The Last Crusade: A Harry Cassidy Novel

by Henry Hack

  “You know when I saw you all shot up in the hospital I only thought of the physical pain you had to endure. I can only imagine what you went through mentally.”

  “Well, it’s over with now.”

  “And you have a safe position now, right? I mean when you made sergeant they did transfer you to a desk job, off the street, didn’t they?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “His transfer was to the Midtown South precinct,” Rita said.

  “They put you back on the street even though you were shot? Can’t you get out of there?”

  “Peg, you know you go where they send you. You have no choice.”

  “Yes, you do. You can quit.”

  “Let’s not re-hash this again, I…”

  “I’m sorry. I just want the children to have a live father as they grow up, not a picture on the mantle.”

  The silence that followed was broken by two screaming young girls running through the front door. They flung their schoolbooks on the sofa and Lizzy shouted, “Daddy! It’s you!” throwing her arms around his neck.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Patty shouted even louder, hugging him around the waist. When all the hugs and kisses were over he said, “Let me see you two. It looks like you’re both at least an inch bigger than when I last saw you.”

  “I’m four feet, six inches,” Lizzy said.

  “And I’m four feet, two inches,” Patty chimed in.

  “And you’re both beautiful young ladies,” Rita said.

  “That you are,” Harry said. “Hey, are you going trick or treating?”

  “Yes, Daddy. Will you come with us?”

  “Sure,” he said. “If I get some of the candy.”

  “Go change out of your school clothes,” Peggy said, “and get into your costumes. They’re on your beds.”

  When they left, Peggy said, “Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Patrick are supposed to take them, but I think Kathy’s hip is hurting, so how about Rita and I keeping her company while you and Dad take them?”

  “Sure. It’s good that Pat and Kathy are close by. For the girls and you.”

  Patty was the first out dressed like the wicked witch in Snow White and Lizzy followed shortly in a hairy wolf-girl costume. They all piled into Peggy’s minivan and headed to Grandma’s house. Kathy was relieved to pass her chaperone duties over to Harry. “I’d love to go with my two little girls, but this hip is acting up again, and I’d only slow them down.”

  Harry found it good to chat with his ex-father-in-law as they escorted the girls through the neighborhood and they caught up on many topics. They returned to the townhouse just as darkness was beginning to fall and the girls rushed in to show their haul to the women. Patrick gave Harry a tour of the house while the ladies and kids got ready to go back to Peggy’s house.

  “I’ll show you two around my place when we get back. Then we can relax and have a drink before dinner,” Peggy said. “I hope you all didn’t eat too much candy out there.”

  “Not me,” Grandpa Pat said.

  “Nor me,” Harry said.

  “Liars both,” Grandma Kathy said. “The old man likes his Snickers and Harry, what was the one you always stole from the children?”

  “Kit Kats, and I didn’t steal them. My daughters gave them to me voluntarily.”

  “We did not,” Lizzy said. “You took them out of our bags when you thought we weren’t looking.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Patty said, “but we let you because we don’t like them so much anyway.”

  Patrick made cocktails and then they sat down to a delicious home-cooked meal. Although everyone said they had no room for dessert they ate some anyway—a homemade layer cake decorated in orange icing with a pumpkin face on it, and apple pie a la mode.

  “I think I gained five pounds today,” Rita said.

  “I’ll second that,” Harry said.

  Nine o’clock arrived and it was the girl’s bedtime. Tonight they were hugged and kissed and tucked in by five adults instead of just their mother. “Good-bye, Daddy,” Lizzy said. “Please don’t get shot anymore.”

  “Daddy?” Patty asked, “Why can’t you stay here with us?”

  “You know why Patty, but I promise I’ll see you more often. Goodnight, honey.”

  This was always the tough part, the good-byes and the good-nights with the kids and both Peggy and Harry always had the same thought—why couldn’t we/he/she have made this work?

  The traffic was light at this time of night and Harry cruised along I-78 submerged in his thoughts. “It was a great day,” Rita said, bringing him back to the present. “You know you have a great family there. What went wrong between you and Peggy?”

  “The Job. She wanted me to quit. I refused. I was on the Force when we got married and it wasn’t a point of contention then. But as time went by, she said I was more devoted to my beat than to her and the kids. Said she could fight another woman in my life, but not the Job.”

  “Was she right?”

  “No, but I never could convince her of that. You could see from a few of her comments today that she feels the same way.”

  “Yeah, I noticed, but tomorrow we both have to go back to those mean streets.”

  “We still have tonight,” Harry said. “If you know what I mean.”

  Rita squeezed his shoulder, smiled, and said, “I sure do, lover boy.”

  The lieutenant’s exam began on Saturday morning, November 3, promptly at eight a.m. Rita and Harry had both gotten off duty at midnight the previous evening, and had a fitful night’s sleep worrying how they would do on the test. And as luck would have it, the exam turned out to be particularly difficult. Rita finished with only ten minutes to spare, and Harry with five. When time was called, most of the other sergeants were still furiously filling in, or changing, their answers.

  Outside, as Harry looked around for Rita, he lit up a cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, still not able to quit the deadly habit that had taken his father’s life.

  “Got a cigarette, sailor?” he heard Rita say as she walked up to him.

  “A cigarette? Since when did you begin smoking?”

  “I don’t. Just once in a great while, but I’d like one right about now.”

  “Tough test, huh?” he asked as he lit Rita’s cigarette.

  She puffed on the cigarette a few times without inhaling and said, “Yeah, it was, but I’m sure I made at least a seventy-five. How about you?”

  “The same. I’m sure I passed it, but the big question for both of us is—will it be high enough?”

  The crowd of test takers streamed out of the high school towards their cars, and Harry and Rita strolled to a park bench and finished their cigarettes. “Look at this day,” he said. “A ten if there ever was one.”

  It was mild, around sixty degrees, and the autumn sun warmed them through their jackets. The sky, dark blue as it can only be in early November, was disturbed by a few white marshmallow clouds that moved impercepitvely in the gentle westerly breeze, and a not unpleasant aroma of someone illegally burning leaves permeated the air.

  “A ten indeed,” she said.

  Harry took her in his arms and held her tight for a long time. “I love you Rita. Don’t ever, ever leave me.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. I love you, too, and I will never, ever leave you.”

  After the pressure of the lieutenant’s exam was over Rita and Harry settled down and began planning their wedding in earnest. With the somewhat more than gentle prodding from Rose and Stan they hired the catering hall and DJ and were almost finished preparing the guest list. Susan Goldman agreed to be the maid of honor and Harry chose Pop Hunter as his best man. One night, while they were adding and subtracting names from the guest list, Rose casually said, “Oh, when are you going to prepare that spare bedroom?”

  “Huh?” Harry said as Rita rolled her eyes knowing exactly what was coming next from her dear mother.

  “For our first grandchild, of course. Pick a neutral color,
maybe light yellow. Stan and I will buy the crib.”

  “Aren’t we rushing things, Mom?” Rita asked. “The wedding is still over four months away.”

  “It always pays to be prepared. You know accidents do happen.”

  They all chuckled at that comment and Harry said, “We’ll certainly start the planning process, Rose.”

  That seemed to satisfy her and they all moved to the dining room table.

  In the fall Police Officer Julius Carver’s campaign against his nemesis kicked into high gear. He would grab Dukie’s numbers runners right at the end of their routes and gleefully tear up their work saying, “Go tell Dukie he a bad boy. Shouldn’t be takin’ numbers on my beat.” And all the cops in the Eight-Three would harass the patrons of Dukie’s three joints by ticketing them for any and all traffic violations from minor parking infractions to drunk driving as they drove out of the parking lots at closing time.

  At Julie’s urging Deputy Inspector Jenkins requested the Queens Vice and Narcotics Squads to increase their efforts in the precinct and they made numerous arrests of Dukie’s dope peddlers, numbers runners, floating crap games and even a couple of prostitutes. And when Narcotics took down a two-kilo cocaine possession case, Julie took great delight in rubbing it into Dukie’s face telling him, “Two Kees! Man that must have really hurt, huh Dukie?”

  Dukie just glared at Carver and seethed, but said not a word. He did not want to acknowledge that Big Julie was getting to him, but he was getting to him and he began to think of doing bad things to him—real bad things, like killing him. But he knew better than to screw with an NYMPD cop who had forty thousand brothers in blue that would hunt him down, so he took the hits and seethed in silence—until the night that Big Julie went too far, the night that Julie crossed the invisible line etched inside Dukie’s criminal mind.

  Julie had turned the corner onto Jamaica Avenue and caught Dukie right in the act of slapping a couple of his girls around. He and his partner, Dennis O’Neill, jumped out of their patrol car and grabbed Dukie’s arms. They knew the girls would never press an assault charge on Dukie so Julie and Denny decided to administer street justice right then and there. They pushed Dukie into the crowded bar and Julie shouted, “Yo! Listen up!” When the silence was complete he said, “What we got here is a cowardly mother-fucker who acts tough by smacking ladies around. But he ain’t tough at all. Let me prove it.”

  With that he threw Dukie up up against the wall saying, “Assume the position you coward scumbag.”

  Julie and Denny searched Dukie roughly, occasionally smacking him in the back of the head. Julie reached up between Dukie’s legs and squeezed hard causing Dukie to groan and making Julie laugh out loud. “Hey, Denny,” he shouted. “For a big guy ol’ Dukie got hisself a real tiny dick! Smallest johnson I ever felt searching somebody. Big Dukie prolly got the tiniest dick in Jamaica. Maybe all of Queens!”

  Some of the patrons smirked, but quickly dropped those grins when Dukie turned his face around and said, “You pig mothafucka…”

  Julie backhanded Dukie hard across his face knocking his expensive Oakleys to the floor where Denny took great delight in grinding them to pieces with his size thirteen police boots. “You wanna take me on, nigger?” Julie shouted into Dukie’s face. “Let’s do it!”

  Dukie managed to regain control of his emotions and remained silent. The roust was over and when the two big cops left the bar Dukie walked into his office and picked up the phone. Within twenty minutes his three lieutenants were crowded into the small room with him. He minced no words saying, “I want that motherfuckin’ pig Carver dead.”

  Bobby Woolsey, the lieutenant who ran the dope end of the business for Dukie said, “You sure, Boss? Offing that pig’ll bring a lotta heat down on us.”

  “He’s fuckin’ up all our action anyway,” said Tighthead Jackson who ran Dukie’s gambling operations.

  “Tighthead’s right,” Dukie said. “I don’t give a fuck about the heat. If we have to we’ll move our whole operation to another part of Queens or out to Hempstead. Julie Carver has got to go and I’m giving ten large to one of our guys to do it. Now who’s it gonna be?”

  It took the three lieutenants only a couple of minutes to pinpoint Smoky Lyles, one of Tighthead’s crew. “He’s loyal, Boss,” Tighthead said, “and he hates all cops. He’ll probably do the job for nothing.”

  “Get him in to see me right away.”

  The confrontation with Dukie Greens happened early in the midnight tour and it was after three a.m. when Sector C ran across their patrol supervisor. When Rita Becker took their memo books she commented on the quiet night thus far noticing the lack of entries. A big grin spread across Julie’s face and he said, “Oh, we had activity, Sarge, but we sure couldn’t write it down.”

  “Care to tell me what that was?”

  “Sure,” he said and he and Denny animatedly related their earlier encounter with Dukie, leaving nothing out.

  “I don’t like that at all,” Rita said. “You may have pushed him too far.”

  The disappointment on their faces was that of two children who had expected a reward for good behavior, but got scolded instead. “What’s the problem, Sarge?” Denny asked.

  “The problem is that you humiliated him in public, in front of a lot of people. I saw a lot of complaints from similar situations when I was in IAD. I mean you ranked on the size of his dick and smashed his two hundred dollar shades, for Pete’s sake!”

  “You think he’ll run to IAD on this?” Julie asked.

  “I hope so,” Rita said. “That means he’s going public and not planning something else.”

  “Planning what?” Julie asked.

  “To take you out, Julie. To whack you.”

  “He wouldn’t dare try it,” Denny said.

  “He’s a bad dude and you two have been really messing up his operations. Just be extra careful, okay?”

  “Sure Sarge,” Denny said. “Uh, how much trouble would we be in if he ran to IAD?”

  “Probably none. You’d lie your asses off like all good street cops do, and it becomes your word against his. And with all your recent arrests of his people IAD would have to figure it was retribution from Dukie.”

  Julie smiled and said, “Shucks, Sarge, I’m upset that you would think Denny and I would lie to the good folks over in IAD.”

  Rita smiled back and said, “Get your fat asses back on patrol you hair-bags. And steer clear of Dukie for the rest of the tour.”

  Dukie Greens counted out from a pile of hundred dollar bills and when he reached a hundred of them he slid the stack across the table to Smoky Lyles. Smoky fingered the money and said, “You don’t have to give me all this, Dukie, I hate that big pig as much as you do. And to think he’s a brother.”

  “He ain’t no brother of ours and I ‘preciate you not wanting my money, but you deserve to be paid for this job. And I want you to use some of this dough to get yourself armed properly. All these pigs wear bulletproof vests, so get some heavy duty automatic stuff. Go see Kwame on Liberty Avenue. Now let’s plan on how and when we’re gonna set this fat mothafucka up for his well-deserved demise.”

  11

  Thanksgiving had come and gone. Early December with its onrushing holidays was suddenly upon Harry and Rita and they were getting some Hannukah and Christmas shopping done in Manhattan. They took a break from both the shopping and the biting cold wind and stopped for coffee at one of the hundreds of shops in Midtown. “So my dear,” Harry said, “have you fully acclimated yourself to the rough, tough streets of the Eight-Three?”

  “That I have, with a lot of helpful hints from your classmate, Julie Carver. Although I am now worried about him.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “No, not in the way you’re probably thinking. But let me tell you more about this Dukie Greens guy who is Julie’s main target of hate. And I believe the feeling is mutual, which is why I am worried.”

  After Rita gave Harry all the details he said, �
�We both know that Julie, and his partner, are tough strong cops, but I share your concern. No matter how tough you are you can always be ambushed. Does he realize his situation?”

  “I remind him all the time, and all the cops in the precinct are aware of Dukie.”

  “Good, keep after him. Some of these street cops think they are invincible, you know.”

  “Oh yes, I know,” she said. “I’m going to marry one. A guy called Hopalong Cassidy who used to rule his corner of the world like Conan the Barbarian.”

  Harry smiled and said, “Ah, yes, the good old black and white days…”

  “Which are now gone forever, may I remind you?”

  On that Friday, December 13, they both began a set of midnight tours and were leaving their apartment for the subway. Rita would take the F train east to Jamaica and Harry the E west to Manhattan. As they approached the station, Harry took Rita in his arms and kissed her goodbye. “See you in ten hours,” he said.

  “Gotta run,” she said. “I hear my train coming. See ya later, lover boy.”

  “Not if I see you first, lover girl.”

  Rita’s tour began quietly with a couple of auto accidents and a few domestic disturbances reported in the precinct. Thus far the bars and all-night diners were free of fight calls and only one gunshot run was given out. At 3:17 the dispatcher assigned Sector C to the Black Horse bar to see the bartender for an unknown trouble call. Rita looked over at her driver, a nine-month rookie named Jimmy Zito, and said, “Head over to that call. Step on it a bit.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said. “You want lights and siren?”

  “No, the traffic’s light. Just get us there fast.”

  Sector C Was one block away from the Black Horse and was actually headed there for a closing time check when the call came over the air. They pulled up in front of the place and Denny said, “Looks quiet in there. Wonder what the problem is?”

  “Let’s find out,” Julie said heaving his big body out of the driver’s door and following his partner inside the bar.