Skells

by F. P. Lione

  I finally went upstairs to the desk at five to eleven. Vince Puletti, the old-timer who runs the radio room, was talking to Sergeant Hanrahan. I got a cup of coffee and went back outside to smoke a cigarette on the front steps.

  The four-to-twelve cops were starting to come in, standing outside smoking and talking like we’re not supposed to do.

  “Tony, did you hear about O’Brien?” Jimmy Murphy, who works the Madison Square Garden detail, asked me. I was on the bottom step and had to tilt my head back to look up at him. He’s about six feet tall, blue eyes, Irish looking.

  “What about him?”

  “I heard he got jammed up,” he said.

  “How?” Jammed up means suspended, gun and shield taken, usually IAB—or the rat squad from internal affairs, as we call them—is involved.

  “I don’t know,” Murph said with a shrug. “I just heard he got jammed up.”

  When I saw O’Brien last night he didn’t look like anything was wrong, then I remembered that McGovern said he left early. It could be bogus, half the stories you hear around here are lies anyway.

  “How’s your sister?” he asked. Murph had met Denise at a hockey game last December. He was working his detail at the Garden and moved Denise and me from a couple of nosebleed tickets she got to behind Montreal’s bench. Then he showed off some more by taking Denise back to the locker room for some Ranger autographs.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “Tell her I said hello,” he said. The last time he asked me to set him up with her, I was in no mood for anyone from work meeting my family. I insulted him by telling him I’d knock him out if he went near my sister. The truth was he was divorced and he was Irish, two strikes already against him as far as the family’s concerned. Plus he was a nice guy and Denise would probably eat him alive—the type she usually goes for are yoyos. Sal Valente, a neighbor of ours growing up, was the last guy she dated. He’s a real nice guy, but then he dumped her and went back to his psychotic ex-wife.

  I finished my cigarette and went back inside. Vince Puletti was in the radio room, and he gave me a “come here” signal with his hand.

  “What’s up, Vince?” I said, shaking his hand. Vince was big, beefy, and bald. He was also the source for gossip in the precinct. If it happened, he knew about it.

  He grabbed his belt loops and looked around. “O’Brien got jammed up today,” he said quietly. He was talking to me but looking around the room to make sure no one heard him.

  “That’s what Murph said. What happened?”

  “He left early this morning,” Vince said.

  “I know, McGovern told me he had a lot to do today.” Vince nodded and took a deep breath. “He caught his wife in the sack with another guy.” He shook his head and looked sympathetic, but I’m sure he was loving this.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  He shrugged. “Supposedly some guy she met online.”

  “She told him that?” I asked, skeptical.

  “I guess him holding a gun to her head made her talkative.” He put his hands out in a “don’t ask me” gesture. “I don’t know what he was thinking,” Vince added.

  “He’s thinking he caught his wife cheating on him—what else was he gonna do?” I said. “She’s lucky he didn’t shoot the both of them.”

  “And blow a million-dollar pension?” Vince shook his head. “Tony, it’s not worth it.”

  Vince lives for his pension. He could have retired ten years ago, but he’s still packing it away in his pension fund. I’ve met old-timers like him. They leave the job, have a heart attack the next day, and never collect a dime of their pension. The guys who I came on with have a saying, “not a day over twenty,” meaning the day you make twenty years, you’re out of here.

  When Fiore came up from the locker room, I told him about O’Brien. He had already heard about it on the train in, but he didn’t go into detail.

  The muster room was almost full now, with a low buzz running through it about O’Brien. Heads were shaking and McGovern, his partner, was surrounded.

  “What happened?” I asked him.

  “I talked to him this morning, it’s not what everyone is saying,” he said like he’d already told it ten times.

  “Did he think something was going on, is that why he went home?”

  He shrugged. “Well, he’d noticed she’s been on the computer a lot lately, but that’s not why he went home. He’s finishing his basement and wanted it done for his son’s confirmation next week. He was quiet going into the bedroom, he thought everyone was sleeping—”

  “She had a guy in her bed with her kids in the house?” I snapped.

  McGovern called her a couple of names that I thought were on the money and said, “After that she calls the cops and says he held the gun to her head and then let off a round when the guy tried to run out.”

  “Did he let off a round?” It wouldn’t look good discharging his gun with his kids in the house.

  “No, and he gave them his gun. I’m sure they’ll test it and see it wasn’t fired. Once they know she lied about him letting off a round, they’re not going to believe he held the gun to her head either,” McGovern said.

  “Did he?” I asked.

  He shrugged with a smile.

  “He lives in Suffolk, right?” I asked, thinking that Fiore knew a couple of Suffolk cops and maybe they could help O’Brien out.

  “Yeah, he actually knew one of the cops who answered the job, so he’s not really worried. I was gonna take off tonight, but he said he’d be staying with his brother. I’ll talk to him in the morning,” he said.

  “Tell him I was asking for him, and tell him if he needs anything, a place to stay, just let me know.”

  “Will do, Tony.”

  Nick Romano and Rooney had their heads together, and when I walked over to them Romano gave me a “come here” gesture and pulled a name plate that said MASSAGE out of his pocket.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  “From a hotel up on 44th Street.”

  “What’s it for?” I asked.

  “Decorations for the inspector’s door.” He and Rooney laughed. He walked over to the inspector’s door, which is behind the muster room, slid out the inspector’s nameplate, and slid in the “Massage” sign. “Rooney has the rest of the stuff, it’s hysterical.”

  Rooney got Romano in a headlock. “Good work, buddy!”

  Rooney was about to show me whatever he had when Sergeant Hanrahan called, “Attention to the roll call.”

  “The color of the day is white,” he said. He gave out the sectors and the foot posts and a description of an eighty-year-old male white who was missing.

  “His name is James McGoughey,” he said, but it was pronounced “Magooey.”

  He smirked and waited until the ranks got it out of their system.

  “Is that Mr. Magoo?”

  “Sarge, that was a male white, three feet tall, bulbous nose, wears Coke bottle glasses and a fedora hat and cane?” Rooney asked.

  “Last seen driving backwards through the Lincoln Tunnel,” McGovern yelled.

  “He was last seen yesterday at Penn Station,” Hanrahan continued. “He wandered away from his family. He has Alzheimer’s and no foul play is suspected. He was last seen wearing a short-sleeved, blue button-down shirt and black pants. Keep an eye out for him. If you see him, hold on to him and give me a call on the radio.”

  We wrote it down in our memo books.

  “Tonight’s the elephant walk down 34th Street,” Hanrahan said. He was talking about Ringling Bros. and Barnum $ Bailey Circus. Every year they make the rounds, first out in Jersey at the Meadowlands, then to the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. From the coliseum they take the animals by train into the Long Island Railroad yards in Queens and walk them through the Midtown Tunnel and down 34th Street to Madison Square Garden.

  Hanrahan finished up with, “I just want to give you a heads-up. They should be coming into the train yards around midnight and co
ming down 34th Street after that. There should be a detail handling it, but there’ll probably be protestors crying about how the animals are treated, so keep an eye out.”

  5

  We grabbed Romano and stopped for coffee on the corner of 39th Street. Fiore went into the deli, and Romano was in the backseat looking like he’d been hitting the sauce again.

  “Out with Rooney this morning, Nick?” I asked him.

  “For a little while. We were working on the picture for the inspector’s door,” he was saying as he put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

  “I used to drink a lot with Rooney,” I said, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  “What’s your point, Tony?” he mumbled.

  “My point is I was someone to drink with, and so are you. If you didn’t go to the bar, Rooney would find someone else to hang out with.”

  He still had his eyes closed. “I’ll be gone soon and he’ll have to find someone else.” He opened one eye.

  “What about you—will you find someone else to drink with?”

  “I won’t be drinking as much once I’m in FD; I’ll be too busy,” he said.

  “Busy doing what? You think they don’t drink in the firehouses?”

  He shrugged. “I’m sure they do.” He met my eyes in the mirror. “I’m not you, Tony—I’m not an alcoholic, and I don’t need to find God because I don’t like the way my life turned out.”

  “Sure you are, you’re just like me,” I said calmly. “You’re alone, and your personal life is in shambles. Your girlfriend left you, and you don’t live with your daughter.” I was counting out on my fingers for effect. “And you go to the bar with Rooney in the morning so you’re too drunk to look at how much your life sucks.”

  “Thanks, Tony, I feel much better now,” he said dryly. He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.

  “You know what, Nick? I wish someone had talked to me the way Joe and I try to talk to you. It would have saved me a lot of trouble,” I said.

  “Maybe I want trouble. Maybe I don’t want to go to church on Sunday and suck up to someone who didn’t give a crap [I’m editing] about me and let my father get shot in the face when I was ten years old.” He turned his head to look at the window, his eyes staring at the ground. “And if God’s so almighty, then how come he couldn’t do anything about it?” He swung his eyes up to mine again in the mirror. “Huh? How come I have a daughter that I don’t live with ‘cause her mother’s a friggin’ slut? Nothing to say, Tony?”

  “You better duck when you say something like that, Nick,” I said. “Don’t be blaming God because you got some girl pregnant or because some lowlife shot your father. People are accountable for their own actions. Anyway, I’m not God’s lawyer. If you need to know about something he did or didn’t do, why are you talking to me? Ask him yourself.”

  “I’m not talking to him,” Nick said sullenly.

  “Not talking to who?” Fiore said, getting in the car. He handed Nick his coffee and put the other two in the cup holders.

  “Nobody,” Nick mumbled.

  We were quiet on the ride up to 44th and 8th. “Can you pick me up for my meal?” Romano asked.

  “Sure. You want us to sit with you while you drink your coffee?” Fiore asked.

  “No thanks, I’ve already had my lecture for the day,” he said as he slammed the door.

  Joe looked amused. “You lecturing him, Tony?”

  “I was trying to talk to him, he’s hungover again.”

  He nodded.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he laughed. “I think it’s nice you’re trying to help him.”

  “He don’t want my help—he’s mad. He reminded me of myself when my life was in the toilet. He said if God is so powerful, how come he couldn’t stop his father from getting shot?” I shrugged. “It’s a valid question.”

  “Don’t feel like you need to have an answer for him, he’s gotta go to God about it,” Fiore said as I drove over to Broadway. We didn’t have any jobs yet, so I parked near the corner of Broadway and 34th Street.

  It was 11:50, and a small crowd had already gathered. There were about twenty people on the corners of both Broadway and 6th Avenue where they almost intersect at 34th Street. Nothing stood out about the crowd to make me think they were waiting for the elephants to walk by; they could just be hanging out.

  “I guess the Pirates knew there’d be a crowd,” Joe said, nodding his head toward the southeast corner of Broadway and 34th.

  They were standing opposite the entrance to the subway station. They’re not usually out this late, and they were preaching without their usual microphones.

  “I’ve never seen them down this far. They’re usually up on 7th Avenue between 42nd and 45th streets,” I said.

  Over the years there’s been all kinds of street preachers in Times Square, some legit, some whackos. The legit ones mean well; they’re down in the trenches trying to help the downtrodden. Some of the storefront types have signs that say “All Welcome.” Some offer food, shelter, or prayer.

  For the most part the whack jobs are harmless, just strange. Some preach on the sidewalk with something in front of them for people to toss money into. Others mumble about the devil and the end of the world or yell things out that nobody understands, but not these guys.

  The Pirates, as we call them, are a group of hate preachers. I don’t know what religion they are, but they use their constitutional rights to religious freedom to spew their poison at people walking by on the street. They dress all in black almost like Ali Baba, but they’re not Arabic. Black parachute pants, black shirts with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders, and black leather bandannas tied around their heads. They usually have a sound system set up and stand militant style around the grand poo-bah, who stands on a small platform, dressed in white.

  The lead guy, in a robe and headpiece, spouts out his anti-government/anticop/antieverything garbage. He blabs his conspiracy theories and makes threats of murder and destruction, inciting the people as they walk by.

  What surprises me is that some people actually stand there and listen. Some look uncomfortable and others get angry, like this guy in a Yankee hat walking by with his kid.

  “Why are you doing this?” he yelled at them. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about!” He was staring at the guy in white, and three of the Pirates in black took a step toward him and folded their arms to intimidate him.

  The guy in the Yankee hat shook his head and started walking away. Someone yelled “Psycho!” as they passed our car, and the leader started after them. He saw Joe and me in the RMP and stopped. He stared at us, thinking we were watching him, which we were. He started walking toward us in slow, deliberate steps. His Pirate paesanos were watching this and came closer.

  Joe’s face was blank as he watched the guy approach his side of the car.

  “What are you looking at?” he said contemptuously to Joe.

  “Just making sure the peace is kept,” Joe said, his voice even.

  “There’ll be no peace,” he said ominously.

  I saw red. “Are you threatening us?” I said, leaning toward Joe’s side of the car.

  Joe stopped me with his hand. “There’ll be peace as long as I’m here,” Fiore said, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “We’re praying you die,” he said to Fiore. Then he leaned in and smiled at me, and I saw his eyes. They were green like a cat’s, sinister looking. “We’re praying you all die.”

  Joe smiled now and looked him in the eye. “He who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. You can pray all you want—no weapon formed against me shall prosper,” he said.

  I guess the guy had no comeback for that. He straightened up and stared at us for a second or two before walking away. He walked a couple of steps, then turned and glanced back at us with a confused look on his face and continued on.

  “What was that about?” I asked, confused.

/>   “Just letting him know who’s in charge,” Fiore said.

  “I know that one about no weapon shall prosper, but what was the other thing you said?” I thought it was pretty good in case I ever got into something with the Pirates again.

  “It’s in 1 John,” Fiore said. “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.”

  “What’s with his eyes? They were freaky,” I said.

  “They’re contacts, he does it to scare people,” Joe said with a shrug, unimpressed.

  “How do they call themselves preachers? They’re the exact opposite of what God is. He’s love, and all they talk about is hate and death,” I said.

  “That’s why no one but the real nut jobs listen to them,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, but that’s what makes them dangerous.”

  The Pirates preached for about another ten minutes, but the crowd was ignoring them now, so they packed up their stuff and went down into the subway.

  About ten after twelve, the first Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey truck came down 34th Street. The crowd got excited and moved up to the curb and into the street to see if the elephants were coming down. After a couple of minutes, they went back to hanging out when nothing else came down the street.

  About fifteen minutes later, the truck came from Madison Square Garden and went back toward the Midtown tunnel. Then the circus trucks started coming every couple of minutes down 34th Street—the trains must have come into the railroad yard.

  “We should have brought the kids,” Fiore said. “They would love to see the elephants.” Fiore has three kids, two boys and a baby girl.

  “Stevie couldn’t come anyway. He’s sick, got an ear infection.”

  “I hate when the kids are sick, especially ear infections—the kids are miserable.”

  “Yeah, Stevie sounded like he was in pain.”