Roachkiller and Other Stories (7 page)

“The old aches and pains, huh, Abuelita.”

“Si, mijo,”
she said, then slammed down a three-five. “Now you got to put the double five.”

“But you never get no trouble, living in this old building, in this bad neighborhood?”

Then she looked up from her dominoes. In her one good eye was the saddest look. Like all her life was not there. It was just for a second. And then it was back, like it was on fire.

“Your abuelita is fine. Now put down the double five.”

Right then Roachkiller knew, knew from the look on her face, the way she sounded, that Don Moncho was not making up some story.

So Roachkiller put that double five out.

“Te lo dije,”
Abuelita said.
“Lo veo todo.”

She won one, two, three after that. That was all right. Abuelita was everything, God bless her. She never did no one no wrong.

Roachkiller was a little punk when he was a boy. Stole, fought, sold drugs. Abuelita, she knew. But she didn’t say anything. Turned the other way. Then what happened, the thing Roachkiller was best at, that he had mad skills for, was killing. It just came easy. Don Moncho caught on to that, and Roachkiller had steady work for a long time. If Roachkiller wanted to do it anymore now didn’t matter. There was one more man Roachkiller had to make dead. D-E-A-D.

*  *  *

Don Moncho, he was being hassled by a landlord. Ain’t that funny for a man who used to run the neighborhood? But things change. A lot of old-timers still respected him, but the new people coming in, buying up houses and shit, they didn’t give a fuck who he was. They just saw an old spic.

The landlord’s name was Michael Raskin, and he lived on the Upper East Side. Roachkiller got in there as a maintenance man. Some shit never changes.

Roachkiller rode up the elevator, no one looking. Found the door, tripped the lock, got inside. It was mad quiet. Except for this dude’s air conditioner. He kept it running all day. Sweet cool in that nice-ass place. Nice thick rug all the way through, big-ass TV in the main room. But the kitchen was smaller than a bathtub. Rich motherfucker probably ate at restaurants all the time.

Big pictures on the table. Big bald guy with a goatee. That was the guy. Roachkiller waited in the bedroom.

The landlord came in, talking. He wasn’t alone. Some chick was with him. Not the scene Roachkiller wanted to play. But if that’s the way it had to be. That’s why Roachkiller had some of Abuela’s old stockings. One went over Roachkiller’s head.

Chances are the girl would head to the bathroom, the guy to the kitchen or big-ass TV.

“I need a drink,” the girl said.

“I gotta go to the can,” the guy said.

Okay, other way around.

Roachkiller stood behind the door. When the guy came, Roachkiller got the knotted-up stockings around the guy’s throat. Held tight. Kicked the door closed. The guy was big. Hit back with his elbows two, three times.

Felt something crack.

Held tight.

He pushed Roachkiller back into a lamp. It smashed. “Mike, you okay?” The girl banging on the door. Up against the wall now, still holding tight, feeling something in his throat give. 

“Mike?”

He was down on the floor, done, Roachkiller thought. But that guy was strong. He was up again, took a swipe at Roachkiller, tore half the stocking off. Got him back by the stocking around his throat again. Tight. Tight.

Snap.

The girl was screaming now, wild and shit, making no sense. Loud. Not cool. Roachkiller was only here to kill the guy. Just the guy. But Roachkiller couldn’t let this lady call the cops. Even if she only saw another Puerto Rican face behind a ripped pair of his grandmammi’s stockings. Couldn’t take the risk. See what I’m saying.

Damn.

Roachkiller yanked the door. She was about to scream. The pillow was the fastest way. A pillow in her face then with a fist behind it. Down on the floor. She was feisty. Pretty, too. But Roachkiller was not going back to jail.

No way was Roachkiller going back to jail.

*  *  *

Next day, the
Daily News
did a story on Raskin. Roachkiller was reading it on the stoop. Another hot fucking day. They called it a botched robbery. The mayor knew the guy. Said it was a shame.

Roachkiller was about to go upstairs, but saw, across the street, that kid again, getting slapped around by that guy, de la Cruz.

Roachkiller walked across.

“Yo, leave the kid alone.”

“What the fuck you got to step into my business for?” de la Cruz said. He didn’t recognize Roachkiller.

The kid took off meanwhile.

“You’re right,” Roachkiller said. “It’s not my business.”

“So fuck off.”

“Easy. Take it easy. This is me fucking off.”

So Roachkiller went up to Abuelita’s for dinner then later back out to enjoy an ace. De la Cruz was slumped up on the stoop, snoring.

There was the kid again now, walking, scared, trying just to get up the stairs and into his house.

“Kid,” Roachkiller said. “Get the fuck over here.”

He was scared but he came. Roachkiller handed him cash.

“Get a six-pack.”

“What kind of beer you like?” he said. He looked happy to be doing something for me. Punk.

“It’s not for me,” Roachkiller said. “Buy any old six-pack and leave it next to my man over there on the stoop.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions, peckerhead. Do it.”

*  *  *

Miguel Peralta was an addict who hung out by the waterfront off Grand Street. You can see Manhattan from there, big and silver and shit, and watch the tugboats on the river. They got park benches there, but mostly it’s rocks and dogshit and crack vials. Sometimes white people go there to picnic. Roachkiller will never understand those motherfuckers. But most days it’s empty, and that’s where Peralta went to get high.

It was almost too easy. Roachkiller had to wait up till five a.m. till the cop left. The timing had to be right. Roachkiller walked outside, and there was de la Cruz still sleeping it off, six empty beer cans next to his ass.

People make it easy for you to kill them. They walk alone at night. They don’t lock their windows. They talk to strangers in clubs. You can throw shit in their drink that’ll kill them long before they think of the asshole who bumped into them at the bar. You can bang them up, one, two, three, and never get no blood on you. You can shoot them from a block away and still have time to finish your McDonald’s. Killing is easy. Dealing with the evidence, that’s hard. ’Specially with cops around.

Peralta liked to get high on the piers as the sun came up. Fucking romantic. And stupid. He was all alone, sitting on a rock. The man who attacked Abuelita.

Walked up to him, two shots in the face. Took whatever money and drugs he had. Threw the gun into the garbage a block away, threw my gloves in the sewer ten blocks away.

Roachkiller felt good, felt clean. But not free, not no more.

*  *  *

Abuelita had some serious breakfast waiting for Roachkiller. Eggs,
platanos,
spam, and the best fucking
café con leche
. Roachkiller first went to the bedroom, made a quick phone call.  Then Roachkiller came out, gave Abuela a long hug, and when she looked at my eyes, Roachkiller had to turn.

“Dios te bendiga, mijo,”
she said and told me to sit down and eat.

Before Roachkiller finished breakfast, here come the sirens. Abuela stop for a second, she look at Roachkiller, Roachkiller be looking at his coffee. Whistling.

Roachkiller knew without looking, the cops were waking up de la Cruz from his beauty sleep. Motherfucker. “Hey, buddy, hey, buddy, wake the fuck up!” De la Cruz be in cuffs in five seconds, in the cop car in ten. Still half asleep probably.

He’ll get plenty more chance to get beauty sleep in jail, what with his prints on the gun and all. Not really a good idea to get drunk and sleep so deep out in the street. Won’t hear Roachkiller sneaking up on you, putting your prints on a gun, or whatever, see what I’m saying.

Couple days later, though, was Roachkiller’s turn.

Getting home from the bodega, two cop cars outside the apartment. Roachkiller looked up. The curtains in Abuela’s kitchen window was open. There she was, talking to somebody.

The girl might have still been alive.

Or Roachkiller left something behind in that landlord’s place.

Or they traced it back to Moncho and then back to Roachkiller.

Cops be here soon enough. Time to bust out. God bless you, Abuelita. Take it easy.

Roachkiller saw the kid again, staring at him.

“Kid!”

He didn’t say nothing.

“Wait for the cop cars to go, then bring this upstairs to the lady in 4B.”

Roachkiller put money in the bag, gave the kid twenty bucks for his trouble.

“Thank you, Ro—. Thank you, mister.”

“Forget it.”

Roachkiller took the train to the City, took a half hour to find a working pay phone.
“Joselito, how you doing, man?”

GhostD

Eulogio Vega thought about maybe working out. Then he thought about maybe playing Metroid Prime. But as he moved toward the video game, the doorbell rang. “Marvelous,” he said.

He saw his cousin Mildred through the front window.

“E,” she said. “How you doing, baby?”

Her moon-round face, framed by kinetic hair dyed auburn, beamed at him. He smiled. Then he noticed another woman and a thin, older man standing next to Mildred.

“I’m extremely busy,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Open up. I got a favor to ask.”

“That can’t be good,” he said to himself, slumping his large shoulders. He padded heavily back through his apartment and then forward through the hallway to the front door.

Mildred gave him a wet kiss on the cheek and hugged him. “You need a shave. I told these people you could help them. They live in my building.”

“What? Do they have a computer problem?”

“No, stupid. They need a detective.”

“A what?” he said. “Have I not told you a million times already that while I work for a private investigation agency, I’m not really a detective? Not like you think anyway.”

“I promised you would help them. It’s not that hard. They just wanna find their son. You could do it with your computer.”

“You mean ‘Google’ him?”

“No! Just listen to them,” she said, rubbing his big shoulder. “As a favor to me.”

“Okay.”

The woman’s name was Cookie Cortez. Her egg-shaped body was emphasized by stretch pants and a Mets sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, gray curls whizzing out. Her eyes, heavily shadowed, were red and full of sadness. She sat in the gray folding chair in Vega’s kitchen. The older man stood behind her. Jesus Lugo. He had a red, pinched face. Black hair slicked back. Bulging green eyes. Vega didn’t trust him right away.

“My son Danny is missing. This is Jesus, he is his stepfather,” Cookie said. “We haven’t seen Danny for five days. He’s just seventeen.”

“I’m assuming you called the cops already?” Vega said. “The people you normally go to to look for people.”

“They can’t do that,” Mildred interrupted. “Jesus is a boletero, a bookie, you know, for the numbers. So he doesn’t like the cops.”

“Sure,” Vega said.

“Another thing—I be sincere with you,” Cookie said. “There’s money missing. And they’re gonna think Danny took it.”

“I gotta ask then: Did he take it?”

“Eulogio!” Mildred smacked him on the shoulder.

“My son is not a thief, Mr. Vega,” Cookie said. But Jesus said, “Cookie, amor, we don’t know.” She snapped back:
“¡Ay cayete! Tu no sabes!”

“Yeah. Okay. How much money is missing?” Vega said.

“Ten Gs,” Jesus said.

Vega’s big bull-like face popped open with surprise. He turned to Cookie. “You got a picture of Danny?”

She did. Danny Cortez looked surly, with doleful eyes half closed and his mouth half open.

“His junior high graduation,” she said.

“Would he have any other reason to run away?” Vega said. “Since you say he didn’t take the money?”

“Well,” Cookie said, raising her dark eyebrows. “There’s this girl, and you know how that is.”

“Oh yeah.”

*  *  *

Valiant Security International occupied the entire fifth floor of an office building on East 43rd. The information technology department took up a corner of the office, and Vega’s cubicle was in a corner of that corner.

At work he wore a thin black tie and a short-sleeved shirt. When the phone rang, he picked it up and said, “Help Desk.” He listened a few moments, then explained to the caller the process of rebooting.

After that, he played a halfhearted game of Minesweeper. On the wall above him was a picture of Vega in a military police uniform standing next to another soldier, a thin black man wearing shades.

The man from the picture popped his head over the wall of the cubicle. He had on a pair of shades.

“You looking at porn again?”

“Hey, Reid,” Vega said, smiling. “How’s it going, old man?”

“Can’t complain,” Reid said. “I got your message. What’s the good news?”

Vega told him about Danny Cortez, and Reid said, “He could be a gigolo in L.A. by now, or eating origami in Japan.”

“Sushi.”

“Sushi. That’s it.”

“My cousin comes to me with stuff like this all the time. ID theft, find out where my ex-husband moved, like that,” Vega said. “But this is much more serious. I think that kid took the money, and that money don’t belong to Jesus. It belongs to the local mob.”

“I hear that.”

“You think I should back out of it, then?”

“Eulie. You may not admit it, but I know you get itchy sitting in that chair all day long. Your father was a cop. Your uncle was a cop.”

“They were both killed on duty.”

“The point is they were heroes,” Reid said. “And you got cop in your blood. I think this thing will do you good. Get you off your fat computer-tech ass.”