Jonathan Santlofer: Anatomy of Fear

Badge out in front of her, Terri Russo made her way past the uniforms who were trying to maintain order on the Brooklyn street. It was dark, but the combination of yellow street lamps and flashing red beacons bathed the crowd of fifty or sixty people, all angling for a better view, in an eerie orange glow.

Damn it, thought Terri. Didn’t they know better? Perhaps the line between real life and entertainment had finally become so blurred, people just thought it was another reality show.

She stopped a moment, her eyes on the crowd. He could be here .

Her pivotal case had been one of those-a creep who just couldn’t help himself, had to be there, right under the uniforms’ and detectives’ collective noses, watching them clean up his ugly mess. She’d spotted him from a police sketch, followed him without stopping to think, without calling for backup, which some would call foolish-and did-particularly as she’d taken a bullet to her right shoulder. Worth it, if you asked Terri; it was the collar that had catapulted her into her current position, heading up an NYPD Homicide Resource Division out of Midtown North. Hell, she ought to thank the little creep.

“What have we got?” she asked the Brooklyn detective, though she already knew. It was the reason she’d been called-the drawing pinned to the dead man, same as the guy who’d been stabbed in midtown Manhattan.

Stabbed, she thought, not shot. That didn’t make sense.

The Brooklyn detective’s eyes did a slow dance over Terri’s breasts beneath her tight jean jacket, then back up to her face, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail that made her look about eighteen, though she’d be thirty-one in a week.

He handed her the dead man’s wallet. “African American male, shot between six and six-thirty,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Couple of witnesses confirmed the attack, heard the shots, but didn’t see the shooter. Vic’s name is Harrison Stone, lives just there.” He pointed to a four-story brownstone. “Wife’s already made a positive ID, arrived on the scene about the same time the patrol cars did, approximately ten minutes after the shooting.” He angled his head toward a group of detectives, a couple of uniforms, a blond woman crying. “The wife,” he said, maybe sneering,

Terri wasn’t sure.

She noticed one of the crime scene crew removing the sketch from the dead man, about to bag it.

“Over here,” she said, pulling on gloves.

Chief of Department Perry Denton arrived at the scene as if he was expecting a red carpet, klieg lights, and Joan Rivers to ask: Who are you wearing? He wasn’t a big man, but carried himself as if he was. He stuck an unlit cigar between his teeth and surveyed the scene.

Terri thought it was funny that people assumed she’d fucked Denton to get where she was. The truth, if it had been up to Denton she would never have gotten the promotion, not when she’d abruptly ended their affair less than a month after it had started. But that had been over a year ago, when Denton was still heading up Narcotics. How was she to know he’d end up being her boss?

The chief of department took the sketch from her hand, his arm, accidentally-on-purpose, brushing against her chest.

Terri wondered if his wife knew he fucked anything that didn’t have a dick. She turned and headed in the opposite direction. She introduced herself to the dead man’s wife, a glacial beauty who reminded her of that fifties actress Grace Kelly, though right now the woman’s pale blue eyes were red-rimmed, cheeks streaked with mascara. Terri said she was sorry.

“Why…Harrison? It…it makes no sense. Can you tell me…why?” She stared into Terri’s face, waiting for an answer.

“Maybe you can help us figure that out,” Terri said softly.

The woman shook her head, blond page-boy hair swirling like a skirt around her sculpted jawline.

Denton signaled Terri over with a crook of his finger and the kind of smile that had caused all the trouble in the first place. He moved in close as he talked, lemony aftershave she remembered commingling with the smell of cigar. There were another detective and a couple of CS techies flanking him, just enough audience. He waved the sketch. “I want the lab to go over this like they were going through a murdered whore’s pubic hair, you got that?”

Terri flipped open a small notepad and spoke while she wrote, “Like…a…murdered…whore’s…pubic…hair. Got it.”

“Funny,” said Denton. He locked his hand on to her shoulder and kneaded it through her jacket.

She slid out of his grip, her shoulder throbbing. It was the exact spot where she’d been shot. Had Denton realized that? She knew the answer. It hadn’t taken her long to discover the man was a sadist.

He whispered in her ear, “Need a ride back to the city?”

It had been almost a year and she had no intention of changing her mind. I’d rather swim, she thought. “Got my car,” she said, trying to keep the attitude out of her voice. She had to be careful. The man could make her life miserable. Of course she could do the same for his. “I should hang out awhile,” she said. “See what the immediate canvass produces.” This was her second chance and she did not want to blow it.

“Right,” said Denton. “You just do that.”

Nate is Spanish the way Madonna is Jewish.”

My friend Julio grinned at his wife, both junior partners at a downtown law firm where they each argued they were the token, Jessica the woman, he the Latino; their baby asleep in a nearby bassinette while we ate dinner ordered in from the local Chinese restaurant.

“Cálmate,” I said.

The truth was sometimes I didn’t know who I was-my Grandma Rose’s tatelleh or my Abuela Dolores’s chacho.

Hector Lavoe’s La Voz, the voice, was playing in the background, but only because I’d brought the newly reissued CD of the Puerto Rican salsa singer’s groundbreaking 1975 album with me. Otherwise it would have been Mozart or Beethoven, which I still couldn’t get used to hearing in Julio’s house.

I looked around at the leather couch, Persian rugs and antiques, two floors of a brownstone on Ninety-fourth between Fifth and Madison. Ironic, I thought, Julio living the good life only minutes away from the mean streets of El Barrio where he’d grown up.

“This place is too good for you, man.”

Julio made a fist, tapped his heart, and slid into the street talk of his youth. “Don’ worry, brothuh, even though I’m at the top, you still my main-mellow man, mi pana. ”

Jess rolled her eyes. “Must you guys always act like teenagers when you get together?”

“Yo, mira, I think so.” Julio winked at me.

We’d been buddies forever. Julio’s aunt lived in the same tenement as my grandmother and he’d hang out there because it was better than the peeling paint and roaches of the project where he lived with his single mom, who worked day and night to keep a roof over their heads. We met one day in the stairwell, Julio hiding out so his aunt wouldn’t see and tell his mother that her son was smoking dope at age eleven, and he gave me a toke, my first. When I recovered from the coughing fit we started talking, bonding over the music of Prince and Carlos Santana. From that day on we were brothers.

After that I started going uptown all the time. El Barrio was an ugly ghetto, but compared to where I lived-the Penn South apartments on Eighth Avenue and Twenty-fourth, which was filled with old people and had about as much life as a funeral parlor-it was exciting. My parents didn’t like it, but I told them I was in search of my Spanish heritage. Of course that was bullshit. What Julio and I were searching for was alcohol and drugs-and we found them.