by F. P. Lione
“I have no idea,” Alfonse said.
I tried not to think of Romano’s father again as I crossed into the street. Instead I started praying Psalm 91 like Fiore’s been pounding into my head. I ask you, Lord, to give your angels charge over me, to keep me in all my ways.
“Stay here,” I said to Alfonse. The last thing I needed was him getting hurt.
I heard something smash as I approached the front of the house and I heard her scream, then sob. The front door opened and the wife tried to get out, clawing her hands against the latch to make it open. Ralph grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head into the wooden door with such force that I winced.
“Ralph,” I yelled. “Let her go!”
He yelled something raunchy and dragged her back in. “Help me,” she choked. “He stabbed me—please help me,” she cried, her voice sounding like it was at a distance. I had no idea what time it was or if her kids were in the house.
I felt my hands start to shake and heard the sirens, sounding like they were coming from Father Cappodanno Boulevard.
“Alfonse,” I called as I turned back to him. “I told you to stay across the street,” I snapped when I realized he was about ten feet behind me. “Get back on the phone, make sure they send an ambulance—she said he stabbed her.” He had a cordless in his hand and dialed, walking back toward his house where the signal was better.
I wrestled with it for a second. This guy was too far gone to hear anything now, and I couldn’t see this ending good. I was torn. I didn’t want to deal with this, but I couldn’t walk away and let him kill her. Nobody should have to live like this.
I took my gun out of the holster and dropped the holster on the ground. I took a deep breath and climbed the stairs.
I was quiet when I opened the door, and thankfully it didn’t squeak and give me away.
It was a basic ranch house, small entranceway, living room to my right, kitchen straight ahead, and the dining room off the kitchen.
There was blood on the wall in front of me, and a line of it was smeared into the rug.
I looked to my right into the living room. He had her on the floor about ten feet away. She was lying on her back, with blood saturating the front of the silk blouse I saw her wearing this morning. On her left arm the shirt was cut, and I could see a bloody gash. Her eyes were vacant as she stared at nothing.
His back was to me, which gave me the advantage. He was still wearing the clothes they locked him up in yesterday, leaning over her as he amused himself terrifying her.
“This is my house. These are my kids,” he said slowly, methodically. “You are nothing but a crazy, washed-out whore, and you don’t dictate how I run my life. You think you got me today? No judge is gonna tell me that I can’t come in my own house. Where’s your order of protection?” He laughed in her face. “You can’t keep me out of here.”
I came up behind him and smashed into him with a body shot. He lost his balance and went forward, crashing into a wooden coffee table that pushed out when he hit it.
“Get out!” I yelled to her. She seemed to stall, and I yelled again, “Get out of here!” She sobbed then and crawled on her hands and knees toward the front door.
I heard the sirens outside as I aimed my gun at his chest. “Get out of my house!” he yelled.
I saw him looking around, and I took a couple of steps back toward the door to let him know he wasn’t getting out that way.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” he said, standing up. “Or you’d go out that door and mind your own business.”
“I’ll take you out right here,” I said. I wasn’t gonna play word games with him.
He looked out the window and saw the RMP. He looked at me and ran to his right into the dining room.
At that point I couldn’t shoot him as he was running from me and I knew the wife was safe. The cavalry was here—let them handle it.
I went to the front door, keeping my hand with the gun behind me. I didn’t feel like getting shot in case someone thought I was Ralph.
Eddie DiTommasso was coming up the steps, so I yelled, “He’s going out the side door.”
“Side door,” Eddie yelled to his partner. We heard the side door fly open, and Eddie and his partner took off after him. I stepped outside, holding my gun inside the waistband of my sweatpants. I heard a lot of yelling in the backyard, and I saw them grab him as he was trying to get over the back fence.
The wife was lying facedown on the front lawn. Alfonse was leaning over her, looking like he was crying. The woman who lives in the house next to me, I think her name is Joanne, came running across the street. She was the one who took her home from the hospital yesterday.
“Oh dear God,” she said, crying.
“Sandy, look at me.” Sandy was half conscious, looking chalky. The bruises on her face stood stark against her white skin. Some were new ones from today, others from yesterday, and some yellow in color, even older.
EMS was finally here, this time two males. They were both young but seemed to know what they were doing. One hustled over to us; the other went to the back of the bus for the stretcher.
Eddie was walking Ralph out of the backyard by his cuffs. “This isn’t over,” Ralph said.
“Shut up,” Eddie said.
“I was defending myself. She attacked me—she’s friggin’ nuts,” Ralph kept going.
“I said shut your mouth.”
“She was gonna kill me!” Ralph yelled.
“There’s not a mark on you. And she has an order of protection. You’re not allowed near her,” Eddie said, losing his patience.
“This is my house! No piece of paper is gonna change that!”
Eddie pulled him up by the cuffs, a favorite maneuver of mine to shut someone up.
“Tony, you okay?” Eddie asked as he walked him past me.
“Yeah, did you get the knife?” I didn’t see it when I was in there, but Ralph didn’t have time to get rid of it.
“We’ll get it,” Eddie said. Ralph spit in my direction, and Eddie slapped him in the head. “Cut it out,” he said. “You don’t learn, do you?”
The sergeant was here now, along with three other sector cars and ESU. The Emergency Service Unit on Staten Island is about a mile from here, so they got here quick.
I walked over to the RMP. “Ed, do you have a cigarette?” I asked. Alfonse smoked but not cigarettes, only those stinky little cigars.
He tossed me a pack of Marlboro Lights and I lit one, taking a deep drag. I noticed my hands were shaking as I held the cigarette, and I balled them into fists to stop it.
Half the block was out now, gawking at the spectacle. EMS had wrapped and twisted a bandage around her arm to slow the bleeding. I saw the bandage on her stomach as they got her on the stretcher.
“We gotta get her to the hospital,” they told the sergeant. She looked worse now, completely unconscious. I hoped it was more from the trauma than the stab wounds, but I had no way of knowing.
“I’ll follow in my car once I get the kids,” Joanne the neighbor was saying.
“Where are her kids?” I asked.
“They’re still at school.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten to three. Chris will watch them after I get them off the bus,” she said, while nodding toward her husband, who was talking to the sergeant. I didn’t know him that well. He was a fireman and worked all the time. They had five daughters, little blond girls who all looked alike to me.
EMS left with their sirens blaring and drove the wrong way up Greely Avenue. Eddie had Ralph in the RMP, and him and his partner were talking to EMS and their sergeant.
I stood there talking to Joanne and Alfonse. Joanne was crying, saying, “What am I gonna tell these kids?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But at least he won’t be coming back here.”
“You’re a good man, Tony,” Alfonse said with feeling. “But you should have shot him.”
“Ah, let him go to jail
,” I said. “He won’t get out now. They’ll keep him in until trial.”
Eddie walked over and shook my hand. “What is this? I don’t see you for ten years, now it’s two days in a row.”
“I know, Ralph’s keeping you guys busy,” I said.
“He’s keeping you busy too,” he laughed.
We stood there for a couple of minutes talking. He was telling me he got married, had two kids. He took out the pictures and showed me his family. He said his father died and him and his wife bought the house from his mother, who moved to Florida.
They took Ralph out of there before the kids got home. The neighbor, Joanne, told her husband not to tell the kids anything until she could find out how serious the mother was.
The neighbors were out now, talking about Ralph now that he was gone.
“He’s half a nut.”
“He took my son’s football because it went over his fence.”
“He’s out of his mind. I hear him hitting her all the time.”
“Steals my paper all the time, ’cause he didn’t pay the paperboy and they canceled him.”
“He killed my cat—I found it dead on my front steps.”
I shook my head. This guy was terrorizing the neighborhood.
I was still outside talking to Alfonse when Joanne went up to get the kids off the bus. The kids looked scared as she walked them into the house. I could hear them saying, “Where’s Mommy?”
“I’m going to see her as soon as I bring you inside,” Joanne said.
“I want to come too,” the little boy said, starting to cry. “I want Mommy.”
17
I went inside after that and took a shower. I was gonna make some coffee but decided to go back to sleep for an hour or two so I wasn’t exhausted tonight. The initial adrenaline rush had worn off, but I was tired and wired at the same time.
I set my clock for 6:00 and crawled back into bed. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but the next thing I knew, my alarm was beeping. I hit snooze three times and finally got up at 6:27.
I brushed my teeth and shaved and was about to order some pizza when Alfonse came to the door. He was carrying a plate wrapped in foil and what looked like Italian bread.
“Here, Tony,” he said as he held it out to me. “Julia made this for you. She said you were a hero today and shouldn’t be eating pizza.”
I laughed. “How did she know I’d be eating pizza?”
“Because you always eat pizza.”
“Sometimes I get a hero, or Chinese,” I said.
“Same thing,” Alfonse said. “Still not homemade.”
“Any word on—” I tried to think of Ralph’s wife’s name. “Sandy? Last I heard she was in surgery.”
“Is she gonna be alright?”
He shrugged. We were both quiet, and then he said, “How about that girl you’re engaged to, can she cook?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But not as good as Julia. Tell her I said thanks.”
Michele is a great cook, but so was Alfonse’s wife.
The dish was still warm, so I grabbed a fork, a soda, and a napkin and sat down to eat. I said thanks to God for the food and added a big thank you for everyone making it out alive today. I asked him to help Sandy make it through surgery so she can get home to her kids.
I took the foil off, and my mouth watered. It was rigatoni with sausage in a tomato cream sauce, and lots of basil. I ate the bread, dunking it in the sauce and wiping the plate clean with it.
I called Michele when I was done eating. Stevie answered and spent ten minutes telling me about our new upstairs house. He said the workers were letting him help them spackle. He rambled on about everything. Can we get a dog when we get married? Can he go on vacation with us when we get married, but he said it “baycation.” I said we’ll wait and see about the dog and said probably not to the honeymoon, but I promised him we’d go away together, just the three of us, another time.
I talked to Michele for a couple of minutes. I told her I’d be coming out tomorrow after work, but she forgot she wouldn’t be there. There was a spring concert at her school that she was going to, and I’d wind up seeing her for only about an hour. I didn’t go into anything heavy; she was getting Stevie ready for bed and ironing clothes for the morning. She told me that Denise offered to come out Monday to help us paint. Denise works Tuesday through Saturday, so she’s off anyway.
I showered again and started going through one of the boxes in my bedroom that I still hadn’t unpacked. I had some time on my hands, so I might as well get it done. It was old stuff, my high school yearbook, photo albums, concert tickets, playbills, magazines, and things like that.
I went through the pictures that included old girlfriends and summers down the shore that I didn’t want Michele to see and threw them in an envelope. I kept the yearbook and the pictures that wouldn’t get me in trouble down the road and tossed the stuff from the concerts and the magazines. I was surprised to see it was after 10:00 already, so I put the rest of the stuff on the floor and left for work.
Traffic was backed up down Lily Pond Avenue, so I turned on 1010 WINS to see what was up. An accident had closed down the upper level of the bridge, so I swung around onto the Staten Island Expressway toward the Goethals Bridge so I could go through Jersey.
The Goethals Bridge is so narrow that you have about two feet of space between you and the car next to you. The road is always being worked on, and I slammed my shocks every six feet when I hit the metal plates in the road.
I was clear once I was on the turnpike, but the detour cost me some time and I heard the attention to the roll call order as I came upstairs from the locker room.
I waited for Hanrahan to go through his regular spiel, and I approached him after roll call.
“Hey, Boss,” I said while I shook his hand. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I had an off-duty incident today. Yesterday too, actually, but today was more involved.”
I went into it with him. I told him I had to pull my gun but that it never went in the report. I told him I knew one of the cops, that I’d gone to school with him.
I could see the wheels turning. “Did you fire your weapon?” he asked.
I shook my head emphatically. “No.”
“He was cuffed by uniformed officers?”
“Yeah. He ran out the back door, and they caught him as he was going over the back fence,” I said.
“Alright.” He nodded. “You got nothing to worry about. I’ll let the ICO know. He may wanna be kept informed on how the case is going.”
The ICO or Integrity Commanding Officer is actually a lieutenant.
“Oh,” he said as I was leaving, “if anyone comes to try and talk to you about this, get representation from the PBA. Don’t say anything without someone there.”
“No problem, Boss,” I said. I knew the drill.
I didn’t think anything would happen. I didn’t do anything wrong, but it wouldn’t be the first time a cop tried to help someone off duty and wound up getting screwed for it. The other side of this is it makes the inspector look good that his cop rescues someone off duty, as long as he’s sure it won’t turn around and bite him.
“Hey, Tony,” Romano said when I got in the car. “How’s the house coming along?”
“Good. Michele told me today that a couple of the rooms might be ready to be painted by the weekend,” I said.
“Yeah? Maybe I could come out and help you. I have my daughter Saturday and Sunday, but we’re off Monday and I’m not doing anything,” he said.
“You’re gonna help me paint,” I said dryly. I could see Fiore biting the inside of his cheek.
“Sure, what are friends for?” He smiled as he got into the RMP.
“Is this because Denise is off on Mondays and she’ll be going too?”
“Is she gonna be there?” He asked like he was clueless.
“Have you talked to Denise, Nick?”
“Uh, not lately,” he said.
I looked at
him in the mirror to see which way he looked. They say if someone looks to the right, they’re telling the truth and if they look left, they’re lying. Since I was looking backwards at him in the mirror, I couldn’t tell, so I just took it that he was lying through his teeth.
“Nick, if you want to come and help me paint on your day off, that’s fine with me,” I said. I could use the help anyway, and I didn’t want to bother Joe when he was off.
“Great. Give me directions before the weekend, and I’ll be out Monday morning,” he said.
I almost told him to get them from Denise but decided against it.
Romano went in the deli for coffee and a paper. As we were driving up 8th Avenue to drop him off at his post, I saw a line of cabbies double-parked outside the Pakistani Restaurant between 39th and 40th streets. Through the window I could see all the cabbies sitting inside, looking like the Mideast summit.
Every night they do this, so they’re easy targets to summons to get my numbers in for the month. Not that the city gives us a quota. The police department would never make us write tags to make money for the city. I’m sure the city doesn’t need the tens of millions of dollars they rake in every year from summonses. (Yes, I’m being sarcastic.)
I pulled up behind the last cab and gave a whoop with the siren to let them know I’m here and to move their cabs.
Three of them came out, jumped in their cabs, and drove up the block to park them. There was one cab left sitting there.
I pulled out my memo book to look for a summons for the last one. The cabbie registrations are all the same, so I don’t have to get out of the car to look at the windshield. All the registrations expire on December 31, and since I can get the information off the plate, banging out summonses is pretty quick. The cab was new, a yellow 2001 Chevy Caprice.
I sat and wrote him out the summons, and just as I finished writing the tag, he ran out of the restaurant and jumped in the cab. I drove up alongside the cab and stuck it on the windshield.
He rolled down the passenger side window and yelled, “Officer, I’m just getting something to eat!”