According to police reports, Hector had less than a thousand dollars in his bank account. But upon search ing his apartment, they found nearly fifty thousand dollars in cash stuffed underneath a fake floorboard in his kitchen.
Hector was not some young kid with no education dealing to make ends meet. He had an MBA. A freaking business degree. Yet despite the degree, despite the hundred thousand dollars he spent to attain it, Hector
Guardado had not been able to find employment since returning to New York City, his hometown.
The other day I'd stolen Hector's briefcase to learn more about his dealings, to learn more about this group of misfits that my brother may or may not have been a part of. And now the man was dead, murdered in cold blood. Another young man killed like a piece of meat, shot twice in the back of the head, surely by someone who knew him.
Because of that, I called Amanda the moment I got out of the subway. Stopping at the apartment first to pick up the briefcase and its contents, I headed straight for the police. No more clandestine detective work. No more hiding my hand until all the cards were dealt. A life had been taken.
It made me sick to my stomach to think that Hector
Guardado's life might have been taken because of his stolen briefcase, but two days ago he was alive. Two days ago the briefcase, along with the drugs and his cell phone, were in his possession.
And now today he was dead, and the drugs were in police custody. I wasn't willing to write it off as a coincidence.
'You okay?' Amanda asked. I didn't nod. I wasn't the one on a slab somewhere, or being written about in the newspaper. She seemed to get this, because she didn't ask again.
Soon the door opened and a familiar face walked in:
Detective Sevi Makhoulian.
Makhoulian sat down in a chair across from us.
Looked me over, then looked at the items on the table.
He took a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket, spread open the black folds of the suitcase and peered in.
'This everything?'
I nodded.
'And this was all in Guardado's possession when you took it from him.'
I nodded again. 'You can fingerprint it,' I said. 'I never touched the stuff.' I nudged Amanda slightly with my elbow, giving her a silent thanks for the advice.
Makhoulian sighed and leaned back in his chair. He folded his arms behind his head as though deciding what to watch on television. He didn't look the least bit concerned with anything.
'What are you going to do?' I asked.
'Frankly,' he said, 'I'm not sure yet. Unfortunately we can't charge you with theft, because Mr. Guardado would have been our only witness, and frankly it would be a waste of time. Because, though I don't know you that well, anytime a person willingly brings half a pound of weed, a fourth of a kilo of cocaine and enough crack rocks to keep Flavor Flav's teeth chattering for a year, they're not the ones using it.'
'We're not,' Amanda said. 'We weren't.'
Makhoulian nodded, then thumbed his lip. 'Look,
Parker, I know you think your father is innocent. If I was in your shoes, I'd want to do anything I could to help him, too. And if he is innocent, he'll be found as such by a jury of his peers.'
'The case hasn't even gone to the grand jury yet,'
Amanda spat.
'True, but we all know that's a mere formality. We have his fingerprints. We have his receipts from his trip to New York. And we have a motive.'
'Does the name Butch Willingham ring a bell?' I asked suddenly.
Makhoulian looked confused. Said, 'No, why?'
I believed him. 'Nothing,' I said. 'Just a guy who was killed a long time ago.'
'And you bring it up, why, as a brainteaser?'
'I'm not sure why,' I said. 'Just wondering if I'm the only one who thinks there's a lot more to this than a simple case of a guy murdering his son. Since, you know, another young man was just killed in the same manner as Stephen Gaines.'
'The investigation into the death of Hector Guardado is under way,' Sevi said. 'You're a reporter, Henry, right? Can you tell me how many murders were com mitted in New York City last year?'
'Not the exact number, but I believe it was under five hundred.'
'Four hundred and ninety-two,' Makhoulian said.
His eyes were riveted on mine. This was not a history lesson or an attempt to belittle my knowledge. 'Now, first of all, that was the lowest number of murders com mitted in Manhattan in over forty years. First time it's been under five hundred since 1963, to be precise. Thing is, even though that's low for our standards, that's still an awful lot of homicides. Now, think about that word.
Homicide. These four hundred ninety-two people were killed by someone else. They didn't step into open elevator shafts or pee on the third rail. They were killed.
Murdered. Now, you are a reporter. So it's part of your job to report crimes that are extraordinary. Like Sharon
Dombrowski, the elderly woman on Spring Street who was so convinced she was being targeted by a robber that she hooked up an electric cable to her door, so when her poor landlord came by to check on a leak and knocked he was electrocuted to death. Or Percy Whitmore who bought a studio in Little Italy using a loan from his father. Only when he didn't repay in time, Percy's dad came over and smacked his son across the face so hard ol' Percy fell and cracked his skull open on his bookshelf. Accidental? Maybe. But homicides nonetheless.'
'What's your point?' I said.
'See, you write about these instances because they're one in a million. Like a shark attack, they're so gruesome and out of the ordinary that people want to hear about them just like how they slow down when passing a car wreck. What doesn't get that press are the boring murders. The two taps to the back of the head.'
Makhoulian mimicked pointing a gun to his cranium, cocking his trigger finger twice to illustrate the shots.
'You know how many of those nearly five hundred murders were the result of gunshot wounds? Four hundred and twenty-eight. Now, I'm not a mathemati cian, but that's somewhere between eighty and ninety percent. So you're going to come in here and tell me, definitively, that these two murders are the result of some vast conspiracy that I'm too dumb to see?'
'I'm not saying you're dumb. But Hector called my brother that night.'
'According to Verizon, the phone call lasted eight seconds. You know how long eight seconds is? Long enough to realize you've dialed the wrong number before you hang up. There are no other records of these two having ever corresponded, no other calls between the two.'
'You don't see these killings as two pieces to-'
'Pieces my ass, you're reading too much James Ellroy. Know what they teach us in the academy? The rule of lex parsimoniae. Since I'm guessing you're not exactly fluent, what the Latin translates to is 'entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.' Boil down the translation, what that means is if a man is murdered, and the fingerprints on the gun belong to someone he knows, who has access to him, and who has a motive to kill him, I'd be willing to bet my badge, my wife, my mortgage and my iPhone you put that killer in cell block
D you've got the right guy.'
'You said usually,' I replied. 'You said eighty to ninety percent. Well, it's my job to find the exception to your rule. I've told you everything I know. I'm hoping when I walk out of here you do something with it, and don't piss it all away because of what you read in a damn textbook. Because I find that extra few percent,
Detective. Father or not, brother or not, it's just what I do.'
Amanda and I stood up. Waited for Detective Sevi
Makhoulian to say something. When he didn't, we waved at the camera so the observers in the other room would unlock the door. Makhoulian nodded, a click signaled that the door was unlocked, and I left to prove to the detective I was a man of my word.
