They could tell by the angles of the cracks in the glass where the bullets had come from; it looked like a straight-on shot, from someplace exactly opposite, on the same level. The building was U-shaped; there was an apartment across the courtyard, facing hers. They went over to that apartment, knocked; they had their guns out. Nobody answered; there were no sounds. Three o’clock in the morning. They holstered their guns and turned away. The door opened. They turned back. A man was standing in the doorway, pointing an automatic. If they went for their guns, he would shoot. They talked as they inched forward. Phil grabbed the guy’s gun hand as Chris pulled his gun and put it to the guy’s head. Phil was trying to push the guy’s arm down, get the gun pointed to the floor, as the door gave way and they all fell into the apartment. The door slammed shut. It was pitch black. Three men with two guns, grappling.
The guy was yelling, “I’ll kill you!”
Chris was yelling, “Drop the gun! Drop the gun or I’ll shoot!”
Phil was thinking, “I wonder if Chris knows where my head is.”
Finger by finger, Phil pried the guy’s gun from his hand. The gun dropped. Chris found the light. The whole thing took ninety seconds, start to finish.
When you were in uniform, you knew exactly what you were supposed to do. You had to check the glass: At the beginning and end of your tour, you walked around and made sure no windows of the stores on your post were broken. When you were in uniform, you knew where you belonged. Where did Chris belong now? Not at Andy Glover’s funeral. Too many cops there. Policemen in white gloves had lined two blocks along 145th Street, a hushed blue sea, as Andy’s coffin, covered with the white, green, and blue NYPD flag, was borne into the Convent Avenue Baptist Church. Where did Chris belong now? Not at Carlo Gambino’s funeral, when the old don had a Mass of the Resurrection. Same reason: too many cops there.
The lights in the plaza had come on; there were no people around. A security guard making rounds came over to Chris. “I live here,” Chris said.
“Okay, have a good evening,” the guard said.
Chris went up to his apartment. He stood at the window, looking down at the black water. He had talked down suicides. You had to be careful, if they were on a roof, not to get too close, or they might take you over the edge with them. You talked them down, then you called a priest. It didn’t matter whether they were Catholic or not, you called a priest anyway. The longer you talked, the less chance they’d jump. “Nothing can be that bad,” Chris would say. “No matter what’s the matter, it can’t be that bad.” When he’d gone on a domestic-dispute call, the woman was standing there with a black eye, then she begged him not to lock the guy up. So Chris had let him off with a lecture. “Listen! I don’t want to have to come back here again. If I get another call, I am going to come back and beat the living shit out of you.” Cops were allowed to talk like that, in those days. “Settle down, now! You have a wonderful wife and family. You have your health and a place to live. Enjoy your life—it’s simple.”
Now Chris knew it wasn’t simple. Something could be that bad—so bad that there seemed no other way out. Judas had thought so.
He didn’t seriously consider it for himself, though. That was an ultimate law he couldn’t break. He just walked over to the kitchen and poured himself a drink. He’d been drinking, all along, because it was part of the life-style. Now he was drinking because it eased the pain and because he just felt like drinking.
Against all the rules, he met Phil.
They’d talked on the phone often, since Phil had been back in New York, but getting together had been out of the question, too risky for both of them. As an FBI agent, Phil didn’t wear a uniform, but Chris thought Phil looked as though he were always in uniform. It wasn’t just the dark suit and the tie; it was his whole bearing, his straight-arrow look. He looked so much like a lawman that some people thought he never laughed. Chris knew better, and he’d missed Phil a lot. The last thing Chris needed was for somebody to see him talking to a fed. Hanging around with a wiseguy wouldn’t have been a good career move for Phil, either.
Chris phoned Phil at his office.
“How are you doing? How’s it going?” Phil asked.
“Fine,” Chris said. “I’ve got to see you.”
They met at the safest place Chris could think of, a tiny, out-of-the-way beach in Queens. It wasn’t much of a beach, just a strip of dark-brown sand on an inlet off Jamaica Bay. Planes taking off and landing at Kennedy Airport, less than a mile away, made a racket, and the smell of jet fuel hung in the air. Chris had been going to Rockaway for thirty years, so he knew about the little beach. He used to drag-race on Cross Bay Boulevard, in a souped-up Chevy, starting at the Bow-Wow restaurant and ending at the channel bridge, a quarter of a mile with no traffic lights. You could see the channel bridge from the beach. Partly because it was so small and secluded and basically unappealing, Chris and Phil were the only people there.
“Hey, you look great,” Chris said. “How’s it going?”
“You look terrible,” Phil said. “What’s the matter with you? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing,” Chris said. “I just wanted to see you, keep in touch, you know? How’s the family?”
“Fine,” Phil said. “Everybody’s fine.” He was appalled at the way Chris looked. He saw that Chris had gained weight, yet his face had a strained, tight look, and he looked as though he were drinking a lot. He had a bleak expression in his eyes that Phil had never seen.
“Come on, sit down,” Chris said. He motioned to a piece of broken log, embedded in the dirty sand. “This is my beach chair. I found this place a long time ago. It’s a good place to sit and talk.”
“Great, let’s talk,” Phil said.
Chris sat at one end of the log, Phil at the other. Chris was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, but Phil was in his suit and tie. Phil figured he must look ridiculous, sitting there like that, but he was never comfortable taking off his jacket or loosening his tie. He opened a paper bag he’d brought and took out two cans of diet cola.
Chris took the can. “Hey, can I keep it this time, Dad?”
Phil laughed. “But I never said it was corruption to take the can of soda. I just said it was better …”
Chris chimed in. “Better not to take anything at all, that isn’t paid for.”
Chris took a swig of his soda.
“You were a better cop than I was,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Phil demanded. “You were a terrific cop. At least, my mother said so.”
Chris brightened a little. They’d always said their mothers were stereotypes of Greek mothers, who lived only for their children, and they’d made up a joke. “What’s a Greek mother? A Greek mother is a mother who, if her son cuts her heart out one day because he needs money and he’s going to take it out and sell it, she calls to him as he’s running out the door, ‘Be careful, don’t trip and fall!’”
“How’s your mother?” Chris asked.
“She’s fine,” Phil said. “She’s still down in south Jersey, that little place with the big garden. How’s yours?”
“She’s fine, I think,” Chris said. “I haven’t seen her for a while.”
Phil knew in general what Chris was doing, and he knew from looking at him, and hearing what Chris was saying, and what Chris wasn’t saying, that something was very wrong. But he didn’t want to press. Better to let him say whatever he’s got to say when he’s ready, he thought. So Phil talked about his family—his son, who was a Scout, all excited about going to summer camp; his wife, Judy, who’d gone back to nursing, part-time.
“How’s your wife?” Phil asked.
“She’s fine, I think,” Chris said.
Chris stared out at the murky water. Two stray seagulls were skimming near the edge of the water.
“I wish we could go back,” Chris said. “I wish we were back in the radio car again. I’ve been thinking about those days, a lot, and about the Academy.”
�
��Well, those were the good old days,” Phil said. Looking at Chris, he thought maybe it would help to reminisce. So he talked about old times. As a cadet at the Academy, Phil had been sent out for a couple of days to direct traffic. He’d been sent to what he thought must have been the busiest intersection in the world, Times Square, where Broadway and Seventh Avenue intersect. He was petrified. He was just standing there shaking, traffic whizzing all around him, when a cop approached.
“What are you doing here?” the cop asked.
“I’m supposed to be here, sir,” Phil said.
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’” the cop said. “I’m not your superior; my badge is the same color as yours.” He pointed to the traffic signal. “See that light? That is a traffic light. It turns red and it turns green. Now, this may come as a shock to you, but that light is going to turn red, then green, then red again, all day, whether you’re standing here or not. And people are going to stop and go and stop and go whether you’re standing here or not. So take it easy. Relax.”
“Yes sir, I will,” Phil said.
Chris laughed. “They sent me to Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street,” he said. “A terrible corner. Sink or swim. I’ll never forget it. I didn’t know how to talk with the whistle in my mouth, and a truck was coming through the intersection, and I hollered at him, and the whistle went flying out of my mouth and the truck ran right over it.
“Then a woman comes running up to me, and she’s hollering, ‘Officer, Officer, there’s a building collapsed over on Ninth Avenue!’ I just looked at her, because my sergeant had said to me, ‘Don’t get involved in anything, kid. Just do traffic and don’t get involved.’ So I said to her, ‘You better call the police.’ She says, ‘But you’re a policeman, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I’m a policeman, but please, lady, call another policeman.’ And I gave her my dime, from my memo book.”
Chris laughed again, then stopped abruptly. He squeezed the empty soda can between his hands, making crackling sounds.
“How long have you been under, Butch?” Phil asked.
“Four years and two months,” Chris said. “They call me ‘Curley.’”
“Well, my God, that’s too long,” Phil said. “That’s way too long! A couple of years, okay, but after that it takes too much of a toll. I can see it’s taking a toll. It’s time to bow out, Butch. Pull the plug.”
“No, not yet,” Chris said. “I’ve almost got one guy right where I want him. I have to stay in a while longer, because it’s taken me a long time to get to this point, and nobody else could get to this point.”
“Look, if you got hit by a car tomorrow, there’d be somebody to take your place,” Phil said bluntly. “There are other cops. There are even other Greek cops!”
“You don’t understand,” Chris said wearily.
“I understand that you have been in this job about twice as long as you ought to be,” Phil said. “You look god-awful. You can’t keep on like this, Butch.”
Chris laughed shortly. “The word ‘can’t’ isn’t in my vocabulary,” he said. “At least, somebody once told me that.”
“Look, you’ve done your duty,” Phil argued. “You’ve fulfilled your obligation, whatever that was. You can only live the way you’re living, always on guard, for just so long. And frankly, Butch, I doubt you’ll accomplish much more, at this point. It’ll just be more of the same.”
“You don’t understand,” Chris said. “There’s another situation that I—that I have to deal with. I have to stay in a while longer.”
“Well, how much longer?” Phil demanded. “How long is this going to take?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said.
After their meeting, Chris felt bad that he hadn’t leveled with Phil. He’d always felt he could tell Phil anything. Phil had always felt he could tell Chris anything, too, even something that maybe, for some reason, he couldn’t tell his wife. At the 4-oh, other cops had been puzzled by their friendship. “What do you guys have to talk about so much?” one cop had asked. Chris didn’t know what to answer; he knew only that if he and Phil were locked in a room together for six months, they’d never run out of things to talk about.
But Chris felt that this whole mess was his burden, his responsibility. It was too much to dump on Phil. He’d gotten himself into it, and he’d have to find his way out. Besides, if he told Phil the whole story, Phil would tell him what to do, and whatever he told him would be right. Chris wasn’t ready for that. But it was so good to see Phil, such a relief just to be with him for a little while, that they continued to meet once, sometimes twice a week, on the little strip of beach. Chris wanted to talk, hoping Phil wouldn’t hear.
When he told Phil about the pain in his groin, Phil insisted he see a doctor. When Chris hemmed and hawed, Phil drove him to Astoria General one night, to the Emergency Room. He waited while Chris was examined.
Chris came out smiling. “He doesn’t think it’s serious,” Chris told Phil. “He says it’s a water seal, or a groin sprain, something like that, and it’s not serious. He says if it doesn’t go away in a couple of weeks, I should see a specialist. But it’s nothing urgent.”
The doctor gave him Tylenol with codeine, which made him feel better. He felt better when he was at Our Lady of Pompeii. He’d confessed to God. Now the time had come to confess to Marty.
10
A German shepherd named Duke kept watch at the Ravenite in the predawn hours, from three to six A.M., when nobody was there. At other times, the dog was locked in a back room. Chris was annoyed by the animal’s frequent barking. He’d never been fond of dogs, anyway. When the family moved to Queens, they got a dog because it seemed like the thing to do, now that they had a backyard. Chris was supposed to take care of Lady, but it usually ended up with Katrina doing the feeding and the washing. Chris knew that boys were supposed to like dogs, but he would have preferred a couple of cats.
Harry told Chris that things were happening around the Ravenite, though he was careful not to tell him too much. He didn’t tell him about the observation post that had been set up, with a camera, in an apartment across the street, with a Chinese guy as tenant of record. Harry didn’t want Chris to look up at that window, automatically, when he stepped out onto the sidewalk. Chris could tell that the guys at the club were getting edgy. They were especially suspicious of a strange car that remained parked on the street, and they talked of setting it on fire. Then they settled on hooking up a hose to a fire hydrant and flooding the vehicle. That would take care of any eavesdropping equipment.
What Harry did tell Chris was that the NYPD’s black-bag team was ready to break in and plant bugs. Getting in was not the problem. There wasn’t a lock made that the black baggers couldn’t handle, no piece of equipment they didn’t find a use for. But to get in and wire the place, they needed a court order, illegal bugging having gone out of style after Watergate. To get the order, they needed proof of criminal activity. Informers had been talking about lots of criminal activity, but a judge wasn’t going to sign an order just based on what an informer said. Chris guessed the judges must have felt as he did, that an informer might bullshit you and tell you anything he thought you wanted to hear. A judge would authorize it on the word of an undercover, though. An undercover cop was dependable. So Harry wanted Chris to get in, one more time, wearing his wire, and get that proof.
Chris didn’t want to do it. For one thing, he felt that with so many people running around, wires could get crossed, and they might start shooting the wrong people. In a way, the longer Chris was in this world, the safer he felt, because he was accepted. But in another way, the longer he was in, the riskier. Sooner or later, by the law of averages, something was going to happen. A guy’s luck would run out.
His nerves were shot. Around eleven o’clock one night, he went down from his apartment to the Waterside garage, where he kept his car. He’d caught a few hours sleep and was off to make his rounds. When he unlocked the door and got in, he smelled something odd, like a mixtu
re of booze and garlic.
He hurled himself out of the car. He pulled the automatic and held it straight-arm, using both hands, in the classic police stance: STAY!
Stiff with tension, holding the gun in his outstretched arms, pointed at the back seat, he inched toward the car and peered in. No one was there.
He got back in the car, then just sat there, unable to bring himself to start the car. Come on, come on, turn the key, start the car, he told himself. But he couldn’t. He got back out, lifted the hood and looked for wires. He got down on the greasy concrete floor and squirmed underneath the car, on his back, and looked for wires. Finally he just forced himself to get in the car, turn the key and go.
Another night he was driving out Queens Boulevard, heading for the Kew. It was a warm night; he had the window open. He stopped at a red light. The driver in the car in the lane beside him took his hand off the steering wheel, reached down to the front seat and picked up something. Chris could just see, from the corner of his eye, the shank of a long object. It was a shotgun!
Chris yanked at the steering wheel and rammed his car crossways in front of the other car. With his right hand, he grabbed his gun, while he threw open his car door with his left. He ran to the driver’s side of the blocked car and stuck his gun in the guy’s face. As the man stared at him, his eyes popping, face ashen, speechless, Chris saw the long-handled object on the seat. It was a tennis racket.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Chris mumbled. He ran back to his car and took off.
He began to carry his service revolver instead of the little automatic. It made him feel safer. It was a bigger caliber weapon, more reliable. He didn’t holster it; that looked too professional, a giveaway. He just stuck it in his waistband, with tape around it so it wouldn’t slip through. He took the handles off before he wound the tape around the frame so that it wouldn’t look like the “detective special,” but like some homemade piece of crap. He had a hundred excuses ready, in case somebody got nosy—“I was carrying a lot of money today, I needed a bigger piece”—but nobody ever asked. He began sleeping with the lights on.
Love or Honor Page 24