Roachkiller and Other Stories Read online

  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.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Vega said, turning back to his computer screen. “Probably a simple runaway case anyway, right?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I’ll keep this on the down-low, chief. Let me know how it comes out.”

  * * *

  That night Vega took the J train to Marcy Avenue, then he walked the half mile to the Clemente Projects on Division Avenue. It was a cool early summer night, but he was sweating when he got there.

  The security desk stood empty in the lobby. The elevator smelled of urine, the hall of boiled brussels sprouts. The doorbell didn’t work. Vega knocked and got no answer. He waited. Looked up and down the hall.

  Knocked again. Nothing.

  He pounded on the door and finally a short bald man with a thin mustache answered. His face was angry until he looked up at Vega.

  “I’m Eulogio Vega. I called before.”

  The man nodded, limply shook Vega’s hand, told him to take a seat. Down a brief narrow hallway was the living room. A woman sat there watching a giant flat-screen TV. She didn’t get up.

  The furniture was covered in yellowing plastic, and when Vega sat it made a crumpling and a whooshing sound. A coffee table in front of him was littered with dinner plates, magazines, Magic Markers, and potato chip wrappers.

  The man joined her in staring at the TV. The man whispered to the woman. The woman yelled, “Lissette! Get out here! A man wants to talk to you!”

  A thickset girl of about fifteen walked in and sat opposite Vega on the couch. She had a bag of potato chips in her hand.

  Vega introduced himself and said, “I’m looking for Danny Cortez.”

  “You gonna arrest him?” she answered between crunches. There was bright red lipstick on her teeth.

  “No, I don’t arrest people. I just want to find Danny.”

  “Why you askin’ me?”

  “According to his mother, you’re his girlfriend.”

  She sucked her teeth. “She don’t know what she’s talkin’ about. We was talkin’ for a while, but that’s all.”

  “Maybe you know where he is anyway?”

  No more chips, nothing to do with her hands. “No,” she said.

  “And you don’t know where he’s staying?”

  She sucked her teeth. “I ain’t gonna tell you nothing. I ain’t gotta tell you nothing. You ain’t even a real cop.”

  “Fair enough,” Vega said. “But your friend could be in real trouble. His mother . . .”

  “What do I care? That lady just wants that money.”

  “You know about the money?”

  “Yessssss.” The teeth-sucking again.

  “Danny could get into a lot of trouble because of that money. You know that.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell you where he’s at because I don’t know. But sometimes he hangs out at this bar in the Northside.”

  “What bar?”

  * * *

  Teddy’s Bar & Grill. Only t
wo customers leaned on the bar when Vega walked in. A pretty blonde bartender looked very bored. Vega ordered a domestic beer and asked the bartender where everyone was on a Saturday night.

  “The Spore.”

  “The Spore?”

  She handed him an orange flyer from a stack on the bar.

  LIME ORANGE

  Presents

  THE SPORE

  Artists in Billyburg coming together for an organic gathering of minds, music, & art.

  All welcome.

  The words wrapped around a picture of what looked like a smiling tank made out of metal spikes. The address on the bottom of the flyer was on Kent Avenue, by the river.

  “Thanks for the beer.”

  Vega decided to walk. Halfway there he thought about how nice it would be to be sleeping. He heard the music from three blocks away, a thumping cacophony. The Spore was located in a large warehouse. A sign in front read: Spore $25.

  At the entrance stood an old-fashioned subway turnstile and a young man with a tumbleweed of hair combed dramatically over to one side and a shining beard made of piercings. Vega couldn’t help but think that somewhere a father was very disappointed.

  Vega showed him Danny’s picture. “Excuse me. You seen this kid around?”

  “Wow, man, are you a cop?” the man said in a mannered lisp that made Vega wince.

  “Private.”

  “Wow, a shamus, a P.I. Like, what’s the rumpus, gumshoe?”

  “Have you seen this kid?”

  The tumbleweeded man took the picture and looked at it. He seemed bored by the whole idea of looking at the picture. Finally, he said, “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Can I look for him inside?”

  “Twenty-five bucks, man. And you should ask Lime if it’s okay.”

  “Lime?”

  “Lime Orange. He’s in charge. You’ll see him. He’s got the green tux and the acid Mickey tee.”

  Vega paid and went through the turnstile. People were packed in there, masses of black hair, fuschia hair, goatees, more pierced faces, tattoos. The music was so loud it took up space as well.

  Before Vega moved ten feet, a man in a green tuxedo jacket and black jeans walked right in front of him. On the man’s T-shirt was a cartoon of Mickey Mouse with six eyes and four white-gloved hands. The man himself had a metal ring that pierced his left nostril. A puff of very black hair hung off his chin. His head was shaved to a stubble.

  “Hey, you the private eye?” the man said, smirking.

  “Yeah. You the Lime Green?”

  “Lime Orange, yes.”

  “The tux threw me. Sorry.” Vega smirked back, but Orange’s expression was blank. “Well, have you seen this kid around?”

  Orange grabbed the photo of Cortez and held it close to his face for a long time. Finally, he said, “I’ve got, like, a lot of local artists here. That’s what this is about. I organized this. We are showing solidarity and the spirit of Williamsburg. I don’t mind if you look around. And I hope you enjoy the show.”

  Vega took back the picture and began walking through the exhibits. It was tough to see through the whirling lights and areas of dimness and groups of people wearing black or flannel. The art was equally dark. On one wall, he saw a series of paintings of what looked like medical scars blown up a thousand percent. Next to that was an animatronic Santa Claus with its potbelly carved open to reveal a bloody Christ child. The Santa said, “Merry Fucking Christmas.” Vega shook his head. In the next area he saw a series of black-and-white photographs of faces. They looked like people he knew, neighborhood faces, old faces.

  “These I like,” he said.

  He turned the corner to a larger open area. A huge thing dominated the space. It was the tank advertised on the flyer. A good twenty feet long, it was made of railroad spikes and copper and plastic pipes bent and soldered together. The front of the tank smiled a wide, spiked Cheshire smile. On a wooden post a plaque at eye level read: RAPEPILLAGESLASHBURN by Lime Orange. Mixed Media, 1997.

  “I present my homage to the Vikings.” Orange was suddenly next to him. “I’m fascinated by the traditional understanding of meaning. What starts out as hope soon becomes manipulated into a carnival of greed, leaving only a sense of decadence in the darkness.” Orange held a beer bottle in his hand, close to his mouth, but he didn’t drink from it. He circled around the tank in front of Vega. “I worked on this for over three years. I got lucky with the pipes though—they’re from a hardware store that was going out of business.”

  Vega tried to walk around the tank to the left, but Orange moved with him, blocking the way. Then through the ribs of the tank, Vega saw a flash of white sneaker at floor level. Someone was running. He took a step back and saw the young face.

  “Danny!”

  Cortez was over the turnstile and outside in seconds. Vega pushed through the turnstile and ran after him. The kid was already two blocks away. Vega swore. “Fucking teenagers.”

  After three blocks of running, Vega’s sides hurt, but he focused on the kid’s sneakers, which stood out in the darkness between streetlamps.

  Danny zigzagged toward the Northside. He was heading across the street when a station wagon pulled out from a parking spot and clipped him. The driver cursed. Danny flipped in the air, went down. Long enough for Vega to close the distance between them to half a block.

  The kid made a turn onto Bedford. Vega picked up his pace and turned the corner in time to see the kid head for the L train. Vega ran down the stairs. He heard clicks and dings and then “Stand clear of the closing doors.” The L train to Manhattan was pulling out. Vega could see Danny smirking at him from inside a car. The smirk pulled out of view.

  “Shit,” said Vega. Then he saw the back of the train. The gate sticking out at the end. He ran to meet it as the train was picking up speed.

  He reached and held on to the gate. It pulled hard at him, yanking his arms almost out of their sockets. He landed his feet on the back platform just as the train moved into darkness. Sweat dripped down his back and his side ached as if he’d been speared. He could see inside of the back car. A little girl waved at him with one hand and picked her nose with the other.

  Suddenly, the train bumped into something on the tracks, making the cars shake. Vega slipped.

  He hit the tracks hard. The train pulled away into the darkness, and Vega lay on his back, something screaming in his ribs, his legs cramped from running. He crawled, then walked back to the Bedford Avenue stop. A beefy lady transit worker stood on the platform. She looked at him and shook her head.

  In the light Vega saw parts of his pants and jacket were ripped and that he was bleeding through the rips. The worker helped him back on the platform. He told her who he was, showed her ID. She said, “Get yourself to a doctor or something, mister. Batman, you ain’t.”

  * * *

  When Vega woke up, he was on the couch in his cousin’s apartment. A miniature Doberman sat on his chest and barked as if it had just conquered him in some battle. Vega could not move. His body felt like a double-tied shoelace knot. Eventually, he picked the dog up off his chest and began to hobble like a crab over to the door. It seemed to take days.

  “Where you going?” It was Mildred, with a spatula in her hand. Her hair was dyed red now and looked like a burning halo around her head.

  “I have to get home.”

  “Get back on that couch. You’re not going nowhere.”

  He realized he had only moved two feet from the couch.

  She continued to talk to him from the kitchen. “I’m sorry I made you do this. I thought you could find that kid one, two, three.”

  “So did I,” Vega said, so softly he might as well have been speaking to himself.

  Mildred brought him a tray of eggs, sweet plantains, toast, coffee, and four aspirin. He ate, then fell asleep. When he woke up, the apartment was quiet. Mildred was out with the dog.

  He rose stiffly from the couch and slowly, very slowly made his way home. After a hot shower, h
e got dressed then called a car service. He went back to the Spore.

  Vega put on his glasses and got out of the car with his black vinyl briefcase. He could hear some music but not as loud as it had been. There was no one at the front door this time, but it was open. It was barely lit in there. The art pieces seemed more humble to him now, more modest. He headed toward what looked like an office.

  From around a corner someone walked in carrying a large frame. He could see a woman’s feet in clogs underneath it. The frame was one of the black-and-white photographs of faces. An ancient old man’s face. Vega felt like the picture looked.

  “Hello,” Vega said.

  “Oh, sorry,” the woman said, peeking out from behind the frame. She was thin and pale, but she had thick lips and a thick nose. Her black hair was short and curly, with a streak of purple in it.

  “Is that one of yours?”

  “Sure is.”

  “You did all the black-and-white faces?”

  “Sure did.”

  “I liked those. I don’t know much about art, but those were my favorites.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and for the first time she smiled. “That’s very sweet of you to say. I know some people think I’m not the most radical, innovative artist, but . . .”

  “They’re great.”

  “You’ve got a great face. I’d love to photograph you.”

  Vega could feel himself blushing. “My fat face?”

  “Well, maybe so. But it has a lot of character, a lot of strength. Very ethnic, too. My name is Anya, by the way.” She put the frame down and leaned it against her hips. She stuck out her hand and he shook it.

  “Eulogio Vega.”

  “So, what can I do for you, Eulogio? Are you a collector?”

  Vega handed her his business card. “Actually, I’m a private investigator.”

  “This says, ‘Computer technology specialist.’”

  “Internet fraud is my specialty. But that’s not what I’m here for.”

  “Are you here to see Lime?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “He’s right behind you.”

  Vega turned and there was Orange, in a work apron and carrying a soldering iron.