Rizzo’s Fire

by Lou Manfredo

  Priscilla smiled, chewing her first bite. “Hmmm,” she purred. “This is some good fuckin’ pizza, Nunzio.”

  Nunzio’s flush deepened, and he turned back to Rizzo. “But,” he said, “I gotta tell you, Joe, I know squat about the guy. No name, nothin’. To night, he was loaded, like most times he’s been in here. Shit, I could smell the booze on ’im from way over there, by the friggin’ chopped garlic.”

  Rizzo smiled. “The three kids were a little fired up, too, wouldn’t you say?” he asked.

  Nunzio shook his head sharply. “Few beers, Joe, couple a beers. For the holiday. I know those kids. They grew up in here eatin’ my pies. They’re good kids. And Gary, the one got shot, he coulda been a middleweight contender. Fastest hands I ever seen. Semifinaled the Golden Gloves when he was seventeen, won the next year. Even the freakin’ nig … black guys couldn’t lay a glove on him.”

  He glanced again at Priscilla. She smiled tightly and twisted the cap off her water bottle. “How ’bout the spics, Nunzio?” she asked coldly. “They have any better luck?”

  Again, Nunzio reddened, his eyes darting away from Priscilla’s. Rizzo reached out a hand, patting him gently on the face. “I got an idea, Nunz,” he said. “Knock off the narrative. I’ll ask the questions, you give the answers. You know, like in the movies.”

  Nunzio nodded. “Okay,” he said sheepishly. “That sounds like a good idea.”

  When they had finished with the man, Rizzo and Jackson left, meeting up with Officer O’Toole at the door.

  “Just coming to get you, Sarge,” she said. “We found that casing.”

  Rizzo lit up. “Show me,” he said.

  The brass casing lay in the gutter, nestled among cigarette butts and scraps of paper. Using O’Toole’s flashlight, Rizzo bent to the casing and examined it.

  “Thirty-oh-six,” he said. “Like Sastone figured.”

  He stood and brushed grit from his pants leg. “Thanks, O’Toole, good work. Tape off the area. When forensics shows, let them get some pictures and bag the shell.”

  The cop, fair-skinned and twenty-something, smiled.

  “You got it, boss,” she said.

  Later, following Rizzo’s directions, Priscilla drove the Impala toward the Lutheran Medical Center.

  “You may hear an occasional ‘nigger’ slip out here and there, Cil,” he said. “Kinda comes with the local territory.”

  “Yeah,” she said without anger, “I know. Territory keeps gettin’ smaller, though. So that’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah,” Rizzo said absently. “Anyway, you got any thoughts on this case, Cil?”

  She shrugged. “Shooter knows Vinny’s, been there a few times before. Chances are he lives local somewhere. Nunzio didn’t remember ever seeing the guy pull up in a vehicle, so maybe he lives in walking distance. The guy likes to booze it up, we oughta check out the local bars. See where he was drinking to night. How many guys coulda been running around wearing fatigue pants on Columbus Day?”

  Rizzo pursed his lips. “Pretty good,” he said. “And those fatigues—ever since Bush the Elder sent Stormin’ Norman and the boys and girls into Kuwait, the civilian fashion statement of choice has been brown-and-tan desert fatigues. The green-and-black jungle fatigues are from the old Vietnam days. But our shooter, according to the witnesses, he goes green and black.”

  “Maybe he’s some bugged-out Viet vet,” she said.

  “Too young for that,” Rizzo said. “Everybody who saw him pegs him about forty.”

  Priscilla shrugged. “So he’s a military buff. Likes to dress the part, show what a hard-case dude he is.”

  “Not likely,” Rizzo said.

  Priscilla glanced at his profile as she drove.

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “Well,” Rizzo began, “it don’t add up like that. Guy had on a winter Thinsulate civilian jacket over the fatigue pants, and he was wearing dark brown boots. A wannabe army guy in jungle gear would have on a military jacket and matching black combat boots. So it don’t add up.”

  They drove in silence for a few moments.

  “Too bad Nunzio didn’t see him tear-ass away in that pickup,” Priscilla said after a time.

  Rizzo nodded, scanning his notes as he answered. “Yeah, well, everybody has to hit the head once in a while. Bad timing for us.”

  Priscilla turned her lips down. “I hope that cracker washed his fuckin’ hands before he kneaded the pizza dough I just ate,” she said distastefully.

  “A-fuckin’-men,” Rizzo said, laughing.

  “IS IT my imagination,” Rizzo asked Priscilla, “or was that nurse comin’ on to you?”

  Having been informed at the hospital that Gary Tucci was in surgery and could not be interviewed until Tuesday evening at the earliest, Rizzo and Priscilla returned to the Impala.

  Priscilla unlocked the driver’s side door and climbed in. “You mean that little redhead with the cleavage? Bet your ass, honey.”

  Rizzo shook his head. “Bad enough when I was workin’ with Mike I was the invisible man. Now with you, too?”

  Priscilla laughed as she started the engine. “Hey, Joe, I am smokin’. Ain’t you noticed yet?”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Are there even any straight women left, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Don’t worry, Joe, there’s plenty. More than enough to keep the species going.”

  Now it was Rizzo who laughed. “Well, ain’t that a black lining to a silver cloud. But how’d she know? The nurse, I mean? You give her the secret handshake? Is it like that Star Trek guy with the fingers? What?”

  “You get a vibe, sometimes. If you’re interested, you put out a feeler. If you don’t get ignored, you flirt a little. That’s all that just happened, Joe, so don’t start hyperventilatin’ on me.”

  “Hey, it don’t bother me,” Rizzo said. “A nurse or two hit on me here and there. Back in the day.”

  Priscilla smiled broadly. “Is that right? So, you tellin’ me that Florence Nightingale chick was straight? That what you sayin’?”

  “Just look where you’re going, wise ass. More than a few drunks out here to night.” He glanced at his Timex. “Let’s go back to the scene, check in with Schoenfeld and Rossi. I wanna make sure that shell casing is photoed and bagged for prints. CSU’ll do it for sure, but if it’s Borough, who knows?”

  They rode in silence, Rizzo deep in thought. After a while, he said absentmindedly, “That nurse, that redhead. She was pretty hot-looking.”

  Priscilla shrugged. “My trolling days are over. Me and Karen forevah and evah.”

  “That’s good, Cil.”

  “But I gotta tell you, it ain’t gonna be easy. This cop gig is a babe magnet. It’s what hooked Karen on me. At first, anyway. Now she gets all righteous and concerned and tells me to quit and hook up with one of her old man’s business dudes, but, deep down, she really gets off on the cop thing.”

  Rizzo laughed. “I think Jen did, too, back when I was in the bag, all blue and shiny.”

  “See?” Priscilla said. “It’s all the same shit. All the same.”

  “That reminds me,” Rizzo said. “I got a speech I give all my new young partners. Seems like only yesterday I was givin’ it to Mike.”

  Priscilla glanced at him quickly, negotiating a stop sign at the same time.

  “Is it the ‘You gotta have options’ bullshit Mike told me about? Some crap you’re always telling your kids?”

  “No, not that one. And it’s not crap: it’s gospel.”

  “Okay. What then?”

  “It’s my other speech,” Rizzo said. “I got three single young daughters. I need you to steer clear of them. And don’t get your pan ties all twisted up,” he interjected quickly when Priscilla’s head snapped around and her eyes burned into his face. “Relax. It’s got nothin’ to do with you being gay. Or friggin’ black, either. Although, I gotta say, either one would be enough to kill my mother.”

  Priscilla shook her anger away. “Are they gay?”
she asked in tight tones. “Your girls?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he said.

  Now color came to her face beneath the cafe-au-lait skin tone. “Then what the fuck, Joe? You think I got some magic dust I sprinkle on their asses to switch ’em over?”

  He chuckled. “Whadda I know? But it don’t matter—like I said, I tell all my partners the same thing. Ask Mike if you don’t believe me. I just don’t want any cop sons-in-law. Guy cops, lesbian cops, cops from outer space, it don’t matter, no friggin’ cops. Period.”

  Priscilla slapped lightly at the wheel of the Chevy.

  “Another one! Another fuckin’ cop bigot like Karen’s mother.”

  Rizzo smiled and opened the glove compartment, digging out an unopened pack of cigarettes.

  “So sue me,” he said, tearing at the cellophane.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Rizzo sat at his kitchen table, poking absently at a bowl of cornflakes. He had a busy day ahead: lunch at one with his ex-partner Mike McQueen, then another four-to-twelve night tour with Priscilla. The witnesses to the shooting—Cocca, Hermann, and Nunzio—would give their sworn statements at noon to the police administrative aide and day tour detectives at the Six-Two. The alleged flasher, Bruce Jacoby, might or might not show up at four, with or without his lawyer, and Rizzo and Jackson still needed to get to Lutheran to interview the shooting victim, Gary Tucci, and to visit the local bars as Priscilla suggested. Rizzo also had to consider another neighborhood canvass for additional witnesses or someone who could I.D. the dark pickup truck in which the shooter had fled.

  “Plus follow up on that shell casing,” he muttered aloud.

  “Talking to yourself, Daddy?” he heard.

  Turning, he saw his middle daughter, Jessica, enter the kitchen, a small book bag in her hand. Like her mother, Jessica stood five feet eight inches tall, lean with dark brown eyes, and long, thick brown hair.

  “Hey, honey,” he said. “Home already?”

  She shrugged and dropped the bag beside the table, bending to kiss Rizzo’s forehead and sighing.

  “They canceled my ten-fifteen. The professor was out soul searching, no doubt, and he couldn’t make it. I only have the two classes on Tuesdays, so here I am.” Twenty-one-year-old Jessica was in her senior year, commuting to and from her parents’ Brooklyn home to Manhattan’s Hunter College.

  Rizzo used his foot to push a chair back from the table.

  “My good luck,” he said. “I get to see you a little.” He thrust his jaw toward the chair. “Sit,” he said. “You want coffee? I just made it.”

  Jessica dropped into the seat and smiled at her father. “Are you serious? It’s almost eleven o’clock, Daddy, I’m already swimming in Starbucks.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Starbucks—aka Maxwell House, only four bucks a cup.”

  “I know, Daddy,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Actually,” Rizzo said, growing serious, “it’s good you’re here. I really need to talk to you.”

  “Oh?” she asked. “ ’Bout what?”

  “About your sister,” he said.

  Jessica wrinkled her brow. “Okay. Which sister?”

  “Your kid sister, Carol. I need you to talk to her.”

  “You want me to give her the birds and the bees talk, Daddy?” she asked. “ ’Cause I hate to break it to you …”

  Rizzo shook his head. “No—birds and bees I can handle myself,” he said.

  “Oh, really,” she answered, laughing. “Since when?”

  Rizzo looked puzzled as he replied. “Whaddya talkin’ about? I raised three daughters, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but none of us ever heard any s-e-x talk from you.”

  “Well, maybe. But I still handled it. I had your mother tell you.”

  Jessica’s laughter returned. “And that’s ‘handling’ it?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “It worked, didn’t it? You all know where the parts go, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Jessica said, nodding solemnly. “Thank you.”

  “Okay,” he said with a grin.

  “So, what’s up with Carol?” Jessica asked, leaning forward in her seat. “Is it still this police thing?”

  Rizzo nodded. “Exactly. The test is comin’ up very soon, and personnel just sent out a fax saying that expedited hiring will get under way in record time. That means by this time next year, Carol could have graduated from the academy already.”

  “Oh,” Jessica said, frowning. “Does Mom know about this? The last she and I spoke about it, Mom figured we were a year away from Carol even getting canvassed to be hired.”

  Rizzo answered, shaking his head. “I haven’t told your mother yet, but it’s bound to start showin’ up in the papers and on the news. The department wants the word to get out, that’s how desperate they’re gettin’. That’s why Carol’s able to take the test in Suffolk County, at Stony Brook. When I came on, you wanted to be a cop, you took the test at a high school in one of the five boroughs. On a Saturday morning. Now, they’re even givin’ the damn test in Philadelphia. Imagine? They’re wavin’ the Big Apple at kids a hundred miles from here. That’s how hard up they are for recruits.”

  Jessica shook her head slowly, but didn’t speak.

  “You gotta talk to her, Jess. Talk some sense into her. She’s just a kid, a sweet, naïve kid. She thinks she’s gonna stop the madness, save the citizens. It isn’t like that, Jess. Maybe it never was, but it sure as hell isn’t now.”

  “I know, Daddy. But Carol is determined. What right do I have? If she told me what to do with my life, I wouldn’t like it very much.”

  “Forget rights,” Rizzo said sharply. “She’s your sister. You want her out bumpin’ heads with skells and psychos while every latte-sucking liberal is standing behind her with a camera phone protecting the dirtbags from the oppressive fascist cops? You think that’s gonna work out for her?”

  Jessica saw the passion in her father’s eyes, and it unsettled her. She blinked nervously.

  “Take it easy, Dad,” she said. “Don’t have a heart attack.”

  Rizzo leaned even closer to Jessica.

  “Talk to her, Jess,” he said, regaining a softer tone. “For her own good. Talk to her. She may listen to you.”

  Rizzo sat back in his seat and began fumbling in his pocket for the Nicorette.

  “I don’t think your mother and I can do it alone,” he said softly. “I think this might have us beat.”

  Jessica frowned. She saw something in her father’s eyes. Something she had never seen there before: fear.

  DETECTIVE SECOND Grade Mike McQueen strolled into Pete’s Downtown Restaurant and took a seat at the bar. He turned to the young female bartender and ordered a straight-up Manhattan. It was twelve forty-five: Joe Rizzo would soon meet him for lunch at the popular Brooklyn restaurant.

  At six feet even, with sharp blue eyes twinkling in a well-featured face, McQueen cut an impressive figure in his new charcoal suit. The suit had been specially tailored, showing no hint of the semiautomatic pistol belted to his right hip. He sipped his drink and waited, occasionally returning the admiring smile of the pretty young bartender.

  McQueen was twenty-nine years old with nearly eight years in the NYPD. He had spent the preceding year as a rookie detective third grade, partnered with Joe Rizzo at the Sixty-second Precinct.

  As he drank, waiting for Rizzo, a smile touched his lips. His recent transfer to headquarters at One Police Plaza had been the result of their brief partnership. With that transfer, he was now poised to advance his career in ways that, six months earlier, he wouldn’t even have dared to imagine. And he owed it all to Joe Rizzo.

  As McQueen pondered his good fortune, Joe Rizzo’s Camry, westbound on Old Fulton Street, turned right onto Water Street. He nosed it into the curb and shut it down. Climbing from the car, he glanced at his Timex: twelve-fifty.

  The neighborhood, situated between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge
s, was now known as DUMBO, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The area was at the height of transformation from a forsaken nineteenth-century industrial area to a thriving, urban hub with hulking old factories, ware houses, and liveries being converted into high-priced condominium complexes with ground-floor eateries, specialty shops, and small, artsy businesses.

  As Rizzo dug out a cigarette, a last smoke before lunch, and leaned against the Camry, a brutal memory came to him about this very location. As a young patrolman, he and his partner had once discovered the decaying body of a homeless woman, her throat violently slashed, in the shadow of the historic Fireboat Station House which, back then, stood abandoned and dilapidated at the foot of Old Fulton, the flat, calm waters of the East River stretched before it.

  Rizzo gazed across the fifty yards separating him from the old building, now gaily festooned in white and red and housing an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, young professionals on their lunch hour entering and exiting, the bright October sunshine washing over the scene. To the right of the Fireboat House, with its cluttered parking lot, stood the River Café. Directly across from Pete’s where Mike was waiting, the stone mass of the Brooklyn Eagle building where Walt Whitman had once been a reporter stood in majestic restoration—now the condominium home to scores of young, successful Brooklynites.

  Rizzo shook his head in wonder.

  “Things sure have changed,” he muttered aloud, making a mental note to introduce his Manhattanite partner, Priscilla, to this corner of Brooklyn, so different from her old Bed-Sty neighborhood and her new working confines of Bensonhurst’s Sixty-second Precinct.

  He glanced again at his watch, tossing the cigarette away, and walking toward Pete’s Restaurant.

  Once seated with Mike McQueen in the rear of the main dining area, Rizzo smiled across the table.

  “So, Mike,” he said. “You look great. How are things across the river? You playin’ nice with all the other Plaza boys and girls?”