Skells

by F. P. Lione

  I was about pick up the phone to order some pizza when it rang.

  “Hullo?”

  “Tony, it’s Grandma,” she said.

  “Hey, Grandma, is everything alright?”

  “I want you to come over.”

  “Why? I was just there last night.”

  “I need to talk to you, and no one is here. Did you eat yet?”

  “No, I was gonna order some pizza.”

  “Don’t order—I made soup, it’s raining. And I have chicken from last night.”

  She always makes soup when it rains, even in the summer. I debated it for a minute and decided I might as well get it over with. I had to see everyone this weekend and if there was something going on, I want to know ahead of time.

  “I’ll be there in a little while,” I told her.

  I packed my bag for work, bringing clothes for tomorrow and Friday. I brought my cell phone charger and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a book I bought to read to Stevie.

  The air was warm and wet, and the rain was down to a drizzle. I took the service road to Clove Road and got to Grandma’s by 7:00. She buzzed me in and was waiting in the hallway when I got there. She got me in one of her choke holds and kissed my cheek. She felt frail and bony as I hugged her.

  She was alone like she said, and she had the table set for two. She must have gone shopping. Her red folding cart that all the old Italian ladies take to the stores was resting against the wall in the entranceway.

  “What kind of soup did you make?” I asked.

  “Pasta faggioli,” she said, but it sounded like “pasta fazool,” which is cannollini beans and macaroni. She makes hers with proscuitto, garlic, and basil, and it’s delicious.

  She ladled the soup into the bowls and took a loaf of Italian bread out of the oven. She pulled out a bottle of Bell’Agio Chianti, the kind the old men drink playing checkers in the park. She poured herself a small glass and held the bottle up to me. I shook my head no, and she put it back on the counter. I sent up a silent prayer for the food and dug in.

  “So what’d you want to talk to me about?” I asked between bites.

  “I need help with the seating arrangements.”

  “Why do we have seating arrangements at an American Legion hall?”

  “Because, I can’t sit Aunt Rose with Little Gina. Little Gina didn’t invite Aunt Rose to her engagement dinner, so Rose wants nothing to do with her. Uncle Mickey’s not talking to Uncle Henny since they got in trouble with the bookies. Denise isn’t talking to your father, and I can’t sit Marie near your mother. Anna Morreale and—”

  “Grandma, do you even hear yourself?” I cut her off. “What?” She gave me a blank look.

  “There’s something wrong with this family. You can’t even put them all in a room together without half of them fighting about something. Why does there always have to be a problem?” I asked, exasperated.

  “You know, Tony, you keep telling me that this woman isn’t poisoning your mind, so how is it that since you met her you turned on your family? You never said stuff like this before. No family is perfect, but we’re your family, and we don’t appreciate her coming in here and turning you against us.” She was pointing her finger at me.

  “Grandma, this has nothing to do with Michele. Why do you blame her for everything? Maybe it’s because I don’t drink anymore that I’m seeing all this stuff,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s that church you go to, teaching you to look down on everyone else!”

  “That’s not what they teach us,” I said, wondering if that was what I was doing.

  She got up and went over to the oven and pulled a towel off the handle. She took two dishes of leftover chicken out of the oven, set them on the table, then went back and turned off the oven.

  “Grandma, I love you and I love my family. I’m just tired of all the fighting. How about we don’t have seating arrangements and just let everyone sit where they want?” I said, trying to smooth it over. “This way no one has to sit next to someone they don’t want to.”

  “Because they’ll fight!” she snapped, proving my point whether she realized it or not.

  “If they fight, they fight,” I said, resigning myself to it.

  We finished our dinner and had coffee. She had picked up seven-layer cookies at the bakery, the ones that have a pink, green, and yellow layer with raspberry jam in between, with a chocolate-covered top and bottom. I’m trying not to eat too many sweets, but I love these and I wound up eating six of them.

  We watched the Yankee game until I left for work. The Yanks were down at Camden Yards playing Baltimore. They were tied 5-5 until the bottom of the fifth inning. I left after Soriano scored in the 6th inning. If they won, it would be their fourth win in five games.

  There was an accident on the Gowanus with a fatality near 39th Street. The expressway was down to the center lane. A van collided with a smaller car that was demolished, facing traffic in the left lane. There was a body on the ground on the side of it, and I could see a pair of sneakers sticking out from under a blanket, probably waiting for EMS to come out and pronounce him dead.

  I got to Midtown at 10:40 and parked on 36th Street. I went downstairs to change, and Hanrahan caught me on my way up from the locker room.

  “Rooney’s a schmuck,” he said.

  “I know. Why, what’d he do now?” I asked and then remembered what he was planning to do to the inspector’s door. It must have shown on my face that I realized what he was talking about, because he shook his head and walked into the muster room.

  Cops were cracking up around the room, listening to Rooney brag about what him and Romano did to the inspector. Hanrahan gave the fall in order, and the room got quiet. He gave out the sectors, the foot posts, the color of the day (green), and the return date for C-summons before he brought up the subject of the inspector. “Uh,” he stuttered a little, and I could see he was biting his lip. “It’s been brought to my attention that the inspector’s door was decorated with some pornographic material this morning. To say the least, he was not happy seeing his face superimposed over this kind of—” He stopped and coughed to cover his laugh. His shoulders started to shake and he snorted, then he turned around to compose himself. He held up his hands as the ranks started to roar.

  “Don’t laugh,” he said seriously, “he’s ripping.”

  “So what?” Rooney spat. “Who cares if he’s ripping? We’re ripping.”

  “Careful, Mike,” Hanrahan said. “He might think you’re the one who did it.” He looked hard at Rooney. It might be funny, but the inspector could play games with Rooney.

  He finished up with, “I don’t want anyone off post tonight. Foot posts, pick up your jobs.” He was basically telling us we have to watch our backs now that we humiliated the inspector.

  Fiore and I grabbed Romano, who was acting cocky as anything for helping Rooney disgrace the inspector. We stopped for coffee on the corner of 9th Avenue and made Romano go in. We drove him up to 44th Street and sat with him till he finished his coffee.

  We had no jobs, so I drove west to 9th Avenue to patrol our sector, driving east to west on the streets and south on the avenues. I was coming back westbound on 39th Street, and as we passed an empty lot on the north side of the street, Fiore said quietly, “Stop the car.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Shhh, did you hear that?” He turned his head to the side, listening intently.

  “What?” I said. I didn’t hear anything.

  He held up his hand. “Pull the car over and lower your radio,” he said as he was already getting out of the car.

  I shut the car and lowered my radio, following him into the lot. The lights from the street lit up the front of the parking lot, but the back of it was dark. I couldn’t see anything but I heard it now, a faint cry and the slap, pop sound of someone being hit. I heard a blow being delivered again, some mumbling, and then more clearly a deep voice said, “Shut up, you—” with some pretty foul adjectives.

>   Joe and I looked at each other and moved quickly out of the light before they could see us, holding our handcuffs so they wouldn’t make noise. Once we stepped out of the streetlight, we could see the outline of a man kneeling down with his back to us and his arms moving. He was huge, I could see his massive upper body. He was wearing jeans down around his ankles and a white muscle shirt.

  I heard a female crying and then a couple of more hits being given as his hands pounded her. We had our guns out and we both raised them toward him.

  I went to the left and Joe went to the right. I stayed back behind a little; I didn’t want the perp to get in between Joe and me, ’cause if we were standing on either side of him and had to shoot, we’d shoot each other.

  As we came up on it, we saw what was going on. There were two men, the one with his back to us was holding a female down with one arm as he raped her, alternating with blows to her face with his fists. The second man was kneeling by her head, holding her down by the shoulders as he watched. Neither one of them saw us until Fiore put his gun to the big guy’s head and yelled, “Police! Don’t move!”

  I yelled a command to the second guy, “Get down!” He let go of the female, who was lying there limp. I keyed my radio, still holding my gun at the second guy, “Central, 85 forthwith, empty lot on three-nine between eight and nine, closer to eighth,” which means officer needs assistance, and put the radio in my back pocket.

  The second guy, the smaller of the two, had let go of her but was still kneeling.

  “Get down now,” I said as I lunged at him with my gun out in front of me. When he looked down the barrel of the gun, he complied pretty quick and lay down on the ground with his arms and legs out.

  “Get down on the ground!” Fiore yelled to the first guy, still on his knees. He was massive, solid muscle, with the hint of a smile on his lips.

  “Yo, yo, chill, man,” he said, putting his hands out. He got up, wiping the gravel off his knees. He reached for his pants that were still down around his ankles.

  “Don’t move!” Fiore barked.

  “You got this wrong, this is my girl—tell them.” His eyes swung a warning look to the female, who was crumpled on the ground.

  “I said get down on the ground!”

  Neither me or Joe would look at her and take our eyes off him. We could hear her crying, saying, “Thank you, God,” over and over.

  Joe poked him in the back of the head with the gun and said, “Get down on the ground or I will kill you!” Fiore colored it up a little. I was surprised in a disconnected sort of way—I’ve never heard him curse before.

  The radio was babbling, but I wasn’t listening to it. I could see the big guy looking around, seeing where he could run. He looked like a psycho, shaved head, thick neck, and the tattoo work and jailhouse muscles of a recent stint in the joint.

  He started talking again. “Oh, come on, dude, just let me pull my pants up. I’m telling you, she’s my girl.” He was looking at me, sizing me up.

  Joe hit him with the gun again behind his ear, this time harder, and yelled, “This is the last time I’m telling you, get down on the ground or I will blow your head off!”

  I could see he was thinking of taking us on. He reached down to pull up his pants, and I saw I had a clear shot at him. I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could and heard the oomph as I connected with his family jewels. As he bent over, I holstered my gun and grabbed his right wrist and gave him an armbar, pushing my elbow into the back of his upper arm while holding his wrist. His face slapped against the ground as he went down, and I put my knee in his back and cuffed his one wrist.

  Hitting the pavement stunned him for a second, but his left arm was still free. He pushed himself up with a roar as I yelled, “Joe, grab his other arm before I lose leverage here.”

  The sound of the radio came into focus, and I could hear the sectors responding, “Eddie 84, Henry 84,” telling Central they were on the scene. A sector car came into the lot, scraping its bumper against the entrance ramp as it pulled in. Rooney and Connelly got out and ran over to us.

  Joe holstered his gun and grabbed the guy’s other arm, but he had a huge upper body and his muscles made it difficult for us to cuff him. We strained to pull his arms together to cuff his wrists. He started to buck and we rode him like a bronco for a couple of seconds, till Rooney came over and closed his arms so we could cuff him.

  Connelly cuffed the other guy and stepped back from him and said, “Oh man,” when he saw the victim.

  We had forgotten about her while getting the cuffs on the big guy. She was beaten bloody, with welts and bruises all over her face. She was petite, with dark brown hair disheveled around her shoulders. One eye was swollen shut, and the other one was just about closed. Her nose was broken and bleeding, and her mouth was swollen and split. From the amount of swelling in the face, I’m sure more than her nose was broken. She was sitting now, curled up and shaking, with her arms around her knees. Her legs were scraped and bleeding, and she was missing a shoe.

  Fiore was on the radio, breathing heavy. “South David to Central, I need a bus forthwith to north side of three-nine between eight and nine.”

  Central came back with, “Twenty minutes out.”

  It happens sometimes, EMS is backed up with multiple injuries somewhere or stuck at Bellevue finishing something up.

  Connelly was talking to her in soothing tones, but she was rocking now, looking at the ground and saying, “Thank you, God,” over and over. The big guy was yelling, not so tough now, with his hands cuffed and his pants down around his ankles.

  “Tell them,” he spit out some more curses at her. “Tell them you were hooking us up; tell them we were chilling, having beers.”

  Connelly gave him a shove with his foot. “Shut up, shut your mouth.”

  He shut his mouth.

  Rooney and Connelly patted them down while I called Central.

  “South David to Central,” I radioed.

  “Go ahead, South David,” Central answered.

  “Slow it down,” I said so the other sectors weren’t rushing to the scene. “We’ve got two under at the lot on three-nine between eight and nine.”

  “Zero zero twenty hours,” Central responded, putting the time of arrest at 12:20.

  The boss and most of the squad were on the scene now, and Nick Romano came whipping around into the parking lot on foot.

  “What happened?” Hanrahan asked as he approached Joe and me.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Joe heard a noise, we didn’t know what it was. We came up on these two mutts holding her down and raping her.”

  He looked at the victim. “Do you have a bus coming?”

  “Yeah, twenty minutes out,” I said.

  “I’m not leaving her on the ground in the parking lot or putting her in a sector car—take her back to the house,” Hanrahan said. “Let the bus meet us there. You and Joe take the victim. Let Rooney and Connelly take the musclehead, and Noreen and I will take the smaller perp.”

  Rooney pulled the big one up by the cuffs and the back of his pants and said, “Come on, you piece of garbage.” He and Connelly put him in the car.

  I went over to the victim still sitting on the pavement, rocking back and forth while she stared at the ground.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. “How ‘bout we take you back to the precinct? The ambulance is gonna meet us there and take a look at you.”

  She stopped rocking and tried to focus on me. Her eyes were pretty much swollen shut, so I doubt she could see me. “Are you an angel?” she asked.

  I smiled and shook my head. “No, just a cop,” I said.

  She started to cry.

  7

  They must have taken the scenic route to the precinct, because Joe and I were the first ones back. The boss left Romano in the parking lot to watch the crime scene. I opened the back door of the RMP to get the victim, and she swung her legs around and put them on the ground. Her legs were bloody, and I could see pieces o
f glass and gravel imbedded in them.

  She was saying, “Thank you, thank you, Officer. I was praying to God, and you guys showed up. They were gonna kill me, I know they were gonna kill me.”

  She was right, these guys were psychos. With the size of the big one and the force he was using, she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. I was thanking God too—it’s rare we get to stop something like this while it’s going on. Usually we’re called in afterward to pick up what’s left of the victim. I wish I could say we stopped it before anything happened, but the big guy had already assaulted her. The smaller one would have taken the leftovers.

  “They can’t hurt you now, we got you. Come on, let’s get you inside and let the EMTs take a look at you.” I put out my arm for her to grab onto and lift herself up. She held my hand and carried her shoe in the other. She was a little wobbly, so I put my other hand under her shoulder.

  Joe was silent as he came around to my side of the car. He took a look at her face and turned away, balling his hands into fists. I’ve never seen him this angry, usually it’s me who goes off. He composed himself and helped me get her up the three stairs into the precinct.

  She was barely walking, and by the time we got to the desk the lou, Terri Marks, and Vince Puletti were staring at us. The lou looked at her and then looked at me with anger and disgust flashing in his eyes.

  “Lou, I’m gonna take her in the back to the Anti-Crime office and come back.” We didn’t want to bring her in the muster room where she would have to see the perps again.

  “Go ahead,” he said with a nod. Normally the lou just puts his head back down to whatever he’s doing, but he was staring at her. He looked over at Fiore. “You okay, Joe?”

  Fiore gave a quick nod and followed me. As we were walking toward the back, I heard him call Terri Marks.

  “Terr, can you come in the back with us and wait with her?”

  “Sure, Joe. Can I get her something to drink?”