I come awake slowly, aware of sounds, a mumbling and the sobs of a woman. My first instinct is to move away, to create distance. Yet I stay where I am, my body not yet under my control. Seconds pass, a minute, before I realize that the body wracked with sobs is my own and the mumbling is a clumsy attempt by Ortega to offer comfort. His arms are wrapped around my shoulders and my head is against his chest and my tears have soaked his blue shirt.
Horrified, I push him away, hard enough so that he stumbles back. I’ve never felt a man’s arms around me, never known comfort from a man or a woman. I’m not about to start now. No fucking way.
“Martha?” Ortega’s mouth is set in a line, his eyes narrowed. I don’t know what to make of his expression. Don’t know what Tina—and it could only be Tina, crying on a man’s shoulder—might have told him. But I do know that I have to reply.
“Yes.”
“And before?”
“Tina.” I turn away to straighten my clothes. “She remembers.” The truth is far more complicated, but I don’t explain. “It’s not like she has a choice.”
I turn back toward Ortega, glimpsing as I turn a fixed image on a monitor. The monitor’s positioned on a shelf behind the cop and it’s displaying a single image: my father’s head. He doesn’t seem to me very changed. His skin is grayish and his eyes are somewhat shrunken and his lips are colorless. But all in all, he seems oddly undamaged. Not that I expect him to get up. I know he’s dead, that death has claimed him. Removed from our future, he no longer frightens me.
“I read the case file at lunch this morning,” Ortega says. “Hank Grand’s file, from twenty-seven years ago.” He hesitates for a moment, his eyes dropping then rising again, his tone gentle. “I know what he did to you.”
We’re on the road, crawling alongside rush-hour traffic on the Manhattan Bridge. I’ve already suggested that Ortega use his siren to speed up our journey, but he only chuckled.
“And where would the traffic go?” he told me. “Into the river?”
So now I’m fidgeting in the back seat, wanting to be rid of the cop, the day and our body. I need a vacation. I need respite.
We’re halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge when my disposable phone belts out a string of cheery little tones. I dutifully fish it out of my bag. Without phone mail, I don’t have a lot of choice.
“Hi, Carolyn, it’s Malaya Castro.” The cheery tone again, high-pitched, almost girlish. “How are you?”
“How am I?” I laugh and Ortega laughs with me. He hits the siren twice, whoop, whoop. “Never better, Malaya. Never better.”
“Great.” She takes a breath. “I got a call from the review board a few minutes ago. They’ve scheduled a hearing.” When I don’t respond, she adds, “On your case.”
“When?”
“Friday, ten a.m. You’ll have to be there.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be there, too. You won’t be alone.”
I glance out the window, staring for a moment at the Staten Island Ferry as it crosses the bay. The wind is up and the orange ferry appears small against the whitecaps. “Why are they doing this? Why now?”
“Kings County is part of the New York City Health and Hospital System. Anything that goes wrong, that catches the attention of the media, reflects on the mayor. The administration’s only doing what all administrations do. They’re circling the wagons.”
“And I’m what? A hostile Indian?”
“We’ll find the answer to that one on Friday. Just remember, you need to be there. You need to show them who you are and that you’re fully functioning.” She hesitates briefly as a horn sounds, then says, “Are you in a car?”
“Yeah, I’m with Detective Ortega. He drove me to the morgue, to identify my father’s body.”
“Seriously?”
“Because these days identifications are made at home through the ME’s website. There was no need to travel. You’ve been played.”
Dinner isn’t much, a can of tuna fish, the last of the mayo, a little red onion, two slices of whole wheat bread. Courtesy of a food pantry run out of a Baptist Church on Bergen Street.
Meager or not, I’m sharing my dinner with Marshal, the man-boy who makes no judgments, who takes us as we are. Marshal came over because he found a new email, which is still unread. He’s proud of this discovery but prouder still that a website specializing in electronic music has added one of his compositions to its playlist. He tells me the name of the site, which I forget before the words reach my ears. I’ve listened to Marshal’s compositions and I can’t make them any more than noise. Irritating noise at that. But for Marshal, this is the first time he’s been recognized by any professional and he’s as happy as a five-year-old on his birthday.
Far be it from me to rain on Marshal’s dream. I even share the last of a small pound cake, which I was hoping to finish myself. By that time, we’re in the living room and Marshal’s pulling a joint from his shirt pocket.
“You think the cops are gonna do a search?” He doesn’t wait for a reply before adding, “Those notes on the table? If the cops get a search warrant, they’re gonna take ’em. So, how about I copy them and stash the copies at my place?”
I nod and smile. “I like it, Marshal. I like you, too.”
He blushes, then offers me the joint. “You want some?” he asks.
I don’t and I tell him so. Still, I don’t object when he lights up. I merely hold out my hand for the email. “Alright, I’m ready now.”
Zenia, greetings.
I fear I’ve become obsessed. When I first learned of Hank Grand’s death, I discarded the possibility that my multi had anything to do with the matter. Bear in mind, Hank Grand produced child pornography, regularly dealt with mob figures who distributed his films and passed twenty-seven years in some of New York’s most violent prisons. Consider also that Hank Grand stood a bit over six feet tall and weighed nearly 250 pounds. His daughter, by contrast, is of average height and slim—she can’t weigh more than 120 pounds—and to my knowledge has never been violent.
Surely, under the circumstances, my dismissing the possibility that Carolyn Grand (or one of her many doppelgangers) murdered her father can be forgiven.
Forgiven or not, my opinion abruptly changed following an interview conducted in my office by a homicide detective named Ortega. He probed as best he could and I did the same. I wanted to learn something of the circumstances surrounding Grand’s death, but Ortega was no more forthcoming with me than I with him. Nevertheless, I did come away convinced that my little multi is a legitimate suspect.
Following Ortega’s departure, the identity calling herself Eleni (just to remind you, Eleni’s the promiscuous identity) arrived for her visit. As this was my first opportunity to examine Eleni, I paid close attention to her appearance and manner. First the obvious. She threw her sexuality in my face, making clear her willingness to give me her body if I wanted it. (I didn’t and don’t.) Her behavior, when it wasn’t teasing, was challenging, and she didn’t let up. Still, after I got past her charade, I found something else, something she would have preferred I not find, a hard and cold assessment devoid of empathy.
That got me going, Zenia, and I began to speculate, my thoughts running toward the obsessive. Suppose I reverse engineered my original judgment. Suppose I began by assuming that Carolyn Grand murdered her father. Well, then, instead of a single suspect, I’d have five to consider.
Selena was the first to be discarded. Too unfocused and utterly nonviolent. Victoria came next. Proper, even a bit conceited, she’s obsessed with her image. I cannot imagine her committing a murder. Tina presented something of a problem. I’ve seen her angry, as you know, but her anger, when I examined it, was the anger of a child, a nine-year-old throwing a tantrum.
That left Kirk, Eleni, and Martha. I’ll take Martha first. A self-identified lesbian, Martha is relentlessly capable. Her mindset is masculine and she instinctively focuses on resolving problems, the sooner the better. Hank Grand was certainly a problem. Did she resolve it?
Kirk shares Martha’s sexual preferences, but considers himself to be a man trapped in a woman’s body. In session, he is fearless and makes no effort to placate me. Nevertheless, of all the identities, he seems the least concerned with their shared misfortunes.
I’ve already described Eleni. I believe Eleni could have played the seductress long enough to put Hank Grand off his guard, to overcome the size disparity. Further, I can imagine her killing him for the pure pleasure of watching him die. She’s that cold.
Enough, dear Zenia, lest I become too excited for sleep. It’s getting late, and there’s nothing to be decided here, lacking as I do, all knowledge of how Grand was killed. Was he stabbed, bludgeoned, shot, poisoned? Are the ladies innocent? Guilty? Just now, that’s for them to know and me to find out. And if my expectations are not terribly high, I do believe I’ll be royally entertained along the way, which is all I ask. So, good night. Sleep well.
Laurence