You Have the Right to Remain Silent Read Free Page A

fear to keep the witnesses from talking to the police. It would have worked, too, if the Symptom of Death hadn’t seen Mrs. Alvarez’s murder as an opportunity to get rid of a rival gang.
    Well, maybe one of the girls would let something slip during interrogation; some of them were very young. Marian finished typing the report and glanced at her watch. Two and a half hours until she met Brian for dinner. If she left right then, she’d have time to wash her hair.
    Or, she could go tell young Juanita Alvarez they’d caught the girls who’d killed her mother.
    Marian rubbed her eyes tiredly. No real decision. Brian had seen her with messy hair before.

2
    Running north and south along FDR Drive, the Jacob Riis Projects sat on a windswept lot surrounded by a low wire fence. The tallest building was a fourteen-story pile of mud-colored brick ( shit-colored , Foley called it), with bars or plywood or chicken wire over the windows of the lower floors. Marian Larch had no trouble getting in; all three locks in the double glass doors were broken. Inside, the ubiquitous stench of urine mixed with the smells of spices and marijuana. Spray-painted gang signs were everywhere—on the peeling walls, the doors, even on the ceiling. The elevator was working for a change. Marian checked the escape hatch before stepping in; someone had nailed boards across it. Kids strung out on speed or blacktar heroin sometimes thought it was a gas to ride on top of elevator cars and blast away with a shotgun at unsuspecting passengers.
    The Alvarez apartment was on the eighth floor. The decibel level would have made a deaf man wince; TVs were blaring, boom boxes were booming. Twelve-year-old Juanita Alvarez and her siblings were being cared for by an aunt—who Marian suspected was a neighbor bribed to put in an appearance whenever the cops or the social workers showed up. Juanita was a very self-sufficient child.
    Marian’s knock was answered by a cherub-faced child of eight or so who had eyes that never quite looked at you. Marian smiled at him and said, “Felipe?”
    â€œFelipe dead,” the boy said tonelessly. “I’m Tito.”
    Marian was taken aback; one of the children was dead too? “Oh, I’m sorry! When did he die, Tito?”
    The boy gazed at his shoes, said nothing.
    Marian hunkered down to his eye level. “When did Felipe die? How long ago?”
    Tito stared past her shoulder at open space. “Mama say don’t talk about Felipe and Estella.”
    Estella as well? What was going on here? Marian gently took hold of the boy’s arms. “Tito, is Estella dead? The baby died? How?”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œYou understand your mother won’t be taking care of you anymore, don’t you, Tito? You have to tell me so I can help you. Is Estella dead too?”
    He nodded, wouldn’t meet her eyes.
    â€œBut Juanita’s all right, isn’t she? Is she here? Where—”
    A high, shrill scream made Marian jump. She looked up to see Juanita flying through the air at her. The girl landed heavily, fists and feet flailing and her mouth pouring out a stream of curses in Spanish. Marian lost her balance and they both fell across the doorjamb, Juanita screaming and hitting and Marian trying to catch the girl’s arms. Three black teenaged boys walked by and laughed. “Thassit, Sugar Doll—you get ’er!” one of them said.
    Tito stood by silently watching, or not watching.
    Marian finally managed to get the girl turned around and wrapped both arms around her in a restraining embrace. She spoke soothingly into Juanita’s ear and rocked her like a baby; the girl’s fury gradually dissolved into a kind of crying that wracked her whole body. Marian half lifted, half wrestled her into the apartment and closed the door. She told Tito to fetch a cold wet cloth; he moved silently to obey.
    Eventually Juanita had calmed down to the point