Shadows Still Remain Read online

  Shadows Still Remain

  A Novel

  Peter de Jonge

  For my father,

  with affection and respect

  …dusk do sprawl.

  —JOHN BERRYMAN

  Contents

  Epigraph

  1

  At 9:37 on Thanksgiving eve, nineteen-year-old Francesca Pena steps from…

  2

  Freemans, styled like a ramshackle hunting lodge, is packed to…

  3

  Detective Darlene O’Hara licks the cranberry sauce off her thumb…

  4

  The next evening O’Hara and Krekorian stand outside Samuel Gompers…

  5

  Saturday, O’Hara and Krekorian focus their crime-solving talents on a…

  6

  Thumbing the photograph of Pena in her coat pocket, O’Hara…

  7

  Krekorian lives twenty miles up the Palisades in the Rockland…

  8

  They decide to leave the car where it’s parked and…

  9

  Three hours later, just before midnight, O’Hara and Krekorian watch…

  10

  Krekorian does a U-turn on LaGuardia, and with his siren…

  11

  Across the river, a milky dawn puddles up over Brooklyn…

  12

  From the ME’s office, Lowry and Grimes proceed directly to…

  13

  By the end of that night, Lowry has O’Hara and…

  14

  O’Hara has Hall close down the job, then calls Jack…

  15

  The door to apartment 5B is still unlocked and partly…

  16

  At two in the morning, unable to watch any longer,…

  17

  When O’Hara returns to the Seven, the air in the…

  18

  Saturday morning, buoyed by a night and a half of…

  19

  If you don’t think women are suckers, check out the…

  20

  New York Hardcore Tattoos and Piercing is bowling-lane tight and…

  21

  O’Hara stuffs the copy of Pena’s tattoo into her coat…

  22

  Breaking in a new box of Advil is rarely attempted…

  23

  The portion of 106th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam is…

  24

  Practice is making O’Hara a better liar. At 6:05 a.m.…

  25

  “David,” asks O’Hara, “why are you paying your respects from…

  26

  Tuesday night O’Hara gets out of the subway again at…

  27

  Bruno is fourteen pounds of empathy. He knows right away…

  28

  When O’Hara and Krekorian get to McLain’s temporary new home…

  29

  The following evening, at ten minutes before midnight, O’Hara gets…

  30

  On a prime retail stretch of Ludlow, just south of…

  31

  Monday morning, while Daniel Delfinger places his glasses on the…

  32

  The picture O’Hara drops on Juergen Muster’s gray enamel worktable…

  33

  O’Hara picked the Empire Diner because it’s just up the…

  34

  O’Hara looks down at the uneven surface of her kitchen…

  35

  Wincing at the light and siren pulsing from her dash,…

  36

  Outside is a riot of emergency response—ambulances, squad cars and…

  37

  “Turkey on a Kaiser roll,” says O’Hara. The swarthy, hollow-eyed…

  38

  Wednesday at eight in the morning, jackhammers start breaking up…

  39

  When O’Hara runs down the steps and sees the size…

  40

  Over the next couple of hours, O’Hara becomes highly knowledgeable…

  41

  O’Hara pushes back out through the vestibule, to the curb,…

  42

  On Thursday morning Muster’s Amazonian receptionist unlocks the oxidized steel…

  43

  O’Hara’s silence worries Krekorian. “Lowry had a whole department working…

  44

  Building 972, on the west side of Second Avenue, between…

  45

  Eventually, techs arrive to secure the crime scene. They replace…

  46

  To get out of the neighborhood without a ruckus, O’Hara…

  47

  The cabins are set in a row on the bank…

  48

  Three weeks later, an hour before dawn, Rick Helmsford, the…

  49

  From Fort Greene, O’Hara takes the BQE to the Grand…

  50

  On a sticky morning in late August, O’Hara leans against…

  51

  When Aarons’s voice drops off the line, O’Hara feels the…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  At 9:37 on Thanksgiving eve, nineteen-year-old Francesca Pena steps from the cramped vestibule of a crappy little apartment building in the East Fifties and hurries north. Model thin and shielded from the cold by only a vintage Adidas warm-up jacket, she leans into the icy wind that seems to hurl cars downtown and squints at the dreary commerce. This stretch of Second has never amounted to much. Tonight, with everyone on the way to families or bracing for their arrival, it’s essentially shut down. The only exceptions are a candy store franchise that just changed hands and an Irish pub with an advertised happy hour that runs from ten in the morning to seven at night.

  Pena turns west at Fifty-second and with long athletic strides traverses another cheerless block. She passes six-story walk-ups, a basement dry cleaner, another cheerless pub, and the headquarters for the Salvation Army. As always, she winces at the gap-toothed sign with its missing A’s in S L V TION. An NYU sophomore on a track and cross-country scholarship, she has run through all kinds of neighborhoods, good and bad, but none as unsettling as this shabby bit of midtown fringe, where every endeavor feels dwarfed and mocked by the value of the real estate beneath it. As an antidote to the creepiness as much as the cold, Pena slips a chocolate malt ball into her mouth and picks up her already brisk pace. From Third on, the start of Midtown proper, there are no more random tenements or one off businesses. There are only franchises and banks and office towers, and as Pena hurries through the emptied-out block, her bloodred jacket and short glistening black hair are the only colors. Thanks to the hotels, Lexington, at least, is well lit, and on the far corner is the glowing entrance to the IRT. When the signal turns, Pena bounds across the street and down the greasy steps, and after an expertly timed swipe of her Metro-card, pushes through the turnstile like a finish line. She barely has time to throw away her used-up card before a southbound 6 train fills the station, and when she climbs up onto Bleecker, she’s so glad to be downtown, the air feels ten degrees warmer and for the first time in what seems like hours, she is aware of the night sky. Seeing that she has fifteen minutes to spare, she makes a quick detour to Tower Records, where she grabs the latest No Doubt CD for Moreal and the latest Britney for Consuela, and after enduring a withering eye roll from the pierced cashier, heads south again.

  A topless Kate Moss, still freezing her tits off at thirty-one, presides over the intersection of Houston and Lafayette. Pena, very nearly as alluring, crosses under her, setting off flash-bulb smiles from the cabbies lined up at the BP station. Safely across, she turns east on Prince. She passes the side of a build
ing plastered with posters for sports drinks, bands, and video games, then hugs the high brick wall that borders the cemetery from Mulberry to Mott.

  Compared with midtown, Nolita is barely reduced by the holiday exodus. Cars and pedestrians snake through the clogged streets, smokers huddle outside the bars, and as always there’s a crowd waiting to get into Café Habana. East of Elizabeth, however, the street goes black. On Bowery, the restaurant wholesalers are battened down as if for a storm. Cold, and anxious for her walk to be over, Pena turns east onto Rivington. Half a block later, at the end of a short tight alley, she spots her destination: the four-month-old restaurant/bar called Freemans.

  2

  Freemans, styled like a ramshackle hunting lodge, is packed to the fake rafters, but Pena’s friends have staked out prime real estate at the corner of the bar. Like Pena, Uma Chestnut, Mehta Singh and Erin Case are NYU undergrads. Standing side by side, they are so photogenic and multihued that if you cropped out the three-thousand-dollar designer bags and serious jewelry, they could be showcasing their racial diversity for a college catalog. In a sense they are.

  Pena’s arrival sets off a high-pitched eruption of girly glee. When it subsides, Chestnut, who believes with some justification that she reigns over everything below Fourteenth Street, sets off a second by announcing “Cocktails!” Singh, who is taller, curvier and darker than Pena and possesses an equally electric smile, asks for a Sidecar, and the porcelain-skinned Case, whose pink cable-knit sweater is somewhat misleading, a Beefeater Martini—dirty. “Dirty indeed,” says Chestnut, whisking an intentionally greasy bang off her forehead. “And how about you, Francesca?”

  “A Malibu and Seven,” says Pena. “You can take the girl out of the barrio, but you can’t take the barrio out of the girl.”

  “Why would anyone want to,” says Singh.

  The girls present their fake IDs, and Chestnut places the orders, including her own signature Lower Manhattan. When all the cocktails have been mixed, signed for and delivered, Case carefully raises her tiny infinity pool of gin and vermouth. “To Thanksgiving,” she says. “Everyone’s favorite excuse for a five-day bender.”

  “And to all your relatives who got seasick on the Mayflower,” adds Pena. This sets off enough laughter that cocktails have to be steadied before they can be sipped again.

  Time flies. Particularly when you’re young and beautiful and getting wasted. For four hours, the four pals don’t stop cracking each other up, and while occasionally a brave boy dares to breach the perimeter, they mostly flirt with each other. And although Chestnut’s father just had a retrospective at MOMA and Singh’s is the largest commercial landlord in New Delhi and Case was raised like a hothouse flower in eighteen rooms on Park Avenue, it’s Pena, the scholarship girl from western Massachusetts, who is the undisputed star of the group. It is her approval and messy snorts of laughter the others vie for.

  Chestnut, Singh and Case have elaborate Thanksgiving dinners to wake up for the next morning. By 2:30 a.m., they’re inclined to call it a night. But not the long-distance runner Pena, who by way of explanation nods discreetly toward an older guy at the end of the bar.

  “Tell me you’re joking,” says Singh. “He looks like rough trade.”

  “Doesn’t he, though?”

  “You’re coming with us if we have to drag you out,” says Case.

  But Pena crosses her arms and shakes her head like a stubborn toddler, and after a final flurry of hugs and kisses, Chestnut, Singh, and Case have no choice but to abandon her. As soon as they’re out the door, Pena’s posture stiffens. In the tiny bathroom near the kitchen, she splashes her face with cold water, and when she returns to the bar, so-called rough trade has strategically relocated to the neighboring stool.

  “I’ve been watching you all night,” he says. “Am I finally going to get a chance to talk to you?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Any reason?” asks the deflated suitor. But he does it so softly and with such diminished confidence that Pena, who had already turned to the bartender and ordered a Jack and Coke, pretends not to hear him as she takes the drink to a small table in the far corner. As the last customers trickle out, she sits with her back to the bar and nurses her drink for almost an hour. Finally, as a busboy gathers bottles and glasses from the empty tables, she pushes out of her seat and navigates the short alley to Rivington and the half block east to Chrystie.

  At 3:30 a.m at the end of 2005, the corner of Rivington and Chrystie was still among the darkest and least trafficked on the Lower East Side. At 3:30 Thanksgiving morning, it might as well be the dark side of the moon. Pena knows there’s no point even trying to hail a cab until she walks the two long freezing blocks to Houston. After three queasy steps, she realizes she is about to pay the price for mixing all those ridiculous cocktails, and crouches between two parked cars.

  “You OK?” asks a voice behind her.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” she snarls, and retches some more.

  3

  Detective Darlene O’Hara licks the cranberry sauce off her thumb and savors the penultimate bite of her homemade turkey sandwich. She is enjoying her modest feast in the empty second-floor detective room of Manhattan’s Seventh Precinct, overlooking a windswept corridor of the Lower East Side where so much unsightly city infrastructure—including a highway, bridge ramps, dozens of housing projects and this squat brick station house—has been shoved against the East River. The Seven is the second-smallest precinct in the city, covering just over half a square mile, and the curiously exact address of the station is 19½ Pitt Street, but there’s nothing half-assed about the institutional bleakness in which O’Hara has chosen to spend a solitary Thanksgiving.

  O’Hara is thirty-four, with wavy red hair, raw, translucent Irish skin, that even in late November is sprinkled with freckles. She sits at a beige metal desk facing a wall of beige metal file cabinets. The light is fluorescent and the linoleum floor filthy, and behind her, facing a TV that gets three channels badly, is a lunch table littered with the Chinese food tins and pizza boxes that couldn’t fit in the overflowing wastebasket. The windows are filthy too, darkening an already grimy view of the Bernard Baruch projects across the street, but the layer of dirt doesn’t keep out the cold.

  O’Hara isn’t the slightest bit put out by her surroundings or solitude. In fact, she welcomes the rare quiet. It’s like getting paid to think, she thinks, and besides, she isn’t altogether lacking in company. In the chair next to her, curled up in the deep indentation excavated by her partner’s ample Armenian ass, is her fourteen-pound terrier mutt Bruno, his peaceful canine slumber punctuated by snorts and sighs and the occasional rogue fart.

  In addition to the overtime, O’Hara is working the shift for the distraction. Two p.m. in New York makes it 11:00 a.m. on the West Coast. In a couple of hours, Axl, her eighteen-year-old son and University of Washington freshman, will be heading to the Seattle suburb of Bellevue for his first visit to his girlfriend’s parents, and O’Hara pictures Axl, sprawled in his ratty chair in his ratty bathrobe, girding himself for five hours of hell (the father is a shrink, the mother a dermatologist) with black coffee and Metallica. As far as she can tell, a fondness for heavy metal is about the only attribute her son has acquired from her, not including of course his red hair and ridiculous name. In most significant ways, Axl takes after O’Hara’s mother, Eileen. This is probably a good thing and, once you’ve done the math, not surprising, since his grandmother is the person who essentially raised him. You don’t survive having a kid your junior year of high school without a great deal of help, and as O’Hara polishes off her sandwich she makes a point of silently expressing the thankfulness appropriate to both her circumstances and the holiday. Still, the thought of Axl spending Thanksgiving at a dining room table in a real house with a real family makes O’Hara feel like crap.

  The first two-thirds of O’Hara’s shift go as quietly as expected. She reads the Post and News and half the Times. At 3:15, she gets a cal
l from Paul Morelli, the desk sergeant on duty. A rookie patrolman, named Chamberlain, just brought in a Marwan Overton, nineteen, on a sexual assault. Should he bring him upstairs?

  “It’s Thanksgiving, for Chrissakes,” says O’Hara. “It’s supposed to be a PG holiday—turkey, a bad football game, family.”

  “Well, who do you think filed the complaint?”

  “Martha Stewart.”

  “Close,” says Morelli. “Althea Overton, who in addition to being a junkie, prostitute and a thief, is also the suspect’s mom.”

  “Well, OK then.”

  Minutes later, Chamberlain escorts the handcuffed Overton into the detective room. After O’Hara takes the suspect from him, Chamberlain lingers awkwardly by the door, like someone at the end of a date hoping to be invited in.

  “I heard you actually volunteered to work the shift,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  Although O’Hara wears no makeup, rubber-soled shoes, and cuts her own hair, and obscures her generous curves under loose-fitting pantsuits and button-down shirts, she’s not fooling anyone. Half the guys in the Seven have a crush on her, and the young ones like Chamberlain tend to get goofy and tongue-tied when they talk to her.

  “Hopefully, you’ll get out on time at least,” says Chamberlain.

  “Thanks,” says O’Hara. “I’ll take it from here.”

  O’Hara walks Overton to the far end of the room and puts him in the holding cell, where he slouches disinterestedly on the corner of the metal cot. Faithful to the fashion, everything Overton wears is three sizes too big, but in his case it only serves to exaggerate how small and slight he is. Overton, who could pass for fourteen, is barely taller than the five-foot-three O’Hara, and after looking at his tiny hands and sad hooded eyes, O’Hara guesses that along with everything else, Overton was a crack baby.

  Not that any of this matters to Bruno. Since Overton was brought in, Bruno has practically been doing summersaults, and after Overton tells O’Hara that he’s OK with dogs, Bruno races into his cell and greets him like his last pal on Earth, which, not to take anything from Marwan, is how Bruno greets everyone. Detectives look for the bad in people, the incriminating detail, the contradiction, the lie. Bruno is only interested in the sweetness and never fails to find it. Overton is so disarmed, you’d think letting Bruno into his cell was calculated, and probably it was, because twenty minutes later, when O’Hara brings him out of the cell, Overton waves away his right to an attorney without a second thought.