Bronx Requiem(17)

“Estamos aquí para hablar con usted acerca de Paco Johnson. ?Se puede abrir la puerta, por favor?”

Palmer added, “Ma’am, don’t be alarmed. Just open the door so we can ask you a few questions.”

The door closed. Ippolito and Palmer listened for the sound of the chain being removed, but heard nothing. They exchanged looks. Palmer raised a fist to bang on the door when it suddenly opened wide.

Lorena Leon stood in the doorway, defiantly blocking entrance. She had once been a good-looking woman. Even now, after a lifetime of hard years, she made sure to color her gray hair a deep brown with something she bought off the shelf at the local Duane Reade. But she couldn’t cover the deeply etched lines in her skin, or hide the anger and defiance in her eyes. She wore a pair of old jeans that hung off her bony hips and a clinging, faded white top with navy blue horizontal stripes that emphasized her sagging breasts.

Ippolito asked, “Okay if we come in?”

She stepped back and hacked a phlegmy smoker’s cough.

Old, cheap furniture crowded the small living room. For some inexplicable reason, an iron skillet filled with fried ground beef sat on a heavy 1950s coffee table in front of a beat-up red couch.

Drooping green drapes covered most of the room’s two windows, blocking the gray daylight outside. A tired window air conditioner ground away, doing very little to change the fetid air filled with cooking smells.

Both detectives stepped in, but neither moved very far into the apartment so as not to upset her. She stood with her arms crossed, waiting for whatever trouble they had brought to her.

Palmer hung back, letting Ippolito continue.

“Mrs. Leon, I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

She shook her head and turned away from them, moving over to the couch, sitting down at the edge, as if she didn’t want to hear the bad news while standing. She didn’t offer the detectives a seat so Palmer and Ippolito walked toward the couch and stood opposite her.

Palmer held his notebook and pen, ready to take down any information Ippolito might pull out of the old lady.

Ippolito knew from his interview with Ferguson that Lorena was Paco Johnson’s mother-in-law, so he put on a sympathetic demeanor, informing her, “Your son-in-law was found dead this morning, not too far from here.”

Lorena looked up at Ippolito confused. He translated. “Su yerno fue encontrado muerto.”

Maybe it was his accent, but Ippolito’s translation seemed to confuse her even more.

She responded with a voice degraded by decades of cheap menthol cigarettes. “What?”

Palmer glared at the woman and raised his voice in case there was something wrong with her hearing. “Paco Johnson has been murdered.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes. He’s dead.”

“Why?” she asked.

Good question, thought Ippolito.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you have any idea why?”

She looked down at a frayed green carpet and shook her head. Palmer couldn’t tell if she was somehow trying to deny Packy had been murdered, or deny them an answer.

She looked up at them and frowned.

Ippolito said, “Can you tell us anything that might explain what happened?”

“He should never come here. Never.”

“Why, Mrs. Leon? Why should he have never come here?”

She shot her right hand up as if to slap away the trouble that had entered her home. She sat up straighter.

“He don’t belong here. He knows nothing. I never see him for years. He no care about me, about my house.”

“So why did he come here?” asked Ippolito.

“From prison. For a place to stay. He no want to be here. You are the police. You already know these things? You know he was in prison.”

Palmer said, “Why did you let him come here, if you didn’t want him to?”

Now the old lady looked up at the two men. First Palmer, then Ippolito. Something in her hardened. She shook her head again, digging in, a stubborn scowl twisting her face.

Ippolito was tired. The hot, stuffy apartment and odor of the fried beef aggravated him. The old lady’s raspy smoker’s voice annoyed him. If this was their only lead, they were going to be f*cked on this case.

He walked to the dining area and came back with a chair, part of an old red Formica dining set. The vinyl on the back of the chair had split apart years ago. He dragged the chair near where Lorena Leon sat and placed himself in front of her.

Palmer stood where he was, watching, listening carefully.

Ippolito poked the old woman’s knee, perhaps harder than he’d intended. She jerked away from him and looked at him, angrier now. Ippolito didn’t care.

He dropped his attempts at Spanish, not wanting to give her any cover. “Listen to me, lady. This is serious. This isn’t drugs, or burglary, or some petty bullshit. This is homicide. Murder. Understand?”

Ippolito made sure to get his face right in front of the older woman’s. He looked at her carefully, letting what he’d said sink in. Although her skin had creased with age and taken on a web of fine lines from years of smoking, the woman had strong features. This wasn’t some shy old lady. She still had plenty of fire in her.

She didn’t look away. She met Ippolito’s direct gaze.

He spoke slowly and forcefully. “We don’t forget about murders. We will find out everything. Everything. If you help us, if you tell us what you know, it will be better for you. What’s the matter, don’t you want to know who killed your son-in-law?”