The Craving (11 page)

“He did?” Alison asked. “How did he do that?”

“Oh, animals always act silly,” Simon said, changing the subject. Then he said to Jeremy, “That chicken looks delicious, doesn’t it, kiddo?”

For most of the meal, Jeremy was the focus. Simon and Alison were monitoring his eating and joking around with him, telling knock-knock jokes and singing Wiggles songs. Simon managed to eat his beef relatively slowly, and although he was dying to have some of Jeremy’s chicken, he resisted and ate rice doused in
nuoc cham
sauce instead, figuring he’d pick up some more meat on the street later on. All in all, it was nice to have a nice, normal meal with his family, and he almost managed to forget about all of his problems.

Then, when everyone was just about finished eating, Alison said, “Oh, so I was e-mailing Stacy Rosenberg today.”

“Stacy Rosenberg?” Simon had no idea who she was.

“You remember Stacy,” Alison said. “I went to grad school with her. Stacy, Stacy-and-Rob Stacy? They live in Midtown East, like near the
UN. We went out to a bar with them that time with those other people?”

Simon had no recollection of any of this. “Oh yeah, right, Stacy,” he said.

“They have a two-year-old girl,” Alison said. “Her name’s Jessica and she looks adorable—blond curly hair and these big blue eyes. Anyway, Stacy doesn’t work either, so I was thinking maybe you two could hang out sometime.”

“What do you mean?” Simon asked, trying not to get too defensive.

“I mean a play date,” Alison said. “Like maybe you could meet up at a playground sometime, or Pizzeria Uno, or maybe you could invite her over to the apartment.”

“No, I mean about how she doesn’t work either. I work. I got laid off, but that doesn’t mean I don’t work.”

“Okay, you both don’t currently have jobs, is that better? I was just thinking that it could be a good match, that’s all. She goes to Carl Schurz Park on the East Side. She said she’d meet you there sometime.”

“You mean you talked to her about this already?”

“We didn’t
talk
, we just exchanged a couple of e-mails. Why? What’s the big deal?”

“Is this because of what happened this morning?”

“This morning? What do you—”

“Because of what you said,” Simon said, “how you don’t trust me.”

Alison looked at Jeremy, who was distracted, playing with a piece of chicken on his plate, and said, “It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with that Jeremy needs to be around kids his own age. It was great when you had those guys to hang out with during the day, but since
you don’t want to hang out with them anymore I’m just giving you another option.”

Simon had told Alison that he didn’t want to hang out with the guys anymore because he didn’t have enough in common with them. There was no way he could tell her the truth, of course—that he had something very big in common with them, much bigger than she could ever imagine.

Continuing in a quieter tone he said, “I don’t believe it. I think it’s because you don’t trust me. You don’t want Stacy to have play dates with me, you want her to babysit me.”

“That is not true,” Alison said. “I just think it would be a good idea if Jeremy spent more time with other kids his own age.”

“You said the girl’s two,” Simon said.

“Going on three,” Alison said. “And girls mature faster than boys anyway. I don’t understand what the big deal is, why you’re acting so threatened.”

“Maybe because you’re threatening me.”

“How am I threatening you?”

“Acting like I’m not capable, like there’s something wrong with me.”

“There
is
something wrong with you. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“What’s wrong with Daddy?” Jeremy sounded concerned.

Simon and Alison looked at each other.

Forcing a smile for Jeremy’s sake, Alison said, “Nothing’s wrong with Daddy.” Then she stood and said to Jeremy, “How about two more bites and you can have some ice cream for dessert, okay?”

Alison tended to Jeremy, acting as if Simon weren’t in the room. Well, so much for nice and normal.

After dinner, while Jeremy was playing in his room, Alison came into the kitchen where Simon was doing the dishes and said, “I can do those. Don’t you have a therapy appointment to go to?”

“It’s okay, I can finish cleaning up,” Simon said.

“No, I think you should go now,” Alison said.

Simon could tell she was seriously upset, and he agreed that some time apart would do them both good, so without another word he put on his shoes and black leather bomber jacket and left.

Whenever he went out for a fake therapy appointment he walked around for a couple of hours, then returned home. As he went down Columbus Avenue, he replayed snippets of the argument with Alison, and he knew she’d been one hundred percent right. There was nothing wrong with her suggesting that he go on play dates with her friends, and he knew he’d acted oversensitively. He and Alison had been in marriage counseling for the past year or so but their problems had always been the minor issues that all couples had—pet peeves, bad communication, et cetera. But now he had a major issue that he couldn’t discuss with her or anyone. He was back in a troubled marriage and he knew she wouldn’t put up with his crap forever. If he didn’t figure out how to change his behavior and become a better husband and father, he was going to lose his family forever.

Simon was crossing Eighty-sixth Street when it happened. He was distracted by thoughts about his troubled marriage and the admiring gazes of two women who were at the curb, facing him, when he realized he was crossing against the light. The next moment the car slammed into him from his side. It must’ve been speeding because he didn’t have a chance to react in any way. Almost instantaneously his legs gave way and he was sucked under the front of the car with the force of a powerful vacuum. His head slammed hard against the street and at least one wheel of the car ran over his neck.

While this was happening time seemed to slow down, or vanish entirely, and he only had one dominant thought:
You’re about to die.
But strangely he wasn’t frightened, or even mildly scared. For years he’d suffered from hypochondria and panic attacks and, in a way, an underlying fear of death had always dominated his life, but now when he was confronted with the moment when his life was about to end, death didn’t seem like any big deal.

“Hey, are you okay?”

The voice was from one of the women who’d been eyeing him. He knew this because she was kneeling next to him. She had straight dark hair and was wearing Obsession and a strong deodorant. But how did he know any of this? How could he see her and smell her if he was dead?

Now there was another voice, a man talking fast in some foreign language, probably Arabic. Simon looked over and saw a scruffy man who reeked of cigarettes next to the woman. Then Simon became aware of other odors and sounds but he didn’t know why he was so lucid. And where was the pain? He’d hit the pavement so hard, it should have cracked his skull open, but he was barely dazed, as if he’d just headed a soccer ball. There was some mild achy pain in his legs, but otherwise he felt perfectly fine. Maybe he was imagining all of this. Didn’t some people believe that you can hallucinate right before death? Or maybe he was having a near-death experience. Soon he’d see the bright light, reach out for the welcoming hand of a dead relative.

But none of this happened. There were just more strangers crowding around him, asking him if he was okay, and assuring him that he was going to be fine and help was on the way.

Then Simon stood up, the leg pain gone. Aside from some very slight dizziness, he didn’t feel at all unusual, but that was exactly what
was so unusual. A car had hit him at full speed and he should be dead, or at least very seriously injured, but instead he felt barely jolted. The people around him noticed how unusual this was as well. Everyone seemed amazed, with widened eyes, and some jaws were slacked open.

“W-what’re you doing?” the dark-haired woman asked.

“I’m fine,” Simon said. “I mean, I’m not hurt.”

The Arabic guy next to a cab—ah, so it was a cab that had hit Simon—seemed stunned.

Simon glanced at the people, the taxi, and then at the area toward the front of the taxi where his body should have been lying with multiple broken bones and blood splattered everywhere.

“You really should sit down,” the woman said.

“Yeah,” a guy behind her said. “You shouldn’t move till the ambulance gets here.”

The word
ambulance
terrified Simon. He couldn’t be taken to a hospital. He couldn’t have his blood tested and have the ER doctors discover that their patient wasn’t human.

“Nothing’s broken,” Simon said. For emphasis he shook his arms, then each leg. Then he said, “See? I’m fine.”

Everyone still seemed amazed, or in shock, as if they’d just witnessed someone come back to life, which, in a way, they had.

“The car must’ve gone right over me,” Simon said, figuring that some barely plausible explanation was better than nothing.

He forced a smile, but no one smiled with him. After an awkward few moments, he made his way through the crowd of about twenty or thirty onlookers, toward the curb. Then he walked away faster, practically running. He didn’t know if he was exhilarated or terrified.

He just wanted to get away.

G
eri thought they’d caught Orlando Rojas’s killer. Early Saturday morning the police received a tip via the department’s 577-TIPS hotline from a caller who had seen the sketch on TV. Most tips were useless, as a lot of people treated calling in tips like buying lottery tickets—phone in a bunch and, hey, you never know, one might hit—but this one sounded legit. The caller was certain that James Arrojo, from Astoria, was the shooter, and even claimed that Arrojo drove a light blue economy car, perhaps a Ford Escort. When Queens police officers went to investigate, Arrojo threatened them with a pair of scissors. The officers were able to subdue the suspect, and he was taken to Manhattan North, where Carlita Morales was brought in to view him in a lineup.

Geri, who had been home at the time of the arrest, arrived at Manhattan North shortly after Arrojo. Well, the guy certainly looked like the sketch—dark
hair, same shaped eyes, same bushy eyebrows. He didn’t have any gang connections, though, and he didn’t seem like the drug dealer type. He worked at a retail computer store in midtown. He had no record.

Officer Phillip Campo, one of the arresting officers, said to Geri, “When we broke down the door, he attacked us.”

“Wait,” Geri said. “You broke down the door? You mean you had a warrant?”

Campo smirked and said, “I thought I smelled some pot in the apartment.”

A relatively new law in the city allowed police to break into apartments or houses if they smelled marijuana from outside or in a hallway. The law was designed to prevent offenders from disposing of drugs before police showed up, but some people felt the law could be used as an excuse by cops to avoid the hassle of getting warrants.

“Okay, let’s see what we got,” Geri said.

Geri liked a lot about her job—the detective work, the zero-to-sixty rush when things got out of control—but her favorite part of her job was interrogations—getting into the head of a perp, taking control.

When she entered, the first thing Arrojo said was, “Yo, I didn’t do it. You got the wrong guy.”

No surprise there. Practically every suspect—whether innocent or guilty—opened with, “You got the wrong guy.” After about an hour of questioning, Geri hadn’t gotten very far. Arrojo was sticking to his story that he was home with his girlfriend at the time Rojas was shot and he had no idea why he was even a suspect. He said he’d only gone for the scissors when the police arrived because he thought somebody was breaking into his apartment.

“It’s one o’clock
in the morning, people start breaking down your door, what would you do?”

“You mean you didn’t know they were police officers?”

“Not till they were busting in my apartment,” he said. “Then before I knew it they had me on the floor and were cuffin’ my ass. How come I don’t got a lawyer? I asked for a lawyer in the squad car and they told me to shut my ass up.”

After rewording questions she’d already asked and getting the same answers, Geri left Arrojo in the room and went out to where Shawn was watching through the two-way glass and said, “He’s not the guy.”

“His girlfriend could be lying,” Shawn said. “That’s what people do when they’re in love. They lie.”

It was true that lovers and relatives were usually useless for alibis.

“She’s not lying,” Geri said.

“I’m not saying she is, I’m saying she could be.”

“Come on,” Geri said. “This was a drive-by and this guy sells computers. We have nothing on him except he drives an Escort and he has bushy eyebrows.”

“Let’s put him in a lineup just in case,” Shawn said.