3 Quarters

by Denis Hamill

  “You think you can?” Perez asked with hope.

  “I mean what did you really do?” Gleason said. “You okayed a few pension forms under terrible duress. You failed to report a homicide. But you were set up, a victim. I mean you might lose the city job. The AMA might suspend you for a year. But I can’t see any jail time. I can even see immunity. If you turn state’s evidence on these bastards.”

  “I know what it’s like being a cop in jail,” Bobby said. “No offense, but you’re just not built for the showers, Doc.”

  Perez considered this a moment, and it registered like a lifelong recurring nightmare. He turned to Gleason and said, “And you’ll represent me?”

  “You own this house?”

  “Yeah,” Perez said.

  “Of course I’ll represent you,” Gleason said.

  “I’m supposed to wear special blindfold glasses and wait on a bench . . .”

  “ . . . on the corner of Avenue U and Flatbush,” Bobby said.

  “How’d you know that?” Perez asked.

  “Never mind,” Gleason said.

  “I’m supposed to check on some woman,” Perez said.

  Bobby’s pulse started quickening. He and Gleason exchanged a knowing nod. “He said it was a woman?” Bobby said.

  “Yes,” Perez said, checking his watch. “I’m supposed to meet him in an hour.”

  54

  John Shine’s Mercedes passed them on the road out of Windy Tip as Bobby, Gleason, and Forrest Morgan sat in the Internal Affairs cop’s unmarked Lumina on the shoulder of the road two hundred feet from the security gates.

  Bobby dialed Patrick on the cell phone and said, “Shine is heading your way, Sonny.”

  “I’m waiting, Charlie,” Patrick said to Bobby on the other end, parked two miles away in a PAL minibus outside of Kings Plaza Shopping Center. Patrick was watching the man with the dark glasses who sat alone on the bench at the bus stop across the street. In the PAL bus with Patrick was a father and son from the Coney Island projects, eager to play a little midnight basketball in Windy Tip. The kid’s name was Walters. The father was a subway track worker who was even taller than his six-foot-three son.

  “You really think the cops who stole my father’s birthday money might be there tonight?” Walters asked Patrick.

  “If the police photos you identified for me are correct,” Patrick said, “chances are very good.”

  “I wanna meet these two,” the father said.

  “I wanna play them,” his son said. “A little one-on-one . . .”

  ‘You just ID them, for me,” Patrick said.

  “I can’t go in there without backup, Bobby,” Morgan said as he shifted in his seat. He waited with Bobby and Gleason in his car near the gates of Windy Tip.

  “I know John Shine,” Bobby said. “He’s a man who refuses to lose. He’ll kill Dorothea if he’s trapped. I know if we wait for him to come out of the house with her, he’ll lead her out first, using her as a human shield in case anyone is waiting. He’d use her as a hostage. He’d also blow her away if he had to. So we need to surprise him where he least expects us to show up.”

  “But without a fuckin’ warrant?” Forrest Morgan said, looking at his watch for the third time in five minutes. It was a few minutes before 11 AM. “There’s this little thing called the Fourth Amendment, man.”

  He yanked up the door handle and stepped out onto the road for air. Bobby climbed out of the front seat. Gleason got out of the rear door.

  “Come on, Morgan,” a nervous Gleason said as he unzipped his pants and proceeded to urinate on the side of the road next to the Lumina. “You know the law. You can enter any premises and use the Fourth Amendment for a doormat if you’re following a suspect that you know is involved in the commission of a felony. There’s not a judge in Sol Diamond’s Brooklyn who’d give you a search warrant. But this Shine is ready to fly the fuckin’ coop. He knows the jig is up, excuse my French. But you know that when Perez enters that house, he is participating in the commission of a felony called blackmail, participating in a conspiracy called kidnapping, pension rigging, and even murder. That gives you probable cause. How many more dead bodies do you need before you justifiably move your sorry ass past the Fourth Amendment?”

  An agitated Morgan looked Bobby in the eye. “I don’t like this arrogant, nasty-mannered little man,” Morgan said, pointing at Gleason with disdain. “He’s not only pissing me off; he’s pissing on my fucking car!”

  “City car,” Gleason said. “I got the jitters. I usually don’t help bust people. I’m used to unbustin’ ’em. But duty calls.”

  “Izzy, put away your prick, will ya?” Bobby said.

  Morgan paced across the deserted road, carrying his police radio in his hand, trying to make a decision.

  Patrick saw Shine’s Mercedes slow on Flatbush Avenue, watched it make a U-turn and park in front of the bus stop. Shine got out of his car, walked to the bench, and guided Perez into the front passenger seat. He slammed the door shut and then glided back into his car. Patrick dialed Bobby on the cell phone.

  “Pickup made, Charlie,” Patrick said. “I’ll wait three minutes and follow. I’ll proceed to prearranged place.”

  “Shine’s on the way with Perez,” Bobby shouted across the road to Morgan. “This is it, babe. You have the chance to blow open the biggest three-quarters scam in NYPD history. Hundreds of dirty cops that make all the tens of thousands of good, honest, noble ones look like pieces of shit. Page one, Daily News, big picture.”

  Morgan glared at Bobby and flapped his arms. “Don’t you think I know all that shit?” he said.

  “Then shit or go blind,” Gleason said.

  “We have three minutes,” Bobby said. Morgan walked on the other side of the road, waving his hands, talking to himself, throwing left hooks at imaginary opponents. An urgent report crackled over his police radio, and Morgan put it to his ear and listened in glum, motionless silence and then walked quickly back toward Bobby and Gleason, his face stunned with awful surprise.

  “What?” Bobby asked.

  “Dunkin’ Donuts go out of business, Morgan?” Gleason asked.

  Morgan looked at Bobby, waving his index finger, and said, “Good thing I still had you under surveillance last night, Bobby.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “They just found Barnicle, Tuzio, Hanratty, and your first lawyer, Moira Farrell,” Morgan said. “All shot dead in her office on Court Street.”

  “There goes the neighborhood,” Gleason said.

  “I told you I didn’t like this despicable little man,” Morgan snapped, pointing the radio at Gleason.

  “Dorothea will be next,” Bobby said. “Now do we go in?”

  All the old battle scars around Morgan’s tired eyes appeared to converge into one final blink.

  “We go in,” Morgan said.

  55

  Two minutes later Shine’s Mercedes rolled past them on the road, heading toward the security gate of Windy Tip.

  “You follow my lead, Bobby, is that a ten four?” Morgan said.

  “Ten four,” Bobby said, from the passenger seat.

  “What’s this, fuckin’ Dragnet?” scoffed Izzy Gleason from the backseat.

  “When we get out there, Izzy,” Bobby said, “I want you to stay in the car. The last thing I need is to be worrying about you. But I want you there to make sure my ass is covered by the letter of the law.”

  “We should have brought Herbie,” Gleason said.

  The security guard recognized John Shine and mechanically lifted the security arm to let the Mercedes pass through the gates. Less than a minute later Forrest Morgan pulled up in his Lumina. The elderly security guard looked at Morgan and said, “Lost?”

  “Actually I’m here for some watermelon and ribs,” Morgan said, and flashed his badge. The security guard held his hands up in mock surrender.

  “Enjoy your meal, bro,” he said, and lifted the security arm.

  John Shine parked at the c
arport beside his beach home and helped Dr. Hector Perez from the passenger’s seat and up the stairs to his deck and through the back door. He walked him through the living room and then down a narrow corridor between the stairs leading to the upper floor and the wall of the living room. On the right-hand side of the base wall of the staircase, John Shine pressed firmly on a three-foot-by-six-foot panel of oak, right where the wooden tongue met the groove of the next gleaming panel. A firm double counterpress released the magnetic catch-lock, which allowed Shine to swing the section inward. In front of him was a flight of steep stone steps leading into the earth beneath the beach. Nothing, not all the reinforced concrete and soundproofing in the world, could lock out the smell of the sea that seeped through the three-foot-thick missile-silo walls. John Shine flicked on a light switch and led Dr. Perez through the entrance.

  “Watch your step, Doctor,” John Shine said. “These stairs are rather steep. Let me lead.”

  At the bottom of the steps, John Shine unlocked a ten-inch-thick door, consisting of solid soundproofing foam sandwiched between two sheets of two-inch plywood. He pushed open the door, which gave way with a sigh.

  “Daddy, I’m cold,” Dorothea said.

  “The doctor is here, darling,” Shine said. “Everything will be fine.”

  Forrest Morgan parked on the beach road with a clear view of the stately house. Stars twinkled in the sky above Jamaica Bay, and the far-off strains of the Coney Island amusement parks carried on the soft night wind.

  “Okay, Counselor, we watched him walk Perez inside,” Morgan said.

  “Then you witnessed conspiracy, extortion, blackmail, and a victim under duress,” Gleason said. “You can legally follow them inside. That’s my whole fuckin’ contribution. See ya in court. I’m going down to that gin mill for a fuckin’ Yoo-driver.”

  Gleason made a move to get out of the car. Bobby stopped him.

  “You gotta wait right here, Iz,” Bobby said. “That’s enemy territory.”

  “You ready?” Morgan asked.

  “Let’s do it,” Bobby said and walked toward the back of the house.

  Patrick stopped at the Windy Tip security gate in the PAL bus. The security guard looked at him and then at the two black faces with him. “Sorry, ace,” the security guard said. “You musta missed the turn for Riker’s Island.”

  Patrick flashed his badge. The security guard looked at it.

  “You can go in,” he said. “But the help stays where they are.”

  Patrick smiled, floored the accelerator, and smashed through the security arm and into Windy Tip.

  Dr. Perez checked Dorothea Dubrow’s heartbeat and her pulse as John Shine sat in an overstuffed armchair in the shadowy corner of the subterranean living quarters. A spotlight behind him shone directly into the room, casting him in shadow and shielding him from Perez’s view.

  Perez put an ice pack on Dorothea’s forehead and placed her hand on it to secure it.

  “I need you to do this as quickly as possible,” John Shine said from the shadows. “I have a child to collect and a plane to catch. I need to know if she is ready to endure a long trip.”

  “What drugs is she on?” Perez asked.

  “Haldol,” Shine said. “Three milligrams three times a day.”

  “Enough to keep her in a prolonged semiconscious zombie state,” Perez said. “She must be a hell of a strong woman to still have a pulse and heartbeat like she has. Her fever is bad. But not dangerous. Still, I don’t recommend travel.”

  “Can she endure a four-hour trip?” Shine asked.

  “Yes,” Perez said. “But I’m going to give her a vitamin B shot. Her fever might worsen if she sleeps.” Perez was lying, sweating, checking his watch, looking over at the stairs’ door beyond John Shine. Instead of vitamin B, he gave Dorothea a low-dose injection of a mild amphetamine, to bring her out of her Haldol stupor. He knew that anything could happen in the next few minutes. Where were they? He stalled for time. He crossed Dorothea’s legs, checking her reflexes, which were weak but satisfactory. The amphetamine was already beginning to counteract the Haldol.

  “She comes from excellent stock,” John Shine said, beaming with pride.

  Bobby slid open the back door of the beach house. After leading Perez inside, John Shine had not locked it or set the elaborate alarm. He was obviously planning a quick departure.

  Bobby and Forrest Morgan stepped quietly into the house, guns drawn. Morgan cautiously followed Bobby through the living room.

  “Where’s the trapdoor?” Morgan whispered.

  “The plans say somewhere under the stairs,” Bobby softly replied. “We gotta search for the panel.”

  “Wonderful,” Morgan said.

  O’Brien placed fresh brews in front of Lebeche and Daniels. They stood at the bar of The Central Booking Saloon, watching New York 1, an all-news TV station, with silent dread. Caputo and Dixon, Levin and Flynn, sat spaced along the bar, flat beers warming on the counter as they watched with growing alarm the breaking news about the murders of Barnicle, Tuzio, Hanratty, and Farrell.

  Then the alarm turned to panic when stock footage of the Empire State Building came on the screen. “In what could be a related matter,” the Asian newscaster announced, “a man identified as Constantine Zeke, an ex-cop who worked for Gibraltar Security in Brooklyn, has been identified by Manhattan homicide detectives as the man arrested in the Empire State Building this evening for stabbing to death a fellow Gibraltar operative named Richard Kuzak. Sources say Zeke is cooperating with authorities in an unfolding corruption scandal . . . .”

  Silence prevailed in The Central Booking Saloon until the men at the bar heard the sound of a gun being cocked behind them, followed by the sounds of a basketball being dribbled. The shocked cops turned and saw Patrick Emmet standing there. Walters and his father were with him. Patrick held his gun on the cops at the bar.

  “Now, let’s nice and slowly put all the guns on the bar, guys,” Patrick said, training his service revolver with confident authority. He pinned his badge on his PAL jacket.

  The stunned three-quarters cops complied, placing their service revolvers on the bar.

  “What, are we making a Spike Lee movie here?” Daniels said, attempting humor amid the shock.

  “Walters, collect the guns for me,” Patrick said to the tall teenager. Walters moved quickly along the bar collecting the guns, placing them in a gym bag, patting down each livid cop and finding concealed “drop” guns, used to plant on potential perps, on two of them. “And then identify the ones who robbed you.”

  “Your name is gonna be shit on the job, asshole,” Lebeche said to Patrick. “I got your badge number stenciled in my brain.”

  When Walters got to Lebeche and Daniels, he said, “Remember me?”

  “I don’t watch Soul Train,” Daniels said.

  “You star in Gorillas in the Mist?” asked Lebeche.

  “You guys helped me celebrate my father’s birthday,” Walters said. “That ring a bell?”

  He yanked Daniels off the stool first, hit him with a right hand that flattened his nose into a bloody pulp. He followed with a left hook to the rib cage that dropped Daniels in a heap.

  Lebeche ran toward the rear of the bar, and Walters’s father followed, grabbing him. He slammed Lebeche onto the top of the pool table and drove a right hand into his face, cheekbones and the nose cracking.

  “I’m the boy’s father, fellas,” the father said. “Now, I want an apology for my boy, and then I want my goddamned birthday money.”

  He hit him a second blow to the face, Lebeche’s head lolling on the green felt.

  “Easy, guys,” Patrick shouted. “I want them to be able to stand when they’re in front of the judge.”

  After some trial and error, Bobby finally found the right panel in the oak stairwell wall. Easing it open, he silently signaled for Forrest Morgan to follow him. They descended to the bottom of the soundless stone stairs and paused for one deep final breath. Bobby and Morgan
exchanged a pensive look and then quickly burst into the twenty-by-twenty-foot underground bunker, waving guns.

  “Dorothea, get down,” Bobby yelled.

  Bobby and Morgan were instantly blinded by the spotlight behind the heavy armchair where John Shine sat. Bobby and Morgan tried to aim in that direction, but in the blinding light they could not get a clear shot.

  Shine was only momentarily startled. He dropped quickly to the floor, firing a pistol he pulled from his waistband. Bobby and Morgan dove in different directions, hitting the floor, returning fire into the blinding halo of light.

  “Oh, my God!” screamed Dr. Perez, dragging Dorothea from the couch to the floor with him.

  Shine grimaced with back pain but scrambled for cover behind the armchair and shot again at Bobby. Morgan fired at the spotlight, blowing it out, leaving just the overhead lights and a table lamp illuminating the room.

  Shine fired three rounds toward Bobby and Morgan, keeping them pinned down. Bobby let loose with a return barrage of shots in his general direction, but the rounds lodged harmlessly like spitballs into the soft cushions of the big chair. Shine popped up from behind the chair to fire, and Bobby shot him, the bullet tearing through his left arm, blood splattering the wall behind him. Shine grunted loudly and disappeared behind the chair again.

  Forrest Morgan rolled behind a coffee table, under a softly shining lamp and ripped off several shots from his 9 mm Glock automatic. The room went momentarily silent, and then Shine popped out like a defiant target in a shooting gallery and fired back at Forrest Morgan. A bullet tore into Morgan’s right shoulder and sent a pink fog misting across the lamplight. A second bullet exploded into Morgan’s left thigh, and he stumbled backward, pulling the lamp off the end table as he fell, the lightbulb exploding, casting deeper shadows into the dim room.

  Bobby crawled on his belly toward the armchair, firing three more times. Two bullets zinged over his head, and he lay flat for a moment on the deep pile carpet, frantically reloading his spent revolver.