Страница 26 из 113
My father once hit my mother. I was young, no more than seven or eight, and she had started a small fire in the kitchen while she was frying some pork chops for his di
“Oh no,” she said. “I was just-”
And my father hit her. He was frightened and angry. He didn’t hit her hard. It was an open-handed slap, and he tried to pull the blow as he realized what he was doing, but it was too late. He struck her on the cheek, and she staggered slightly, then touched her hand gently to her skin, as though to confirm to herself that she had been hit. I looked at my father, and the blood was already leaving his face. I thought he was about to fall over, for he seemed to teeter on his feet.
“Lord, I’m sorry,” he said.
He tried to go to her, but she pushed him away. She couldn’t look at him. In all their years together, he had never once laid a hand upon her in anger. He rarely even raised his voice to her. Now the man she knew as her husband was suddenly gone, and a stranger revealed in his place. At that moment, the world was no longer the place that she had once thought it to be. It was alien, and dangerous, and her vulnerability was exposed to her.
Looking back, I don’t know if she ever truly forgave him. I don’t believe that she did, for I don’t think that any woman can ever really forgive a man who raises his hand to her, especially not one whom she loves and trusts. The love suffers a little, but the trust suffers more, and somewhere, deep inside herself, she will always be wary of another strike. The next time, she tells herself, I will leave him. I will never let myself be hit again. Mostly, though, they stay. In my father’s case, there would never be a next time, but my mother was not to know that, and nothing he could ever do in the years that followed would ever convince her otherwise.
And as strangers passed by, dwarfed by the immensity of the buildings around them, I thought: What have they done to this city?
Walter tapped the tabletop with his finger.
“You still with us?” he asked.
“I was just reminiscing.”
“Getting nostalgic?”
“Only for our order. By the time it arrives, inflation will have kicked in.”
Somewhere in the distance I could see our waitress idly spi
“We should have made her commit to a price before she left,” said Walter. “Heads up, they’re here.”
Two men weaved through the tables, making their way toward us. Both wore casual jackets, one with a tie, one without. The taller of the two men was probably nudging six-two, while the smaller was about my height. Short of having blue lights strapped to their heads and Crown Vic-shaped shoes, they couldn’t have screamed “Cops!” any louder. Not that it mattered in this place: a few years back, two guys fresh off the boat from Puerto Rico-literally, as they hadn’t been in the city more than a day or two-tried to take down the diner, home to cops since time immemorial, at around midnight, armed with a hammer and a carving knife. They got as far as “This is a-” before they were looking down the barrels of about thirty assorted weapons. A framed front page from the Post now hung on the wall behind the register. It showed a photograph of the two geniuses, below the block headline DUMB AND DUMBER.
Walter rose to shake hands with the two detectives, and I did the same as he introduced me. The tall one was named Mackey, the short one was Du
“How you doin?” Du
Mackey seemed more interested in the waitress than he was in me. I wished him luck. If she treated her suitors like she treated her customers, then Mackey would be a very old and very frustrated man by the time he got anywhere with this woman.
“Nice pins,” he said admiringly. “What’s she like from the front?”
“Can’t remember,” said Walter. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen her face.”
Mackey and Du
The pimps were harder to catch, and their methods were becoming more sophisticated. Some of the pimps had gang affiliations, which made them even more dangerous to both the girls and the cops. Then there were those who were actively engaged in trafficking young girls across state lines. In January 2000, a sixteen-year-old Vermont girl named Christal Jones was found smothered in an apartment on Zerega Avenue in Hunts Point, one of a number of Vermont girls lured to New York in an apparently well-organized Burlington-to-the-Bronx sex ring. With deaths like Christal’s, suddenly $23 million didn’t seem like nearly enough.
Mackey and Du
“All these kids want to do is catch terrorists,” said Du
Our waitress returned from far-off places, bearing coffee and bagels.
“Sorry, boys,” she said. “I got distracted.”
Mackey saw an opening and rushed to take advantage of it.
“What happened, gorgeous, you catch sight of yourself in a mirror?”
The waitress, whose name was Mylene, whatever kind of name that was, favored him with the same look she might have given a mosquito that had the temerity to land on her during the height of the West Nile virus scare.