by Robert Cea
He stared at me and jerked the car back into drive. “Fuck you, Rob,” he said in an even tone. I let it go, and that was the last we spoke about it. What I did do was, every time I met with Cho, Billy stayed behind; whenever we tossed some schmuck and he had drugs on him, I made Billy give it to me and I never told him what I did with it. I guess he thought by not actually seeing the crime being committed, though knowing full well it was being committed, that it really wasn’t taking place. He needed to make it right in his mind, which I thought was immature and, honestly, made me feel like a cheap suit. I was good enough to do the bad stuff and take all the heat if I got caught, but he would share the credit after we made those great collars given to us by Cholito and all the other slugs in the community I had to deal with daily who were sucking me dry. It was at that moment that I totally lost respect for him, and knew that we didn’t have much of a future together.
8
Thirst for the Darkness
She was wearing a fabulous Frette silk pajama top with a matching knee-length silk robe she’d purchased at Bergdorf’s earlier that week. She was kicked back, drinking some chardonnay, reading some magazine I had never heard of, when I arrived home. Mia looked so pampered, and she fit so well in my apartment. I just looked at her and forgot about everything filthy that I had witnessed that day: the animals, the guns, the TKO, all of it, gone that quick. She was smiling at me as she dropped the magazine and tapped the bed for me to sit next to her. It was a work night for her, but she’d made me promise to call her about eleven P.M. every night to let her know if I was collaring up. If not, she would wait for me, so she could feed me and we could make love before turning in. Tonight, I was hoping, would be one of those nights. I wasn’t in the mood for any conversation. I just wanted to decompress and, simply, not think. I took a quick shower; the last thing I wanted was to have any street odor on me when I was with her. I was wrapped in a towel and sitting at the table where she had put down various plates of food: antipasto, fried vegetables, and of course linguini Bolognese, my favorite. She sat with me and sipped her wine; she was a vision of beauty. I was tired, and so happy she was there. After every tour, on my way home, in the quiet of my car, there was always a humming or buzzing in my ears. It would last at least two hours; sometimes I would feel it undulating in my head till long after I was asleep. I never knew why it occurred; maybe it was due to my blood pressure spiking so often during the day, or maybe it was all the unseen noises that are a part of the ghetto and shoot through your subconscious all day and night long, but tonight, the ringing and humming and buzzing was not there. It was just her. She reached out to touch my hand and I saw the engagement ring. I loved the fact that she never took that ring off; it was one of those untold gestures that said how much she loved me.
“How was your day, Rob?”
Between mouthfuls I said, “Long, and I’m so glad to be home, just wanna chill.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you’re home. So we have an appointment at the bank on Friday.”
“Friday’s no good, Mi, I have to work a two to eleven.” I knew what the appointment was for; the owners of the home in Kings Point had accepted her offer and now it was time to mortgage up. I had issues with this, things were just moving too quickly. I wanted to move a little slower, but I could not tell her this without upsetting her. I had to be smart, and being smarter than Mia was a task and a half.
“Rob, I think that us getting this mortgage takes precedence over either of our jobs, no?” she said. It was common sense, and had I been a Wall Streeter, or a college professor, or a garbageman, for that matter, this would have been common sense, but I was not any of those things. I, and what I did for a living, was much different from anything she could imagine.
I stopped eating, gently laid down the fine Christofle silverware she had purchased at Fortunoff’s. I knew that this conversation was going to have to take place sooner or later. I swallowed a large amount of merlot before I began. “Mi, I don’t think I want to be on the mortgage or the deed with you.”
I immediately felt the temperature change in the room. She tilted her head at me slightly, doing what she did best, analyzing me, the statement. She was going to filter the information, process it through her mind, and only then would she respond; Mia never did anything spontaneously, she did not live by the seat of her pants. Everything was thought out, to the letter. Emotions were not a part of any business decisions, where her judgment might be clouded; emotions, they would come later.
“You feel something in your past might stop you from getting the mortgage—past credit problems?” I looked in her eyes, shook my head no; she blinked twice, slowly, trying to work this out, and remained unemotional. “Well then, if it’s not a past problem, why wouldn’t you want to be on the paper?”
“It’s the job, Mi. I’m on paper as a co-owner on the property, something happens on the job, we could lose the house.”
“Well, what could happen on your job that would cost us the house? The NYPD will indemnify you if something occurs accidentally; that’s why you pay into your insurance fund.”
She was right about that; we did have a good insurance plan that indemnified us on job-related accidents. We were covered with RMP accidents. If I got into a gunfight and a nonparticipant civilian was injured by me, I would be covered, but like everything else on this job, there was a gray area. I knew how we were working in the streets without a safety net, doing everything a little off-color, and this she was not privy to. For example, say I received info that there was someone wanted for a homicide and he was hiding out in some apartment, but was on the move all the time. Our only chance of capturing the perp would be to get the jump on him immediately, so we would hit the apartment without a warrant and with as little backup as possible because the fewer cops who knew about our practices, the fewer people there would be to test-i-lie or, worse, tell the truth. But what if in the course of getting into the apartment illegally, some civilian got hurt? Or what if the wanted man shot at us and hit a civilian? We were dead wrong because of how we’d gotten into the apartment and we could swing from a large tree behind it. That is the gray area where we could be sued personally, in civil court. Civil trials are different from criminal trials because the evidence does not have to be so overwhelming to gain a conviction, and with one sketchy witness to our practices, that in itself could sway a jury or a judge against us, and then any of my assets could be used as a settlement. I explained most of that to Mia. What I did not tell her was that the cornerstone of every one of my collars started out sketchy, that my methods of apprehensions in the streets could almost always go terribly wrong, and that at every turn I could be sued. I played it off like I was just being cautious, but the truth was, yes, I did not want some mope who deserved to get gotten anyway possibly beating me in court with a jury of sympathetic cop haters, allowing him to take what Mia and I both worked very hard for. But, really, that was just a half-truth. The other side of that coin was my wanting to know that if I decided to get up and walk away, I could do so without any red tape, that with a snap of my fingers, I could pack a bag and leave behind this life that was planned out for me to the letter. It was a sad way of starting our lives, but in this job, in which I was fully entrenched, it was the only way.
Mia was deflated slightly; it was the first time that my job had gotten in the way, compromising our plans and our future. She was all about becoming one entity with me: our souls, our lives, our blood, our money. But she was realizing that there was something else that demanded my time, attention, and commitment—the streets of the Badlands. After a few moments of allowing this to all sink in, she gently touched my hand, smiled sadly, and said, “I’m really tired, baby, I’m going to bed.” She stood up, placed her wineglass in the sink, and closed the bedroom door softly behind her. I sat there in my damp towel, suddenly with no appetite. I poured the rest of the wine and drank it till the glass was empty. The exhaustion I’d felt prior to this conversation was gone. My urge to be inside
this beautiful woman had disappeared. It was just me and something racing through my body, the compulsion that I would always get just before we started our tour, excitement that was roaring through me, the excitement of the unknown. I suddenly did not want to be in my beautiful Rockaway apartment only 150 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. I wanted to be back on the street. I had a quick shot of Jack Daniel’s, put my clothes back on, and quietly closed the door behind me as I went back out to the world I loved so much, the Badlands.
Before I got there, I’d need to fuel up. That meant Alfredo’s.
It was booming, as usual; there were some burnt-out denizens from the precinct, who I had met, their goomadas, and the string of sexed-up Bettes from the Badlands. Roxanne was behind the bar, and the second she saw me walk in, she pulled two glasses off the rack and poured four fingers for both of us. I moved right for her. She looked sexy, wearing a pair of daisy dukes and a tight red halter top that accentuated her perfect breasts and red lips. Her hair was pulled up librarian style and she wore nonprescription glasses to feed the image. She should have just worn a sandwich board that read: “I am built for fun and will rock your motherfucking world.” Words cannot describe the sexuality this chick exuded. I was ready, mentally, to walk down that road. Maybe it was fear of the future—this thing of raw sex and beauty that could be mine for the taking would no longer be available to me after I was married. Maybe I was angry at having my future so perfectly laid out for me and I wanted to “man up” slightly, to show myself that I still had a modicum of control in my personal life. Or maybe I just wanted a secret that I could take to the grave with me. In any case, my heart jumped as I reached the bar and she openmouth kissed me for a few hot moments.
“Tatico, where you been? You know what nights I work, why you ducking me?” She said this almost as a whisper; she held my face in her hands, very close to hers; she looked at my lips and wiped the lipstick off them softly.
I looked her up and down, but not disrespectfully; I wanted her to know that it was all about her, and I was available, and that she was “all that.” “You are so fucking sexy. You know that?” I asked.
“ ’Bout fucking time you noticed; we was startin’ to wonder about you, Tatico.” She laughed; it was cool and comfortable. She might have been from the streets, but goddamn, she was so at ease and happy with who she was, it made me want her more.
“When can we be alone?” I found myself asking.
Her left eyebrow lifted. “Ohhh, you wanna hang out.” I saw her nostrils flare; I knew this was not going to be a oneoff, hit it, and move on. No, this I should take my time with, enjoy a little. Some drunken psycho from the 7-6 was making a racket at the end of the bar behind the slow service. Without removing her eyes from mine, she just lifted up her middle finger to the unseen, annoying cop and flipped him the bird. “I’m a take care a this asshole at the end of the bar, then I get a break for half an hour. We can go for a walk if you want to.”
“I want.” She kissed me again as I closed my eyes. I got aroused immediately, but this was different, there was more heat attached to this. This felt primal.
Alfredo, the owner, came behind the bar when Roxanne motioned to him. He was shortish, about thirty-five. He was thin, probably from a serious cocaine habit, but he was friendly and handsome enough to get over easily, and the cocaine he always had available would get him over in the fashion he liked so much, with multiple partners, all at once. He smiled at me when he stepped behind the bar. It was a guy thing, he was saying, Hit it hard, with his knowing eyes. He enjoyed having guys who could get over in his bar, especially cops. We were protection for him, and we also thought he was kind of a cop buff, but definitely enjoying his status as a civilian, enjoying his extracurricular activities— snorting up half of Bolivia with chicks who were no less than solid eights.
Roxanne grabbed hold of my hand and I followed her out, past the onlookers who all wished they were going to the same place I was. I knew there were cops in there who semi-knew my story. They knew that I had a really beautiful legit-type girlfriend, and that we were getting married. I knew the fact that I was walking out the door with Roxanne was going to be big news in the bar and the precinct. I didn’t care, because I really did not associate with any of those cops in the precinct; at the time, I felt they were below me, and I had nothing in common with them. They were just trying to get over on the job while I was trying to get over on the ADAs, the scumbags in IAB, the vile defense attorneys, and most important, I was trying to get over on the animals in the street. Our views on police work could not be more different, however, if they needed me in the street; I was their brother, and a trusted one they could absolutely count on. They knew my reputation was that I was as crazy as they were, but in a different way. So this dirty little secret would—like all of the other secrets—most definitely stay right here, in the Badlands.
It was a nice night. At this time of the evening, the traffic above us was light. The expressway was like a giant canopy, offering shelter to the homeless, the degenerate, and the horny. She led me across Hamilton Avenue, west, toward Red Hook, without saying a word. Underneath the expressway, she seemed to know exactly where she was going. I followed her to the wall on the farthest south part of the underpass. It was dark, but if someone pulled up they would see whatever was happening. At that point, I didn’t care, and clearly she didn’t either. She leaned up against the wall, smiling as she pulled my hands to her. She closed her eyes and started to kiss me. I felt her heart pounding, she was sweating, and she was moaning as she thrust her tongue deep in my mouth. She lifted my hands up to her breasts; she was not wearing a bra. I felt her nipples, large and hard; she took my two fingers in her hand and forced me to pinch them, hard. She moaned loudly, “Ahh fuck, Tatico, fuck.” Her eyes were half open as she whispered this. She took my hand in hers and placed my fingers in her mouth, then slid her shorts to one side and slid my fingers in. Her eyes rolled back in ecstasy. She pulled my fingers out and fed them to me. “I taste good, baby?” she asked. I could not talk, I just nodded, placing my fingers in her mouth and we both kissed them. She lifted up her halter, revealing her perfect breasts. She then started to rip at my pants, and very quickly unbuttoned them, my five-shot Smith & Wesson tumbling off my waist and hitting the ground; I didn’t care. I unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts. Her breathing was labored and loud. Now, this was all about need. She wanted me, I wanted her, no pretense, zero bullshit. It was just about the primal urge we all have, it was a sex thing. “I’m a take care a you with my mouth and tongue later, Tatico, just want you inside me now, wanna feel you deep inside.” She held me in her hand, she did not waste any time with foreplay and slid me right inside; I became animalistic. Every inch of her was raised up, all of her emotions, her breathing, every piece of her was an exposed nerve ending. I knew this was going to happen fast for both of us. I thrust inside her, and she made no attempt to lower her voice; with each move she screamed and said something in Spanish, very throaty and sexy. This was truly one of my most intense sexual encounters ever. Not because of who she was, but because of where we were, the danger of it all, and that we really didn’t give a fuck. This was as natural and raw as it can get. I heard the cars roaring, overhead, I had heard footsteps nearby, I knew my pistol was on the ground, behind me; we didn’t give a fuck. It added to the fantasy. She had a violent orgasm; she grabbed hold of my back, I felt her nails dig in deep. She hiked up on the wall, feet off the ground, straddling me, and she came again; this time I joined her. I was covered in sweat and completely spent. She could not move. I had to hold her up as I felt the muscles inside her twitching uncontrollably.
As her breathing evened, I let her down gently. I pulled up my pants, sliding the gun in my lower back, and she leaned against the wall half naked and flushed, eyes glazed. She looked as if she’d just taken a hit of TKO. Then she slid her shorts back up and zippered them without buttoning them. “Why don’t you button up, Roxanne?”
She smiled. “’Cause I don
’t wanna cut off any feeling down there, I can ride this shit out for at least another half hour.” She then slid her hand down the front of her shorts, then pulled it up to her face and inhaled. “Plus I can smell you real easy now, Tatico.” I felt myself getting hard again behind her honesty. She was as sexual as someone was ever going to get. We kissed and walked out from the dirty underpass, back across the avenue to Alfredo’s bar. The whole encounter took less then ten minutes, but the bridge that I had crossed in those ten minutes could never be walked back over. Can’t undo the done, I thought.
She moved back behind the bar, looked in the mirror and put on some lipstick, not caring who saw or what they thought, then started serving drinks like nothing had occured. She gave me a little wink as I turned and walked out. I can write this now, and I hate the fact that I fucked around on Mia, but at that time in my life, I didn’t think it mattered. I was living in a place where a bullet could have ended it all. This nihilism was becoming a huge part of my mentality. Death was around every corner, so what the fuck? I’m not trying to justify my infidelities. Not every cop is going to fuck under some expressway in full view of the public, because of the possible pitfalls of our job—that tomorrow just may never come. I’m saying that is what I was feeling at the time, and that with every tour of duty, the law of averages was catching up with me, because I was truly over-the-top aggressive in my fieldwork. In hindsight, the thing that strikes me the most is how fatalistically I viewed my world, all at the ripe old age of twenty-four.
My thirst for the darkness did not end inside Roxanne. That was just the warm-up. I got in my car and headed straight for Red Hook. The zombies of the night passed me, knowing but uncaring. I rolled my window down, needed to breathe in that air, exhilarated to know that these were my streets, that I was making a difference. The cats who knew me all gave me respect and moved indoors, but I wasn’t there to launch a late-night ambush. I just wanted to cruise; I felt like this was my kingdom, I wanted to survey my property, maybe catch something that I could use tomorrow, maybe meet someone ready to do some work for me. An open car door revealed one of Red Hook’s two-dollar hos giving some guy head. Junkyard dogs roamed the dark streets in a pack, looking for food, or worse, no different from the animals who were bipedal. More hookers were standing in a row, topless; as I drove by, they called out my name, holding both breasts in their hands and jiggling them gently. I was now in the most abandoned part of the Hook, the waterfront. I could see the Statue of Liberty in the background; she was certainly not a voice of inspiration to anyone unlucky enough to have seen her from where I was at that moment. Farther on, the ancient and abandoned grain terminal moved up on me slowly. It was an indelible icon of what Red Hook had become: The closer you got to it, the easier it was to see the cracked mortar, and the gaping holes along its massive structure. It was dark and scary; it was the perfect symbol for the hell it bordered. In the foreground, I saw movement from a bench on the other side of a small, vacant, crater-filled park. I slowed down, popping my head out the window, listening carefully for any sounds of distress. There was a voice, pained. I pulled up and saw Cholito sitting on the ground, using the bench to hold himself up. I walked to him slowly. “Cho?” I called out. He was moaning, not crying, because that emotion is burned out of any junkie or ghetto cat at a very young age. I got a frontal view; it was not good. He’d been beaten, badly, his head swollen, bulbous almost, his forehead protruding out, dark blue, almost black. His eyes had swelled shut beneath some huge gashes. The person who’d done this to him made sure that Cho’s arms and legs were not touched, assuring that he would be back slinging when his tour of duty began the next morning. This told me the perpetrator was the Shah or one of his lieutenants. Cho used his fingers to pry open the skin around his eyes so he could see who was calling him; he just leaned back when he realized it was me.