she could still smell the nap.
“Check it out.” Sugar gestured to a large trophy nesting between Blockbuster video boxes on a shelf over his television: first place in an under-eighteen kick-boxing tournament at the Jersey City Boys Club.
“The kid’s a monster.” Sugar beamed.
Nerese’s gaze strayed to a framed yearbook photo of Taylor Sugar; Nerese as always doing a double-take at rediscovering that Sugar, never married, and still more or less an urban redneck, had an adopted son who was either Asian or Hispanic, he’d never tell which.
“That’s great, Bobby.”
“Wait. Check it out . . .” And before she could stop him, Sugar turned sideways and pulled down his sweatpants to mid-thigh, revealing a brown-and-amber bruise which, despite a few days’ worth of fading, still resembled a fully articulated human foot.
“Taylor was practicing in the kitchen, and me as usual with my head up my ass? I just come around the corner and walked right into it. Look . . . ,” touching himself right below the hip. “You can still make out all five toes.”
A luxury development built on reclaimed marshland abutting the Hudson River, Little Venice was politically part of Dempsy proper but geographically a long, lonesome mile from the nearest residential or commercial district of the city.
There was a security shack and a remote-controlled gate at the entrance to the development, the guard obliged to phone the tenants before allowing their visitors on the grounds. But given the vast and porous wasteland that enveloped this checkpoint it was too much to hope for that there should be a record of Ray receiving any guests the day of the assault, especially if they had come to do him dirt.
As Nerese came through the gates, manned today by a retired cop she knew by face but not by name, the air became redolent of a heady mix of river tang and churned earth, and she found herself on a fragile ribbon of asphalt hemmed in by hillocks of backhoed dirt, each mound posted as the future site of a pool, tennis court, health club or recreation center—each one a rest stop for the gulls, overrun with cracked clam shells, construction debris and its own random greenery—weeds, moss, Arms to Heaven and whatever else took root via neglect.
The houses themselves, which began a half-mile beyond the checkpoint, were a picturesque scrunch of vaguely Tudor four-story structures that brought to Nerese’s mind the movie-set village terrorized by the Frankenstein monster, with a touch of Popeye waterfront thrown in to acknowledge their proximity to the river.
Standing before Ray’s third-floor apartment with the key supplied by the management office already in the lock, she abruptly changed her mind about reading his place first, and opted instead for ringing the bell of his nearest neighbor, a Mrs. Kuben, who had discovered Ray sprawled and seizing just inside his own doorway and had made the call to 911.
The woman who eventually made it to the door was in her seventies, tall but crooked at a fifteen-degree angle from osteoporosis, her piled hair frosted and filigreed a brilliant rusty orange.
“Good morning.” Nerese reflexively smiled and stepped back, her police ID alongside her face. “I’m Detective Ammons from the Dempsy PD? Can I speak to you about what happened next door?”
“You know, they tell you a place is safe,” Mrs. Kuben said, nudging a cookie-covered plate an inch closer to Nerese, who was seated across from her at the dining table. “So you move in.”
The apartment had that un-lived-in feel that Nerese sometimes encountered in old people’s digs, the rooms spotless but reeking oppressively of camphor, her eyelids fluttering against the fumes.
“The catching detective says you made the call to 911 at a quarter past five in the evening. Does that sound about right?”
“If that’s what they say,” she shrugged.
“Well let me ask you, how’d it come about that you found him?”
“I went to
“Check it out.” Sugar gestured to a large trophy nesting between Blockbuster video boxes on a shelf over his television: first place in an under-eighteen kick-boxing tournament at the Jersey City Boys Club.
“The kid’s a monster.” Sugar beamed.
Nerese’s gaze strayed to a framed yearbook photo of Taylor Sugar; Nerese as always doing a double-take at rediscovering that Sugar, never married, and still more or less an urban redneck, had an adopted son who was either Asian or Hispanic, he’d never tell which.
“That’s great, Bobby.”
“Wait. Check it out . . .” And before she could stop him, Sugar turned sideways and pulled down his sweatpants to mid-thigh, revealing a brown-and-amber bruise which, despite a few days’ worth of fading, still resembled a fully articulated human foot.
“Taylor was practicing in the kitchen, and me as usual with my head up my ass? I just come around the corner and walked right into it. Look . . . ,” touching himself right below the hip. “You can still make out all five toes.”
A luxury development built on reclaimed marshland abutting the Hudson River, Little Venice was politically part of Dempsy proper but geographically a long, lonesome mile from the nearest residential or commercial district of the city.
There was a security shack and a remote-controlled gate at the entrance to the development, the guard obliged to phone the tenants before allowing their visitors on the grounds. But given the vast and porous wasteland that enveloped this checkpoint it was too much to hope for that there should be a record of Ray receiving any guests the day of the assault, especially if they had come to do him dirt.
As Nerese came through the gates, manned today by a retired cop she knew by face but not by name, the air became redolent of a heady mix of river tang and churned earth, and she found herself on a fragile ribbon of asphalt hemmed in by hillocks of backhoed dirt, each mound posted as the future site of a pool, tennis court, health club or recreation center—each one a rest stop for the gulls, overrun with cracked clam shells, construction debris and its own random greenery—weeds, moss, Arms to Heaven and whatever else took root via neglect.
The houses themselves, which began a half-mile beyond the checkpoint, were a picturesque scrunch of vaguely Tudor four-story structures that brought to Nerese’s mind the movie-set village terrorized by the Frankenstein monster, with a touch of Popeye waterfront thrown in to acknowledge their proximity to the river.
Standing before Ray’s third-floor apartment with the key supplied by the management office already in the lock, she abruptly changed her mind about reading his place first, and opted instead for ringing the bell of his nearest neighbor, a Mrs. Kuben, who had discovered Ray sprawled and seizing just inside his own doorway and had made the call to 911.
The woman who eventually made it to the door was in her seventies, tall but crooked at a fifteen-degree angle from osteoporosis, her piled hair frosted and filigreed a brilliant rusty orange.
“Good morning.” Nerese reflexively smiled and stepped back, her police ID alongside her face. “I’m Detective Ammons from the Dempsy PD? Can I speak to you about what happened next door?”
“You know, they tell you a place is safe,” Mrs. Kuben said, nudging a cookie-covered plate an inch closer to Nerese, who was seated across from her at the dining table. “So you move in.”
The apartment had that un-lived-in feel that Nerese sometimes encountered in old people’s digs, the rooms spotless but reeking oppressively of camphor, her eyelids fluttering against the fumes.
“The catching detective says you made the call to 911 at a quarter past five in the evening. Does that sound about right?”
“If that’s what they say,” she shrugged.
“Well let me ask you, how’d it come about that you found him?”
“I went to
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