The Pusher полностью

"I don't know how," she said at last. "My husband is good. He has worked all his life. This minute, this very minute, he is working. And have I not been good? Have I done wrong with my children? I taught them the church, and I taught them God, and I taught them respect for their parents." Proudly, she said, "My children spoke English better than anybody in the barrio. Americans I wanted them to be. Americans." She shook her head. "The city has given us much. Work for my husband, and a home away from the mud. But the city gives with one hand and takes back with the other. And for all, senores, for the clean white bathtub in the bathroom, and for the television set in the parlor, I would not trade the sight of my happy children playing in the shadow of the fort. Happy. Happy."

She bit her lip. She bit it hard. Carella waited for it to bleed, amazed when it did not.

When she released her lip, she sat up straighter in her chair.

"The city," she said slowly, "has taken us in. As equals? No, not quite as equals-but this too I can understand. We are new, we are strange. It is always so with the new people, is it not? It does not matter if they are good; they are evil because they are new. But this you can forgive. You can forgive this because there are friends here and relatives, and on Saturday nights it is like being back on the island, with the guitar playing and the laughter. And on Sunday, you go to church, and you say hello in the streets to your neighbors, and you feel good, seсores, you feel very good, and you can forgive almost everything. You are grateful. You are grateful for almost all of it.

"You can never be grateful for what the city has done to your children. You can never be grateful for the narcotics. You can remember, remember, remember your daughter with young breasts and clean legs and happy eyes until those… those bastardos, those chulos… took her from me. And now my son. Dead. Dead, dead, dead."

"Mrs. Hernandez," Carella said, wanting to reach out and touch her hand, "we…"

"Will it matter that we are Puerto Rican?" she asked suddenly. "Will you find who killed him anyway?"

"If someone killed him, we'll find him," Carella promised.

"Muchas gracias," Mrs. Hernandez said. "Thank you. I… I know what you must think. My children using drugs, my daughter a prostitute. But, believe me, we…"

"Your daughter…?"

"Si, si, to feed her habit." Her face suddenly crumpled. It had been fine a moment before, and then it suddenly crumpled, and she sucked in a deep breath, holding back the racking sob, and then she let it out, a sob ripped from her soul. The sob stabbed at Carella, and he could feel himself flinching, could feel his own face tightening in an impotency. Mrs. Hernandez seemed to be clinging to the edge of a steep cliff. She hung on desperately, and then sighed and looked again to the detectives.

"Perdуneme," she whispered. "Pardon me."

"Could we talk to your daughter?" Carella asked.

"For favor. Please. She may help you. You will find her at El Centro. Do you know the place?"

"Yes," Carella said.

"You will find her there. She… may help you. If she will talk to you."

"We'll try," Carella said. He rose. Kling rose simultaneously.

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Hernandez," Kling said.

"De nada," she answered. She turned her head towards the windows. "Look," she said. "It is almost morning. The sun is coming."

They left the apartment. Both men were silent on the way down to the street.

Carella had the feeling that the sun would never again shine on the mother of Anнbal Hernandez.

The 87th Precinct was bounded on the north by the River Harb and the highway that followed its winding course. Striking south from there, and working block by block across the face of Isola, you first hit Silvermine Road and the fancy apartment buildings facing on the river and Silvermine Park. If you continued walking south, you crossed The Stem, and then Ainsley Avenue, and then Culver Avenue, and the short stretch of Mason known to the Puerto Ricans as La Vнa de Putas.

El Centro, despite the occupation of Maria Hernandez, was not located on Whore Street. It crouched in a side street, one of the thirty-five running blocks that formed the east-to-west territory of the 87th. And though there were Italians and Jews and a large population of Irish people in the 87th, El Centro was in a street that was entirely Puerto Rican.

There were places in the city where you could get anything from a hunk of cocaine to a hunk of woman-anything in the alphabet, from C to S. El Centro was one of them.