A man being led past us in handcuffs looked at us with interest. So did the cop who was escorting him.
Lopez noticed and made an exasperated sound. “Great. We’re the floor show again.”
I waited until those two men were out of earshot, then I demanded, “How did you even know I was taking birth control pills?” We had never discussed it.
“I saw them in your bathroom a few months ago.”
“You’ve got no right to search my bathroom!”
“I
“Well, you shouldn’t have noticed,” I sputtered, too angry to care how lame that sounded. “It’s none of your business.”
“It is
“So this is what you’ve been thinking about?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
“
I thought about hitting him again.
When I didn’t answer him, he said in exasperation, “
There was a roaring in my ears for a moment, and then everything went silent. I stared blankly at Lopez, suddenly feeling drained and empty. The combination of anger, humiliation, and hurt that I’d been juggling for days caught up with me, as did my fatigue, my financial stress, and my anxiety about finding another job soon enough to keep myself going. I felt ready to collapse, and I could hardly form a coherent thought. I swayed a little, feeling a bit dizzy.
“Are you okay?” He reached out to steady me, then evidently remembered my reactions tonight to his attempts to touch me, and stopped himself. “Esther? You look a little . . . Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m just really tired.” My voice sounded dull and distant to me. I
Lopez rested his hands on his hips, looked at the floor, and let out his breath slowly. “All right, look. Maybe this isn’t the time—”
“I’m still taking my pills.” I’d been on that prescription for several years. It helped stabilize my erratic cycle and control my symptoms. “And I’m definitely not pregnant.” Nature had made that quite clear in recent days.
He nodded. “Okay,” he said quietly.
I knew I was really mad at him, but I just couldn’t feel it now. Everything had shut down. I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. Nothing else mattered.
“Are we done?” I asked wearily. “Can I go?”
“Yeah. But I want you to wait here a minute, okay? I’m going to get a squad car to take you home.”
Since I couldn’t afford to waste money on a cab, and the logistics of getting home by foot and subway at five o’clock on a frigid winter morning seemed overwhelming just now, I nodded my agreement.
A few minutes later, Lopez escorted me outside, where it was dark and bitterly cold, and put me in the backseat of a squad car. A uniformed policewoman was behind the wheel. Her male partner sat in the passenger seat. I nodded in response to their brief greeting.
Lopez said to me, “They’ll wait in the street until they’re sure you’re inside your apartment. Turn on a light so they’ll know, okay?”
I nodded again, too tired to speak.
He said to the cops in the front seat, “Miss Diamond lives on the second floor, and her living room faces the street. Don’t leave until you see the light go on.”
“Understood, detective.”
And then, despite how apathetically exhausted I was now, Lopez managed to enrage me one last time.
“I’ll call you,” he promised me.
It was like being poked with a cattle prod. My temper ignited immediately, my energy suddenly renewed. “I can’t
“I just said the wrong thing, didn’t I?” he guessed.
“It’s exactly what you said when you left my bed a week ago,” I fumed. “And then you never called!”
“He slept with you and then didn’t call?” said the policewoman at the wheel of the squad car. “For a
“That’s right!” I said.
“God,” said Lopez, “I just hate my whole life right now.”
“Oh, come on,” said her partner. “That’s not fair. We’re not all like
“Take Miss Diamond home now,” Lopez instructed them. “
I fumed in stony silence all the way home, huddled in the backseat of the police car while the two cops in the front seat bickered about . . . I don’t know. Mars, Venus, men, women, Lopez, and me. Something like that.
After I let myself into my shabby but welcoming apartment in Manhattan’s West Thirties, I turned on the light, then went to the window and waved at the bickering cops in the car on the street below, so they’d
My daypack by now felt like it was stuffed with bricks. I slid it off my shoulder and dropped it on the floor. Then I headed toward my bedroom, unzipping and unbuttoning my coat. As soon as I slid it off my shoulders, I shivered. My apartment was freezing. I quickly stripped off my clothes, leaving them lying in a heap on the floor, and donned heavy flannel pajamas, followed by a thick, fuzzy bathrobe. After a quick trip down the hall to the bathroom, I crawled into bed, still wearing my bathrobe, and collapsed facedown on my pillow, so relieved to be there.
I was just drifting off to sleep, trying to banish the random thoughts and images that were floating through my head, when I realized who
Once again living up to his nickname, Alberto “Lucky Bastard” Battistuzzi had escaped OCCB’s sweep of the Gambello crew.
When the cops barreled into the restaurant, shouting “NYPD!” and everyone else started screaming in response (in particular, I remembered Ronnie shouting, “It’s a raid!”), Lucky had been in the men’s room, trying to clean splattered lasagna off his clothes. Alerted to what was happening, he must have made his getaway.
I assumed the cops had all the exits covered, but it didn’t surprise me that Lucky had managed to slip away undetected. He was wily, experienced, and quick-thinking, and he knew that building well. He was also, well,
I wondered where he was now. He presumably couldn’t go home, and I doubted he’d gone to Victor Gambello’s house—that would be too obvious to be safe. Besides, for all we knew, the cops were executing a search warrant there, too.
Well, wherever Lucky was tonight, I thought drowsily as I drifted off to sleep, I hoped he was all right.
4
Laoshi
