by F. P. Lione
“Where have you been?” I barked at Denise, still annoyed from being startled awake.
She raised her eyebrows. “At Grandma’s, Dad, if that’s okay with you.” She paused. “Why are you home? I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow.”
“I felt like coming home.”
“Why?” She looked confused.
“Because I felt like it, Mom, if that’s okay with you,” I countered. “And what’s with you and Sal Valente?”
“Nothing. We’re friends.” She sounded sincere enough, so I let it drop.
“Are you going to Dave’s tonight?” I asked.
“No, I have to work tomorrow. Turtle races are always a late night.”
It turned out she was right about the turtle races. I got to Dave’s at 10:00, and the bar was packed with turtle gamblers. Little turtles were put in a line, each with their own lane numbered one through twelve. You bet on your number while the DJ played Meatloaf, Southside Johnny, and other party music that the crowd knew exactly how to sing along to. It was a real upbeat crowd, getting into the music and the races. I won two drinks, then sat by myself at the end of the bar talking to Dave. A knockout girl who looked about fifteen but had the attitude of a seasoned player sauntered up to me wearing tight white shorts, white sandals, and a tight red shirt.
“Buy me a drink?” She smiled, her friends giggling behind her.
“Sure.” I shrugged as I signaled Dave. “What are you drinking?”
“Iced tea.” My eyebrows shot up. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. A couple of these and she’d be in a coma.
“Iced tea for the lady,” I said to Dave.
When she picked up her drink, she took a sip, said “Thanks,” and walked away. Her friends laughed.
I’m too old to fall for a stunt like that. I should have known better. Feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life, I picked up my money, left Dave a tip, and walked to an all-night newsstand. I bought two six-packs of Budweiser, then walked back home. I put one of the sixes on the kitchen table and the other in the refrigerator while I went upstairs for my gun. I felt better having it near me. I brought the gun and the six-pack out on the deck and sat down on the lounge chair. I started drinking big gulps, half a bottle at a time, with big belches in between while I stared out on the water.
I heard voices from the party on the deck. My mother’s. Have a drink Tony, that’ll fix it. Then my father’s. That’s enough, Marilyn. Then Marie. We have a closing date of September 15. I heard the guys at work laughing that I threw up. I heard my old girlfriend Kim say, At least with him I have a future. I looked up because I thought I heard Denise say, Are you coming, Tony? I heard the rope straining against the pipe as the body swayed.
I drank until I didn’t hear anything else.
7
The birds were chirping when I opened my eyes on the deck. It was just getting light out. There was a pounding in my head, and my mouth was dry and sticky. I walked into the kitchen, popped two Tylenol, and washed them down with a beer. I went upstairs to put my gun away, turned on my air conditioner, and climbed into bed.
I woke up again at 11:00 Monday morning to silence. I got up and shuffled through the rooms. The only evidence of anyone having been there was a pot of coffee, still lukewarm. I poured a cup and put it in the microwave, punching the timer for one minute. I added milk and sugar, but it was still too hot, so I went outside to check the weather. The sky was overcast, the air hot and thick. Thunderstorms were expected by nightfall, with temperatures in the mid-eighties.
I drank my coffee and smoked a cigarette at the kitchen table. I wondered what I was going to do that day. After show-ering and shaving I went down to the Shell station to get my car inspected. I ate a warm bagel with melted butter while waiting. When I finished the bagel I wanted another one, so I walked back across Bay Street, hoping there were still some warm ones left. Fortunately there were, and I ate this one with fresh coffee. After finishing the coffee, I retrieved my truck and drove down toward the ferry.
I drove to Olsen’s Salvage Yard to pick up a new set of hubcaps for my truck. This is the second time I’d had them stolen and probably shouldn’t bother replacing them anymore.
“New hubcaps again, Tony?” Danny Olsen smiled.
“Yeah.” I shook his hand.
“Forty bucks for the four.”
I gave him the forty bucks and talked with him a while. He reminded me I should leave one hubcap off because nobody’s gonna bother stealing an incomplete set. I know this but you would think that parking my car half a block from the precinct would offer some protection.
I spent the rest of the day cleaning my guns and taking a nap. I woke at 8:00 and had dinner with Vinny and Denise. We grilled a London broil and ate it with zucchini, baked potatoes, and a salad. Vinny was excited about the wedding plans. He had booked St. Michael’s, and he and Christie were going to a travel agent that night to talk honeymoons. Denise thought he should try a cruise; Christie wanted to go to Hawaii, but Vinny is afraid to fly. He asked what I thought, and I told him to take a cruise to Hawaii. He made a face.
I left for work at 10:30 and sped all the way up the west side after catching traffic on the Gowanus Expressway. I barely made it to roll call on time.
The Harper brothers hit on the Fourth of July. I found out at roll call that a grapnel hook was found still attached to a rope on the roof at 315 West 39th Street. The brothers entered the roof from inside the building, probably hiding out during the day on July 3, and got fifty grand in garments from one of the smaller name designers. The garments were due to be shipped out on July 5. The inspector put the anticrime unit on it, but personally I doubted they’d hit again so soon.
Fiore and I started the night without any jobs, so we cruised slowly through our sector. Most cars, when they cover their sectors, drive the Avenues. I like to cover my sector by driving each street east to west between 34th and 40th Streets and 5th and 9th Avenue. Fiore and I were doing this until 11:45, when we stopped at a light. I noticed a transit police car stopped at the same light and I waved over to them. Over the radio I heard Central put over shots fired at a location which was right around the corner from us. I pulled the car up into the intersection and looked down the block. I didn’t see anything going on, so Fiore put it over the radio that we were 84, on the scene.
The promised thunderstorm hit, and it started to rain fat drops on the windshield as I pulled in front of the building. We got out of the car and went to the front door. It was an all-glass front door on a gray marble entranceway. Black marble accented the door and the inside floor was black-and-white tile. A kid was lying on his back in the lobby. The door was locked so I pulled out my utility knife and pried the lock open. I jammed it with my memo book to keep it open. We went inside and took a look at the body. He was a light-skinned Hispanic male about eighteen years old, wearing jeans and a button-down cream-colored shirt with the first two buttons open. His eyes were open, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. As I was looking him over, Fiore called in the confirmed shooting, possible DOA, and went past me to a small hallway. The hallway was about five feet wide and ten feet deep before it angled left. He walked through until I couldn’t see him anymore. I felt for a pulse on the victim’s throat; there was none. The body was still slightly warm—he hadn’t been dead long.
As I checked him over, the two transit cops that were next to us at the light came in. I could hear the rain against the sidewalk and the swoosh of cars as they opened the doors. They were young, rookies, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three years old. One was Irish, the other Italian. They came over to look at the body when Fiore came back with his finger in front of his mouth, motioning me to keep quiet and follow him. As I turned back to the rookies I saw one of them bent down giving the guy mouth-to-mouth. I slapped him hard on the back of the head.
“What the—” He spun around toward me.
“He’s dead, get away from him,” I snapped quietly.
�
��But what if he…?”
“He’s dead and the shooter might still be here, so stay there and don’t touch him.”
He nodded nervously.
I went over to Fiore, and as I got around the corner there was a small elevator and a stairway door. I could hear footsteps on the floor above us and thought maybe the shooter was upstairs trying to hide or find another way out of the building. We put it over the radio that the possible shooter might be in the building and called for backup.
We pressed the button for the elevator, but it wasn’t moving, and the door leading to the stairwell was locked. We went back to the foyer where the body was, and I started looking to see if there was any bullet hole. I told the rookies again not to touch anything, and I carefully picked up the victim’s shirt by the corner so I wouldn’t upset the crime scene. I couldn’t see any blood or bullet hole, which was surprising. The other cars came flying up 38th Street and pulled in front of the building while one sped past us.
Soon Lieutenant Jim Farrell was on the scene. He was probably one of the most brilliant cops I had ever met. I doubted there was anyone in the department I respected more. He’s around sixty years old with more than thirty-five years on the job. A rumpled-looking man, he had a friendly face with a wide, bulbous nose from all his years of drinking. His curly salt-and-pepper hair had a tendency to stick out on one side. He wore wire-framed glasses and had a huge potbelly that reminded me of Santa Claus. Tonight his white short-sleeved shirt adorned with lieutenant bars was coffee stained, and the waist of his pants disappeared under his stomach. His voice was gruff from the pipe he was constantly smoking, the mouthpiece chewed up. He always reminded me of an absentminded professor. He was also a frequent drinking partner of mine. Like me, he worked career midnights and has paid for it in his personal life. He’s been to the farm to dry out a couple of times, but in the end the booze always gets the best of him. His wife ran off long ago, leaving him to raise a son and daughter alone. His daughter got into an abusive domestic situation, and his son has been in and out of rehab for drugs. He never remarried and is used frequently in the command to handle difficult and delicate issues.
He spotted a limousine pulled over halfway up the block. He had Mike Rooney shut the car and take the keys from the driver.
Someone opened the door to the stairwell, and Fiore grabbed the door and kept it open so we could go upstairs. We grabbed the guy as he came out. He was white, about thirty years old, bald and skinny. We had our guns drawn and put him up against the elevator, telling him not to move.
“Okay. Okay, no problem,” he said, putting his hands up.
“Where are you coming from?” I asked in a hushed tone.
“From the second floor, at the after-hours club.” His voice cracked.
“Did you see anyone go in there or up the stairs?” I said, still holding him.
“No, I didn’t see anybody! I was in the bar!”
I brought him over to the transit cops and told the lou we had access up the stairs. We checked the stairs, finding we couldn’t go up to the third floor. A steel-gated door with a push bar on the opposite side blocked the entrance. I turned and motioned with my finger toward the door on the second floor.
The after-hours club was located on the second floor. We announced to the dim, empty bar that we were police officers and told anyone inside to come out now. As we came in through the door there were some tables to the right bathed in a red glow from a colored lamp. In front of us was a bar that extended to the left and ended with two other tables. Long, dark curtains covered the windows, and people actually came out from behind them as we announced ourselves.
We asked what happened, and no one knew. They had all heard the shots downstairs, and they panicked and hid in case the gunman headed upstairs. Mostly men occupied the bar, including the bartender. McGovern and O’Brien came up to help with the search, so I left them upstairs with Fiore and went back down to talk to Lieutenant Farrell.
The limousine turned out to be a group of wannabe gangsters from Bensonhurst in Italian silk and a lot of gold. They told the lou they had been in the building in a brothel up on the sixth floor. When they had come down from the brothel a bunch of guys from Staten Island pulled a gun and an orange box cutter on their friend, who was now dead in the foyer.
The lou told me to put some gloves on and check the body without moving it too much. I looked it over and finally found a small entrance hole in the guy’s chest. I hadn’t seen the entrance wound at first because the skin had closed around it. The bullet must have killed him instantly because there was very little blood on him. I gingerly held up the corner of his shirt and I could see another entrance wound in the groin, down below his waist on his left side. I couldn’t figure out why he had been shot there, but I didn’t want to turn him over and mess up the evidence. It was hot in the vestibule, and I suddenly felt a desperate need to be out of there.
“Did anyone check the limo?” I asked the lou.
“No, go on out and take a look, Tony,” he said quietly.
When I stepped back outside it was still raining. Steam was coming off the street and the cars as the heat came up, making the air thick and muggy. I walked about fifty feet to where the limo was parked. The vehicle wasn’t new—it was black with black interior and shabby. It smelled of liquor, cigarettes, expensive cologne, and stale breath. I checked the seats and the floor, finding nothing, I stuck my hand into the backseat, and it moved a little. I pulled it out and found a half-inch-thick gold chain on the floor behind the seat. As I searched the rest of the limo I found an orange box cutter in the panel on the door. I put the chain and box cutter in my pocket and went back up to talk to the lieutenant.
“Lou,” I said quietly as I pulled him to the side. “What did this kid get robbed for?”
“Supposedly a big, thick gold chain,” he said, eyes darting over to the wise guys being held outside.
“Was it a gold chain like this?” I smiled as I pulled it from my pocket.
He chuckled.
“And what did they use to do the robbery with?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“An orange box cutter,” he answered.
“Like this one here?” I held it up.
He smiled again. “Just hold on to that for now. I want you to show it to the detectives and tell them where you found it in the car.”
“If the guys from Staten Island robbed this chain using a gun and a box cutter, then why were the chain and the box cutter in the limo?” I asked him.
“The shot in the groin is on an angle, down, like he shot himself pulling out the gun. I figure he was the one with the gun and when he pulled it out he shot himself. While the victim was stunned, the other guy grabbed it and shot him with it.”
That made sense to me. Their buddy got shot, and they all ran out. Then they came around with the limousine to see what had happened to him. If the sector car hadn’t stopped them, they would have been long gone.
The detectives came to the scene and went up to the brothel, a Korean geisha house on the sixth floor. The madam at the brothel identified two groups of men approximately eighteen to twenty years old who came in separately. We didn’t arrest anybody then; instead we brought them all back to the precinct for an investigation. The detectives had a rookie sit on the body until crime scene workers and the coroner finished up there. Fiore and I went back to the precinct to explain to the detectives what we’d found. Then the detectives let the Brooklyn men tell their story, and they said the Staten Island wannabes took their friend’s gold chain and shot him. When the detectives showed them the gold chain and the box cutter I found in their car they started turning over on each other. By early the next morning, the Staten Island guys were coming in with their parents to tell their side of things.
The way it went down was the Brooklyn guys waited downstairs in the lobby for the Staten Island guys to come out of the geisha house. The dead kid used the box cutter to rob the gold chain from one of the Staten Island wannabes, but
the guy resisted. When he pulled out the gun and shot himself, the Staten Island guy got spooked and grabbed the gun and shot him in the chest. The gangs apparently knew each other.
With the exception of the dead kid, both groups of men were Italian. They grew up fascinated by violence and corruption. They idolized guys like John Gotti and Carlo Gambino. They imitated their heroes in their mannerisms and speech, foolishly thinking that they could take what they wanted, killing for it if they felt like it. It threw me that the dead guy was Hispanic—he could never be a made man in the mob because of it. I couldn’t figure out why he was their trigger guy. Maybe he was from the neighborhood and managed to finagle his way in, but he wasn’t Italian—he shouldn’t have been there. The thing that bothered me most was when he was shot they all ran, leaving him to die alone on the cold floor of that building. In the end the Brooklyn men were charged with robbery, and it was determined that the Staten Island man had acted in self-defense.
It was a long and exhausting night. Fiore and I didn’t say much to each other. I must have looked funny because he asked a couple of times if I was feeling okay. I caught him looking at me strangely and wondered if what I was feeling showed on my face. I couldn’t wait to finish up so I could head over to the bar—between my weekend and the dead guy, I really wanted a drink.
I vouchered the chain and the box cutter and waited for the detectives to finish their questioning before I went home. I went downstairs to the lounge to close my eyes for a half hour when Fiore asked to talk to me. As we walked out of the lounge, I asked, “What’s up, Joe?”
“Tony, are you sure you’re okay? I don’t like the way you look.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”
“I want to give you my home number and my cell phone number. If you need to talk, anytime, I want you to call me.” He paused and took a breath as if trying to figure out what to say next. “I’ll be honest with you, Tony, I’m concerned about you and I’ve been praying for you. I think you got a lot going on inside. You don’t talk much, and that’s not good. I just want you to know I’m here, and if there’s something you want to talk about, it’ll stay right here, between us.”