End of Watch

for her.

CHAPTER 38

After Annie went swimming on Sunday morning she and Frank headed for the Baruch Houses. Frank asked, 'Was that true what you told Cammayo yesterday, about wantin' to be a cop?'

Annie offered a crooked grin. 'Let's just say I went to Brooklyn College and one day there was a car crash out front, okay?'

Frank tried not noticing the familiar sights outside her window. 'So why did you?'

'Steady paycheck. Good benefits. Good pension. Somethin' different happenin' everyday. You?'

'Same,' Frank fibbed.

Crossing Canal Street Annie asked, 'You ever been in Baruch?'

Frank nodded.

'It's the largest public housing project in Manhattan. Got twenty-four hundred apartments.'

'I know.'

'How do you—? Don't tell me you lived in Baruch, too.'

'Last two years of high school.'

'Where else?'

'That's all. East Village, to Masaryk, to Baruch.'

Annie went quiet and Frank liked it that way. Her eyes skimmed the skyline, refusing to dip to street level. Even after Annie parked Frank averted her gaze.

'What?'

'What, what?' Frank countered.

'Whaddaya lookin' for up there?'

'Nothin'.' Frank got out. She let Annie lead the way even though nothing had changed in twenty-seven years.

A man in torn clothes started toward the detectives. Recognizing the car and making them for cops he retreated. The women climbed to the fourth floor and found the apartment they wanted.

'You okay?'

'Peachy.'

Annie shrugged and rapped hard on the metal door.

'Who is it?'

'Police.'

'Police?'

'NYPD. Open the door.'

There was grumbling but after a series of locks tripped, a thin, ashen-skinned woman opened the door. Unkempt and red-eyed, she bounced in her own skin. A crackhead.

Holding her ID out, Annie asked, 'Rosalia Calderon?'

'She ain't here.'

'Are you Flora Alvarez?'

'Yeah.'

'Can we come in a minute?'

'For what?'

'We'd like to ask you some questions.'

'I ain't done nothin'!'

'Not about you. About an old homicide, when you would have been about five.'

'Five?' came the shouted reply. 'Don't know nothin' 'bout no homicide when I be five.'

'You might be surprised how much you remember. Can we come in?'

'I don't know.' The woman looked over her shoulder, pulling at a twist of hair. From inside the apartment a television and a radio blared.

'I promise we'll only be a minute.'

Flora pulled the door open.

'Do you live here?'

'Don't it look like it?'

As Frank took in the blankets on the couch, empty Rheingold cans and full ashtray, Annie asked, 'How long have you lived here, Miss Alvarez?'

Flora raised a hand over the floor. 'Since I was dis big.'

'Would you have been livin' here in nineteen sixty-nine?'

Struggling to make the calculations, Flora finally agreed, 'Yeah, I'd a been here.'

'Who else was living here then?'

'My mother. My father was dead. He was a electrician. He got shocked to death when I was four. My brothers woulda been here.' She scowled, reaching for a cigarette. 'Pablo woulda still been here. Maybe. No,' she decided, lighting her smoke and inhaling deeply. 'He be gone by then. I remember he left in winter.'

'Who's Pablo?'

'My brother.'

'How many brothers do you have?'

'Two. Well, three, maybe. I don't know.'

'You don't know how many brothers you have?'

Alvarez scratched under her hairline. 'Pablo he took off in 'sixty-nine and we ain't seen him since.'

'Why'd he take off?'

Alvarez shrugged. 'Berto said a dealer be lookin' for him and he had to go. Owed the man lotta money is the story I always heard.'

'Who's Berto?'

'Roberto. Roberto and Edmundo my brothers.'

'You're sure Pablo took off in 'sixty-nine?'

'Yeah.'

'And it was winter?'

Alvarez bobbed her head without hesitation. 'Pablo had his own bed and when he left, I got one of his blankets.'

Annie and Frank looked at each other.

'And no one's heard from him since?'

Alvarez blew smoke. 'That boy prob'ly been dead a long time now.'

'Why do you say that?'

'He a junkie,' the woman stated wistfully. 'A junkie ain't long for this world.'

Alvarez's foot bounced and between drags she beat a steady tap-tap-tap with her cigarette on the ashtray.

Frank told her, 'Describe Pablo for us. The last time you saw him.'

'That was a long time ago,' Alvarez answered, gazing back into the past.

'Try. How tall was he?'

'Taller than Berto, by a little. Skinny. He was always skinny but he got skinnier after the junk. He wunt light like me. He was dark, like our daddy. And handsome, too. Before the junk, I remember dat. He used to swing me 'round 'til I be dizzy. He made me laugh. He made me a doll once. Outta wood. He liked to carve things. I remember dat. He be always carving some'tin'. He was nice. I liked Pablo.'

'How much older than you was he?'

The question confounded Alvarez. Her face frizzled up. 'I don't know. Maybe twelve, t'irteen years.'

'Did he use for a long time?'

'All my life.'

'Any of his friends still around? Anybody he woulda used with?'

'I don't know.' Alvarez jumped up and started pacing. 'Why all dese questions? Why you wanna know 'bout Pablo? You t'ink he done somet'in'?'