by Rob Hart
Instead, Tanner wandered off to take a leak and came back to find the life spilling out of Reggie, whose last word he croaked out before coughing up a river of blood and dying.
“Manny.”
Manny Calabrese.
It was all Tanner needed to know.
And here was Calabrese, standing there with a smile on his face. Tanner’s hand shook. He wanted more than anything to pull his gun and give Calabrese a taste of what he did to Reggie.
He gripped his knee, fingers digging into the bone until it hurt.
Calabrese was holding two Tupperware containers, flecks of snow layering on the shoulders of his tan coat. He looked over at Bhati, then above her head, at the mugshot. He nodded toward it. “You might be surprised, but that handsome fella up there is me. That photo was taken a long time ago, obviously.”
Tanner tried to speak but found he couldn’t.
Calabrese nodded to Bhati and said, “Darling, your partner and I have some things to discuss. Why don’t you head on inside, huh? Get yourself a slice of lasagna. Probably the best lasagna you’ll ever have. The trick is to mix two eggs into the ricotta. Helps the lasagna keep its structural integrity.”
Bhati looked at Tanner.
Tanner could see it in her eyes. She was worried that if she left, something bad would happen. And she was right. But he still outranked her, and at this point, it didn’t matter.
Best she not be around to see this.
“Go ahead,” Tanner said.
“But…”
“Now.”
Bhati hung her headphones from the hook next to the monitors. Climbed out of the van, careful to give Calabrese a wide berth, and headed across the street to the bookshop.
Calabrese climbed into the van, pulled the door shut, and put the Tupperware containers on the makeshift desk under the monitors. He eased himself into the battered office chair that Bhati had occupied.
Tanner’s heart slammed against the inside of his chest. The last time he saw this man, he was thirty pounds lighter, still had all of his hair, could read small text without squinting. It felt like a lifetime. Calabrese, too, looked so different. Like he was slowly disappearing.
Calabrese slid the chair forward, the wheels creaking and grunting with the exertion, so he could reach past Tanner and turn on the space heater. It crackled and roared to life.
“There, that’s better,” Calabrese said. “So how are things?”
“Don’t you dare…”
“I didn’t kill your partner, you know,” he said. “Sacks, right? He was a good cop. Believe it or not, I respect cops. You do your job, I do mine. It just so happens they run in conflict with each other. I’d never kill a good cop.”
Tanner reached down to his ankle, removed the black Ruger LCR, and placed it in his lap. Not so much as a threat, but to set the tone of the proceedings. Calabrese shook his head.
“I bring you a peace offering,” he said. “My mother’s lasagna. Best in the world. It’s four days before Christmas, no less. And this is how you respond.”
“Say your piece,” Tanner said. “Because you’ve got about two minutes before I paint the inside of this van with your brain.”
Calabrese sighed. “I get it. I would be angry, too. But you have to understand, what happened that day…”
“He said your name.”
“I’m sure he did. I was there.”
Tanner gripped the gun.
“Here’s how it went down,” Calabrese said. “I was at the warehouse following up on a thing. And I run into this guy. You remember Lou Rossi? The man was a thug. An animal. He was cheating on the family, you know what I mean? So I run into him doing something he shouldn’t be doing, but he gets the drop on me. He’s holding me at gunpoint.”
Calabrese extended his index finger, thumb pointed up, imitating a gun.
“And Sacks comes wandering in.”
He swung his hand in a wide arc and cocked his thumb.
“And, bang. Rossi shoots Sacks in the throat. I don’t even think Rossi knew what he was doing. He was just startled, is all.”
“And you just left Reggie there to die,” Tanner said.
“I heard you coming. You’re not exactly light on your feet. Not even then. What was I going to do, besides get blamed for it?”
“Then why did he say your name?” Tanner asked. “It was the last thing he said before he died.”
“How should I know?” Calabrese said, shrugging. “Maybe he was saying, ‘Manny didn’t do it, you meat-head.’ All I know is, Rossi’s gun killed your partner. Not mine.”
“Right. And where’s Rossi? Let’s see if he can corroborate.”
Calebrese shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, unless you’ve got a medium or a Ouija board or something.”
Tanner sat back in the chair. It groaned under his weight.
The thought of revenge was the only thing that sustained him. The promise of a period on the end of the sentence that had been running on for the past twenty years. All he had left was an empty apartment in Queens, a few plants, and a futon. The best he could do with the alimony payments, the child support payments. The penalties he paid for a life that became consumed by his hunt for Calabrese.
And now it had been taken from him.
No, it couldn’t be true.
Calabrese was trying to save himself. That’s all.
“I don’t believe you,” Tanner said.
“I wish you did. Not that it matters. You want to kill me right now, go ahead. You’re only moving up the deadline a bit.”
“What do you mean?”
Calabrese sighed. Placed a hand on his stomach.
“Cancer,” he said. “I got a few months left, maybe.”
The news cast Calabrese in a different light.
His face didn’t look thin, it looked sunken.
He didn’t look tired, he looked weak.
“What am I supposed to do?” Tanner asked. “Feel sorry for you? Even if what you said is true, you’re still a killer. You ruined lives for your own personal gain.”
“No, I did it because…” Calabrese stopped. Thought about it. Shook his head. “I’m not here for a philosophical discussion. I was pretty sure this had been eating at you and I wanted to put it to rest. Even if not for you, for me. Now, here…”
Calabrese took the two Tupperware containers off the desk and held them.
“I know we’re not pals,” he said. “But it’s Christmas. Let’s put all that hate and regret behind us. Sit here and just enjoy one last meal together. Then you can do whatever the hell you want to me, okay?”
Tanner breathed deep.
Then he reached over and clicked off the transmitter that was recording everything going on in the store, along with the conversation they were having.
Calabrese seemed to get that this was not an insignificant gesture. A look of fear flashed across his face.
“I hate you wiseguys so much,” Tanner said. “Stuff like The Sopranos. The Godfather. All these movies and television shows that take the horrible stuff you do and glorify it. I bust my hump for going on thirty years trying to make the world a better place, and kids got stars in their eyes for Michael Corleone, like he’s a hero or something.”
Tanner slid his chair forward until he was closer to Calabrese. Until he could smell the man’s wool jacket.
His breath.
“Here’s the truth,” Tanner said. “Your entire family is a blight. After I’m done with you, I’m coming for your kids. The two of them were raised on the backs of dead men. Right now, your son is in there profiting off your legacy. It’s obscene. Pretty soon he’s going to find himself in a pair of cuffs. I’ll find a way. And once I do that, I am going to take the Son of Sam law and swing it at him like a bat. I will make sure he never sees one more red cent from that book.”
Calabrese frowned. “I’ve done some bad things but I’ve never threatened a man’s family. Never.”
“You made your bed.”
<
br /> Calabrese’s nostril’s flared.
The scorched smell of the space heater filled the small space.
“A threat like that would not have worked out well for you back in the day,” Calabrese said. “But times have changed. I’m willing to set all this aside. I will do whatever you want. Just leave my family out of it.”
Calabrese’s gaze softened.
He added: “Please?”
Tanner shook his head. “No. No, I can’t do that.” He almost said “I’m sorry,” but caught himself before the words left his mouth.
This man didn’t deserve his sympathy.
Calabrese looked down in his hands, at the blue Tupperware containers. He considered them for a moment before handing the one in his left hand to Tanner.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s just eat. Pretend for a few seconds like we’re two men whose lives haven’t been ruined by the mistakes we’ve made. Then you can do whatever the hell you want to me. Right here, right now. Shoot me in the head, beat me to death, I don’t care. My son…” A tear formed in the corner of his eye. “He didn’t even want me there. He told me to leave. You can’t hurt me by hurting him. Not anymore.” His voice dropped and cracked. “I’ve punished him and his sister enough.”
“Fine,” Tanner said, snatching the Tupperware container out of Calabrese’s hand. “If it’ll shut you up.”
He popped the cover and picked up a plastic fork sitting on the desk, speared a bite and shoved it in his mouth. Not that he wanted to accept the gift. But there was no sense in letting it go to waste, and anyway, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
If this was the formality that’d buy them some private time together, so be it.
He could drive the van down to a quiet spot in Brooklyn. Really go to town. Work out all those years of frustration.
He was pretty sure he saw a hammer next to the driver’s seat.
The lasagna was delicious. And still warm, too. It exploded in his mouth, a far cry from the cold, congealed pizza and Chinese food that filled his refrigerator lately. Calabrese nodded and opened his own container, produced a plastic fork from his coat, and began to eat.
“Merry Christmas, by the way,” Calabrese said, before taking a bite.
“Hmhmmh,” Tanner mumbled, his mouth full of food.
They finished at the same time, placing the blue plastic containers on the desk. Calabrese wiped his mouth as Tanner swallowed and went to pick up the gun.
It slipped from his hand and tumbled to the floor.
For a moment he thought his hands were just a little cold, but then realized he couldn’t make his fingers curl.
“Well, that’s enough of that,” Calabrese said, climbing out of his seat and reaching for the door of the van.
Tanner tried to reach for him, but found his arms didn’t want to obey him either. They hung from his sides like lumps of dead meat. He tried to speak but only managed to produce a raspy gurgle, as a crooked hand wrapped around his heart and squeezed, hard.
Calabrese opened the door and stepped down to the street.
“For the record,” Calabrese said, “I gave you the slice I was going to eat. It includes a very high dose of jimsonweed. Grows all over Arizona. I hope it didn’t affect the taste. Figured you’d get your closure and I’d get mine. But then you had to go and threaten my family. That’s low. So, here we find ourselves. I know I said I don’t kill good cops, but you’re not a good cop.”
Tanner heaved himself forward and tried to stand, one last desperate attempt to get Calabrese before he died. But his feet buckled under him and he tumbled forward, his face smashing into the floor of the van.
The door slid closed with a thump and he watched as the flickering glow of the surveillance monitors faded into blackness.
ERIC EXITED THE bathroom to find Ian standing in the back room.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “I thought we lost you.”
The truth was, Eric needed some time for the swelling around his eyes to go down, so it wouldn’t be so obvious he was crying, but he didn’t want to say that.
He settled on: “I’m sorry, I just needed a few minutes.”
“No worries,” Ian said. “But we should get going.”
Eric followed Ian into the main part of the store, the space filled with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
“If I could have your attention, everyone,” Ian yelled. Conversations were abandoned as everyone turned. “We’re very excited to welcome Eric Calabrese, the author of White Sheep. We don’t do a lot of memoir here, but it’s a great book, and we’re happy to have him. Eric is going to talk a little bit about it, and maybe take some questions. Without further ado…”
Ian gestured to Eric as the room erupted in applause.
When it died down, Eric said, “Actually, I want to read a bit.”
He thumbed open the book, skipping past the sticky notes to a passage he didn’t intend to read, but felt right given the circumstances.
“The truth is, my father…”
“We can’t hear you!”
It was his sister, Christine, calling from the front of the store. He smiled, climbed on a chair so he could get a good look at everyone—including Christine, who was throwing a thumbs-up—and began to read again.
“The truth is, my father was a complicated man.
The hands that strangled the life out of Vincent Abruzzo on October 16, 1985, are the same hands that played catch with me in the yard of our home in Gravesend. The hands that beat Michael Moretti to death on June 5, 1987, are the same hands that cradled my sister when she woke up crying in the middle of the night.
I have spent my entire life trying to square this.
It’s left me wondering if I’m tainted. If the kind of evil that afflicted my father was genetic, if it could be passed down to us. Or if we had the freedom to make our own choices, to move past it.
I choose to believe the latter, but live in fear of the former.
There is one truth, though, in all of this, and it’s that my father did not think of himself as evil. Not good, maybe. I think he was smart enough to know the consequences of his actions, and how they reflected on the world around him. But everything he did was to provide a good life for myself and my sister. And until he disappeared—after testimony in open court twenty years prior to the publication of this book forced him into witness protection—he did.
We never wanted for anything. He never raised a hand to us. If we fell, he picked us up…”
Eric felt his throat growing thick. He paused and looked up.
Standing outside the store, his hand pressed against the glass, was his father.
The words on the page grew blurry, and Eric swallowed, did his best to recover quickly, lest anyone look back. Because despite the gulf between them, he was afraid someone might see him, and didn’t want his presence to get him in trouble.
Eric smiled and nodded and hoped his father noticed.
MANNY WISHED HE could go back into the store, but knew that wasn’t an option. He met eyes with his son, who smiled and nodded before going back to reading.
That would have to be enough.
Footsteps crunched in the snow to his left. He turned and saw the pretty young police officer who had been in the van. She was holding a steaming cup of bodega coffee.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Manny said back.
“Well, this is awkward,” she said with a half-smile.
Manny figured Tanner could use another couple of minutes to stew.
“Listen, Detective Tanner said if I saw you, to ask you to get him a cup of coffee,” he said. “I see you’ve already got one, and I’m sorry if it’s an inconvenience…”
A look of relief washed over her face. Like she was happy to be getting away from him. “Oh, I don’t mind.”
She offered another smile and turned.
“Hey,” he called after her.
She looked over her shoulder.
“You
seem like a bright kid,” he told her. “Tanner is not a nice man. I know, I’m not one to judge. But you should know that, all right?”
She paused like she wanted to say something, then nodded and walked off, rounding the corner.
Manny looked across the street.
There used to be a bar there, the Raccoon Lodge, that had a fireplace in a little alcove in the back. A great spot on a night like this, but the shutter was down. Probably another victim of the real estate market.
He took out his cell phone and dialed the only number programmed into it. It rung three times before a groggy voice answered, “Hello?”
“Agent Wilks?”
“Wait…Manny? Why are you calling? Is everything okay?”
“Not really, no. Listen, you still living in Staten Island?”
“I am, but if there’s a problem, I have to contact the local field office in Scottsdale…”
“I’m in Manhattan.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story. Any chance you can come out and meet me? Is McSorley’s still open? Or did the rat developers get that one, too?”
“It’s still open, but we have to get you back before someone sees you.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” he says. “Only place I’m going at this point is the Tombs. They still got the Tombs here?”
“Manny, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Why don’t you meet me at McSorley’s? I’m going to have one last drink. I’ll order you one. You want light or dark?”
Silence on the other end of the phone.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Don’t rush. Drive safe. I’m not going anywhere.”
Manny hung up the phone and stuck it in his pocket. Gave one last look at the bookstore. Eric was still standing on the chair, reading from his book. Manny couldn’t make out what he was saying.
His daughter Christine was in there somewhere.
The pair of them, better than he could have hoped.
Better than he deserved.