Skells

by F. P. Lione

  “One o’clock, meet me at the diner on Clove and Hylan.”

  “No, I don’t want diner food. How about the bakery on Old Town Road?” It was more a trattoria than a bakery, fresh bread, good Italian food, and outside tables.

  “Ooh, I love that place. Okay, one O’clock, and you’re buying,” she laughed.

  When I drove home to drop off my clothes, I found my landlord outside arguing with the guy across the street. Everyone calls the guy the mayor ’cause he thinks he owns the place. Alfonse was up in his face, and it looked like it was getting heated.

  “Hey, Alfonse,” I said when I got out of the car. “Everything okay?”

  “No it’s not, Tony. I saw him take my recycle pail and I want it back.”

  My landlord was talking to me but looking at him. I don’t know the guy’s name, but he’s a problem. He puts cones out in the street so no one can park in front of his house. He takes his dog out and lets him crap on everyone’s lawn and never cleans it up. He’s always fighting with his wife, and you hear them screaming all the time. Last week he was fighting with someone for driving over his cones and parking in front of his house. It got to the point where he went inside and grabbed a bat and broke two of the windows in the car. The guy took off and no one called the cops, so no charges were pressed against him. It was escalating with him, and eventually he was gonna be a real problem.

  “I didn’t take your pail,” he dismissed Alfonse. “How can you tell it’s your pail anyway? They all look the same.” He was short and round and shaved his head to deter from his baldness. He weighed about two hundred pounds, and he was wearing a muscle T-shirt (we call them guinea Ts) and nylon shorts. He was about thirty-five and worked nights like me. I think he was a corrections officer.

  Part of me wanted to walk away and leave it, but to tell the truth, the guy was shady enough to bat Alfonse in the head and leave him lying in the street.

  “I put my name on the bottom of the pail,” Alfonse said. Recycle pails are stolen regularly around here. People put their names on them in permanent marker, and then someone steals them and slaps a bumper sticker over the name. It’s ridiculous, but you need the recycle pail to get rid of the cans and bottles. If you put the cans and bottles in the regular garbage, you get a summons and have to pay a fine. They actually have Sanitation police now who look through your garbage.

  “How you doing, guy,” I said to him and put out my hand to shake. “I’m Tony.”

  “Ralph,” he said. “I don’t know why he thinks I got his pail.” He shrugged and put his hands out.

  “I saw you take it!” Alfonse was raising his voice again.

  “Do me a favor, get the pail and let him see it just to humor him,” I said, staring at him with a smile that never reached my eyes.

  He matched my stare and said, “Anything to shut him up.”

  He stomped into his yard, walked into the house, and slammed the front door.

  “I guess he’s not showing you the pail,” I said.

  Alfonse went to walk onto his property and I grabbed him. “Whoa, hold on there. It’s only a pail, Alfonse, and this guy’s half a nut. Leave it alone and we’ll steal it back next week on recycle day,” I said.

  “I can’t stand him, Tony, he’s always making trouble.”

  “I know, but when he loses it you don’t want to be around.”

  I stayed in the yard, talking to him a while to calm him down. He was a nice old man, and he was good to me. He brings me food when his wife is making something special, and on Easter she made me a grain pie.

  I put the clothes away and puttered around until 12:30, when I left to meet Denise.

  The parking lot for the bakery was full, and I wound up parking across the street in the lot for the bank.

  The place was packed with the lunch crowd. All the tables were full outside, and I found an empty table in the back corner. I could see why this was the only empty table—every time I leaned on it, it went up on one side and down on the other. I guess a piece was missing off one of the legs.

  There must have been about ten women working behind the counter, most of them pretty and young. It looked like the owner preferred thin blondes, because that’s all that worked there.

  I waved to Denise when she walked in and half the heads in the place turned, females included. She squeezed through to the table and sat across from me.

  “Did you order?” she asked. She was dressed in black pants and a button-down, light pink shirt, or unbuttoned-down shirt was more like it.

  “They let you dress that way at work?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding, Tony? I’ve led the shop in sales four months in a row.” She was reading the menu on the wall as the waitress approached. “I’ll have the grilled chicken salad, a cappuccino, and one of those stuffed breads with the broccoli rabe,” she told the waitress.

  “No more broccoli rabe, just spinach or the potato, eggplant, and red pepper,” the waitress said, rattling it off like she’d said it ten times already.

  “The eggplant one,” Denise said. “Will you split it with me, Tony?”

  “I’ll have a piece. You can take the rest home.”

  The waitress was looking annoyed as I read the menu on the wall, so I told her, “I’ll have two Sicilian slices.”

  “So,” Denise said when we were alone. “Marie already got to Dad, huh?”

  “Looks that way. She told him that you and I said we were gonna tell Dad she was cheating so him and Mom could get back together now that Mom’s sober.” I shook my head. “What a piece of work she is. I got him thinking, though—I told him that Marie said Pete Catalano’s son-in-law wanted to invest his money for him. There was no way I could have known that, since he didn’t tell me. I just hope he invests it before she can take it.”

  “I don’t care either way, I just hope she leaves him soon.”

  “So what’s the deal with Romano?” I asked.

  “I’ve known him for a while, Tony. I’m surprised it never came up that he worked with you. He never talked about being a cop, just that he was going to the fire department.”

  “He leaves soon, in a couple of weeks. He hangs out with Joe and me a lot at work.” I couldn’t tell how interested she was in him, so I added, “He drinks a lot, Denise, and he has a lot of trouble with his ex-girlfriend over his daughter.”

  “I’ve met her—the ex-girlfriend, I mean. When I first met him, he brought her to the bowling alley a couple of times. She’s full of herself, looked at the rest of us like we were beneath her. Nick’s so down-to-earth, he seems sad a lot though, kind of reminds me of Eeyore.”

  “Who’s Eeyore?” I asked, then remembered the donkey from Winnie the Pooh. “The donkey from the cartoon, right?”

  “Yeah, you know, cute, kind of sad.” Denise smiled.

  “He’s all wrong for you, Denise,” I warned.

  “We’re just friends, Tony,” she countered, but I didn’t believe her.

  We finished lunch and left by a quarter to two. I went home and flipped the channels on my TV until 3:30, when Michele called.

  “Hey babe,” I said. “How was school?”

  “It was good. What about you, what’d you do today?”

  “Laundry, cleaned up a little, had lunch with Denise,” I said, going through it with her about what happened with Marie and my father.

  “You told him, honey. If he chooses not to believe it, there’s nothing you can do. Oh, Tony, you’re not going to believe this. I went through the envelopes last night from the party—guess how much money everyone gave us?”

  “How much?”

  “Over twelve thousand dollars!” she squealed.

  “Really?” I hadn’t even thought about it. “Wow.”

  “I know, that’s the rest of the money for the wedding.” I could hear the excitement in her voice. “We got over seven thousand between both our parents—it was so generous of them.”

  “How much did my father give us?” I was curious.


  “Your mother and father gave us twenty-five hundred each, and my parents gave us another twenty-five hundred.”

  “Wow,” I said again. That really took a lot of pressure off us for all the crap we had to pay for. The money for a wedding really adds up. The hall was a small fortune, then you add the flowers, music, favors, and invitations—everything costs so much.

  We talked for a couple of minutes more. She was going with Donna to pick out some bridesmaid thing while Fiore watched all the kids.

  I fell asleep surfing the channels and woke up at 7:00. I shaved and packed my bag and ordered out a meatball hero. I ate my sandwich, watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and washed it down with a soda. I was bored out of my mind. There’s no one I hang out with anymore, so I couldn’t call anyone. I picked up my Bible and thumbed through it. I read through Mark 4 about the sower and the seed. I keep reading through it because it’s the one where Jesus says if you don’t get that parable, then you won’t get any of the other ones.

  Pastor John at our church uses this one a lot, about the Word being sowed in our hearts and that we have to be good ground for it to grow. He said if your heart is hard, it’s like the ground being hard and the seed won’t grow good in it. I took it to mean that if you’re what Italians call “thickheaded” and won’t listen to what anybody tells you, you’re not gonna learn anything. I read through it again and asked God to keep me from being thick about it and help me be able to hear what he says.

  I left by 10:15, looking forward to getting back to work. Since it was a Monday night, traffic was nil all the way in. I parked on the sidewalk on 36th Street between 9th and Dyer and walked over to the precinct.

  I went down to the locker room to change and found a Xerox picture of the inspector in a Speedo bathing suit taped to the door. His face was superimposed over some buff guy in a bikini bathing suit. I thought someone was being a little generous with the physique, but it was still pretty funny. I went upstairs and found Joe talking to Vince Puletti in the radio room.

  “Hey, Tony.” Vince shook my hand.

  “How’s it goin’, Vince?” I asked.

  “No sense complaining,” he said.

  “Anything on O’Brien?” I asked. If anyone knew, it would be Vince.

  “They got him over in the pension section until the investigation is over. His wife got a temporary order of protection against him, and he’s been staying with his brother. Friggin’ women, it’s not enough she’s cheating on him—she’s gotta grind him into the ground by ruining his career.” He grabbed onto his gun belt and heaved it up over his stomach, only to have it slide back down.

  Hanrahan’s attention to the roll call announcement stopped me from having to comment, and Joe and I went over to the muster room. I noticed Terri Marks was missing from the desk and wondered if she was embarrassed to face Joe.

  There were more pictures of the inspector in the Speedo taped around the room. Hanrahan pulled them off as he walked toward the podium. He pulled another one off the front of the podium and tossed them in the garbage.

  He walked behind the podium and looked down, shook his head, and pulled another picture off the podium and crumpled it as the ranks laughed.

  “You’re opening up a can of worms here, guys,” he said, trying not to smile. He didn’t agree with what the inspector was doing, but this wasn’t helping things.

  “The color of the day is yellow,” he said. He gave out the sectors and foot posts and meals and finished up with, “Oh, we had a stabbing the other night up on 9th Avenue. The perp’s name is Daniel Browning, he goes by the street name Easy. He was seen earlier by the Port Authority cops, but they lost him in the subway at four-o and eight,” which is right by Port Authority.

  He was talking about the stabbing Fiore and I handled. He gave a description of the perp and the clothes he was wearing, which sounded like what he was wearing the night of the stabbing. “A copy of his picture is over by the desk,” he finished.

  We filed out, and Joe and I grabbed Romano outside on the steps and went out to the RMP. We threw our hats in the back with Romano, our memo books on the dashboard, and jammed our nightsticks in the console before driving thirty feet to the corner to get coffee.

  “I’ll go in,” Romano said, getting out of the car. “You guys want anything with your coffee?”

  “Just coffee for me,” Joe said.

  “Being nice to me isn’t gonna work, Eeyore,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Just coffee,” I sighed.

  “Eeyore?” Fiore chuckled when Romano went in the deli.

  “Yeah, Denise says he’s cute and sad like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.” I made a disgusted sound.

  Fiore barked out a laugh.

  Romano got back in the car, and we drove him up to 42nd and 8th and let him sit in the car while we drank our coffee. He was trying to be nice to me, telling me what a great party it was yesterday. I’m usually suspicious of anyone that’s nice to me but Fiore, and Romano’s no exception.

  I tossed him out of the car and drove eastbound on 42nd Street to take a look at the Deuce before patrolling our sector. We drove on 39th Street over to 9th Avenue, when we heard Central come over the radio with, “In the South a 10-10 disorderly at four-two and eight.” She gave the address of Midtown’s favorite porn store.

  Technically the job was in Henry’s sector, but Henry had an aided when we left the house. Someone inside Port Authority had a breathing problem that they were handling, so Central threw it over the air.

  We heard Bruno Galotti on the radio answer, “Robbery post 5 to Central, I’ll take that job.”

  Central went into the job—apparently a customer in the porn shop was knocking over tapes and arguing with the manager. Romano came over the radio with “Robbery 4 on the back.”

  I turned on 8th and drove toward 42nd Street. The last time I got called to a disorderly at that store, it was an EDP.

  “Let’s give them a hand,” Joe said. “We don’t want Nick getting jammed up before he goes to FD.”

  Fiore radioed Central with “South David on the back.” “10-4, South David.”

  As I passed Port Authority, I looked over to see if Easy was around. Romano was on the radio now, yelling, “He’s running north on 8th Avenue.”

  I looked at Joe and hit the gas a little. As I got toward the front of the porn place, I saw a trail of white smoke going north on 8th Avenue and Romano running in the street, trying to stay away from it.

  As we approached Romano, I heard Central say, “Who is in pursuit?”

  Romano put his radio to his mouth and said, “Robbery 4, black shirt, blue jeans, running north on 8th Avenue past 43rd Street.”

  We could hear him breathing heavy over the transmission. When I passed Romano I could see the guy, a male white with a black muscle shirt, faded jeans, and work boots. He was muscular and looked like he worked construction. He was holding his right arm up and was spraying a handheld can that was letting out a stream of fog. He was looking behind him and running at the same time.

  I passed him and stopped at 44th Street and 8th so he had to run into us. Joe and I got out of the car, holding our night-sticks in our hands. We surprised him, and he stumbled down to a walk as he turned his head around to look where he was going.

  I hit the back of his hand with my nightstick and heard the crack as I connected. The can went flying out of his hand, and I grabbed his right wrist and chest and Joe grabbed his left wrist and chest simultaneously. We half lifted him as we threw him against the wall of the building in front of us. I heard the hollow sound of the can hitting the sidewalk and the oomph as his chest hit the wall.

  I smelled booze and the acrid smell of a chemical on him. We put him down on the ground as I cuffed the right arm, and Joe cuffed the left as Romano ran up.

  “Get off me!” he roared and bucked. “I didn’t do nuthin’!”

  Perps always say that.

  Romano picked the can up off the sidewalk and said, “Pepper f
og.” The can had a little foghorn for a nozzle, nothing like I’d ever seen before.

  Romano put the can up in the perp’s face and yelled, “If you didn’t do nothing, then what are you running for and spraying this stuff?”

  The perp turned away from the can and said, “Get out of my face!”

  “Where’s Bruno?” Joe asked Romano.

  “He’s still back at the store—he got hit with the mace.”

  Joe and I hoisted up the perp and tossed him in the back of the car with Romano and drove down to 42nd and 8th. Bruno was in front of the porn place with another guy, both bent over on the sidewalk. We got out of the car, locked the doors, and trotted over to him. We could hear him coughing, spitting, and gagging.

  “Bruno, you okay?” Joe asked.

  “Ahhh, he hit me with the mace.” His eyes were swollen and tearing.

  “You want a bus?” Joe asked.

  He threw us a wave that looked like a yes, so Joe got on the radio.

  “South David to Central, we have an officer having trouble breathing. We need a bus at four-two and eight; have South Sergeant respond.”

  “10-4.”

  Then Fiore added, “Robbery 4’s got one under at this location.”

  “Robbery 4, that’s 0015 hours,” Central said, giving the time of the arrest.

  “Who’s this?” I asked Romano, nodding toward the guy with Bruno. His face was red and his eyes were tearing, but he didn’t look like he was hit as bad.

  “He’s the manager,” Romano said.

  He looked like he managed a porn store—tall, dark, and greasy, wearing a black silk shirt and four gold chains around his neck.

  Bruno was groaning, “Oh man, this hurts,” and then he cursed in Italian. Joe went into the deli next to the porn shop to get him a bottle of water.

  “How did this guy get away from you?” I asked Romano.

  “When we walked up, he was arguing out front with the manager. Just as I walked up on them, he sprayed the manager, and when he turned around to run, it sprayed Bruno. He kept spraying it as he ran. I chased him, but I stayed in the street so I didn’t get hit with it,” he said, then added, “Good thing it wasn’t windy.”