Blood in Babylon Page 8

  We emerged into the sunlight again on the I-78 in Jersey City. At St. Peter’s Cemetery, we turned north and joined the steady flow toward the I-95. Then, finally, Dehan said, “I don’t buy it.”

  I smiled at her. “I didn’t think you would, but tell me why.”

  “OK, don’t jump down my throat, this is just for starters, but it just feels wrong, Stone. I mean, like he said, what would be their motive?”

  “You’re thinking of the three of them as a unit?”

  She looked vaguely taken aback. “Well, no…”

  “You say that as though you mean maybe, or yes.”

  “Well, I was kind of thinking of them as having a collective motive. I guess.”

  “Let’s just focus on Max for now, until we’ve spoken to Justinian and Annunziata. They might have a completely different motivation.”

  “OK…” She sighed. “What would his motive be?”

  “Well, to begin with, by killing Al, he would immediately add eight point thirty-three percent of many millions of dollars to his personal net worth, because Al’s twenty-five percent share would be shared between the three of them. He would also remove a very big, potential problem from his life…”

  “No, I don’t get that. That’s a fallacy. How could Al be a potential problem?”

  I smiled. “Sure, as he was, but imagine if he recovered enough to be declared capable of taking his seat on the board.”

  She stared at me. “Is that possible?”

  I shrugged. “He’s not a chronic schizophrenic. His psychosis was induced by chemical abuse that caused damage to his brain. How neurons and glia work and whether they regenerate is something of a mystery, Dehan. And neurology—a field in which two of the siblings work as researchers, by the way—is advancing by leaps and bounds every year. Nobody would know that better than Justinian and Annunziata.

  “That is just one way in which Al could cause them problems if he was alive. But basically, anything that challenged their legal control of his shares was a risk. And there are no shortage of lawyers who’d be happy to give that a go.

  “And finally, there is not only the years of shame and embarrassment that he had already caused the family, but there was the ongoing shame of having him living in a small house in the Bronx, attending, as he put it, a Harvard quack’s clinic. That was a shadow that must have hung over him every day.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, but he kind of covered that, Stone. He took the Hippocratic oath and frankly, I thought he sounded sincere. He may be a cantankerous old fool, but I believed he was sincere. And then there was the point he made, why risk it? He didn’t phrase it like that, but it was pretty much what he meant. They had him diagnosed as psychotic, in care and tied up in legal tape. By the time he was killed, there was nothing he could do to them anymore. So why wait till then to kill him? If they were going to have him iced, they would have done it a lot sooner. Why take the risk if it wasn’t necessary?”

  I looked at her. “Iced?”

  “Yeah. You got a pwoblem wid de way I tawk? I’m from de Bwanx, see?”

  “Captivating. Let’s see how it plays out. Personally, I found Maximilian Chester a fraud, unconvincing and a narcissistic egomaniac with no taste.”

  “With no taste? That bad, huh? Your Honor, I would ask for the reinstatement of capital punishment in view of the fact that the accused not only murdered his brother, but also had no taste.”

  “What can I say? I suspect the Chester siblings have a story to tell. We’ll see what it is.”

  She wagged a finger at me. “This time you are going to be wrong, Stone, and I will be right. You know Ned is the guy. You’re just trying to be smart. Occam’s Razor.”

  I shrugged. “You may be right. I think it is too soon to call.”

  “You know I’m right.”

  I didn’t answer and after ten minutes of silent driving, as we merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike and accelerated out of the city, she sniffed and said, “So, no taste, huh?” She gave her head a little twitch. “What was it exactly that was in bad taste…?”

  NINE

  We arrived in Malone at six that evening, having stopped along the way for lunch. We didn’t drop our stuff at the B&B, but went straight to the correctional facility. I had called ahead from the car to give them our ETA and they were expecting us when we arrived.

  We showed our badges at the gate and an officer came to greet us and show us to the interview room. As we made our way down the grim corridors, through vast, echoing steel gates, the officer looked at us curiously. “Chavez brothers, huh?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I guess they told you Ernesto is in hospital.”

  “They did. What happened?”

  “Gangs. I don’t know why they let gang members hang out together like that. Those brothers should have been separated. Instead, as a reward for good behavior, they get lodged together, in the same cell, and they hang with the Chupacabras, their old gang. You let that happen, it stands to reason pretty soon you gonna have gang warfare, right? So, a bunch of Angels got hold of Ernesto in the can, broke his leg, his arm and his jaw before anybody noticed. It ain’t right, but what can you do? It’s the system.”

  I nodded, wondering if he was driving at something. “I guess so. The Angels have a problem with him?”

  “Yeah, he weren’t too smart. He called the head honcho a maricon. That’s a queen in Spanish. So now the Angels are out for his blood. If we hadn’t showed up on time, they would have killed him. Like I said, it’s war.” He shook his head. “All the system does is, it don’t eliminate crime, it just moves it into the jails, where it’s intensified. They keep right on killing, stealing, maiming, selling dope—they’re just doing it behind walls.”

  I thought about what he was saying for a moment, then asked him, “Tell me something, the Chavez brothers, are they taken care of?”

  He stopped, with his hand on a steel door. “By the Cabras?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shrugged, made a face. “Not more than any other member inside. They look out for each other, senior members get cigarettes and care packets. But not Julio and Ernesto.” He unlocked the door. “But if you’re asking, will there be reprisals for what happened to Ernesto? For sure.” He yanked the door open.

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  We went into a small room, about fifteen feet square. There was a table with one chair on one side and two facing it on the opposite side. A chain, bolted to the floor, rose through a hole in the middle of the table with a pair of manacles on the end. Dehan grabbed a chair and I stood looking down at the manacles. I spoke absently, half to myself.

  “One day, he was a cute baby, then he got spots and hormones and he was a troubled youth. When he was hanging with Ned, he could still have made it back, could still have found a path home. But then he made that decision, and in a second, it was too late. Sliding doors.” I turned and looked down at Dehan. “You know what the officer was saying?”

  “About keeping the crime inside walls?”

  I nodded. “Do you sometimes wonder if there are invisible walls around some parts of the Bronx?”

  She nodded. “In every country, in every city.” She fixed me with her eye. “It’s the big problem with modern society, Stone. Nobody knows what to do with the trash.”

  I laughed. “You saying we should recycle criminals? That’s pretty Orwellian.”

  She shook her head. “It’s been proved that recycling doesn’t work. Modern incinerators are faster and cleaner.”

  I was saved from having to answer that remark by the door being pulled open with an iron echo, and Julio Chavez being brought in. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and had manacles around his ankles and his wrists. He wasn’t big, but he was hard and wiry, and he had the dead eyes of a man who has learned to kill. The tattoos on his face said he was a Chupacabra, and that he’d burnt his bridges.

  The officers brought him to the chair, sat him down and manacled his wrists. The one wi
th the keys said, “We’ll be right outside, detectives. He gives you any trouble, just shout.”

  We thanked them and they left, slamming the big steel door behind them.

  Chavez looked at me, then took his time looking at Dehan, then he leaned to the side and took his time spitting on the floor.

  I smiled and gave a small laugh, then leaned my back against the wall.

  “Nothing left to lose, huh, Chavez?”

  “Fock you.”

  I gave the floor my best lopsided smile. “Yeah, well, that’s something you won’t be doing for a while, right?”

  Dehan looked at me and snorted. “He won’t be giving, but hey, he might be takin’.”

  I studied his face for any reaction. There wasn’t any. I cocked my head. “It’s a funny thing, you know, about guys like you who live on the edge. Often, they will feel like they have nothing left to lose…”

  A look of disgust distorted his features. “What is this? NYPD sending out inspirational fockin’ gurus now?”

  I ignored him and went on. “But it’s then, when they feel they have nothing left to lose, that they realize what little they have left is what they most treasure, what they can least afford to let go of.”

  He turned to Dehan. “What the fock is he talkin’ about?”

  She leaned forward and looked into his face. “I think, pendejo, that he’s talking about your brother.”

  Then I saw the reaction. His face flushed and his eyes turned bright with anger. “What about my brother?”

  I pushed off the wall and thrust my hands into my pockets, still looking down at the floor. “You know, I am willing to bet that, for all this hard man show you put on, underneath, what you are, basically, is a family guy. I’ll bet that was all you ever really wanted, a family. Am I right?”

  He didn’t answer. He just watched me. I went on.

  “But the big, bad world came along and they stole your family from you.” I stepped over to the empty chair, looked into his angry face and knew that I was reaching him. “What was it, Mom had a monkey? Turning tricks to pay for her habit? And Daddy? Well, he was probably just a gamblin’ man, way down in New Orleans. And you and Ernesto got your education on the streets, right? It was all you knew. That’s why you joined the Cabras, right? Because it was the nearest thing you believed you would ever find to a family. You and Ernesto, family, welcomed into the Chupacabras, your new family. Loyalty, devotion, protection…” I turned and looked at Dehan, and repeated, “Protection?”

  She shook her head. “Seems to me the Chupacabras family ain’t doing much protecting here, Stone.”

  I watched her for a long moment, chewing my lip. “I was really disturbed,” I said, and then turned to face him, “to learn of what had happened to your brother. How many bones did they break?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Who was it? The Puerto Ricans? The Jamaicans? Maybe the Angels…? They all outnumber you in here, don’t they?” I looked back at Dehan. “I think maybe, for his own protection, perhaps we should make a recommendation that Ernesto be moved, to a more secure prison, like Attica.”

  Dehan affected a frown and turned to Julio. “Do they have Angels in Attica? I’m pretty sure they do…”

  “Don’t do that.” He shook his head. “If you send him to Attica on his own, they’ll kill him. I need him here, where I can protect him.”

  I hooked the leg of the chair with my foot and pulled it out. I sat and frowned at the table top. “It sounds to me, Julio, as though you are asking me for a favor.”

  “What you want from me?”

  “Not much. And while I am at it, let me make you aware of something. What I want, I can get from you or any of your pals from back in 2007. You are my easiest option, not my only option. Are we clear?”

  “What do you want, cop?”

  “I want to know who went with Ned Brown to kill Al Chester, on the night of the 23rd November, 2007.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, glanced sidelong at Dehan. “That the crazy guy?”

  Dehan answered, “Yeah, Julio, that’s the crazy guy. How many people did Ned kill on the 23rd November 2007?”

  He shook his head. “He didn’t kill nobody that night.”

  “Bullshit. That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “No, it ain’t. That ain’t what happened that night. Ned followed the guy to his house. We was havin’ a laugh, scarin’ the guy. Then Ned got crazy ’cause he said the old guy disrespected him. That gotta be punished, right? But when we was pushin’ in the door, he slammed it closed on Ned’s fingers, broke a couple. We had to take him to ER, man.”

  We stared at him for a long moment, then I turned to Dehan and sighed. She shook her head.

  “That’s the story everyone knows, Julio. What we are asking about is what happened next.”

  “I told you what happened next. We took him to the hospital, to fix his fingers.”

  I nodded. “And they did. They fixed his fingers and dosed him with painkillers. You left the hospital, at about ten PM, and then Ned and at least one other of your gang went back to Ned’s house. You took a 9mm pistol and a kitchen knife and you went to kill Al.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  I turned to Dehan. “We’re wasting our time here.”

  He shook his head. “No, man, listen. We lied to give him an alibi, that’s true. That’s what bros do. But what happened was, he was stoned on the painkillers and he wanted to smoke some weed on top of that to kind of take away the pain, ’cause his fingers were hurtin’ bad. So he went back to his house, with Chevronne, and she was gonna give him a hard time. She thought he’d been stealing cars, man.”

  “Chevronne.”

  “His mom. She was real mad at him. We didn’t want to get in the middle of that, so we just went home. That is all that happened that night, I’m tellin’ you.”

  I thought for a moment, then stood. “Let’s go. We’ll talk to Evans…”

  Chavez frowned. “Delroy?”

  “Yeah, he was there that night, right?”

  “Where’s he at?”

  “Attica.”

  “Shit… What’s he in for, man?”

  Dehan spread her hands and her jaw went slack. “Yeah, and say, how’s your mom? How about a chocolate brownie? Cut the crap, Chavez! You got something for us or not? You want Ernesto here or you want us to send him to the Angels?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head again. “Don’t do that. I’ll tell you what happened. Just leave Ernesto here with me, OK?”

  I sat.

  Dehan said, “Talk already.”

  He slumped back, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he released it, he started to talk.

  “We went with Ned to the ER. We was waitin’ a long time. We kept hasslin’ the nurses and shit, but they didn’t want to see us. In the end, they called security and these big mothers come and say ‘Hey, you want we should break the fingers on your other fockin’ hand? So shut the fock up and sit down. They’ll see you when they ready!’ So we waited.”

  Dehan interrupted him. “You’re breaking my heart, Julio. Nice boys can’t catch a break no more! Just cut to the chase, will you?”

  “I’m getting there, man. So finally they see him. They patch him up and the doctor, she gave him like a shitload of painkillers. I don’t know what they was, but he was like, high, you know?”

  He stopped and swallowed. Looked at the door a moment and continued. “So, when we got out of the hospital, it was like real cold? And that was like, it woke him up, know what I’m sayin’? The cold woke him up and suddenly he was real mad at the crazy guy, because he was like sayin’ all the time, ‘that pendejo disrespected me, the son of a bitch. I’m gonna kill him.’ An’ you know, there was always this story about how the crazy guy had like a million bucks in his house, in a box or some shit. And so Ned starts to say, we should go get that fockin’ money. Me? I never believed it was true. None of us believed that shit. But it was like Ned was high and kind of crazy. So I say, ‘No, man, I do
n’t wanna do that shit,’ but Lucky, he says yeah, he’s gonna go and get his Taurus from his house, and they gonna go an’ teach that crazy motherfocker some respect. Know what I’m saying? An’ tha’s all I know. I went home to watch TV.”

  He looked at us both in turn. Then he shrugged and looked down at his manacles.

  “Few days later, I heard that the crazy guy had been killed. So I says to Ned, ‘You some badass motherfocker, man! You killed that old dude?’ He says, ‘Yeah, man. I stabbed that son of a bitch in the heart with a knife.’ He weren’t shot with no 9mm. He was stabbed in the heart, way Ned likes to do it. That’s what he told me.”

  “What about the money?”

  “I don’t know about that, man. He never told me nothin’ about that. We all went our separate ways then. Me and Ernesto, we wanted to get more serious, you know. We had plans. We joined the Cabras. I don’t know what happened to the other guys. I know Ned got his shit together, went to college. That’s good. That’s good for him. He was never…”

  “What?” I waited. “He was never what?”

  He looked up at me and shook his head. “He was never like us, man. His mom was different. She was on him, know what I’m sayin’? I mean, he was tough and badass. You need to be tough to kill somebody. It ain’t as easy as it seems. And he could do that, you know. He had cojones to do that. But after that, he chose the right path.”

  Dehan grunted. “That’s very moving. The reformed killer of vulnerable old men. Gee, I think I might cry.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the story. You gonna leave Ernesto with me? I’m all he’s got, man.”

  I stood. “Desperado, nothing to lose but your family. I’m not going to take that away from you, Julio. But do you ever think? Do you ever ask yourself, what if instead of leading Ernesto to the Chupacabras, you had led him to the community college? What if, instead of killing Geronimo Paez together, you had gone to college together and built a future? What kind of family would Ernesto have then?”

  “Fock you.”

  “Yeah, I kind of guessed you might say that. You know what, Julio? You can take your cheap, self-pitying lies about family loyalty and stick them where they belong, in the can. If Ernesto dies, that’s on you and him, for the stupid, lazy, self-indulgent choices you made. Take it easy, Julio. Thanks for the information. I’ll tell Lucky you said hi.”