Joseph Teller - Overkill

He walked to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet and searched for something strong. But most of the pill bottles were either empty or bore expiration dates from the previous millennium. He settled on a couple of Motrin. Motrin? Perhaps some overnight guest had left them behind. Then again, headaches were sort of like brain cramps, weren’t they? Next he brewed himself a pot of strong caffeinated coffee and downed two cups, black and bitter.

No migraine was going to get in his way.

An hour later, Jaywalker found himself standing on the corner of 112th Street and Third Avenue, where, according to Jeremy, there’d once been a barbershop. He stopped everyone who looked like they might speak English, and asked them if they remembered one. To those who answered him with a blank stare and a “No comprendo,” he tried “Barberio” and pointed to his own hair, just to make sure they wouldn’t mistake him for a barbarian. Finally an old man with no teeth shook his head and said, “No mas .”

“Si, si,” said Jaywalker. “But donde was it?”

Like an idiot, he’d taken French and Latin.

“Come with me,” said the man, in perfect English. And took him a half a block east, where he pointed out a small shop with the word Botanica printed above it.

Inside were rows upon rows of shelves overflowing with dusty jars and amber bottles of vitamins, supplements and herbal remedies. Bilingual hand-lettered signs explained which were good for stomach ailments, which immediately improved eyesight or hearing, and which promised to cure cancer or SIDA, the Spanish equivalent of AIDS. There were cloves for toothaches, mercury compounds for gout, and dried chicken heads for use in Santeria rituals.

Jaywalker was not tempted.

The proprietor, a small woman with a ready smile, spoke no English. “Momentito,” she said, and ducked beneath a curtain and into a back room. When she returned a momentito later, she was accompanied by a girl of seven or eight, presumably her daughter and translator.

Jaywalker explained his business. Did they know if the place had ever been a barbershop? Yes. By any chance, had they bought out the lease from the owner of the barbershop? Yes, exactly. Did they happen to remember his name? No, but if he cared to wait a few minutes, they had papers.

As Jaywalker’s former therapist might have said, “Ahaaa!”

Twenty minutes later, Jaywalker reemerged into the sunlight. In his left pocket, as a result of his appreciation and a twenty-dollar bill, was a small bottle containing a scary fetal-like object labeled Black Toadwort and unconditionally guaranteed to cure him of migraines forever. But even were it to fail to live up to its claim, it would be well worth the investment. For in his right pocket was a piece of paper bearing the careful, practiced lettering of a third grader.

Francisco Zapata

Frankie and Friends

Barbershop

It wasn’t all that far, so from the botanica Jaywalker walked north to 115th Street and the projects, where he found the building that matched the address Jeremy had listed at the time of his arrest. He slipped the lock of the outer door with a credit card and found the tenant board. There were two Estradas listed, one for 3G and the other for 8F. He pressed the buzzer for 3G, hoping it would be the right one. He knew from experience that the chances of either of the elevators working were slim, and the prospect of climbing seven floors was somewhat less than appealing.

“Quit pressing the buzzer, you fuckin’ junkie bastards!”

He tried 8F.

“Who are jew?” came the familiar gravelly voice of a woman.

He spent the first half hour in Carmen’s apartment trying to catch his breath, the next half hour declining her offers of food, and the final half hour quizzing her on what she knew about Miranda.

“Very, very pretty.”

There seemed to be something of a consensus on that point.

“Miranda Raven.”

A last name.

“’Cause her father was like a Indian, a real Indian. From Florida. Her mother told me that, when Jeremy was in Puerto Rico. The Semaphore tribe, I think she said.”

Or perhaps the Seminoles. But whichever it was, she’d fled the city immediately after the shooting, afraid for her daughter. “To Baltimore,” said Carmen. “That’s in Marilyn.” She still had a phone number for them, though. She’d saved it for Jeremy, so that when the problem was finally over, he could call Miranda up if he wanted to and go looking for her.

“Very, very pretty,” she repeated, as though that was explanation enough. And maybe it was.

She dug out the number and let Jaywalker copy it down. “Jew going to call her?” she asked.

“No,” said Jaywalker, who didn’t want to frighten Miranda off with a call from a total stranger. “You’re going to call her mother and ask her to have Miranda call me.”

“Okay. But are jew sure you don’t want something to eat?”

Funny, she didn’t look Jewish.

The following day Jaywalker checked with the licensing division of the Department of State. Francisco Zapata had indeed been the sole proprietor of the barbershop where the botanica now was, and he’d done business under the name “Frankie and Friends.” If he’d employed anyone, it had been strictly off the books. Officially, at least, his “friends” appeared to have been his customers. And a little over seven months ago, Zapata had indeed sold his shop and requested that his licensing status be changed from active to retired. Despite a requirement that he furnish a forwarding address for tax purposes and service of process, he’d failed to do so, and the appropriate blank on the form listed his current whereabouts as “unknown” and his next of kin as “none.”

Now most other investigators, and just about all other lawyers, would have quit right there, writing off the notion of the barbershop owner being a witness as a dead end. But Jaywalker was stubborn to a fault. To him there were no dead ends, just detours. So he made a note in his To Do file, which had by that time grown to a dozen pages. He’d reached the age in life where he no longer trusted his memory to serve him. If something was worth remembering, it was worth putting down on paper. That way, he could save his diminishing brain cells for the important stuff, like remembering to eat at least once a day, shaving every other day and calling his daughter once a week. Back when his wife had been alive, one of her jobs had been to serve as his constant reminder. He’d been ambivalent about it at the time, and had even accused her of being a nag when she got pushy about it. Only with her death had he come to realize just how many hats she’d worn during their marriage, and how utterly lost he was without her.

Katherine Darcy called the following day. Evidently Jaywalker’s “close to the breast” slip had caused her to take a step back from being Katie. Once again, she was all business on the phone.

“The toxicology and serology reports have come in,” she said. Not “I found them,” or “I’ve decided to let you in on what they say.” No, they’d come in . Almost a year late. Which, to Jaywalker, could only mean there had to be something in them that was good for him and bad for her.

“Do you want me to send you copies of them?” she asked. “Or fax them to you?”

“You can send them,” he said. “My fax is down at the moment.” As it no doubt would have been, if he’d had one. “So what do they show?” he asked her, knowing it would make her squirm to read off anything that might give him an advantage, however small.

“The usual,” she said. “Ethanol and opiates in blood, bile and brain.”