Friday, December 17, 2004
Apartment 4C was only slightly smaller than the one adjacent to it, though Kenneth Mercel didn't seem to mind. He barely took up the space he had and the apartment, from the looks of it anyway, couldn't really be categorized as a place for living so much as a rest stop, really.
He seemed to be out of it more than he was in it and from the semi-clean sheets, the few clean things in this place, that much was obvious.
Martin and Vivian had come back here for a second time yesterday, searching for the guy and he still hadn't been here. Now, here they were again.
Martin was starting to hate Queens and though he could've easily gotten an apartment here, given that the rates were cheaper than in Manhattan, and that he was less than twenty minutes from the FBI field office, he couldn't be happier that he had made the decision to settle into his humble little apartment in the Lower East Side. Queens, he mused, wasn't for people who were born and raised amidst the kiddy crimes of rural Washington.
Vivian, on the other hand, wasn't fazed a bit. They could traipse around every little street and neighborhood from here to Brooklyn to Bed-Stuy, Washington Heights, Harlem and on back to Manhattan and she would remain as she was right now because Vivian...Vivian was a New Yorker. She had it in her blood and he counted himself lucky again that he was with her right now instead of by himself, though he'd never voice that to anyone.
Kenneth was ready to leave again, it seemed, as he tossed a few packs of smokes in his pocket, rolled up some money and stuffed it in the pocket below the small hole in his shirt. There were numerous rips in the guy's shirt, like he'd been in a few fights with it. If he looked closely, he could see fresh cuts as well.
"Been in a few fights lately, Kenneth?"
Slapping the sides of his jean pockets to make sure he was packed, he finally turned his attention back to Martin and Vivian, cringed at the name.
"Kenneth? Nah, man, shit. I hate that name. Fuckin' hate it. Crack head ma names me that, man, not me, not me. I hate it. You call me Ken or Kenny. I don't wanna 'ear no fuckin' 'Kenneth'."
Martin held out his hands in casual compliance.
"Sure. So, Kenny, been in any fights?"
"Nah, I cut holes in my shirts for fun."
Everyone's a comedian.
"Sure I been fightin' now and then. People try to take my stuff, I gotta get it back."
Martin and Vivian exchanged a look.
"Stuff?" Vivian asked.
Ken waved his pointer finger back and forth.
"I don't tell my secrets."
"Drugs?"
"Maybe."
Martin sighed.
"All right, look, Ken, we're not concerned with what you do on the street with your 'stuff', we just want to know anything you can tell us about Vincent Marro."
"Vin? Vinny. Yeah, crazy cat, but great guy, you know? We got some beers now and then when he had off, he didn't bother me about my...stuff."
A cop living next door to a junkie who doesn't do anything about the junkie. Strike one, Vincent Marro.
"He's been missing for a day now, you have any idea where he might be?" Vivian asked, waving her pen mildly in the air.
Ken stumbled against the table for a minute, sniffed and rubbed at his nose furiously.
"The hell should I know? I look like his ma? I didn' see the guy for a couple of days anyway, and now he's missing. Who knows? He could be dead somewhere."
"Do you think he's dead?"
"Again, how the hell should I know? He's a cop. Lotta people around here aren't exactly linin' up for autographs when the boys in blue drive by. Could be anybody, could be nobody. Maybe he just wanted out?" He shrugged.
It made a sense of sorts. Neither Martin nor Vivian could argue that they hadn't felt, even once, for the briefest of moments, the need to get away from this job and its pain.
"Listen, can I go?"
He moved his leg up and down like a little boy begging to ride that scary roller coaster he'd been dying to get on since last year. Vivian nodded.
"Let yourselves out."
With that, he was gone.
Martin stood up and Vivian followed suit, ran her hand idly along the lampshade.
"He seem a little too complacent to you?" She asked.
He shrugged.
"He could've been or we could be reading too much into it. You think he would have any reason to get rid of this guy?"
"Lots of reasons, Martin. The guy's doing drugs, he's living next door to a cop. He tells us Vincent doesn't care about the drugs he's doing, that could be a lie."
Martin nodded in agreement now.
"Vincent could've stumbled onto some major drug trafficking around here, some dirty things. Pretty easy to bust people up."
"He was a Homicide detective though --"
"Still a cop --"
"--so maybe this guy Ken was involved in a murder, they used to be pals, Vincent's gonna turn him in, they get to him first, " she finished.
"Any murders around here in the last week or so?"
Vivian stopped.
"Three women in Manhattan, serial killer."
"That's Manhattan."
"We're fifteen minutes away here, no reason he couldn't live here and go there to kill someone."
Martin stopped now too, turned to face Vivian.
"And Ken did have cuts on his skin, fresh cuts."
Vivian held up her finger.
"Let's get back to the office, do a background check on our little Kenny."
*
When they arrived, Jack and Samantha were across from each other, papers strewn over the table with still more stacks of folders to look through on either side of them. Not even seven in the morning, and they both looked rundown like they'd been here all night.
"You go home at all?" Martin asked Samantha as he took a seat next to her.
She nodded.
"Had some Chinese with Danny, talked to Matt, got a few hours. I couldn't sleep, so I came in early."
Martin looked to Jack, asked him the question with his eyes.
"Same thing."
"Find anything?" Vivian asked as she sat next to Jack.
"Not much. Most of his cases were solved, though. Hell, any of these people would have motive to hurt him if they got out. We're picking at straws."
Vivian nodded, sighed.
"Something about this case doesn't feel right, " Jack said, closing the folder before him and rubbing his hands over his eyes.
Danny walked in, took a vacant seat next to Vivian.
"We doing tax returns already?" He asked, knowing full well what they were doing and hoping to liven the mood, if only minutely.
Jack gave him a wry smile.
"You got anything good for us, Danny boy?"
"His partner seems all right, he was being straight with me. I think he might know some things about Vincent that he's not telling me, though."
"Such as?"
"Nothing big, but, I get the feeling they didn't get along all that well and he won't say much about him. Didn't like his brother, Joe, though."
Jack laughed bitterly.
"Big surprise."
"You really don't like the guy, " Martin remarked.
"I think he dislikes me more than I dislike him."
"Why?"
He hesitated, felt Vivian's stare burning a hole into him.
"We were partners a while ago. He uh -- he was cocky, brash. So was I, but...well, anyway, we were working together for a while and he was itching to get promoted, faked a couple signatures on his reports, even faked reports so he'd look good and I reported him and that was that. He was no-good, dirty."
"So how'd he make Lieutenant?"
Jack fanned his clasped hands out.
"I don't know. I came here, he stayed there. Now his brother's missing."
"Well, we have reason to think the neighbor might be involved, " Vivian said.
"Run a background check?"
"On it, " Martin spoke, already standing up and moving to his desk, now lost in his given task.
Jack rubbed at his eyes again, moved his glasses up to free himself from the blurring words on paper.
"All right, Viv, did you and Martin get a chance to check out Vincent's apartment?"
"Not really. You want us to sweep it good?"
"Yeah, bring forensics in, lift prints, hair, whatever you can find. If there's foul play, it might be right under our noses."
Vivian stood.
"Take Danny with you."
*
Vivian turned over papers and newspapers, lifted socks and shirts and brushed against walls. She'd picked up a lot of dust and grime, but nothing substantially pointing to anything out of the ordinary.
Not much in the apartment would give away the fact that this guy had been a cop, which surprised her. Not that she flaunted her job at home, but there were little things she kept around, things that you'd notice if you saw them. Things like her certificate of graduation from Quantico, her badge thrown on the dresser at night when she came home.
If she didn't know he was a cop, she'd walk into this apartment thinking he was just an ordinary guy living in Queens, scraping by on bills and rent and obviously in dire need of a washing machine.
"I can't imagine what his desk looks like, " Danny remarked from the kitchen. Or rather, the little alcove not ten feet to her left that housed a mini fridge and microwave.
"Agents!" came a shout from the bathroom.
Vivian and Danny hurried over, looked over the shoulder of the CSI hunched over tiny blood drops.
"Blood, " he said, as though they couldn't see it.
"Anything else?" Danny asked.
"We lifted a few prints. Nothing else. We'll get these back to the lab and see what we've got."
*
Jack took a break from the casefiles, wandered into his office and threw himself, more than eased into, his chair, plopping his glasses off in frustration. Lord, if this job didn't eat him alive sometimes. He saw the date on the calendar, noticed he had circled tomorrow in red. Therapy. Marriage counseling, to be exact.
They'd been going for three months, three months of Gee, I didn't know that, Where did we go wrong?, What can we do?, and Look what we've become.
Three months of it and he could've said all the things the therapist had said. In truth, he hadn't helped, just stated the obvious like he'd known would happen and what the hell were they still doing? Jack had been the one to suggest it, to throw one more weight from an already sinking ship.
Maria had agreed and stuck with it and looked now like she didn't want to anymore.
He picked up a red pen and crossed out the date. Whether they wanted to or not, they couldn't go, not with this case currently open.
And somehow, he didn't think Maria would mind.
Diverting his attention back to the case in point, he moved back to the conference room, noticed Martin's now vacant desk and inquired about it.
"Went down to one of the stations to look up some more about the neighbor, " Samantha gave him without looking up.
"Are we going to do this now?" He asked, bending over the table to meet her face, willing her to just look up.
"What?" She asked innocently.
"This. What you're doing right now. Ignoring me. Look, I --"
She waved him off, grabbed her coat off the back of her chair.
"Not here, we're not. I'm hungry, let's get something across the street."
He conceded, grabbed his coat as well. She tucked her scarf tightly around her neck as they journeyed out and he followed her lead to the little diner, the one she'd gone to with Martin, though he didn't know it.
They took a seat and she kept her coat on, ready for a quick escape, he supposed.
"You're dating Martin, " he said.
So there it was. It was out now -- why he'd seemed particularly distant to her, a little wary of Martin and her interaction with him. Like he was her big protector, like he had a right to undermine her choices. They were her choices, damnit, and he lost all right to have a say in her life the minute he chose to leave it.
He chose it. That's what hurt her -- the fact that he had knowingly caused that hurt, had looked in her eyes, looked at her tears, looked at the love she was ready to give and said, Nope, you were good for a while, but sorry.
And, God, did it hurt.
"Not that it's any of your business, but no, I'm not dating him."
"You're not?"
"That's what I said, " she responded, her voice growing icier by the second.
"And...it is my business, I'm your boss. If you were dating him --"
"Oh no, you wouldn't even go there, Jack, you wouldn't even. Play the cards like some saint boss that keeps all his agents in line, but hey, it's okay if he gets a little something on the side."
He drew in a deep breath, clenched his teeth. He deserved it, he knew he did. This had been building up for a year, since their abrupt end on the bench.
"Sam, " he said, reaching over to cover her outstretched hand, "you were never 'a little something on the side', you know that."
She pulled her hand away, looked down at her coat.
"Do I? Or was I just a nice distraction for the few rough patches in your marriage? And now that everything's all fine and dandy with you two, you don't need need the sex on the side."
"Sam! God, you weren't sex on the side, you weren't. You were more than that."
He ran an angry hand around his hair, through the loose strands.
"And we're not fine and dandy, Maria and I, we're not. We've been going to therapy and it's still not working."
"Yeah? I went to therapy too Jack. For my gunshot wound. You know what kept me going for six fucking months? Huh, Jack? You know what it was? You. It was you. Took me six months in therapy to realize you were the one thing --"
"The one what?"
"Nothing. Not a godamned thing."
She shot up out of her seat, tucked her hands back in her pockets and made a move to leave, but he caught her arm, looked at her with those disarming eyes.
"What, Sam? What?"
"The one thing I couldn't get over, Jack. Ever, " she whispered, walked away before he could see the angry tears starting to pool in her eyes.
He watched her leave, followed her stroll across the street and lost sight of her as she headed north. They hadn't even eaten.
She walked with meaningful strides, not sure where she was going, but needing to get away from him and this stupid case for just a few minutes and be alone. And she was. She was alone. Always alone.
The entire city moved around her; scattered couples laughing about stupid jokes or funny movies, couples walking hand in hand and wondering how life could get any better. There was this entire mass of people, this huge crowd of people with people, no one, as far as she could see, was alone.
Yet here she was.
Samantha Spade, agent at large, embodiment of pathetic choices and stupid chances and love she couldn't ever seem to get right.
Here she was.
Alone in a crowd.