Unknown - The Genius

That’s not exactly true. I was almost bowled over. Isaac seemed to feel nothing. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt underneath a denim jacket that could have yielded enough pairs of jeans to outfit a dude ranch. He attracted the attention of the cops sitting in front of the building, who halted their shit-shooting to jab gloved thumbs at the giant coming up the steps.

We made our way into the lobby, where Samantha was waiting. She saw Isaac and blinked in wonderment. “Uh, hi.”

“Hi,” Isaac said. Then he chucked me on the arm, more like a good hard punch by most people’s standards. “Zit okay if I wait in the car? Police make me nervous.”

I told him I’d call when I was ready. Samantha watched him lumber out.

“Wow,” she said.

The elevator required a keycard and a code. On the fifth floor we walked

into the midst of a raucous lunch break, three young men and two young women whose conversational leitmotifs appeared to be fuck, fuck you, and fuck you you fucking fuckface. Samantha introduced me as a friend, which I thought was generous.

“Hey,” they said, variously.

“What’s going on?” Samantha asked one of the girls.

“Mantell’s car got broken into.”

“Right in front of the fucking building,” said one of the men. He had black hair and wore a heavy gold watch.

“They took his GPS.”

“You bet they did. It’s ten o’clock in the fucking morning. There’s fucking cops everywhere. There’s fucking Mr. Wong’s across the street, with a picture fucking window. And nobody saw anything?” He shook his head in disgust. “What the fuck. The cop I talked to goes, ‘Do you know anyone who might have anything against you?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, only about three hundred people I’ve put in prison. How’s that narrow it down for you.’”

Everyone laughed.

“The apocalypse is nigh.”

“The apocalypse, my friend, is old news.”

“Did they take your badge?”

“Why would they take my badge? If I were them, I wouldn’t want to impersonate us. We can’t stop a breakin—in broad daylight—in the fucking epicenter of borough law enforcement. So, no. They did not take my fucking badge. You know what Shana said, though. I couldn’t fucking believe this. You know what she said?”

“What.”

“I told her what happened, and she was like, ‘Who did it?’ “

There was a pause. Then everyone broke up laughing.

“No …”

“She said that?”

“Sweardagod.”

“Who says that?”

“She does.”

“She’s a fucking moron.”

“Hey Shana.”

“Yeah,” came a voice from a distant cubicle.

“You’re a fucking moron.”

“Fuck you.”

Samantha escorted me across the floor. For the most part, it looked like any other office, with fuzzy gray partitions, desks crammed into corners, a copy machine loose at the hinges, bulletin boards, file cabinets shingled with magnets, family photos pinned up wherever room could be found. Any other office, except for the anti-domestic violence campaign posters; or the state trooper with the shaved head and large gun, chickenpecking on an old-fashioned word processor; or the significant chunk of a compact car—hood, two doors, and a tire—lying in the hallway (“Evidence,” Samantha explained). She greeted and was greeted by all.

“Why is everyone so young?” I asked.

“Dick Wolf does the hiring,” she said.

Her office had a glass door that she shut to drown out the curses and laughter.

“Did he really get his car broken into outside the building?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“That’s crazy.”

“That’s Queens.” She rummaged around on her desk, shuffling forms and e-mail printouts and files and unopened envelopes. Atop the windowsill were three mugs: a DA seal, Fordham, NYU law. A matted teddy bear dressed as a fireman. A photo of her father, and another of her and her sister in bathing suits on the beach. A brass Gordian knot, dangling on a string tacked to a shelf holding legal books. The screen saver on her computer faded in and out hypnotically, rotating images of a green countryside.

“Ireland,” she said, noticing my stare.

“Is that where your family’s from?”

“County Kerry. My dad’s side. My mom’s Italian. I’ve never been to either place, but if I start saving up what’s left of my salary at the end of every month I should be able to afford a trip when I’m seventy-five.”

She found what she was looking for, a set of keys for her file cabinet. She opened up a drawer full of compact discs and transcripts. I glanced inside but she closed it.

“Not ours.”

“Love letters?” I asked.

“Wiretaps.”

From the next drawer down she produced our box of evidence. It looked bigger than when I’d last seen it, and as she started taking out files and laying them on the desk I realized that she had contributed to its growth.

“This is what Richard Soto came up with.” She handed me a list of old cases, fifteen pages of names, dates, locations, brief descriptions, and the names of the arrested party, if any. I glanced through it and was about to ask her a question when I looked up and saw her staring at the photo of her father, a tissue loosely crumpled in her hand.

She said, “I miss him so much.”

I almost said “I do too.” But I didn’t. I laid a hand on the files and said, “Let’s talk about something else.”

OVER THE NEXT SIX WEEKS we met frequently, either in person or on the phone. During her lunch break we would meet at the Chinese place near the DA’s office; Isaac would take his place three tables away and commence to consume mind-boggling amounts of pork fried rice. We gave him our fortune cookies.

We decided to start from scratch, laying out a fresh timeline of the killings, examining it for patterns. We had the footprint cast reexamined, and were told that the person who’d made it was probably taller than six feet. Samantha asked how big Victor was, and I had to confess that, although one person had told me he was short, in truth I didn’t know. Now that I think about it, that was how we spent the bulk of our time, at least at first: outlining what we did not know.

“Did he go to school?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he have family?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know, exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“How hard were you looking for him?”

“Not very,” I admitted.

“Well,” she said, “now’s your chance to redeem yourself.”

We picked up where I’d left off: calling churches, but this time with greater success. Through dumb luck or diligence, we found a Father Ver-laine, at Good Shepherd in Astoria, who gave us our first sign that Victor had been a real person and not a figment of someone’s imagination. We drove to the rectory and found the priest; he was doing a crossword puzzle, and he greeted us cheerfully.

“Of course I knew Victor,” he said. “He had a better attendance record than I do. But I haven’t seen him in a year or two. Is everything all right?”

“We want to make sure he’s safe. Nobody’s heard from him in a while.”

“I can’t believe he would ever do anything wrong,” said the priest. “His conscience was cleaner than anyone’s, with the possible exception of the Holy Father.”

I asked what he meant.

“Every time I opened the confessional window I’d find him on the other side.”

“What did he confess?”

The priest clucked his tongue. “Those are matters between a man and God. I will tell you that he had far less reason to be there than most people, including the ones who don’t come to confess at all. I told him once or twice not to be so hard on himself, and that if he didn’t, he’d be in violation of the sin of scrupulosity.” He smiled. “All that meant was that I found him in there the next day, confessing to me about that.”