Puzzle by Nora Phoenix
25
Home. To anyone else, the constant blare of cars honking, of snippets of conversation caught as people rushed past, their ears glued to their phones, of traffic and music and street vendors shouting, would’ve been enough to make them go crazy, but to Milan, it was home. New York. His heart beat faster just from the smell, that unhealthy mix of car fumes, garbage, wisps of body odor and scents, and even the signature smell of Abercrombie & Fitch as he strode by their store. He had come to appreciate DC, but this craziness was home…and it always would be.
“Hey, Bradbury,” O’Donnell, one of the other detectives, greeted Milan as he sauntered into his precinct. “What brings your ugly mug back to us lowly servants? Don’t you have two boyfriends to fuck?”
His faint hope that his fellow boys in blue wouldn’t have learned about his love life evaporated. Oh well. “They’ll survive without me for a day. Had to check in on you assholes and see if you already managed to burn down the place without me.”
He eyed his desk, once a hot mess of papers but now neat as a pin and occupied by a guy who couldn’t be a day over twenty-five. “Who the fuck are you?”
The kid jumped to his feet. “Detective Collins, sir.”
Detective? Was he fucking serious? Milan looked for confirmation at the others. “He’s our newest addition,” Sanchez, a former partner of Milan’s, said.
“For real?” Milan turned to Collins. “Do you even shave yet?”
Much to his surprise, Collins didn’t blush, merely raised his chin, determination settling in a pair of gorgeous gray eyes. “My lack of facial hair bears no significance on my ability to do my job, sir.”
Damn. The boy had a backbone. “Okay, point taken. Mind telling me how old you are?”
“Thirty-two, sir.”
Thirty-two? Dude looked ten years younger. “You good at your job?”
Collins didn’t so much as blink. “At being a detective? Not yet, sir. I only started three weeks ago. But I will be.”
Milan had to admire his confidence. To succeed in the NYPD, one needed that. Confidence and grit because it was one hell of a job. “Good. Glad to hear it. Welcome to the team, kid.”
Oh, he could see the struggle on Collins’s face, the debate with himself whether he should call Milan out on calling him a kid. But he wisely decided to keep his mouth shut, which earned him more bonus points in Milan’s book. Knowing when to take a stand and when to shut up was a crucial skill for a cop and even more for a detective.
He chatted for a bit with his fellow cops, Collins observing without chiming in, then asked, “Anyone know where Reyes is?”
“Interrogating a suspect,” Sanchez said, checking his watch. “He should be out in minutes.”
“Okay.”
“What do you need Reyes for? We heard you were working with the feds now,” Alexa Christiansen, a kick-ass female detective Milan respected the hell out of, asked.
“I am.”
She cocked her head. “That didn’t answer my question.”
“That’s right. Can’t talk about it, but I need someone who can blend in.”
A chorus of affirmative sounds rose around him. They all knew that Reyes was as close to a human chameleon as someone could get. Born in Puerto Rico, he was fluent in Spanish but with a mixed heritage, which meant he could pass for black, brown, and anything in between. The guy had a knack for languages, flawlessly switching from accentless American English to Bronx, Brooklyn, and Milan had even heard him speak Cockney once.
Minutes later, Reyes walked in, and after a warm bro hug, Milan pulled him aside so they could talk in private. “You in for a visit to the South Bronx? I cleared it with the captain.”
“Sure. Who we looking for?”
Milan met his inquisitive gaze. “This is classified.”
Reyes’s eyes lit up. “My neighbors were wondering what was up when some feds showed up yesterday, asking questions about me.”
“This is about the Pride Bombing.”
Reyes’s expression hardened. “I’m in.”
Milan had known he would be. Reyes had lost a cousin in the bombing, a young woman who’d been watching the parade with her girlfriend. He gave him a quick briefing, and after they’d both gotten changed into a more casual outfit, they left.
Their first stop was the 40th precinct, where cops did their best to police the most southern tip of the Bronx. The keyword being tried because while New York crime rates had plummeted in recent years, this precinct didn’t share that decline. The combination of poverty, housing projects where people were packed too closely together, lots of homeless shelters, methadone clinics, and a variety of gangs and drug dealers made for fertile ground for crime, including murders, drugs trade, and plenty of violence aimed at cops. The New York Times once had done a whole series of murders in the 4-0, as they had called it, describing the backgrounds of each murder in detail. With its fair share of undocumented immigrants and people fearing retribution from gangs, the neighborhood didn’t even report half of the bad shit that happened.
Still, things were improving, albeit at a slower rate than they should have. Not that all change was always good. Milan was frustrated by the ongoing gentrification in the city, seeing once vibrant neighborhoods being slowly but surely bought by project developers and transformed into luxury housing, pushing out the original residents. It was only a matter of time before the same would happen to the South Bronx.
“What can I do for you?” Feliz Matos, captain of the 40th, asked Milan and Reyes after leading them into his office. He was curt but cordial, and Milan didn’t sense an unwillingness to help, more the tiredness of someone who was flat out overwhelmed.
“2016, the months before the Pride Bombing,” Milan said. “You were a detective here.”
Matos sighed. “Not exactly the good ole days.”
“Can you remember any talk of strangers coming into the ‘hood, asking questions about storing things here?”
“What kind of things?”
“The kind that go boom.”
Matos’s eyes widened. “You’re talking about the bombs.”
“I’m talking about storage for big things, the size of a barrel, maybe. A small container.”
Matos got the hint and didn’t ask for more details. “Ground floor then, easy to carry it in.”
Milan nodded.
“In a residential building?”
“We don’t know.”
“I don’t recall anything off the top of my hat, but…I can tell you who to ask. For the right price, he’ll talk. Nothing happens around here that he doesn’t know about.”
Armed with a name and a location of where they might find this guy, Milan and Reyes left. They found Big Julian where they’d been told he’d be, behind the counter of a neighborhood mini store, and the moniker Big was no joke either. The guy was six feet six, if not more, and built like he could crush you with one hand. Without breaking a sweat.
Milan had agreed to let Reyes do the talking, and after making sure the store was empty, Reyes leaned in. “We wanna ask you some questions. We’ll make it worth your while.”
Big Julian looked them up and down. “Cops?”
“Yeah, but the good kind.”
Big Julian snorted. “Never met a good cop.”
“Today’s your lucky day, then.” Reyes’s tone was light yet radiating strength. His accent was spot-on Bronx and not forced, like someone trying too hard, but effortlessly, like Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale.
“What we be talkin’ about?”
This was where they had to take a risk, and Milan had okayed it. No one would talk otherwise. “Bombs,” Reyes said softly.
Big Julian leaned forward, his eyes razor-sharp now. “What kind of bombs?”
“The kind that blew up in Greenwich six years ago.”
“Shit,” Big Julian said. “Still fucking pissed that those Osamas keep thinkin’ they can come over here and blow shit up.”
“I feel ya.”
“So why you talkin’ to me? I had nothin’ to do with that.”
“We think you might know something.”
Milan pulled the photos out of his pocket and laid them on the counter.
“Six years ago, weeks before the bombing. Remember seeing any of these guys around here? Hearing about a white dude looking for storage?” Reyes asked.
Big Julian paled. “Goddammit. Ricky!”
A young teen appeared. “Yeah, Big J?”
“Stand outside the door and don’t let anyone in. If someone asks, tell them to come back in thirty.”
“Yeah.”
Big Julian waited until the teen had left. “This guy.” He tapped the picture of Laurence Paskewich. “I know him.”
Holy shit. “How?” Milan asked.
“I ain’t talkin’ until I have protection.”
Reyes looked at Milan, who nodded. He wasn’t authorized to offer this, but he doubted any charges would stick against Big Julian anyway. The man hadn’t known about the bombs before, so it wasn’t like he’d willfully aided and abetted.
“Full immunity,” Reyes said. “But only for anything related to this.”
“You break your word, you’ll pay,” Big Julian said, and it sounded more like a statement of fact than a threat. Milan had to admire his balls for threatening two cops.
“Understood. Talk,” Reyes said.
“He showed up in the ‘hood,” Big Julian said. “Musta been March or April. Stayed for a coupla weeks, then disappeared.”
“Where?”
“Apartment on Alexander. Guy who lived there was sent to Rikers, so his mom sublet it.”
“How’d you hear about it?”
“One of my boys alerted me. We don’t like white guys movin’ in like that. You never know what trouble they bring.”
“What trouble would that be?”
“Cops, feds, gangs, drug dealers…anything.”
Milan could see why any of those options would pose a problem for Big Julian.
“What else?” Reyes asked.
“Something weird was goin’ on. He said he had no car and took the red line downtown at 149th every mornin’, but one of my guys saw him load a van that didn’t look like no rental.”
“What kind of van?”
Big Julian slowly shook his head. “Fuck, I never even thought of it.” He seemed lost in thoughts for a moment. “Black van that looked reinforced, not a scratch on it. Had New York tags, but old ones, dinged up. We figured the van or the plates or even both were stolen.”
“Where did they see him?”
“Port Morris, next to the recycling.”
“Any idea what he was loading?”
Big Julian shook his head. “Somethin’ big was all they said. Covered up. But so heavy they carried it into the van with two men, this dude and another white guy. He disappeared the day after. Never gave him another thought until now.”
“You remember a lot of details,” Milan said.
Big Julian shrugged. “I remember everythin’, keep track of everythin’. That’s why I’m still alive…and not in prison.”
“Would you remember a name, by any chance?”
“I gotta make a call. Come back in fifteen. Ricky will give you a note at the door. You need anythin’ else, call the number on the note. Don’t come back here.”
“What do we owe you?” Milan asked.
Big Julian didn’t hesitate even for a second. “Nothin’. This one's on the house. We don’t fuck around with bombs here, and any motherfucker who does is fair game.”
When they returned fifteen minutes later, Ricky gave them a folded piece of paper, and Milan didn’t read it until they were back in their car, which was a beat-up civilian car Reyes used often. To his credit, Reyes never even asked what was on the paper, and Milan wouldn’t have told him anyway. The less Reyes knew, the better, and in this case, it had held only a phone number and one name.
Ryan Wallace.
