The Crossroads

by F. P. Lione

  © 2005 by F. P. Lione

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2011

  Ebook corrections 9.25.2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3725-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Scripture is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Times Square and the other New York City landmarks described in this book exist, as do the recognizable public figures. But this is a work of fiction. The imaginary events and characters are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to any actual events or people, dead or living, is entirely coincidental.

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  This book is dedicated to Jesus, love personified. We who once walked in darkness have seen a great light. It’s your love for us and in us, and it never fails.

  And to Frankie, our strong, bright child of promise. We love you more every day.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  1

  On December 31, the Crossroads of the World become the Center of the Universe as the eyes of the planet look to Times Square when the old year ends and the new year begins. Over the years millions of people have come from all over the globe to witness the brilliant spectacle that only happens in New York City. A billion others watch by television as an illuminated ball is dropped from the top of One Times Square, at the most famous intersection on earth, as the deafening cheers of the wild crowds below greet the new year.

  New Year’s Eve in Times Square is controlled chaos. Roughly eight thousand cops keep between five hundred thousand and a million people under control because we corral them like livestock behind police barricades.

  The New Year’s event is a culmination of input from the mayor’s office all the way down to the garbage pickup. Dick Clark, the celebrities, and the performers make the whole thing look effortless, but it’s not. What goes on behind the scenes is very different from what you see on your television. There’s a lot that goes into the annual celebration, and before the last piece of confetti is swept up by Sanitation on New Year’s Day, it’s already on the planning tables for the following year.

  My name is Tony Cavalucci, and this is my tenth year as a New York City cop. It is my eleventh year working New Year’s Eve in Times Square. I went into the Academy in June and was assigned my first New Year’s Eve in Times Square six months into my career. The first time I worked it, I was a rookie just starting my FTU or Field Training Unit. FTU is where you go when you first get out of the Academy and before you’re assigned to a precinct. I had graduated in December, worked Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and then spent my first six months at the FTU in Coney Island. I got assigned to the precinct in Midtown Manhattan right before my second New Year’s Eve.

  At my first New Year’s Eve, I was posted at a barrier on 40th Street and 7th Avenue with instructions not to let anyone into Times Square. Since I was green and had no idea what to expect, I spent most of the night at Bellevue getting stitched up after I was hit in the head with a bottle. Had I been assigned inside Times Square, whoever tossed it would have already been searched and the bottle would have been confiscated.

  Last year I was fortunate to be on the job at a time when I could count off a year, a decade, a century, and a millennium all in one night, and be part of the history that started nearly a century ago.

  On December 31, 1904, Adolph Ochs, the new publisher of the New York Times, hung the first ball on top of One Times Square. A rooftop fireworks display at midnight celebrated the completion of the Times building and the renaming of Long-acre Square to Times Square. The first illuminated ball was dropped from One Times Square in 1907. Except for two years during World War II, when the people gathered in the dark to listen by loudspeaker, it has been celebrated that way ever since. Long ago, when it was a “gentlemen only” celebration, men came here on New Year’s Eve in their finest evening clothes and rang in the New Year with merrymaking and order.

  By this time next week I’d be crawling on my hands and knees looking for bombs under parked cars in some parking garage in Times Square, because nowadays some people like their merrymaking with explosives and large crowds.

  But now it was the night before Christmas Eve, and I was standing in the muster room, the thirty-by-thirty-foot room where roll call takes place. I was taking the last hit off my cigarette and waiting for my partner, Joe Fiore, to come up from the locker room.

  Garcia, a cop from my squad, was standing in front of the shoe-polishing machine that said “Club Members Only.” He was lighting the can of shoe polish on fire to soften up the wax. He put the top back on the can to put the flame out. He waited a minute, then opened it back up and smeared some on his shoes. I heard the revolving brushes of the shoe-polishing machine thumping as he shined his shoes.

  I picked up a copy of the New York Post, thankful that the headline didn’t have anything to do with the recent presidential election. After six weeks of the New York papers having a field day with the state of Florida and the Supreme Court’s duking it out over the voting numbers, it was time to move on to something else. The papers were relentless, and every day headlines like “Florida Fiasco,” “Gore Loser,” and “Sissy Al’s Going Down Kicking and Screaming” were plastered across the front page. They seemed to be having the most fun with Al Gore, and we were all sick of hearing about it. The headline “No End in Sight” said what we were all thinking—enough already.

  I was almost glad to see the paper picking on the cops again, and I scanned an article about low morale among the NYPD. The police commissioner says the low morale is overstated, but morale is on the rise. Yeah, right. The veteran cops say that morale began to nose-dive back in 1995 when a two-year wage freeze slapped us in the face, followed by two of the worst scandals the department has ever seen.

  I leaned my back against the doorway and stepped away, wondering if I had dirt on my back now. I put the paper back in the radio room, trying to brush off my back as I walked. It’s not that the precinct is dirty. In fact, I could still detect the faint smell of pine from the floor recently being mopped, but I doubt they ever wash the walls.

  It looked like someone had tried to spruce the place up a little by putting a Charlie Brown Christmas tree at the entrance of the muster room. The tree was leaning precariously toward the radio room, and only every other light was lit. Someone was having a little fun with the decorations, and I leaned in to get a closer look.

  There was toilet paper garland—someone had taken a roll and wound it around the tree. A bitten donut was pushed on the top of it in place of a star. It looked like a chocolate-covered Entenmann
’s to me. A 28, the form we fill out to ask for time off, was pushed through one of the branches. It was a request for Christmas Day off from one of the day tour cops, and “Denied” was written across it in red magic marker. About four condoms in their wrappers were taped to the bottom branches with white adhesive tape. I laughed out loud at a Polaroid of Mike Rooney glued onto a green piece of construction paper cut into a wreath. The picture was of Mike Rooney asleep on one of the benches down in the lounge. Someone had written “Insert here,” with an arrow pointing to Rooney’s mouth.

  “Where do they get this stuff?” I heard Fiore’s voice beside me.

  I turned and shook his hand, and he pulled me in for a hug like he always does, slapping my back in affection. “Sneaking up on me?” I smiled.

  I’ve worked with Joe since last June when my old partner, John Conte, was injured and needed knee surgery. When Fiore became my partner six months ago, I had been on a downward spiral from too much drinking and too much time alone. He stood by me through a dark time and brought me into his life and his church. I’ve learned a lot from him in the last few months about God, and we’ve become as close as brothers.

  “Finish your shopping?” Joe asked.

  “Just about. I have to pick up Michele’s earrings in the morning,” I said, then added, “You didn’t tell Donna what I got Michele, did you?”

  “What are we, in high school?” He shook his head. “Donna’s not gonna tell her what she got for Christmas.”

  Donna is Joe’s wife, and Michele is a friend of Donna’s. Last summer I met Michele at Joe’s house, not impressed with anything but her legs. She didn’t seem my type, no makeup, no long nails, no big hair. I met her again at Joe’s church and took a second look. She leaned more to a classic type, refined I guess you’d call her. I didn’t realize I liked that kind of woman. Looking back, I think I just didn’t have much exposure to women outside of happy hour and turtle races. Michele has a little boy, Stevie, who is four and a half, but she’s never been married. She’s thirty-three, a school teacher, and pretty much everything I’ve been looking for in a woman.

  “How ’bout you? You get everything you need?” Joe had been shopping a lot at the Toys R Us in Times Square. He’s got three kids, two boys and a baby girl, so he did a lot of the shopping to give Donna a break.

  “I’m done,” he said with feeling. “Now all we have to do is wrap it.”

  Sergeant Hanrahan gave the fall in order from the podium in the muster room.

  “The color of the day is green,” he said, indicating the citywide color that plainclothes officers would use to identify themselves if stopped by uniformed officers. Knowing the color of the day would keep them from getting shot when they went to reach for their badge.

  Our precinct is made up of different sectors. Port Authority, Penn Station, Times Square, the garment district, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, 34th Street, part of the theater district, and 42nd between 7th and 8th (“the Deuce”). Each sector handles a piece of this.

  He gave out the sectors without looking up.

  “Garcia.”

  “Here.”

  “Davis.”

  “Here.”

  “Adam-Boy, 1883, four o’clock meal.” That designated their sector, the number of the RMP they’d be driving, and their meal hour.

  He went through Charlie-Frank, which is McGovern and O’Brien, and David-George, which is me and Fiore, without incident. When he got to Eddie-Henry, Connelly answered “here,” but Rooney bellowed “Yo,” causing the boss to raise an eyebrow. The boss moved on to the foot posts, robbery posts, and the substation, and ended the sectors by speaking to Noreen Casey, his driver.

  “Casey, 2455, four o’clock meal. Nor, make sure you grab me a radio,” he said.

  John Quinn from the four-to-twelve was bringing in a collar, a drunk and disorderly we could hear yelling before he even got in the door.

  “Who do you think you are?” his collar bellowed. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I don’t care who you are,” Quinn answered in a bored, tired voice.

  “Lou, this guy’s hammered,” Quinn said as he stopped at the desk. “Do you mind if I just take him in the back?” He was pulling the guy in backward by his cuffs.

  “I pay your salary!” the drunk said, inviting a whole slew of comments from the roll call.

  “I want a raise.”

  “So you’re the guy holding back our pay increase!”

  “This job sucks!”

  Quinn ignored this, taking the drunk back toward the metal gated door. The lou buzzed him in, and he went back toward the cells.

  The boss ignored the heckling from the ranks as he went into “It’s been brought to my attention that there’s been some congregating on the front steps before the day tour finishes roll call.”

  “Oh, here we go,” someone groaned from the back of the room.

  Hanrahan held up his hand. “Apparently the CO came in early and saw ten to fifteen guys gathered on the front steps of the station house.”

  “Oh, gimme a break,” Rooney yelled.

  “I know.” The boss nodded in understanding. “Just do us all a favor and stay around the block until the day tour is done with roll call. We don’t want to bring attention to ourselves, especially if the CO comes in early.”

  Hanrahan finished up with “Be careful, there’s probably gonna be some late-night Christmas parties, and there’ll be drunks spilling into the streets. It’s gonna be busy out there, all the stores are open late for the last-minute shoppers.”

  I walked over to the radio room, surprised to see Vince Puletti working. He had enough time on not to be working Christmas week.

  “Hey, Vince, whatcha doing here?” I asked as we shook hands. He had big beefy hands and a big pot belly. His bald head was mottled with age spots, and over the last few months he’d been out sick a lot.

  “Ah, tonight’s my last night. I’ll be here for Christmas, then I’ll be in Florida for ten days.” He could use the sun, he was looking kind of pasty. He had been having some problems with his stomach and some chest pain. At first they thought he was having a heart attack, then they said it was some kind of hernia.

  “Feeling okay?” I asked, concerned.

  “Yeah, don’t worry about me, Tony. I’m too mean to die,” he said, not looking mean at all.

  “Just don’t work too hard,” I said as I pointed the antenna of my radio at him.

  “You can count on it.”

  “Hey, Tony,” he called as I turned.

  “Yeah?” I looked back at him.

  He gave me a “come here” signal with his hand.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “You still on the wagon?” he whispered.

  “Yup,” I nodded.

  “How long has it been?”

  “About five months,” I said. He looked like he was thinking.

  “Is there a bet going?” I asked dryly.

  He held up his hands, “Mike Rooney only gave you two weeks. Me, I said you could do six months.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Vince.” I shook my head as I walked away.

  I stopped by the front desk, where Fiore was talking to the sarge.

  “Hey, Joe, Tony, Boss,” Nick Romano said as he came out of the muster room. Romano’s a rookie that Fiore and I look out for. We drive him to post and have coffee with him, and teach him all the little things that nobody taught us. We only do it because his father was killed in the line of duty, otherwise we would antagonize him like we do the rest of the rookies.

  “Can you give me a ride to post?” he asked. His hair, which had been spiked and bleached white at the tips over the summer, was now dark again, cut short, with just a little spike in it.

  “Romano,” Rice and Beans from the four-to-twelve called. They came in as we were leaving. “Can you do me a favor?” Beans asked. “Central gave us a job about thirty seconds ago for a dispute at 705 8th Avenue, a couple
of guys are arguing over there.” The dispute was at an Irish pub across from the Milford Plaza. Central stands for Central Communications, those phantom voices that transmit our jobs from the 911 operators. Central’s operators each work one division made up of three commands. When 911 gets a call, they dispatch it to Central, who transmits it to us.

  “Sure, no problem, that’s my post. I’ll check it out when I get up there,” Romano said, writing it down in his book.

  “We’ll drop you off up there and back you up,” Fiore told Romano.

  We walked out to the RMP, which stands for Radio Motor Patrol, or sector car. It was cold out, in the low thirties and expected to dip down into the twenties overnight. It was sunny this morning, but clouds had started to come in and we were expecting some snow showers in the morning.

  We drove up 8th Avenue, holding off getting coffee until we answered the dispute.

  “How long were you on the job before you got Christmas off?” Romano asked from the backseat.

  “Don’t expect it anytime soon,” I said, lighting a cigarette.

  I pulled up in front of the bar. It was an older bar, smoked glass front window, white brick face. I’ve been here before; they get a big lunch crowd that comes in for the five-buck buffet. It’s an all-you-can-eat deal, and they put out a spread of corned beef and cabbage, roast beef, turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. They also have shepherd’s pie and a pretty good potato soup.

  The food draws the crowds, mostly construction workers, but the place makes its money on booze. It’s quick and easy to get your food, leaving the rest of your lunch hour to drink. I’ve seen guys scoff down a plate of food and drink six shots of whiskey to wash it down.

  The tinted window with the big shamrock on the front kept us from seeing inside. I took a last drag off my cigarette, tossing it into the street. We opened the front door into a small hallway with wood paneling. We walked into the bar through an inside wooden door with a glass cutout.

  A small Christmas tree was perched on a table in the corner in front of us. Three small tables were in front of the window, and a twenty-foot bar ran along the wall. Christmas lights were strung along the bar and around the window. To the left was an open area with a stainless steel buffet counter, now long since cleaned up from lunch.