Skells

by F. P. Lione

  “I’m gonna go,” I said.

  “I’ll see you around,” she said.

  “Yeah, you take care,” I said.

  “Be happy, Tony,” she said as she got in the car and started it. She made a U-turn and threw me a wave before she drove away.

  Fiore would go inside and call Donna and tell her exactly what happened. But I’m not Fiore, and I’m not saying a word.

  I went inside and checked my machine. The steady red light told me that Michele hadn’t called while I was tempted to romp with my old girlfriend. I knew Michele well enough to know that this would bother her. She’d think that every time she called when I was supposed to be home, that Kim was here and something was going on. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’ll leave it at that.

  I sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I flipped through the morning talk shows and finally settled on a rerun of ER. I was restless and couldn’t concentrate, so I went inside and pulled on a pair of sweats and went up to the boardwalk to go for a run.

  The way my schedule is I don’t run consistently, so I was sucking wind after the first half mile. I got off the boardwalk and crossed Father Cappodanno Boulevard to a deli near the corner of Seaview Avenue for a bottle of water. I crossed back over to the boardwalk and walked the rest of the way home.

  I was hungry now. The only thing I ate was a bagel at 6:00 and it was now 11:00. My refrigerator was empty except for a couple of egg rolls wrapped in a waxed bag and an unopened quart of orange juice. I didn’t want to risk the egg rolls, since I didn’t remember when I’d bought them, so I drank a glass of juice and went to bed by 12:30.

  I woke up disoriented in my dark room. I looked at the clock, squinting to see the time—9:30. Great, I forgot to set my alarm. I showered and shaved in a half hour. Michele called, but I figured I’d call her from my cell phone on the way into the city.

  I grabbed my bag, got in my truck, and headed toward the bridge. I called Michele but got her answering machine and remembered she had the spring music thing at her school tonight and wouldn’t be home. I was starving; that bagel at 6:00 this morning was getting to be a long time ago.

  Traffic was slow on the West Side, and by the time I parked on 36th Street it was 10:30. I stopped in the deli on the corner for a sandwich. I was rushing now. If I got to the precinct by 10:45, I could eat my sandwich and still have time to change before roll call.

  Geri was off, so at least I didn’t have to hear her innuendos. I ordered a chicken cutlet hero with tomato and spicy mustard from an older woman I’d seen there before. I grabbed my sandwich and crossed 35th Street, zigzagging around the cars coming down the block.

  I started up the stairs of the precinct with my eye on the doors, when I heard someone say “Officer” behind me.

  I turned to see three people staring at me. A male black, early twenties, hip-hop looking. He had a small, skinny female black with him and a cute little girl about four years old holding a black doll and holding his hand. They weren’t skells but weren’t rich either. They were coming up from 8th Avenue, walking toward 9th.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Do you know if there’s a fortune-teller around here?” he asked.

  I went into my direction-giving mode. “Yeah. Go up to the corner,” I said, pointing toward 9th Avenue. “Make a right. It’s about three or four stores down. You can’t miss it. There’s a big palm on the door, and I think it’s a purple curtain across the window.”

  I turned to go in, but turned back around. I told myself I didn’t care, this guy going to a fortune-teller was none of my business.

  “Why do you want to see the fortune-teller?” I heard myself say.

  He seemed surprised that I asked him, but not as surprised as me. I thought he was gonna keep walking, but he said, “I got some stuff going on tomorrow, and I want to see what I should do.”

  “Why don’t you just go to the source?” I asked without thinking.

  “What do you mean?”

  I walked back down the stairs toward him. The female and the little girl were watching me, not looking scared, just curious.

  “Do you believe in God?” I couldn’t believe I was asking him—usually Fiore does this kind of thing.

  His eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t answer.

  “Why don’t you go to him and ask him? He cares more about you than some fortune-teller, and what he tells you is free,” I said, wondering where the words were coming from.

  I could see he was thinking about it, so I kept going. “You’re gonna pay someone money to tell you some baloney story about the future, and make a major decision based on that?”

  He put his head down, and it hit me that this guy knew God and was running from him.

  “He loves you,” I said. “He wants to help you.”

  He looked up at me with his lip quivering and nodded. I could see he was fighting back tears.

  I forgot about my sandwich and being on time and started to talk to him.

  “Listen, God loves you,” I said again. “He’s got his arms open to you, and you’re running away.” I didn’t know where this was coming from, just that I needed to tell him. “He’s not looking to hurt you,” I continued. “He doesn’t want to hammer you for all the bad things you’ve done.” I thought about all the times I thought that. “Are you running from God?”

  He nodded.

  “I got locked up,” he said. “For drugs. I go to court tomorrow, and I wanted to know if I’d be going to jail.” He shrugged. “If I was, then maybe I wouldn’t show up.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. I don’t know why—I’m never like this. “Whatever God’s got planned for you, he’s gonna take care of you.”

  I guess he thought I was gonna hug him, because he leaned into my chest and started sobbing. I didn’t know what to do, so I hugged him, hoping no one from the roll call saw me.

  I knew he was terrified of going to jail, and I couldn’t blame him. I asked God to show me what to say to him, and I looked at the little girl holding her doll.

  “Is this your daughter?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Look at this beautiful little girl,” I said. “Do you want to go on the run with her and live that kind of life? Or are you looking to leave her and her mother alone and go on the run without them?”

  He looked at them. The female was crying now too.

  He shook his head. “No, but I don’t want to go to jail either.”

  I was thinking, Do I know the prayer of salvation? Where’s Joe? He’s so much better at this than me; he always knows the right thing to say. I looked around, no Joe, and I felt like God was letting me know I was on my own here. Well, me and him. I guess he wanted me to do this. I swallowed whatever it was that was making me feel embarrassed.

  “Is Jesus your Lord and Savior?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said with a nod.

  “Do you believe he died for your sins? Yours alone? That if it was just you and him, he would have died just for you?”

  I saw him hesitate, and I said, “Stop feeling unworthy. None of us are worth it. He made us worth it. You’re so important to him. Do you believe he died for you?”

  He hesitated and nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Are you sorry for your sins?”

  “I really am,” he said, and I could see he meant it.

  I almost made the sign of the cross over him and said, “Go and sin no more, my child.” Instead I told him 1 John 1:9.

  “It says in the Bible that if we confess our sins to God, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” I said. “You’re standing before him now washed clean.”

  He nodded and looked scared again.

  “Listen, I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. But I do know a couple of things. God is full of grace and mercy—that means he gives us things we don’t deserve. Ask him for grace, ask him for mercy. He’s faithful. He’ll never leave you or forsake you.”

 
; “Can I ask him to have mercy on me with this court thing?”

  “I would. In fact, I will, along with you. But I want you to ask him yourself. Like I said, I don’t know what will happen, but you have to face this. Who’s the person that’s been talking to you about God?” I asked.

  “My aunt,” he said with a smile. “She told me I can’t run from God.”

  “Go see her,” I said. “Now, tonight. I know it’s late, but I doubt she’ll mind.”

  He looked at me with a hint of a smile on his lips.

  “White cop,” he said. “Who’d a thought?”

  “God always knows who to send you to for directions,” I said with a smile.

  He put his arms up and hugged me again.

  “God loves you, buddy,” I said. “I’ll be praying for you.”

  I watched them walk back up the way they came. The little girl kept looking back at me, and I waved to her. She was holding his hand, so she used her doll to wave back as she smiled.

  I remembered I was late and ran up the steps to the precinct. I opened the door and heard Hanrahan’s “Attention to the roll call.”

  Epilogue

  My neighbor Sandy came to see me about a week after the incident with Ralph. I had seen her at the bus stop on the corner on my way home from work, still pretty banged up from the beating she took. I had thrown her a wave and thought that was the end of it, but she knocked on my door a couple of minutes later.

  “Hi,” she said with a smile. She had lost weight and looked pale and gaunt.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Better than I’ve been in a long time. I want to thank you,” she said, holding up her hand when she teared up and I tried to interrupt her. “No, let me say it. He would have killed me, and I know you’re a cop, but you really put yourself out. You could have got caught in the middle of it and gotten hurt.”

  “I’m just glad you and the kids are okay. But I gotta tell you, after all this I hope you don’t go back to him,” I said. You wouldn’t believe how often that happens.

  “No way,” she said with feeling. “I’ve already seen a lawyer, and I’m divorcing him while he’s in jail. I’ll be long gone by the time he gets out.”

  “How are you gonna take care of yourself?”

  “I’ll get a job. I’m also going back to school. My lawyer said even though the house isn’t in my name, we bought the house while we were married and I’m entitled to half of it. I’m sure Ralph will fight me on it, but he’ll be in jail for stabbing me, and I’m hoping that the judge will take that into consideration.”

  “I’m sure he will,” I said.

  She hugged me then, and I patted her back, feeling awkward. “You take care of yourself,” she said.

  “You too.”

  I never heard anything back about the lawsuit I was named in. I checked with Eileen Toomey to see if she’d heard anything, but so far she hadn’t. I also never heard anything from the bugeyed woman who wrote my shield number down outside the deli on 35th Street, so I guess she was just a nut job.

  The detectives arrested Easy for the stabbing over at the cardboard condos. They got a call saying he was up at the Port, and they grabbed him there. The detectives let Fiore and me know, and I wondered if Shorty’s girl knew about it or if she was the one who called them in the first place.

  Fiore told me that the Bible says a dog always returns to his vomit. I’m not sure what that means, but it had to do with Easy going back to where he stabbed Shorty.

  O’Brien was transferred to administrative duty while the rat squad did their investigation of his off-duty incident. They took his gun, and now he sits at a desk all day, shuffling papers around in the pension section. His wife has a temporary restraining order. From what I understand, once they find out if his wife was lying about him letting off a round in the house, they’ll decide what to do from there. McGovern told me O’Brien’s pretty depressed, and I plan to go and see him next time I’m out in Long Island.

  I stopped at my grandmother’s about a week after the engagement party. I wanted to thank her for the party and give her some flowers. She made me dinner, chicken cacciatore, and I stayed with her until I had to leave for work.

  She told me Marie got a second job. Apparently she sells some kind of cookware on the side now and has to go to people’s houses and host parties. Grandma told me my father’s been over a lot now because Marie is working at night and he’s home by himself.

  “Why does Marie have to work a second job?” I asked.

  “I guess she needs money,” Grandma said.

  “Grandma, Dad has a pension and a full-time job. He told me he made eighty-five grand last year. Marie works full-time for the city, and they have half a million dollars in the bank. Why does she need to work?” I half yelled.

  “I don’t know, Tony, but you and your sister better stop saying she’s fooling around on your father. She told me you and Denise were causing trouble between them,” she scolded, pointing her finger at me.

  “You know, it’s funny, Grandma, I don’t remember you being this upset when Marie was causing trouble between my mother and dad,” I said. In fact, I remember her telling me how difficult my mother was. At the time all I could see was my mother’s drinking, and I thought that’s what the whole problem was. But now I know more about it.

  “Tony, you know how your mother was with the drinking,” she said. “It was very difficult for your father to live that way. Marie loves him—she wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

  She said it like she believed it, so I wasn’t gonna argue with her. I told my father about Marie, and he can do what he wants with it from here.

  The construction on my house is really getting there. The bathroom tile is in, and instead of painting the room in white or beige, Michele wanted to paint the room a dark gold. It should have screamed at us, all the glass and tile with such a bold color, but it worked. We used a flat paint on the walls, then she went over it with a leaf-shaped sponge, using a shiny gold that gave the wall a two-dimensional look. When we were done, it looked like something out of a magazine.

  I put in the frosted glass-paneled door and try not to have nightmares of a hand smashing the window and unlocking the deadbolt.

  Romano had come out with Denise like he promised to help with the painting. Fiore and Donna surprised us by coming out, and we spent the weekend painting and barbequing. I asked Denise straight out about Romano and told her not to lie to me. She said they were seeing each other, but she didn’t want to jump into anything like she did with Sal Valente, her last boyfriend.

  I never did tell Michele about Kim coming out to my house. I told Fiore and he was happy with the way I handled it, but he thought I should tell her. If she had come back, I would have mentioned it, but she didn’t.

  Denise called me a couple of weeks after Kim came to see me to tell me that she read in the paper that Kim’s mother had died. She asked if I was going to the wake, and I said I didn’t know. I thought about going and decided against it. My being there wasn’t gonna change anything, and I didn’t want to see Kim again.

  Nick Romano went into the Fire Department Academy on May 15. Our squad surprised him with a party over at the bar on 9th Avenue after his last tour. It was nothing like the party for Brian Gallagher, but we ordered food and had an open bar for about twenty people.

  Terri Marks was there and was trying to get Romano to go home with her. She had given it another shot with Fiore, but he nicely blew her off.

  “I may never see you again,” she slurred, thinking she was whispering in Romano’s ear, but I could hear her from ten feet away.

  He was pretty hammered, not like the last time, but he was close.

  “I got a girlfriend,” he said. “And it’s Tony’s sister. He’ll kill me.”

  “He won’t know,” she said.

  “He knows everything,” Romano said. “It’s freaky.”

  He got emotional at one point, when he was toasting us with his drink. “Y
ou guys are out there, getting it done,” he said. “I know from experience—” His voice cracked and he had to compose himself. “I know from experience just how dangerous this job can be, but you do it anyway, and you do it good.”

  “Here, here!” Fiore said.

  “This job sucks,” Rooney bellowed.

  “You hosehead,” McGovern yelled.

  When everyone was pretty hammered, Romano included, he asked Joe and me, “Was I a good cop?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Yeah, you were,” Joe chimed in.

  “No, really, guys, this is important. Was I a good cop?”

  “Nick, you are a good cop. You’re still a little wet behind the ears, but you were getting there,” I said.

  “Joe?” He looked at Fiore.

  “Nick, it always impressed me how hard it must have been for you to do the job that killed your father. Even when you were scared, you didn’t hide or try to be a house mouse—you were out there,” Joe said. A house mouse is a cop that hides in the precinct. “And I agree with Tony, you were getting there. Eventually you wouldn’t have struggled with it anymore.”

  “Do you think I should have stayed?” he asked Joe. I almost laughed at his confused face, but he was serious.

  “I can’t tell you that, Nick. I don’t know what your reasons were for coming here in the first place,” Joe said honestly.

  Nick was quiet for a couple of minutes, then he started to talk. “When my father died, he had some time on. It wasn’t like he was a rookie, ya know. He knew the job. And when he died, people acted like he was a hero.”

  “He was a hero,” I said, meaning it.

  “He still is,” Joe threw in.

  “No, I mean yes, he was a hero because he was killed in the line of duty. But he died for nothing. He was answering a job where some psycho was looking to kill his wife and shot my father instead. It was a waste; it shouldn’t have happened,” he said, getting a little loud now. “And back then,” he continued, “everyone was so good to my family. The department, the cops, everyone. They made me feel like what my father did was important, and I became a cop so I could stay connected to him.”