me, Carm.”
That pissed her off. She jumped up from the couch and got in my face, the faintly sour smell of beer strong on her breath. “Everything I just said is true.”
“The words are true, but you’re lying. That’s not why you want me to stop looking.”
“Don’t be stupid, Moe.”
“You want me to stop looking because you’re worried I would find out that Alta was a lesbian. Maybe that her being gay had something to do with her murder and if I found out what happened, it would all come to light. You’re too late,” I said. “I went to Alta’s old apartment and I spoke to her landlady. She told me you’d come by and taken your sister’s things out of the apartment, so I went to the house on Ashford to talk to you. The old man across the way told me you left with Israel.”
“That’s not it,” she said, again turning away.
“I couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t want me to see her personal stuff. You were a detective, the best detective I ever knew, for chrissakes! Of all people, you would know how important personal stuff could be. A scrap of paper with a name on it, a phone number, a matchbook, whatever-anything could be crucial. Why, I wondered, would Carm ask me to do this and then tie my hands behind my back by hiding stuff? The only answer that made sense was that there was something you didn’t want me to know about Alta. It didn’t take me long to figure out what that thing was once I dug a little deeper. I actually should have recognized it sooner from the hate mail, from the things they called your sister. Did you really think it wouldn’t come out? And why the fuck would it matter?”
“It’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The way Alta was. It’s wrong.”
“Say it, Carmella. Say it out loud, because I can’t believe what I think I’m hearing.”
“With women. It’s wrong.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“You didn’t see the things she had-the letters from her girlfriends, the pictures of her doing things, the… It’s wrong.”
“You fucking hypocrite! You’re ashamed. You’re going to stand there and tell me you’re gonna judge your sister because she was gay. Is that what you’re saying? You, who turned your back on your whole family because you felt they were ashamed of you? You’re just like them. No, worse than them, because you let their shame change your entire life. You know better than they did.”
She was seething, her face red. “I could not help what happened to me.”
“And you think this was a choice for your sister, that she woke up one day and said I’d rather be a lesbian? In 2009, you’re going to stand there and say this was her choice like what clothes to wear? The only thing about this whole mess that was your sister’s choice was letting Robert Tillman die untreated. You know, Carm, in my head I always believed that you couldn’t know somebody else no matter how close you were to them. I believe that because I don’t think people even know themselves. Still, you fool yourselves sometimes because otherwise you can’t live in this world. I fooled myself about you. I don’t know you at all.”
Her whole body clenched. “Leave it alone, please.”
“Maya told me that Alta never forgave herself for what happened to you as a girl, that she blamed herself until the day she was murdered because she felt she should have stopped you from being taken. Do you even care? But you cut her out of your life, so how could you know that? And now you’re doing it a second time, cutting her out of your life, turning your back on her again. Suddenly you’re not ashamed of her letting a man die, but of her fucking women. You should be ashamed
… of yourself.”
Carmella reared back and slapped me across the face. Now I was stunned and speechless.
“You did what I asked,” she said, walking to the door. “For that I will always be grateful.”
“I don’t want your gratitude. I don’t want anything from you, but I’m not leaving it alone. You have to know that, Carmella. I’m not leaving it alone.”
She stopped in her tracks, about-faced, and asked, “What does it matter to you? Like you said, she let a man die. She’s dead. Nothing will change that. Why do you care?”
“Maybe because no one else does. Someone has to care.”
“And that’s you, right, Moe? Always you. Moe is the heart at the center of the world.”
“Not for much longer.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Now, if you don’t mind,” I said, gesturing at the door. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
“I don’t want to know,” she said, her back to me as she walked through the door.
