Rizzo’s Fire

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, naive 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 bridges, 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 Cafe. 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?”

“Yeah, so far, so good. Piece a cake. When I told my lieutenant I was heading over the bridge to meet you, he told me not to hurry back. It’s pretty relaxed where they have me working.”

Rizzo shook his head and sipped at the double-rocks Dewar’s now before him. “I’d eat the gun if they ever tied me to a friggin’ computer all day. Christ.” His lips turned down. “You sure you’re okay with it?”

“Better than okay,” McQueen answered. “I run complete profiles on everything going on anywhere in the department. I cross-reference crime stats and major cases, looking for patterns or emerging problems. Sometimes I troll for predators, pedophiles, stuff like that, but mostly I’m nosing in on everything the department’s up to. It’s the place to be, Joe. At least for now. They already bumped me up to second grade. That would never have happened so fast if I was still at the Six-Two, no matter how many cases we cleared.”

Rizzo nodded and reached for his menu, flipping it open. “That’s true enough,” he said.

“In my spare time, I scan through stuff, you know, looking for something I can capitalize on. Maybe something to help me catch somebody’s eye, make myself look good. And who knows, someday maybe I can move over to Policy and Planning, where I kinda always wanted to be.”

“What is it, three weeks, a month you’re over there, and already you’re jockeyin’ for position? You learn fast, kid.”

McQueen drained his drink. “Well,” he said, “that’s how it’s done. And it might not be too hard, either. Some of the guys I’ve met over there aren’t the brightest lights, if you know what I mean.”

With a grin, Rizzo replied. “Yeah, well, don’t sell them short, and watch your back. Remember, they were all smart enough to hook their way into the Plaza.”

“Like me, eh, Joe?” McQueen asked.

As he watched Rizzo’s eyes, McQueen ran the details through his mind: how he and Rizzo had tracked down the runaway daughter of a local Brooklyn political power house, City Councilman William Daily. When closeted skeletons had turned up during the investigation, Rizzo had deftly utilized them to both his and McQueen’s advantage.

But the skeletons had never been buried. Instead, they were still lurking, lurking as evidence in the form of a purloined Panasonic microcassette. Lurking in the basement of Joe Rizzo’s Bay Ridge home.

The tape, McQueen thought. The damn tape that could alter the lives of everyone connected to it.

“Yeah,” Rizzo replied, pulling McQueen from his thoughts. “Like you. But you belong over there, Mike. You’re a sharp guy, and a good cop. Maybe they aren’t.”

“Thanks.”

Rizzo shrugged. “Don’t thank me, I didn’t give you your brains. If they give you half a chance over there, you’ll be runnin’ your own squad in a few years.”

“We’ll see,” McQueen said. “But hopefully I’m done with the streets. Almost eight years, that’s enough, and I still may try for the Academy. Teaching. I think I might like that.”

“I can see you there, Mike. You look the part.”

McQueen smiled. “Well, looks are important. Very political at the Plaza. They’re more a bunch of frustrated yuppies than they are cops.”

“We learned a little somethin’ about politics with that runaway Daily kid, now didn’t we, Mikey?”

McQueen’s face turned more somber. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

They ordered their meals, then caught up on each other’s lives. Rizzo filled him in on Priscilla Jackson’s first few days at the Six-Two squad. McQueen laughed when Rizzo related her first encounter with the precinct Romeo, Nick Rossi.

“That’s my Cil,” Mike said.

Later, with McQueen sipping a cappuccino and Rizzo dark coffee, the older cop shifted in his seat and leaned slightly forward. When he spoke, it was in a soft, low voice.

“We need to talk, kid,” he said.

The change in mood wasn’t lost on McQueen. He placed his cup down on the white linen tablecloth and sat back in his seat.

“Yeah. I figured,” he said, his blue eyes neutral.

Rizzo smiled sadly. “Yeah. I figured you figured.”

McQueen waved for the waiter.

“Another straight-up Manhattan and Dewar’s, rocks,” he said. He turned back to Rizzo. “About the tape. Right?”

Rizzo nodded. “Yeah. About the tape. I know we agreed to sit on it. For six months. Keep Councilman Daily’s dirty little secret for a while longer. In the meantime, we’d get you over to the Plaza, courtesy of Daily and his influence.”

“Yes,” McQueen said, “and get you six months of phantom overtime to pad your pension.”

Rizzo nodded again. “Yeah, but most importantly, to buy us some time. Distance ourselves from it all, so maybe we’d get under the radar.”

The waiter arrived and placed their drinks on the table. McQueen reached for his.

“How’s that overtime thing working out?” he asked.

“Good,” Rizzo replied, with a shrug. “It ain’t exactly phantom, but that’s okay. It’s more legit this way. See, Daily set it up through a flunky of his at the Plaza. They call it Confidential Administrative Overtime. Daily’s man processes the O.T. personally, and it gets billed through the Homeland Security federal funding. City Finance never feels it, and it doesn’t show up on the yearly Six-Two overtime stats, so no red lights start flashin’ over there.”

Sipping his second drink, McQueen spoke around the rim of the glass.

“Do you have to actually do anything for it?” he asked.

Rizzo answered as he reached for his Scotch. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s a large Middle Eastern presence on the northeast side of Bay Ridge. I live on the southwest side of the Ridge, Dyker Heights. So, every so often, I drive by the northeast. Check things out. Talk to some old-timers, the remnants of the Irish and Scandinavians that used to dominate that section of the neighborhood. And I talk to some of the Asian newcomers once in a while. Then I write out a report on the local Muslim activity and fax it over to Anti-terror Intelligence. They file it away, and everybody’s happy.”

“So, okay,” McQueen said.

Rizzo nodded. “Well, by my count, the six months for that tape we’re holdin’ comes up this February. Am I right?”

McQueen shrugged. “Yeah. February.”

Rizzo put down his rock glass and leaned across the table. When he spoke, McQueen could smell the liquor on his breath.

“I need an extension, kid,” he said softly.

Rizzo pretended not to notice the relief that flickered briefly in the young cop’s eyes. He kept his own face neutral.

“Oh,” was all McQueen managed.

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “An extension. These friggin’ tuition loans won’t go away just because I retire, and it’ll be a couple a years before Marie is a doctor and can assume the loans Jen and me owe, never mind her own. Not to mention my other two girls.”

“How much time, Joe?” McQueen asked casually.

Rizzo spread his hands and cocked his head to the side. “Not sure,” he said. “A year, maybe-say, next October. Then with the administrative O.T., plus my regular O.T., I can get out with enough pension to carry the loans till the girls can take ’em off my hands. And by then, we’ll be far enough away from it that maybe no one will connect us to it when it does go public.”

McQueen smiled. “I understand. To tell you the truth, I could use a little more time myself. I need to make some contacts, some friends at the Plaza. That way, when we put that tape into the right hands, if the shit hits the fan and Daily does realize we screwed him, at least I’ll have some allies. Some cover.”

Rizzo nodded. “Sounds fair, Mike. After all, I’ll probably be out, my pension in hand, outta their reach. You should have some cover, too. Insurance, sorta.”

McQueen drank deeply, draining the glass. “Yeah,” he said. “Insurance.”

Later, leaving the restaurant after they’d eaten their lunch, Rizzo walked McQueen to his shiny black Mazda, which sat parked at an expired meter on Old Fulton Street. They shook hands.

“We’ll get it done,” Rizzo said solemnly. “Just a little later than we figured.”

McQueen, two Manhattans sitting heavily on his eyelids, smiled sadly. “Yeah,” he said, “we’ll get it done.”

Priscilla Jackson took a seat on the heavy wooden chair beside Joe Rizzo’s squad room desk. She tossed the legal-size papers onto the cluttered desk surface.

“Well, Joe,” she said, “I read all three.”

Rizzo glanced at the sworn statements of Jimmy Cocca, Andy Hermann, and Nunzio Nottadomo, taken earlier by Six-Two personnel.

“Good,” he said. “Now you know as much as I do. Good statements, weren’t they? Bobby Dee might not be the best bull on the squad, but he is the best statement taker. He gets all the info, short and sweet.”

Priscilla nodded. “I’ll remember that. Now what? Do we start on that bar canvass?”

Rizzo shook his head. “Not yet.” He looked at the wall clock. “It’s only twenty after four. If we do it, we should start callin’ around to the bars later, about eight or so. More likely to catch the same bartender who worked last night.”

“Makes sense. So, what now?”

Rizzo sat back in his seat. “Well,” he said, “I figure we discuss it. The shooting, I mean. I got a theory.”

“Yeah, Mike told me about those theories of yours. So let’s hear it.”

Nodding, Rizzo said, “Okay. By the way, Mike says ‘hi.’ Next time I’ll bring you along, he’d love to see ya.”

“Good deal, Joe. So, what’s the theory?”

“Okay, get comfortable,” Rizzo said. “You read the statements. Whadda we got? Incident starts in a well-known, popular local pizza joint, a place the shooter’s frequented over the last year. So, let’s assume he lives someplace close by. He wears jungle fatigues and drives a pickup truck. Schoenfeld and Rossi and the uniforms canvassed the residents of Seventieth Street, presumably where the truck was parked while the shooter ate his pizza then got his ass kicked by Tucci. Nobody they spoke to could say anyone livin’ on the block owns a pickup. This ain’t Texas, not too many noncommercial pickups around. And Cocca said the truck was clean, no writing or company logo on the door. Seventieth Street is all residential, mostly two-story, one-and two-family homes. Most families been living in those houses for generations. They all know one another. If there was a truck-driving, fatigue-wearin’ lunatic livin’ on the block, they’d all know about it. So, we can assume the shooter doesn’t live on Seventieth Street.”

Priscilla smiled. “All this ass-umin’ could be risky,” she said.

“Yeah, well, it usually is, but hear me out. So, Tucci smacks the shooter around. Shooter makes his threat, the young guys leave. Nunzio says the shooter leaves the pizzeria less than a minute after the kids. Nunzio goes in the back room, starts getting ready to close, cleans the booths and hits the head. Next he knows, the radio cars are lightin’ up the avenue.”

Rizzo paused, taking a Nicorette from his pocket. Priscilla watched impatiently as he fumbled with the packaging.

“Damn, Joe,” she said harshly, “give it here.”

She took the gum and stripped the backing, pushing the Nicorette partially through the foil and handing it back to him. “Now tell me the fuckin’ theory before my first pension check gets here.”

Rizzo pushed the gum into his mouth.

“Guy runs out of the store and around the corner. Then, about two minutes later, he’s a block south at Seventy-first Street, waiting for Tucci to come out of Ben’s candy store.” Rizzo paused. “Question: Where’d he get the rifle from so fast? Assumin’, as we are, that he don’t live right there, right on Seventieth Street.”

Priscilla shrugged. “The truck, I guess. He got it out of the truck.”

Rizzo pointed at her. “Bingo. Where else? Now, answer this: Who’s runnin’ around Brooklyn in a pickup truck wearing jungle fatigues and packing a thirty-oh-six rifle?”

Priscilla smiled slowly. “A Great White Hunter,” she said.

“Once again, bingo. A hunter. While you were readin’ the statements, I went online. Hunting season just got under way upstate New York, parts a Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Deer, mostly. Some bear. This asshole is a hunter. That explains the brown boots. He’s not a military nut, probably was wearin’ Timberlands. And his heavy camouflage hunting jacket woulda been too hot for the drive back home from whatever-the-fuck woods he was in, so he slipped on a lightweight civvies Thinsulate. He was probably boozin’ the whole three-day weekend, maybe even in the truck driving home. Probably struck out, Bambi outsmarted him and he’s coming back empty-handed. Instead of going home and smackin’ the old lady around, he maybe stops local for some more booze, then figures he’ll grab a couple a slices of Nunzio’s Sicilian. When Tucci steps on his friggin’ foot, three days of macho bullshit erupts in the guy’s squirrel brain. Then the kid TKO’s him without breakin’ a sweat, and it’s just too much. The guy feels his dick shrinkin’ by the minute, so he figures he’ll grab his rifle and grow some of it back. See?”

“So we start checkin’ out the gun shops, hunting clubs, what ever. Right?” Priscilla asked.

He nodded. “Exactly. Guy probably needs to show photo I.D. for his ammo buys. We could get lucky. There can’t be more than a half-dozen hunting joints in the whole borough, only one or two in the precinct. And if the shooter is a Bensonhurst boy like we figure, he probably shops local. Most people around here do, the whole neighborhood is like a small town.”

“Yeah,” Priscilla said. “A town in the freakin’ Ozarks. Ten years I worked a radio car, two in the South Bronx, eight more up and down Manhattan. I saw a lot of crazy shit, Joe, but this is the first street shooting I ever seen where a rifle was the weapon of choice.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what got me started. That and the camouflaged jungle fatigues. We don’t get many shootings in the Six-Two, but when we do, it’s usually a mob hit. Head shots, up close and personal. And always with a handgun.”

“So,” Priscilla said. “I guess we drop the idea of checkin’ the bars.”

“For now,” he answered. “It’s still a good idea. But I think we’ll put it on hold for a while. What we need is a sketch of this guy. I want to go see the boss, D’Antonio. The Swede. Have him call over to Borough, set up the police artist with the three eyeballs and the vic. Then we can hit the gun shops and the bars with a sketch of the guy in our hands. See where we get lucky first.”

“Okay,” Priscilla said, standing. “Let’s go see the boss.”

Rizzo smiled. “Not just yet, Cil,” he said. “I think I see a lawyer, and he’s coming this way.”

She turned. A tall, disheveled-looking man with sandy brown hair, a worn blue suit, and wire-rimmed glasses was nearing Rizzo’s desk, a uniformed officer beside him.

“Hey, Joe,” the cop said. “This guy’s a lawyer. Said he needs to talk to you.”

“Okay, Randy, thanks.” Rizzo stood and indicated the chair Priscilla had just vacated.

“Have a seat, Counselor,” he said easily. “Forgive me for not shaking hands. Germs and all.”

The man’s lips turned down, but he sat.

“I’m Sergeant Rizzo. My partner here, Detective Jackson.”

The man cleared his throat. “Dan Webster,” he said. “I’m Bruce Jacoby’s attorney.”

Rizzo laughed. “Well, imagine that? Daniel Webster, eh? Any ‘Devil and…’ jokes you ain’t heard yet?”

Webster smiled weakly. “Probably not,” he said.

“Okay then,” Rizzo said, sitting down again. “What can I do for you, Mr. Webster?”

“Well, Sergeant, my client is very upset. He says you and your partner, presumably her, came to his home last night. He says you threatened him. He also said-”

Rizzo held up a hand and silenced the man. “I don’t really give a fuck what he said, Counselor, and neither does she. Let’s get down to it: Jacoby has four prior arrests for public lewdness. He copped to three of ’em, one was dropped. That vic was twelve years old and her parents didn’t want her playing in the sewer with all the shit bags down at the Criminal Court house. I got four positive I.D.’s from victims in this case. They picked your guy out from a photo array. One of the vics is a thirty-something-year-old teacher. Spends a lotta time partying at Club Med or wherever the fuck, and she gave us some details on your guy’s schlong. Sorta like an expert opinion, you could say. Plus, I already spoke to Brucie’s boss. Seems like every time a daylight incident took place, Brucie was either off or out sick that day.”

Here Rizzo paused and looked up at Priscilla, winking at her discreetly.

“So,” he continued, “if you came here to threaten me, Counselor, my boss is across the squad room in his office. Name’s Vince D’Antonio. Lieutenant Vince D’Antonio. He’ll be glad to listen to your complaint, give you the telephone number of Civilian Review, in case you don’t have it memorized, and then he’ll throw you the fuck outta here.”

Rizzo leaned in closer to the man. “But,” he said, his voice turning softer, “if you came here to talk, we can do that, too.”

The lawyer, a few years older than Rizzo, smiled.

“It’s oddly refreshing to do business with an old-timer, Sergeant,” he said. “Most of the younger cops are so tentative and nervous, they almost appear paranoid.”

Rizzo laughed. “So, okay. What’s the deal?”

The lawyer shifted the briefcase he held on his lap and glanced at his wristwatch.

“Well,” he said, “in view of what you’ve said, and assuming it’s accurate…”

Rizzo nodded. “It’s accurate. You can leave here with victim statements and copies of Brucie’s work timesheets, if you want ’em.”

Webster sighed. “Won’t be necessary. Mr. Jacoby is willing to surrender to the District Attorney’s Office. I just have one favor to ask.”

“Tell me,” Rizzo said.

“Mr. Jacoby is particularly close to his mother. This Saturday is her seventieth birthday. He’d like to be with her to celebrate. I’m asking for a surrender date after that. Say, next Monday.”

“No,” Rizzo said, shaking his head. “Fuck him and his mother’s birthday. He wants a favor from me, he surrenders to me. Not the D.A. Me. Me and my partner. If you can’t agree to that, me and Jackson here get in the car and go grab him right now. I don’t need anybody’s permission to lock up some shit-head.”

Rizzo smiled and leaned back in his seat. “You know, Counselor, just between us old-timers.”

Webster drummed his fingers on the briefcase, weighing the options.

“And if we agree, you’ll give him till Monday?”

Rizzo leaned forward, close to the lawyer. “Hell yes, Counselor,” he said. “I’ll even send the old gal a friggin’ birthday card.”

Lieutenant Vince D’Antonio looked across his desk to Jackson, then Rizzo.

“And you figure this shooting warrants a police artist, Joe?” he asked.

Rizzo nodded. “Absolutely. It’d be a shame to waste these witnesses here. All four of ’em saw the guy in the pizza store, under those fluorescents, while everybody was still relatively calm. We can get a good composite from them. Then me and Cil show the sketch around the bars and gun shops. We’re sure to get a hit.”

Vince D’Antonio, the fifty-three-year-old commanding officer of the Six-Two detective squad, sat back in his chair and frowned. His fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair had earned him the nickname “Swede.”

“This might be a tough sell,” D’Antonio said after a moment. “After all, this isn’t a murderer or a rapist or child molester. Borough Command may nix it.”

Rizzo shrugged. “Try, Vince. All I’m askin’. And remember, after Tucci got shot, the guy pointed the rifle at Cocca’s chest and worked the trigger. It was a bolt-action rifle, not a semi, so it didn’t fire. But we can still make an attempt murder out of it. That makes two counts attempted murder, criminal use of a firearm, assault one, and whatever else the D.A. can find in the penal law.”

“I read the DD-fives. I know the story.” D’Antonio paused and rubbed at his eye. “I noticed you didn’t talk to the victim yet, this Larry Tucci kid.”

“Gary,” Rizzo said. “Gary Tucci.”

D’Antonio nodded. “Yeah. Gary. What ever. Before we go to Borough, shouldn’t you at least talk to the kid?”

“We tried. But they had to dig bullet and cement fragments out of his foot, then try to put it back together. He was under the knife when we got to Lutheran.” Rizzo looked at his watch. “Doc told me we could see the kid to night. Why don’t you think about the artist request, Vince. Me and Cil will talk to the kid. We’ll find out when he’s getting discharged. Then the artist can sit down with all four. One-shot deal. You get us that sketch, boss, we’ll get you the shooter.”

After a moment, D’Antonio nodded. “Okay. Talk to the kid first. In a couple a days, if we need to, maybe we can get it done.”

Rizzo pushed his chair back and stood up. Jackson did the same. “Thanks. You know I never ask you for this kinda shit. But Borough is tough. I don’t have anybody left I can call over there to cash in a favor.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” D’Antonio said. “At least there’s one place in the department that doesn’t owe you.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo answered. “Speakin’ of which, Ronnie Torres called me about twenty minutes ago. He does owe me, so he pushed that shell casing to the head of the line. He took a partial print from it. Not enough to run for an I.D., but he lifted enough points to call a match if we print a suspect. You get us that sketch, we put a name to the face, lock him up and print him. Then we nail him with the witnesses and the print. Case closed.”

D’Antonio nodded and reached for his pen. Turning back to his paperwork, he spoke once more.

“Talk to the victim, Joe. Then we’ll see.”

“Okay, boss, thanks,” Rizzo said, turning to leave.

D’Antonio looked up at them. “By the way, how are you two getting along?”

“Great,” Rizzo said. “No problem.”

D’Antonio turned his eyes to Priscilla. “And you, Jackson?”

“Fine, Lieutenant. Just fine,” she said.

“He treating you okay?” D’Antonio asked.

“Yeah, boss, he’s glad to have me. I may not be as pretty as McQueen was, but I’m a hell of a lot smarter.”