Lisa Unger - Smoke

“Man, you can not put your hands on me like that,” Jorge yelled. “That’s police brutality.” He straightened out his shirt and the baggy jeans that were threatening a trip to his knees.

Matt hovered over him, a good two heads taller and about twice as wide.

“Do something about it, bitch,” he said quietly. Jesamyn strolled over to the window and looked outside as if the view of the brick wall was the most interesting thing in the world. Jorge looked up at Matt and then down at the floor.

“Now, sit down, punk, and answer our questions like you have a clue how to conduct yourself in polite society.” Matt stepped back and hoped, hoped , that he would make a move. But unarmed and with none of the other Kings around, Jorge dropped his attitude. He sank into the couch. Matt was disappointed.

“I told the other cops everything I know,” he whined. “They cleared me. Isn’t this like double jeopardy or some shit to question me again?”

“No. It’s not double jeopardy, you moron,” said Matt. He was about to explain what double jeopardy was but he stopped himself. What was the point?

“When was the last time you saw Rosario?” asked Jesamyn.

“I don’t remember,” he said sullenly, leaning down and picking up the pieces of the remote at his feet.

“You don’t remember,” Jesamyn repeated. “You don’t remember when you last saw her? Or what you told the police the last time they questioned you?”

They danced around with Jorge awhile longer. They asked him a question; he gave a vague answer or pretended he didn’t remember. Finally, he said he wouldn’t talk anymore without his lawyer.

“Who’s going to pay for this?” he asked, holding up the broken remote as they walked out of his Riverside Drive apartment. Neither one of them responded and he yelled the question again as the elevator doors closed on them.

“No one’s going to pay for it,” said Jesamyn grimly in the quiet of the elevator. “That girl and the baby inside her are dead somewhere and no one is going to pay for it.”

“Notice how he talked about her in the past tense?” Matt asked.

She nodded and didn’t say anything else. Sometimes the darkness of the job closed in on both of them. The glow she had earlier in the day was gone. Now she just looked tired. He wanted to put his hand on her arm but he didn’t.

Out on the street, Matt’s cell phone rang.

“Stenopolis,” he answered.

“It’s Lydia Strong.”

“Hey.”

“Thanks for the photo. I think it helped us.”

“Yeah?” he said, the brightening of his tone attracting attention from Jesamyn.

“It connects to something we found. Have you ever heard of an organization called The New Day?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said, unlocking the doors of the Caprice for his partner. Jesamyn climbed inside to get out of the cold and shut the door, peering at him through the glass. He walked over to the driver’s side and leaned on the roof and watched the traffic roll on Riverside. He listened as she told him what they’d learned since he saw her last night and how the logo on the van in the photograph was the same as the building in the Bronx.

“There’s nothing in those hotline transcripts,” he said, feeling slightly defensive suddenly. Was she going to start trying to tell him he hadn’t done a thorough job with the leads they had? “We’ve been following up.”

“Yeah,” said Lydia. “I know you have. We’ve got some trainees going over them too. So far we don’t have anything there, either. We’re moving forward with The New Day.”

“Sounds like vapor to me, Ms. Strong,” he said. It had taken her less than twenty-four hours to go off in a direction he’d never even considered and come up with a more substantial lead than he’d approached in two weeks. It pissed him off a little.

“Call me Lydia,” she said. “And I think you’re wrong. If you have something better to go on, please share it.”

He smiled at her though she couldn’t see him. What had Kepler said? Pit bulls. They were like pit bulls.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can find out about The New Day. Maybe they have some complaints against them, something in the system.” It’s not about me, he reminded himself. It’s about Lily. That’s why I hooked Lydia Strong in the first place.

“I was hoping you’d say that, Detective. Call me back?”

“As soon as I get back to the station.”

He hung up and contorted himself into the Caprice.

“Who was that?” Jesamyn wanted to know.

“None of your business,” he said. His bad mood had turned foul.

“Girlfriend?” she teased, punching him on the arm.

“Let’s talk about your love life,” he said, starting the car.

“Let’s not,” she said. He nodded and raised his eyebrows at her.

She frowned at him. “Man,” she said when he stared blankly ahead and pulled out into traffic too quickly. “Who dropped your ice-cream cone on the sidewalk?”

She walked through the elevator doors and stepped onto the hardwood floor. Before entering the giant loft space she bowed. The hours Jesamyn had to herself were precious and few. And she used them well at her kung fu temple. This was the place she cleansed herself with sweat and hard work. She’d come to the martial arts while attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to learn how to defend herself and to develop skills that would help her compensate for her size when she joined the New York City police department, really the only thing she had ever wanted to do with her life. What she’d learned there had taught her valuable lessons about herself, what she was capable of, what she could endure. When she first arrived, young, a little out of shape, lacking confidence, she found a group of people, her Shifu and his black-belt students, who taught her, then gently pushed and cajoled her with respect and faith, into doing things she never would have thought herself able. Her Shifu had a way of believing she could do the things she didn’t believe she could do, and then demanding them out of her with a hard, knowing stare. All her life she’d been told she wasn’t athletic, she wasn’t physical, by a mother who wasn’t those things herself. Her controlling and critical father had considered her a failure for choosing to go into law enforcement, but his disdain for her and for women in general had communicated itself to her in a thousand different ways all her life. She had been in the endgame of a relationship characterized by terrible infidelity and emotional abuse. She came to the temple on Twenty-Seventh Street feeling bad about herself in ways she didn’t even realize. But forced to look at herself in the long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows for two hours, three days a week, she met a whole new woman, one who was defined by her accomplishments and through her actions, not through the negative messages of others who were acting out of their own misery. At the temple she found her strength and speed, she found her center, she found her power.

“Detective Breslow, you look tense,” her Shifu said from his office behind glass walls. He wasn’t even looking at her.

“It’s been a long day, Shifu,” she said with a bow. “Difficult.”

“Leave it at the door.”

“Yes, Shifu.” Passing him and going into the women’s locker room to change. Her Shifu was a badass, the indisputable king of the world he had created. All the black-belt students respected and revered him, the boys wanted to be him. Jesamyn was just profoundly grateful for the things he’d taught her about kung fu and about herself, for his endless patience and the way he’d helped her to hone her techniques. It was the way a father should be: patient, knowing, and understanding. Pushing without insulting, correcting without humiliating, demanding more and better while praising the effort and small successes. She’d never had that kind of instruction growing up, and the little girl inside her worshipped him just a tiny bit for it.