by Robert Cea
I pulled the bags out of the trunk and pretended I didn’t see the van. The cold sweat dripped down my back, giving me a depressing chill. I was nauseated knowing that I was now being watched. In the kitchen Mia was sitting in a chair, stunned. This afternoon she had met someone she had never seen before and had encountered a horrible display of humanity that she’d never want to bear witness to again. My focus on her and the pain she was dealing with was minimal at that moment. I was so focused on that phone on the wall, the wires that were connected to it, and, most important, who was jacked into those wires. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen staring at it. I must’ve appeared to be in some sort of drug-induced state.
“I want you to be careful about what you say on the phone, Mia.”
She tilted her head from the polished tile to the vicinity of where she had heard my voice, but she didn’t look at me. “What?”
“Some nonsense is going on at work…and…I think the phone…well, it may be tapped.”
I moved to the bags, quickly removing the groceries. Her response seemed to take forever, but it came. “My phone is fucking tapped, Rob!?”
I tried to cover as best I could. As I continued to remove the contents from the bags. I didn’t turn to her, sure that she’d be able to read the myriad emotions on my face—disgrace, embarrassment, and fright. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, Mi, just watch what you say.”
“I want you to tell me what in the hell is going on, right this second.” Her tone was clipped and harsh. The last thing I needed was to be scolded by someone who I’d tried for years to keep in the dark about the dark.
I walked out of the kitchen and said, “It’s nothing, it’s just procedure.” I entered the big family room, cold and empty of even the smallest remnants of a family. I looked at the front door, thought about going out there to get some air, but they were there, so I charged up the stairs toward my bedroom, where I hadn’t slept in months. I lay on the bed hoping she wasn’t coming up, though I heard her feet, heavy on the steps. I pulled the pillow over my head; I was trying to block out the buzzing, it was not going to stop, I’d had it all day; the door swung open, and I felt her hand swipe at my foot.
“It’s procedure to tap a cop’s phone?”
I still had the pillow over my head, but no matter how hard I tried neither she nor the buzzing was going away. She ripped the pillow from my face and threw it across the room. She pointed in my face, dangerously close. She was not my beautiful wife any longer, she had become one of them. “What do you think I am, an idiot? Do you actually think you’re that enigmatic, that you’re that much a fucking mystery? Well, you’re not. You are as simple and as telling as the next scared little boy playing policeman, except I know you, Rob, and I know you’ve done something and gotten into trouble and GODDAMN IT, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS YOU HAVE GOTTEN US INTO!”
The word “us” was what did it, and I was glad she had said it because it opened up the gates to the hell I’d been living in. I kicked at her, though thankfully, I missed her. I shot off the bed and charged for the first hard object I could find, the hand-carved cherry-wood vanity that her mother had given us as a wedding present. With every last ounce of strength, fortified behind the hatred and rage that now made up who I was, I hit the eight-thousand-dollar Italian vanity, and then I hit it again, and again. I screamed violently, “You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you? You have fucking betrayed me just like the job has betrayed me. My own fucking WIFE! What have I gotten US into, US? All these years I have been trying to keep you out of it so you could not see or know what it is like, so you would not have to see the same horror I have seen, so your eyes would not be as gray and colorless as mine have been becoming, so I could still know that there was something worth doing this for, YOU! And you turned on me like everyone else. You want to know what I did?” I moved to the dresser, as good a piece of furniture and as solid. I slammed my fists into the top, knocking off her perfumes and her trinkets and her hair clasps and our wedding picture in the antique silver frame. “Men who would chew your uterus out and fuck me in the ass for fun I have had to get into bed with. I have had to befriend them, play the fucking game with them, and then lock these motherfucking animals up, all in a cocksucking day’s work. Okay, maybe I didn’t do it the way it was supposed to be done, maybe I had to play the game hard, but what do you think would happen if every cop in the city did it the way it says to do it on motherfucking paper? You could not walk the streets, they would own me, you, the kids; it would be hell on earth, the same hell that I am now motherfucking living in, you betraying CUNT!” I ripped open the closet door; I pulled out every piece of clothing that I owned and started to tear at them, the hundred-fifty-dollar T-shirts that I never wore, the Gucci loafers that I never wore, the Armani suits that she’d bought for me and which I never wore. I tore them at the seams; her head was down as I destroyed the material matter that she had collected for me throughout the years, her way of showing me that she cared and loved me desperately, I destroyed it all. “This, this means nothing to me, give me that little motherfucking spic back, that is what means something, he should be alive. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my motherfucking fault. They think I did him and took drugs and stole motherfucking money, and I never took a fucking dime; and don’t think that we didn’t have plenty of chances to take; I could have had millions by now. These cunting blood-clot whores are trying to put me in jail.” I tore the buttons from my shirt, I ripped it off my back, I slammed my fists into my chest, I grabbed at my cheeks; there was no realization of pain, I was already in too much pain. I saw myself in the mirror, and the image was horrific; there was a split second of recognition and that is when I charged it and slammed my fist into it. It was leaded glass, so thankfully it only cracked and my hand was not opened to the bone. I spun on her and charged; her head was in her hands, part covering herself, part hiding from the animal that had transformed into more of an animal right before her sad, scared almond eyes. I pulled her to her feet, I shook her with everything that I had left in me; I wanted to shake the love out of her, I wanted her to see me for who I had become; I knew that it was all over, now she had to know. Mia was crying; I grabbed at her face roughly, saying, “You look at me, you motherfucking look at me or I swear I’ll do us both right now.” And in that moment, sadly, I was capable of doing just that, ending it all. She was crying, I did not care, she did not want to look at this man; I did not care, this had to be said. “LOOK AT ME!” I shook her violently, she went limp, she stopped crying, her eyes were glassy and red, though now she was drop-dead focused on the blazing intensity that was my eyes. The buzzing and ringing was loud, I screamed over it, “You want to know why I don’t want to have a baby? Because we live in a rat-infested sewer, a filthy toilet bowl full of maggots is what this city is, it’s what the world is, and nobody gives a fuck, not a fucking soul, no one! And I see it more and more every day, the children are walking piles of flesh ready to be sucked up and dumped with the rest of the garbage this city wants to burn, and the only ones who stand between the babies and the furnace are saps like me! ME! The politicians don’t give a fuck, the bosses don’t give a fuck, I GIVE A FUCK! ME! And when I go, when all the other fall-guy cops go, it is all fucking over, and you can move to Kings motherfucking Point or to Bangor motherfucking Maine or wherever the fuck it is that you think you’re going to be safe and that’s when you are going to realize that I was right, and there is not a good goddamned thing you can do about it!” I searched deep into her eyes, I was looking for any door that was closed, I wanted every inch of her opened, I wanted all of her, much the way I had years before, except that was a different time and I was a different man. “There is no sense to any of this anymore, none. There is no sense to anything any longer, it is over, we are over. Mia, I am who I have become; and you want to know why? Because if you want to fight them, you have to BECOME THEM!”
We stood eye to eye, so close I felt her heart pounding against my chest, her bre
athing rapid. The ringing in my ears wasn’t as powerful, her voice was low and raspy, tears pooled in her eyes and slowly drifted over her cheekbones, resting somewhere on her neck. “Then what’s the difference, Rob, what’s the difference?”
She was right, there was no difference. I had come to know that, it all came down to those three words. And now she knew it, knew that I was no different from the animals and monsters I had been chasing, period.
I released my grip on her arms. There were welts on them. I shook off the realization that I had caused those welts, but those were the welts that would heal, with time, they were the only bruises that would heal.
She backed away from me. I turned, ashamed of what I had become, ashamed that I’d allowed this beautiful girl to get caught in the same dark web I was caught in, but for me, there was only one way out. I heard the door close gently behind me, then heard her car start. I didn’t move until long after I heard its soft engine disappear down the road, which was once the road I had lived on and been so deeply loved on.
13
“G.O. 15 Not in Effect”
The bathroom was cleaner than most of the other policeowned facilities. I wondered why, then it dawned on me that the walls must have been scrubbed clean once a week behind all the nasty graffiti left by the hundreds of cops who had the misfortune of excreting in this building. IAB was a miserable place to find yourself in, especially if the notification you’d received told you to report with your PBA attorney and that G.O. 15 was not in effect. That little footnote meant that if you admitted to any crime during the interview, you could be charged and arrested for it. Cops usually received notification that G.O. 15 was in effect, meaning he’d receive immunity from any crimes he admitted to during the interview; my notification read that G.O. 15 was not in effect.
Conroy and I were in the bathroom at IAB looking out the window onto Poplar Street, in Brooklyn Heights. We turned the faucets on and checked all the stalls. We didn’t think the room would be wired, as that would be illegal, but we could not be too careful. My back was to Conroy as I lazily studied the tiled walls for any discernible graffiti markings. I was glad I’d taken the ten milligrams of Valium Patty had given me; I was able to think without feeling the mega hits of anxiety rush through my body, which was a torturous feeling.
“Our memo books read the same, so as long as we keep our stories the same, they got nothing.” He said this as he dabbed water on his face; he did not look at me and I did not look at him.
“What stories, John?” I said this with the slightest hint of sarcasm, but it wasn’t a dig at John, it was just the way it came out. He still didn’t look at me, but the comment must’ve ricocheted into an open wound because he barked back quickly.
“Any of our collars, what in the fuck do you think?”
“Don’t know what to think, you’re the pro at this, John, remember? You’re the one who’s been down here so often you have your own coffee cup.” That was meant to sting, and sting it did. Conroy snapped the faucet shut and moved closer to me; I still didn’t look at him. I wanted to show him what it felt like to have an indifferent and condescending motherfuck of a partner.
“What, all of a sudden this bag a shit is my fault, Rob?”
“Not saying that, John.”
“Well then, what in the fuck are you saying, buddy boy? Don’t play me, or this abortion, like that, son. I didn’t make you do anything you weren’t willing to do; as a matter of fact, it was your dime what got you into the detail in the first place, and your dime that busted you and that Devlin kid up; you are here because you placed yourself here. It’s hard to play victim when you’re the one holding the bat, sabe?”
He turned from me and moved to the window, lit up a cigarette, and stared back out into the street. I could not let the moment go, I wanted him to know a couple of things and one of them was that I didn’t trust or believe anything he said. “Hey, John, between a couple of old buddy boys, did you do Cho?” I smiled at him as he slowly crossed to me. He rubbed his big hands along my back and chest, obviously searching for a wire; then he smiled.
“We weren’t here right now, I’d put one where the one in Cho should’ve went.” He lifted his thumb and forefinger up, pointed it between my eyes; he then took one last look at himself in the mirror and turned to walk out. Before he reached the door, he whispered back, “On that note, you can go fuck yourself…Tatico.”
The room was half the size of the interrogation room in the 7-6; if it was six by six, it was a lot. It seemed like a jail cell equipped with a small table and four chairs. These rooms were meant to be small. Up close and personal is how the rats liked to play it; they didn’t have the balls to get up in the guts of the streets, so they waited till they could corner the cop in a room just like this one, and then try to play hard-nosed policeman. It was old-school mentality and any salty cop could see right through the charade that these cowards performed daily. I especially was in no mood for game playing. I wanted to get back into the street and somehow redeem myself. My PBA attorney had been inside the room waiting for me. Richard “Ken Doll” Irvman was retired from my job, and from what I understood, he was quite the piece of work. He was a detective who’d gotten bounced back to the bag, or sent back to uniform patrol, behind an unfounded allegation that he was a hired gun for Leroy “Nicky” Barnes, out of Harlem. Nicky Barnes was a major player in the heroin trade back in the seventies; he never rolled on Irvman once he himself was collared, even though he rolled on more gangsters than Sammy Gravano did years later. But the job, IAB to be exact, didn’t give a shit and banished the risingstar detective to a place called the 5-2, in the northernmost section of the Bronx. This was a geographical death sentence for Irvman, who lived with his wife and two kids on Staten Island. To arrive on the job at seven a.m. would take between an hour and a half to two and a half hours, all depending on traffic. Irvman toughed it out, riding out the next twelve years in uniform, way up in the tit end of the Bronx. He made it work for him. Enrolling at Fordham University, studying law, and graduating top of his class. When he retired, he began working as a lawyer for the PBA, and God bless him and the guys just like him, they hated IAB almost as much as the poor schmucks on patrol did. I surmised that Irvman would defend any cop in these tight, scummy IAB cubicles, for free.
Irvman was a handsome man in his mid-forties; he looked like a Ken doll, which would account for his nickname. He was slick in physical appearance, though his fifteen-hundred-dollar-suits and Ivy League good looks paled in comparison to his intelligence about the job, the rights of the cops, and his incredible knowledge of the law. He was wearing a black Brooks Brothers cashmere blazer with double venting in the back. He wore beige khaki trousers that seemed hand sewn, a crisp white Armani button-down shirt with a forward-point collar, and a gold Turnbull and Asser silk tie. No wonder these pricks were gunning for him. He’s a male model with a law degree, I thought. He winked when I entered, then patted me on the back. “Rob Cea, long time, my friend, long time; how’s the family?”
We had never met, but he wanted the two IAB knuckleheads who followed me into the room to think we were two old buddies, just kicking it hard, old school. They were two friends, and we were two friends, and Irvman knew he was smarter and slicker than these two asbestos-suit-wearing rats. Irvman dressed the part because he liked to flaunt his success in front of these scumbags who’d tried to put him down in much the same way they were going to try and put me down. He didn’t look at the two cops, he just patted my shoulder and continued. “Jesus, Bobby, you’re looking good. Annie keeps asking me to invite you over, but we just opened another practice out on the island, so I been crazy busy. Maybe you come out to the club, we play the back nine after we resolve all this nonsense here, yes?”
I smiled; he was good, very good. I actually believed every word he said. I was tempted to slip him my number after the interview. “Yeah, Rich, definitely. Tell Annie Mia has been asking for her as well. Tell her to give a call, we’ll set something u
p.”
He sat in the chair and pulled my chair close to his so that we could discreetly communicate with each other during the interrogation. The two cops sat side by side at the small table and one of them snapped on a tape recorder. Irvman, to add one final piece of dramatic flare, snapped his fingers lightly and said, “Oh, Bobby, almost forgot…”He pulled a leather cigar holder out of his jacket pocket and discreetly handed me a Cohiba. He whispered, though loud enough for the two imbeciles to hear, “Cuban, pre Castro.” He gave me a million-dollar wink and I was now completely eased of whatever tension the ten milligrams of Valium could not ease.
Lieutenant Ferber was about the same age as Irvman, though he looked fifteen years older and wore cheap rubbersoled shoes, a Macy’s off-the-rack brown suit, a beige shirt, and a chocolate tie. He was trying hard to stay attuned to the fashions of the day, as I noticed a GQ magazine on his desk when I passed, but Lieutenant Ferber’s curtains just somehow did not match his carpet. His partner was Detective Cesar Mendoza, a guy who would not pass muster in an opium den. Medium size, he wore blue polyester pants and tie with a long-sleeved light green shirt that rode up his arm as if it were cut too short; it was also stained in the pits. A tattoo peeking out from under his shirt told me he might have done undercover, or UC work in the office, or had once been a UC in narcotics. That didn’t surprise me, as the narcotics units ballooned so much after the inception of crack that they had to pull in any minority who had two years or more on the job without really checking their qualifications. The UCs in the narcotics units were a crack pipe away from being perps themselves; that would certainly explain this greasy Puerto Rican’s choice of assignment, IAB; so Richard Irvman and myself, we were in grand company.
Ferber pulled a pair of thin bifocals from his pocket, then leaned into the microphone trying to act very much the guy in charge. “This is Lieutenant Jeffrey Ferber of the internal affairs bureau. I am with Detective Cesar Mendoza, shield number 616. We are conducting an inquiry into the death of Theobaldi Rodriguez, also known as Cholito. Present at the time of the inquiry is Officer Robert Cea, shield 17750 and his PBA-appointed attorney, Richard C. Irvman.” He looked up at me over the bifocals, which perched at the bottom of his long, angular nose. “Officer Cea, where were you on the evening of September 15 at approximately 2300 hours, of this year?”