Coney Island Avenue

by J. L. Abramo

  “Why did his grades take a dive?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t offered any explanations or excuses, and I have given him ample opportunity.”

  “And why am I hearing about this now, and not sooner?”

  “Because I hoped I could spare you the extra worry, but I’m running out of steam. It’s time you had a talk with him.”

  “Where is Jimmy, by-the-way?”

  “Out with friends.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “It’s Friday night, they went to a movie, that’s not the problem. There is something going on with him he’s not inclined to talk with me about.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Samson promised. “Do we have any ice cream?”

  Ripley had to contend with the heavy Manhattan-bound traffic Samson had been lucky to avoid.

  When he arrived at his sister’s house to pick up the boys, they were already in bed and asleep.

  He and Connie looked in on Kyle and Mickey.

  “Don’t wake them. They can spend the night and so can you.”

  “I need to get home. The house was like a disaster area when I left for Chicago and I haven’t been back since.”

  “Stay for a bite to eat at least. Phil ran out for some milk and juice for the morning. He should be back any minute and he would be sorry to have missed you.”

  Connie fixed her brother a hot meatloaf sandwich.

  “Do you remember my best friend from Junior High School, Justine Turner?” Connie asked, after bringing Ripley a plate and joining him at the kitchen table.

  “Twigs Turner?”

  “Granted, she was a skinny teen. You weren’t exactly Mr. Universe yourself. But she was always a beautiful girl and she filled-in very nicely.”

  “How would you know? Didn’t the family move out to California before you started high school?”

  “Phil and I were at the children’s school last night. St. Margaret’s invites all the parents down every August, before classes start up again, to meet the new teachers. I ran into Justine, she’s back in Queens and begins teaching at St. Margaret’s this year.”

  “Twigs Turner is a nun?”

  “No, she is not a nun, she’s simply a teacher. Justine lost her husband in Afghanistan two years ago and she decided to come back east. You know what I think?”

  “If I say yes, do you still have to tell me?”

  “I think it might be nice if I invited Justine over for dinner sometime and you joined us.”

  “You know I love you, Connie. But you do so much for me and the boys already, you don’t need to add matchmaker to your résumé.”

  “It’s just dinner.”

  “Let me think about it,” Ripley said, just as his sister Connie’s husband walked in.

  “My favorite brother-in-law,” Phil said in greeting.

  “Last time I checked I was your only brother-in-law.”

  “That too. Can I interest you in some Irish whiskey?”

  “Why not.”

  The Palermo Social Club on Smith Street across from the park in Carroll Gardens was one of the few remaining establishments of its kind in Brooklyn.

  A plain stucco façade painted a dark gray. Small high windows that let in some light but offered no view of the interior from the street. No identifying signage on the exterior.

  A recessed door made of solid oak, displaying only a numbered street address and a white metal placard with two words written in bold black letters. MEMBERS ONLY. The fact it was men only as well was clearly understood by any who tried to venture past the sign.

  The club had first been rented in the late-sixties and then purchased in the seventies as a place for members of Societa Villabate, named for a Sicilian town outside of Palermo, to gather for drinks, swap tales and play card games. The Society had been meeting in borrowed rooms since 1919 until finding the permanent home on Smith Street.

  Bernie Senderowitz had grown up in Carroll Gardens, an area that had for decades been populated exclusively by Italian-Americans. His family was one of a small number of Jewish families in the neighborhood and Bernie was the only non-Sicilian allowed through the oak door. Bernie had run errands for members since his pre-teens and even now, in his early-sixties, Senderowitz was referred to by many of the old-timers as il piccolo ebreo con il naso grosso.

  The little Jew with the big nose.

  The Palermo Social Club was Bernie’s drinking establishment of choice. It was only a block away from his house on President Street, and being within walking distance of home was a huge advantage to someone who took as much pleasure in the use of scotch whiskey as Senderowitz did. And it was private.

  When Bernie walked through that door he was not a police detective, he was just another paesano from the neighborhood.

  Senderowitz sat at a small table in the back of the club, working on his second double Johnnie Walker Black.

  Silvio Batale brought a platter of taralli. Crisp Italian style pretzels, which are boiled and then baked. He set the snack down on the table.

  “Thank you,” Senderowitz said.

  “Mind if I sit a minute?”

  “Only if I don’t have to hear your theory of why the Scots never ruled the world. Again.”

  “Actually, I was looking to get some advice for a change.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a great idea. The last time I gave advice to a friend it cost him three thousand dollars at the race track.”

  “I’ll take the risk.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Go ahead.”

  “My youngest boy, Andrew, graduated from Brooklyn College this past June. He excelled in criminal justice and pre-law courses. We expected he would go on to law school. In fact, Andrew was accepted to both Brooklyn Law School and the CUNY School of Law. But now, suddenly, he tells us he wants to join the NYPD. With all due respect to you, his mother and I aren’t crazy about the idea and we don’t know how to talk to him about it.”

  “And you think I can give you something to use to talk him out of it? Listen, Silvio, when I was young there was nothing I wanted more than to be a cop and no one was going to talk me out of it. It turned out to be the best and the worst decision I ever made, but it was my decision. I wouldn’t recommend it for your son, but I could not condemn the choice either. Your boy is a man now, and he will do what he feels he needs to do. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”

  “I appreciate your thoughts.”

  “Enough to bring me another double?”

  “Sure, and it’s on the house,” Batale said. “By the way, have you noticed the new Korean market going in at the corner of Court and Union?”

  “It would be hard to miss.”

  “This building was an Italian produce store until the time it was acquired by the Society. It was one of dozens of Italian markets in the neighborhood. Now, you can’t get a piece of fruit unless you buy it from an Asian.”

  “What’s the difference,” Senderowitz said. “An apple is an apple.”

  On Friday night, after failing to reach the man who he only knew as Mr. Smith, he was feeling very uneasy.

  There were questions he needed answers to.

  Evidently Donahue was considering throwing in the towel and making a deal with the District Attorney. He had apparently recorded damning evidence and handed it over to the DA Investigator on Tuesday night.

  When Smith and Gallo did not discover the tape on Heller, he had asked them to locate Donahue and find out if what he had given to the investigator could name him. Donahue insisted it was the District Attorney’s tape, not his, recorded from a phone tap, and swore there was nothing on it that could reveal the identity of anyone but Donahue himself.

  Smith and Gallo had threatened Donahue physically and the contractor was terrified. He promised to hand over a considerable amount of cash and keep his mouth shut.

  But in either case, if Donahue himself had taped one of their phone conversations, as some kind of liability insurance, or if it was obta
ined through a phone tap, there was no way of knowing which conversation it might be.

  Heller never made it back to the DA. So if Donahue was lying, and no one other than he and Heller had heard the tape, he could perhaps dodge the bullet, no matter how incriminating the content might be. That is if no one else ever did hear it, or no one else was willing or able to say they did.

  He couldn’t trust Donahue was telling the truth, he needed to locate and listen to the recording to be certain he was safe.

  In the subsequent attempts to track it down, two young people had lost their lives to no avail.

  But there was still the chance Smith could find the tape in Chicago and secure it before it fell into the wrong hands.

  Then Mr. Smith would deal with whatever it was the bus boy did or did not know.

  His only consolation, if it could be called that, was that Smith could not name him either. They had never met face-to-face.

  He thought about how well he had played Donahue.

  Discovering proof of Donahue’s labor law infractions quite accidentally, immediately recognizing the find as a windfall, contacting the contractor with an offer to make his problem disappear, phoning in the anonymous tip to the DA’s office to turn up the heat and inspire Donahue to dig into his pockets for more hush money, and devising a fool proof plan to hide the evidence.

  Simple. Effective. Relatively harmless. Done.

  He should never have demanded more from Donahue. It had opened a deadly can of worms, but he had needed additional funds for his campaign.

  The election was less than three months away.

  He was not a religious man, but as he poured another drink he found himself praying he would not go from a front-running political candidate to a convicted murderer because of damned tape recording.

  Detective Jack Falcone had been Ivanov’s partner when she was back at the Sixtieth Precinct.

  Falcone shook Marina Ivanov from sleep with a telephone call shortly before midnight.

  “What time is it,” Ivanov said, after managing to get the phone to her ear.

  “Almost Saturday. Sorry if you were asleep, I didn’t think it should wait.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “There’s a young man down here who asked for you,” Falcone said. “Do you know Alexander Holden?”

  “Yes. Is he alright?”

  “There’s been an incident outside the Lobnya Lounge on Brighten Beach Avenue. The owner’s son was killed. Holden has been arrested for homicide.”

  TEN

  Senderowitz woke up Saturday morning with a harsh reminder of a very long battle of wills with Johnnie Walker. Walker won.

  Before he had left the Palermo Club, well after midnight, Silvio Batale, apparently still uneasy about his son’s decision to join the NYPD, posed one last question to the detective.

  “Do you think it was the pressures of working on the police force that made you so fond of the scotch whiskey?” he had asked.

  “It wasn’t the job, Silvio, it was the taste.”

  Senderowitz dropped two tablets into a tall glass of water, watched them fizz, emptied the glass with one long drink, and found his way to the shower.

  Murphy and Rosen woke up together in Murphy’s bed, having enjoyed a very pleasurable night by avoiding subjects such as cohabitation and how the on the job/off the job arrangement was working out.

  “I would not be horrible to stay exactly where we are for a while longer,” Murphy said.

  “I could think of more terrible places to be,” Rosen agreed.

  Ralph sat at the foot of the bed patiently waiting for acknowledgment.

  Richards woke up to the sound of Sophia crying.

  “Go see what all the fuss is about,” Linda said. “I’ll start breakfast.”

  He lifted his daughter from the crib and swayed her in his arms with a gentle rocking motion.

  “How about bacon and eggs?” he asked the infant.

  Sophia stopped crying and Marty had to laugh when he caught himself wondering if it was the motion or the menu that had done the trick.

  Ripley woke in an empty house that looked as if a Category 3 hurricane had roared through it.

  He realized if he didn’t do something about it before he picked up his boys it might never get done.

  He rolled up his sleeves and got to work cleaning.

  When it came to moving his service weapon to clear and wipe down the kitchen table he was reminded he had shot and killed a man less than a day earlier.

  Ripley wondered how long he would be spared a visit from another ghost.

  Samson woke up and immediately decided he would put off talking to his son about school grades until he heard what District Attorney Jennings had in mind for Vincent Salerno and the deadly tape recording.

  Then he would be able to determine how to deploy his troops.

  It was a defensible excuse for putting off the talk with Jimmy, if he was required to defend it, but it was an excuse nonetheless.

  Samson understood he often avoided confrontations with his son.

  Alicia was correct. Sam was overprotective when it came to his son. He lacked objectivity. Maybe because he was the male child, Jimmy reminded Samson of his own youth.

  At Jimmy’s age, Samson had been exposed to many influences that could have easily landed him on the opposite side of the law.

  He wanted to be a strong father, as his father had been, a father who could be trusting and patient but could put his foot down hard when necessary.

  He was well aware that having once been a teenager did not qualify him as an authority on adolescence.

  He knew that simply being a father didn’t afford him full understanding of the challenges his dad had faced being one.

  He recognized that growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant in the seventies was not quite like growing up in Douglaston today.

  But Samson felt that in many ways the world was a far more dangerous place today, and protecting the children was his job.

  He wasn’t looking forward to telling Alicia of his decision to postpone the father and son talk. His wife had recommended speaking to the boy as soon as possible and he had already missed an opportunity when Jimmy returned from the movies the night before.

  On Saturday morning, Samson found Alicia and the girls in the kitchen.

  Kayla and Lucy were totally involved in what appeared to be a breakfast cereal speed-eating contest.

  “Slow down, girls,” he said, joining them at the table. “Remember the first one who chokes loses.”

  Alicia brought her husband a cup of coffee.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, Lucy?”

  “How come Jimmy went to the ocean and we can’t?”

  “Jimmy went to the ocean?”

  “Yes, Sam,” his wife said.

  “Were we aware of his plans?”

  “Jimmy told us last night, as he raced past us on his way up to his room, that he and some friends were leaving early this morning to beat the traffic out to Jones Beach,” Alicia reminded him, “and you didn’t protest. So, I guess you boys will have to reschedule your man-to-man.”

  “I guess we will,” Samson said.

  “Daddy.”

  “Yes, Lucy.”

  “I can’t finish my cereal.”

  “That’s alright, sweetheart, Daddy can finish it for you.”

  Detective Marina Ivanov woke up on Saturday morning with six words echoing in her head. Holden has been arrested for homicide.

  She would visit her sister’s boyfriend as soon as she was allowed, but not before the prosecutor had decided on a charge and filed it to the court.

  Then there would be an arraignment, a formal reading of the charge and an opportunity for Alex to enter a plea, but not until Monday morning.

  Alex would be held without bail until then.

  It would be advisable to retain a criminal defense attorney immediately, an advocate to be present with Alex at the arraignment.

  But
first Marina had to face her most unpleasant task.

  She had to inform her sister Rachel.

  The murders on Lake Street, as horrible and tragic as they were, did not make front page news and less than three days later they were nearly forgotten by all but several persistent reporters, two stunned and grieving families, and a select group of law enforcers.

  The assassination of Paul Gallo earned considerably less attention.

  And the death of Lee Wasko may or may not have created any interest in Chicago.

  However, when these events were connected the media would be all over it. It would then become the job the Public Information arm of the Deputy Commissioner’s Office to deal with that certain eventuality.

  And Public Information was receiving daily inquiries from those several diligent reporters who had latched on to the story and would not let go.

  There was enough evidence to name Wasko and Gallo as the perpetrators on Lake Street, and throwing that bone to the media might give the DA and the NYPD some breathing room if they could make it appear an open and shut case and if business misconduct and political corruption, at least for the time being, could be kept out of the equation.

  When Chief of Detectives Stanley Trenton collected the Saturday morning New York Post from his front lawn, and saw that the mysterious disappearance of “Brooklyn Business Tycoon” Kevin Donahue had made the front page, he was afraid the breathing room might not hold air very much longer.

  Chief Trenton immediately scheduled a meeting with Henry Munro from Public Information and District Attorney Roger Jennings at the DA’s office.

  Roger Jennings woke up having to make a decision which, in his mind, defined the term crapshoot.

  Withholding information about the recording, and using the recording to possibly lure a murder conspirator, was a tremendous gamble. It could give the Kings County prosecutors something to crow about, or it could blow up in their faces. For an instant, Jennings considered tossing a coin.