Richard Price - The Whites

“Looking for?” Lazar blinking in confusion.

Billy looked off, trying to control his temper. The guy was in the closet and he was scared of being dragged out. And that was all that this was about.

“So why am I here,” he said. “He’s trying to blackmail you?”

“No, but to be honest I never felt comfortable around him, and now every time I see him he smiles at me like he knows me. From what I understand he’s lost his job and he’s this close to losing his condo. And I don’t want to go to the local police here, it would only make matters worse. So, I was wondering… is there any way, in your capacity as a New York City detective and the parent of one of our students, could you maybe have a talk with him before he does anything we’ll both regret?”

“So Eric Salley was not the guy who approached my son.”

“No, believe me, I would have recognized him from a mile away.”

“How about you, are you the one?”

“Am I the one, what…”

Billy got up to leave.

“So, can you help me?” Lazar asked.

“I’ll make some calls,” he muttered, Billy-speak for Go fuck yourself, and then he was gone.

Leaving everybody home alone like that…

As Billy made his way back to Yonkers his anger toward Lazar started to fade. The guy had been terrified, had been carrying the burden of being who he was all his life and just couldn’t imagine surviving the exposure. But gay, not gay, or whatever else, Billy couldn’t imagine living his day-in, day-out life with a secret so heavy on his heart that the only viable alternative was some kind of oblivion.

Sometimes he worried about Carmen having that kind of weight on her, some specific interior thing that made her so anxiously alert during the days and such a tormented thrasher at night, that made every therapy session he had ever attended with her feel like a complete waste of time, filled with sulky bluster and air-ball bullshit, that periodically and without warning dropped a black-dog mantle over her so profound that it might be days before she could bring herself to open the bedroom door.

There were times when he wondered whether she had been sexually abused as a child and never told anyone or as a frightened teenager had abandoned an unwanted baby — that’s where his worst-case imagination came to an end — but one thing he knew for sure: if she could ever find it in herself to finally speak the name of her demon, she would most definitely survive. Her husband would make sure of it.

Pulling into his driveway, Billy saw the silhouette of a stocky male prowling the lawn.

At first he was too startled to move, then moved without thinking, bolting from the car to bull-rush the intruder from behind. As soon as he brought him to ground, landing on top of the guy in a way that forced the air out of both of them, a second figure came running from around the back of the house and bellowed, “Freeze!” while simultaneously blinding Billy with a fierce beam of light. At which point the first cop got up, turned to Billy, and punched him in the head.

And so he was introduced to 24/7 direct patrol coverage, Billy talking as fast as he could to avoid being cuffed and thrown into the back of the Yonkers PD cruiser sent to protect his home and family.

At three in the morning, when Billy entered the sickly bright all-night gas station mini-mart off Frederick Douglass Boulevard, the young kufied African cashier was standing behind the counter, a half-smile on his face as he posed with cops, the majority of whom were holding out beers or candy bars for him to ring up while their partners snapped away with iPhones. The Wheel had said robbery-homicide, body on the scene, but all Billy saw was the cashier, the clowning uniforms, and Stupak.

“Where’s the body?”

“Are you blind?” Stupak answered.

Wading through the posing cops, he took a closer look at the cashier: the smiling kid was stone-dead on his feet, a dime-sized bloodstain barely discernible on the chest pocket of his thick burgundy shirt. On the counter to his right sat a half-eaten Hot Pocket, still steaming from the microwave; to his left was a coiled nest of wooden prayer beads and an accounting textbook.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Billy bellowed at the uniforms. “Everybody out.”

Once they were gone, Billy took an extra moment to contemplate his upright victim, then had to turn away; staring into those unblinking yet still expressive eyes felt almost rude.

“It’s like Madame Tussauds,” Stupak said.

“You pull the store cameras?”

“Of course.”

“Did you…”

“Of course.”

“Any wits?”

“Feeley’s in the back room interviewing the cabbie that called it in.”

“Feeley’s here?” Billy surprised but not really, having figured that after their car talk, Gene would either start showing up like clockwork just to spite him, or he’d take to heart Billy’s suggestion to become a full-time no-show and never be seen again, a winning outcome either way.

“Is Butter here?”

“Give him a break, he just blew a big audition today.”

“Playing what?”

“Are you going to make me say it?’”

“A detective, right?”

Stupak walked away.

“Hey, Sarge?” a uniform called out from the open door. “There’s a guy out here.”

Billy stepped out to see a plainclothes detective in jeans and a hoodie leaning against the door of what he guessed was a dope-confiscated vintage Firebird. Behind the narc, two uniforms posted at the pumps were waving off all cars, at this hour mostly taxis pulling in to gas up.

“Sorry to pull you out. I didn’t want to contaminate your scene in there.”

“Too late for that.”

“John MacCormack,” offering his hand, “Brooklyn North Narcotics.”

“Excuse me,” Billy said, walking over to the uniforms at the pumps. “These cars pulling in?” he said. “They’re probably habituals, so start taking their vitals before you cut them loose, especially the hacks.”

Moving back to MacCormack, Billy finally shook his hand. “So, John, what can I do for you?”

“I need to know your interest in Eric Cortez.”

“Come again?”

“You ran his name yesterday? It raised a flag.”

“Yeah, I did, him and a few others.”

“Can I ask why?”

Billy knew the worst thing he could do was lie. “I was over at the Four-six wrapping up my Fives on a shooting. I had some time to kill, so I looked up a few bad guys from back in the day.”

MacCormack looked off, smiling in temporary retreat.

“Like Facebooking old girlfriends,” Billy said. “Why do you want to know?”

MacCormack let the question hang in the air, Billy not liking that at all.

“OK,” Billy said, suddenly too nervous to wait him out, “I’m guessing that since Cortez is too stupid to be running any kind of crew or moving enough weight to be worth your while otherwise, he’s your CI, most likely in deep for you with some bigger fish, and right now you’re coming up here to see if he’s into some of kind of outside jackpot that he neglected to tell you about. But I’m just guessing.”

“Hang on a sec,” MacCormack said, then walked away to make a brief phone call.

The CSU van finally rolled up, the emerging detectives heading to the mini-mart with their kits and cameras, probably unaware that the tall young man visible through the plate-glass window and looking as if he were ready to ring up a beer was their body.

“Look,” Billy said when MacCormack came back, “it was just curiosity on my part. I probably shouldn’t have run him and I’m sorry I did, but number one, I’m not looking to fuck anybody’s play here, and two, you’re coming to me at three in the morning about this and not answering any of my questions, so maybe you can just tell me this… Am I in some kind of jam here?”