Brooklyn Noir

Can’t catch me by Thomas Morrissey

Bay Ridge

The fuck are you doing?” shouted the squat, muscular man from his van. “I was just gonna park there!”

Detective Sal Ippolito heaved his bulk from the car and felt his temper start to rise. Control. He took a calming breath through his nose, enjoying the aromas wafting from the open back window of Epstein’s Bakery, and tapped his windshield. “See that red light on my dashboard? That little sign next to it? I’m a cop. I get to park here because I’m working. Find somewhere else.”

“You see this sign?” The man slammed a stubby-fingered hand on his door, above the Bay Ridge Bread and Bakers lettering. “I’m working, too. I got to pick up bread for my route. ’The fuck am I supposed to do that if you’re in my way?”

Ippolito took another breath. Another delicious nose-ful of cookie-bread-donut goodness warmed his freezing nostrils. “Look,” he said, restraining his annoyance. “It’s Christmastime. How about giving me a little present by not busting my balls? The longer I stand out here talking to you, the longer it’s going to be until I take care of things inside, and the longer until you get to pick up your bread. Go have a cup of coffee. Go do some shopping. Go do anything else, because until further notice this bakery is a crime scene and no one goes in or out. Capice?”

“It’s 4 o’clock in the morning. ’The fuck am I going to go shopping?” The squat man slammed his van into gear. “Crime scene, my ass. Go commit grand theft donut, ya fat pig.”

Ippolito unconsciously rubbed his basketball stomach, fighting the desire to chase him down for premeditated assholery. “Hell with it.” Crystals of salt and half-melted slush crunched underfoot as he turned and walked to the rear door. “At least I can resist temptations.”

Entering the bakery was like walking into a brownie: warm, moist, and sweet. Steam and heat thickened the atmosphere in a delightful contrast to outside. Ippolito licked his lips, taste buds searching for some of the chocolate or almond that flavored the air.

“H — hello?” A tiny, wizened woman edged into the kitchen. She was so bundled up against the cold, Ippolito doubted she would have been able to swing the fire axe she grasped. “Who are you?”

“Police, ma’am.” He slowly took out his badge. “Detective—”

“Sally! Little Sally Ippolito!” The woman relaxed and lowered the axe. Its weight made her lurch forward. “Not so little anymore, eh?”

Ippolito frowned before he recognized her. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Funerro?”

“I called you people.” The old woman shuffled over to lean against a sink filled with batter-crusted trays and pans. “Eppy used to save the first loaf of bread of the day for me. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so I thought I’d surprise him coming by. I’ve done it before when my goddamn insomnia kept me awake. I think that snippy waitress at the Bridgeview gave me regular coffee when I asked for decaf, just to be mean—”

“Mrs. Funerro, what happened? The operator said you told her there was trouble.”

“I didn’t want to say too much over the phone because I wanted to get this,” she shook the axe, “to protect myself.”

“From what?”

“I came to the back door, because I know Eppy leaves it open sometimes to let the heat out — isn’t that a silly thing in this cold? — and when I called out, he didn’t answer. I found him in the front. Well, his body. I was going to call Father Mulhern, too, over at St. Patrick’s, but then I remembered Eppy is — well, — Jewish. I don’t know what those people do about death. Maybe I should call a rabbi?”

“Mrs. Funerro—” Visions of being trapped in the old lady’s apartment when he was a grocery delivery boy years ago, delayed by tales of sciatica and back spasms, made him cut her off. “Did you say Mr. Epstein is dead? You found his body?”

She exhaled. “I thought the police were observant. How will you find clues if you aren’t even listening to what I say?”

Ippolito unholstered his gun. Mrs. Funerro gasped. Putting a finger to his lips, he crept to the doorway with the surprising grace of the obese.

“I told you, I found his body. There’s no one else here now.”

He scanned the shop. Formica cases sat packed with fresh racks of oversized chocolate chip cookies, perfectly frosted layer cakes, and pastries of every shape and filling. Glass and stainless steel reflected the holiday window lights while the Now Servin sign was reset to zero, a string of number tabs hanging below it like a tongue. A flat tray filled with some kind of cookie waited atop the serving counter to be put away. Everything looked as normal as any of the dozen bakeries and bagel shops around the neighborhood, except for the wide red puddle staining the black-and-white tile floor. A slight slope had allowed it to spread almost to the front door.

Ippolito sighed. “Oh boy.”

Epstein’s body lay facedown behind the serving counter. Ippolito crouched and rolled him partway over. The front of his baker’s whites was now squishy scarlet from the nasty, raw gash at his throat, while dozens of tiny rips revealed more wounds on his body. Their edges looked as though something had been gnawing at him.

What the hell? “You were the only person here?” he asked without turning. “No one else? No animals, dogs, or some rats, maybe?”

“Rats? Eppy kept a clean shop.”

He gently set the body back down. No sign of a struggle was in evidence, but a gingerbread figure lay near Epstein’s outstretched hand in a grotesque parody of the dead man. The cookie wasn’t a traditional shape; still humanoid, it looked like a man in a suit and hat, holding a gun. The white frosting gave it a pin-striped suit and mobster attitude, still evident even though half its head and one shoulder had been bitten off. It had apparently come from the sheet of similar cookies inside the case — all those rows were symmetrical except the top, which presumably was missing the half-eaten one. Ippolito picked up a sheet of wax paper.

“Hello, saliva traces and DNA.”

He started to rise, when he noticed something on the glass inside the case. In front of all the mouth-watering treats (Resist the temptation! he scolded himself), words had been written in what looked like Epstein’s blood:

Mrs. Funerro came up behind him. “Did you find something? Is that a clue?”

Quickly he stood, using his bulk to block her view of the body and, more importantly, the writing. “You must have watched police shows on TV. You know I can’t say anything.” Especially if I don’t want everyone from here to Astoria to know about it He held the half-eaten cookie behind his back. “Forensics will tell us what happened. For now, I need you to do something very important.”

The old woman leaned forward conspiratorially. “You want me to canvass for witnesses? I could do that — I know everyone from Shore Road to Fort Hamilton Parkway. Maybe somebody saw something. That snippy waitress got her break at the diner a little while ago. Maybe she knows something — she’s always talking to those boys who go in there, the little gossip.”

“No, no, that could be dangerous.” Ippolito put an arm around her skeletal shoulder and guided her through the kitchen to the rear door. “I need you to go back to your house and write down everything you saw and experienced here tonight.”

“Write down…?”

“You’re our main witness right now. We need to protect you.” He nodded solemnly. “I’ll have a car sent to watch your door, too. Just in case.”

Hope enlivened her voice. “Am I… in danger, you think?”

“Just in case.” He touched one beefy finger to the side of his nose. “But do me a favor — no axes. We can’t have our most valuable witness hurting herself.”

Now she was positively glowing. “Of course. Of course, you’re right. But the Bridgeview is on my way. If I stop there I can question—”

“Straight. Home.” He closed the door before she could argue.

Epstein had kept a small office next to the kitchen. Ippolito used its phone to make his report before going back out to the front shop to wait for assistance. Through the front window he watched snow begin to fall on an empty Fourth Avenue. Memories of his grocery delivery days returned like ghosts of Christmases past. Way too many years ago. Years and pounds. He started to smile until a glare reflected off the floor and reminded him why he was there. The car, a Mercedes SUV with a Christmas tree’s worth of headlights, had stopped at a red light outside. A shirtless young man wearing a thick gold rope around his neck hung out the passenger window.

“I love you, Angieeee! Merry Fucking Christmas!” the man screamed. “Aaaaaaaaa! I love you, Aaaangieeee!”

Across the street an apartment window slammed open. “She don’t love you, ’cause she’s up here sucking my dick! Just shut the hell up!”

Now the driver of the SUV joined in. “You can’t talk to my boy like that! Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

The light turned green and the SUV sped off in a screech of tires and obscenities. “Home sweet home,” Ippolito shook his head. “Where everybody’s a tough guy and no one takes crap from no one, because their boys have got their backs.”

He turned away from the window and his memories to study the scene. The tray atop the serving counter was also filled with those mobster gingerbread men, in eight neat rows of four. Gingerly he avoided the pool of blood as he stood over them. The cryptic message on the display case was backwards from this side, but the baked goods looked just as wonderful. From this position he couldn’t see the body either, and any of the smells death brings were smothered by the overwhelming scent of delightful holiday treats.

“Temptation,” he reminded himself. He stared into the display case, feeling like a child, before something odd caught his eye: One of the gingerbread mobsters had red hands. And they all had white frosting eyes and pinstripes, but red mouths.

Ippolito frowned. The gingerbread mobsters on the countertop looked identical, but with white frosting mouths. He picked one up and circled the counter, stepped over Epstein’s body, and crouched to take one from inside the case. His knees creaked. Holding the two side by side he noticed the one from inside the case, in addition to the varied coloring, also seemed… bigger.

Fatter.

“Hmph.”

Carefully he replaced the larger one, an involuntary grunt escaping his pursed lips as he reached. “Jesus, I’ve got to lose some weight. My New Year’s resolution.” Still in a crouch, he leaned against the counter for support. The hand on which he rested his weight clutched the gingerbread mobster from the countertop.

“What are you looking at?”

The gingerbread mobster had no reply. Its white frosting eyes remained unblinking, its white frosting mouth remained in a fixed sneer.

The temptation proved too much. He cocked his head at the cookie and adopted the tone of the SUV driver: “Fuck me? Fuck you!” He chuckled as he bit off its head and chewed. “Yeah, I can eat you. It isn’t New Year’s yet.” He took another bite. The gingerbread was still faintly warm, and a hint of cinnamon tickled his palate. It dissolved in his mouth like butter on hot pancakes, leaving an aftertaste of gingery vanilla.

“Wow,” he smacked his lips. “Mr. Epstein, the world will mourn the loss of so great a cookie master—”

Scuttling above him made Ippolito’s head snap up. He dropped the half-eaten cookie and started to rise, reaching for his gun. As he came eye-level with the counter he saw the flat pan was now empty. Before he could process this, he saw why.

And he screamed.

“God, he just called this in,” the patrolman said sadly. “Can’t have been more than twenty minutes ago.”

Detective Mike Schofield’s jaw tightened. “Well, obviously the killer came back.”

Ippolito’s body lay atop the body of the bakery’s proprietor. It took two blankets to cover the mass, and both were sponging up blood. It was everywhere. Schofield noted spray patterns from severed arteries as well as smears that showed the hefty detective hadn’t gone down without a fight. Judging by the damage to Ippolito’s body, there had been more than one assailant.

The patrolman was staring at the display case’s glass window. “What’s this supposed to mean?”

Schofield glanced at it. “Whatever it means, it’s written here, too.” He pointed at the countertop. “‘Run, run, as fast as you can. Can’t catch me…’ We’ll see about that, scumbag. You don’t kill a cop and walk away. We watch out for our own.”

Next to the writing sat a tray filled with gingerbread mobsters. Schofield frowned. They were big and fat, overlapping each other in a way that would have made them burn in the oven if that was how they’d been cooked.

“Let me ask you something,” he said to the patrolman. “You bake gingerbread men, you give them faces with white frosting, right?”

“Yeah.”

Schofield pointed at the cookies on the countertop. “So how come these ones have red mouths?”

Case closed by Lou Manfredo

Bensonhurst

The fear enveloped her, and yet despite it, or perhaps because of it, she found herself oddly detached, being from body, as she ran frantically from the stifling grip of the subway station out into the rainy, darkened street.

Her physiology now took full control, independent of her conscious thought, and her pupils dilated and gathered in the dim light to scan the streets, the storefronts, the randomly parked automobiles. Like a laser, her vision locked onto him, undiscernable in the distance. Her brain computed: one hundred yards away. Her legs received the computation and turned her body toward him, propelling her faster. How odd, she thought through the terror, as she watched herself from above. It was almost the flight of an inanimate object. So unlike that of a terrified young woman.

When her scream came at last, it struck her deeply and primordially, and she ran even faster with the sound of it. A microsecond later the scream reached his ears and she saw his head snap around toward her. The silver object at the crest of his hat glistened in the misty streetlight, and she felt her heart leap wildly in her chest.

Oh my God, she thought, a police officer. Thank you, dear God, a police officer!

As he stepped from the curb and started toward her, she swooned, and her being suddenly came slamming back into her body from above. Her knees weakened and she faltered, stumbled, and as consciousness left her, she fell heavily down and slid into the grit and slime of the wet, cracked asphalt.

Mike McQueen sat behind the wheel of the dark gray Chevrolet Impala and listened to the hum of the motor idling. The intermittent slap-slap of the wipers and the soft sound of the rain falling on the sheet-metal body were the only other sounds. The Motorola two-way on the seat beside him was silent. The smell of stale cigarettes permeated the car’s interior. It was a slow September night, and he shivered against the dampness.

The green digital on the dash told him it was almost 1 a.m. He glanced across the seat and through the passenger window. He saw his partner, Joe Rizzo, pocketing his change and about to leave the all-night grocer. He held a brown bag in his left hand. McQueen was a six-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, but on this night he felt like a first-day rookie. Six years as a uniformed officer first assigned to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, then, most recently, its Upper East Side. Sitting in the car, in the heart of the Italian-American ghetto that was Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood, he felt like an out-of-towner in a very alien environment.

He had been a detective, third grade, for all of three days, and this night was to be his first field exposure, a midnight-to-eight tour with a fourteen-year detective first grade, the coffee-buying Rizzo.

Six long years of a fine, solid career, active in felony arrests, not even one civilian complaint, medals, commendations, and a file full of glowing letters from grateful citizens, and it had gotten for him only a choice assignment to the East Side Precinct. And then one night, he swings his radio car to the curb to pee in an all-night diner, hears a commotion, takes a look down an alleyway, and just like that, third grade detective, the gold shield handed to him personally by the mayor himself just three weeks later.

If you’ve got to fall ass-backwards into an arrest, fall into the one where the lovely young college roommate of the lovely young daughter of the mayor of New York City is about to get raped by a nocturnal predator. Careerwise, it doesn’t get any better than that.

McQueen was smiling at the memory when Rizzo dropped heavily into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

“Damn it,” Rizzo said, shifting his large body in the seat. “Can they put some fucking springs in these seats, already?”

He fished a container of coffee from the bag and passed it to McQueen. They sat in silence as the B train roared by on the overhead elevated tracks running above this length of 86th Street. McQueen watched the sparks fly from the third rail contacts and then sparkle and twirl in the rainy night air before flickering and dying away. Through the parallel slots of the overhead tracks, he watched the twin red taillights of the last car vanish into the distance. The noise of the steel-on-steel wheels and a thousand rattling steel parts and I-beams reverberated in the train’s wake. It made the deserted, rain-washed streets seem even more dismal. McQueen found himself missing Manhattan.

The grocery had been the scene of a robbery the week before, and Rizzo wanted to ask the night man a few questions. McQueen wasn’t quite sure if it was the coffee or the questions that had come as an afterthought. Although he had only known Rizzo for two days, he suspected the older man to be a somewhat less than enthusiastic investigator.

“Let’s head on back to the house,” Rizzo said, referring to the 62nd Precinct station house, as he sipped his coffee and fished in his outer coat pocket for the Chesterfields he seemed to live on. “I’ll write up this here interview I just did and show you where to file it.”

McQueen eased the car out from the curb. Rizzo had insisted he drive, to get the lay of the neighborhood, and McQueen knew it made sense. But he felt disoriented and foolish: He wasn’t even sure which way the precinct was.

Rizzo seemed to sense McQueen’s discomfort. “Make a U-turn,” he said, lighting the Chesterfield. “Head back up 86th and make a left on Seventeenth Avenue.” He drew on the cigarette and looked sideways at McQueen. He smiled before he spoke again. “What’s the matter, kid? Missing the bright lights across the river already?”

McQueen shrugged. “I guess. I just need time, that’s all.”

He drove slowly through the light rain. Once off 86th Street’s commercial strip, they entered a residential area comprised of detached and semi-detached older, brick homes. Mostly two stories, the occasional three-story. Some had small, neat gardens or lawns in front. Many had ornate, well-kept statues, some illuminated by flood lamps, of the Virgin Mary or Saint Anthony or Joseph. McQueen scanned the home fronts as he drove. The occasional window shone dimly with night lights glowing from within. They looked peaceful and warm, and he imagined the families inside, tucked into their beds, alarm clocks set and ready for the coming work day. Everyone safe, everything secure, everyone happy and well.

And that’s how it always seemed. But six years had taught him what was more likely going on in some of those houses. The drunken husbands coming home and beating their wives; the junkie sons and daughters, the sickly, lonely old, the forsaken parent found dead in an apartment after the stench of decomposition had reached a neighbor and someone had dialed 9-1-1.

The memories of an ex-patrol officer. As the radio crackled to life on the seat beside him and he listened with half an ear, he wondered what the memories of an ex-detective would someday be.

He heard Rizzo sigh. “All right, Mike. That call is ours. Straight up this way, turn left on Bay 8th Street. Straight down to the Belt Parkway. Take the Parkway east a few exits and get off at Ocean Parkway. Coney Island Hospital is a block up from the Belt. Looks like it might be a long night.”

When they entered the hospital, it took them some minutes to sort through the half-dozen patrol officers milling around the emergency room. McQueen found the right cop, a tall, skinny kid of about twenty-three. He glanced down at the man’s nametag. “How you doing, Marino? I’m McQueen, Mike McQueen. Me and Rizzo are catching tonight. What d’ya got?”

The man pulled a thick leather note binder from his rear pocket. He flipped through it and found his entry, turned it to face McQueen, and held out a Bic pen.

“Can you scratch it for me, detective? No sergeant here yet.”

McQueen took the book and pen and scribbled the date, time, and CIHOSP E/R across the bottom of the page, then put his initials and shield number. He handed the book back to Marino.

“What d’ya got?” he asked again.

Marino cleared his throat. “I’m not the guy from the scene. That was Willis. He was off at midnight, so he turned it to us and went home. I just got some notes here. Female Caucasian, Amy Taylor, twenty-six, single, lives at 1860 61st Street. Coming off the subway at 62nd Street about 11 o’clock, 23:00, the station’s got no clerk on duty after 9. She goes into one of them — what d’ya call it? — one-way exit-door turnstile things, the ones that’ll only let you out, not in. Some guy jumps out of nowhere and grabs her.”

At that point, Rizzo walked up. “Hey, Mike, you okay with this for a while? My niece is a nurse here, I’m gonna go say hello, okay?”

Mike glanced at his partner, “Yeah, sure, okay, Joe, go ahead.”

McQueen turned back to Marino. “Go on.”

Marino dropped his eyes back to his notes. “So this guy pins her in the revolving door and shoves a knife in her face. Tells her he’s gonna cut her bad if she don’t help him.”

“Help him with what?”

Marino shrugged. “Who the fuck knows? Guy’s got the knife in one hand and his johnson in the other. He’s trying to whack off on her. Never says another word to her, just presses the knife against her throat. Anyway, somehow he drops the weapon and she gets loose, starts to run away. The guy goes after her. She comes out of the station screaming, Willis is on a foot post doing a four-to-midnight, sees her running and screaming, and goes over her way. She takes a fall, faints or something, bangs up her head and swells up her knee and breaks two fingers. They got her upstairs in a room, for observation on account of the head wound.”

McQueen thought for a moment. “Did Willis see the guy?”

“No, never saw him.”

“Any description from the girl?”

“I don’t know, I never even seen her. When I got here she was upstairs.”

“Okay, stick around till your sergeant shows up and cuts you loose.”

“Can’t you, detective?”

“Can’t I what?”

“Cut me loose?”

McQueen frowned and pushed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I think I can. Do me a favor, though, wait for the sarge, okay?”

Marino shook his head and turned his lips downward. “Yeah, sure, a favor. I’ll go sniff some ether or something.” He walked away, his head still shaking.

McQueen looked around the brightly lit emergency room. He saw Rizzo down a hall, leaning against a wall, talking to a bleached-blond nurse who looked to be about Rizzo’s age: fifty. McQueen walked over.

“Hey, Joe, you going to introduce me to your niece?”

Joe turned and looked at McQueen with a puzzled look, then smiled.

“Oh, no, no, turns out she’s not working tonight. I’m just making a new friend here, is all.”

“Well, we need to go talk to the victim, this Amy Taylor.”

Rizzo frowned. “She a dit-soon?”

“A what?” McQueen asked.

Rizzo shook his head. “Is she black?”

“No, cop told me Caucasian. Why?”

“Kid, I know you’re new here to Bensonhurst, so I’m gonna be patient. Anybody in this neighborhood named Amy Taylor is either a dit-soon or a yuppie pain-in-the-ass moved here from Boston to be an artist or a dancer or a Broadway star, and she can’t afford to live in Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights or across the river. This here neighborhood is all Italian, kid, everybody — cops, crooks, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Except for you, of course. You’re the exception. By the way, did I introduce you two? This here is the morning shift head nurse, Rosalie Mazzarino. Rosalie, say hello to my boy wonder partner, Mike Mick-fucking-Queen.”

The woman smiled and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Mike. And don’t believe a thing this guy tells you. Making new friends! I’ve known him since he was your age and chasing every nurse in the place.” She squinted at McQueen then and slipped a pair of glasses out of her hair and over her eyes. “How old are you — twelve?”

Mike laughed. “I’m twenty-eight.”

She twisted her mouth up and nodded her head in an approving manner. “And a third grade detective already? I’m impressed.”

Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, so was the mayor. This boy’s a genuine hero with the alma mater gals.”

“Okay, Joe, very good. Now, can we go see the victim?”

“You know, kid, I got a problem with that. I can tell you her whole story from right here. She’s from Boston, wants to be a star, and as soon as you lock up the guy raped her, she’s gonna bring a complaint against you ’cause you showed no respect for the poor shit, a victim of society and all. Why don’t you talk to her, I’ll go see the doctor and get the rape kit and the panties, and we’ll get out of here.”

McQueen shook his head. “Wrong crime, partner. No rape, some kind of sexual assault or abuse or whatever.”

“Go ahead, kid, talk to her. It’ll be good experience for you. Me and Rosalie’ll be in one of these linen closets when you get back. I did tell you she was the head nurse, right?”

McQueen walked away with her laughter in his ear. It was going to be a long night. Just like Joe had figured.

He checked the room number twice before entering. It was a small room with barely enough space for the two hospital beds it held. They were separated by a seriously despondent looking curtain. The one nearest the door was empty, the mattress exposed. In the dim lighting, McQueen could see the foot of the second bed. The outline of someone’s feet showed through the bedding. A faint and sterile yet vaguely unpleasant odor touched his nostrils. He waited a moment longer for his eyes to adjust to the low light, so soft after the harsh fluorescent glare of the hall. He glanced around for something to knock on to announce his presence. He settled on the footboard of the near bed and rapped gently on the cold metal.

“Hello?” he said softly. “Hello, Ms. Taylor?”

The covered feet stirred. He heard the low rustle of linens. He raised his voice a bit when he spoke again.

“Ms. Taylor? I’m Detective McQueen, police. May I see you for a moment?”

A light switched on, hidden by the curtain but near the head of the bed. McQueen stood and waited.

“Ms. Taylor? Hello?”

The voice was sleepy, possibly sedated. It was a gentle and clear voice, yet it held a tension, an edginess. McQueen imagined he had awoken her and now the memories were flooding through her, the reality of it: yes, it had actually happened, no, it hadn’t been a dream. He had seen it a thousand times: the burglarized, the beaten, the raped, robbed, shot, stabbed, pissed on whole lot of them. He had seen it.

“Detective? Did you say ‘detective’? Hello? I can’t see you.”

He stepped further into the room, slowly venturing past the curtain. Slow and steady, don’t move fast and remember to speak softly. Get her to relax, don’t freak her out.

Her beauty struck him immediately. She was sitting, propped on two pillows, the sheet raised and folded over her breasts. Her arms lay beside her on the bed, palms down, straight out. She appeared to be clinging to the bed, steadying herself against some unseen, not possible force. Her skin was almost translucent, a soft glow emanating from it. Her wide set eyes were like liquid sapphire, and they met and held his own. Her lips were full and rounded and sat perfectly under her straight, narrow nose, her face framed with shoulder-length black hair. She wore no makeup, and an ugly purple-yellow bruise marked her left temple and part of her cheekbone. Yet she was the most beautiful woman McQueen had ever seen.

After almost three years working the richest, most sophisticated square mile in the world, here, now, in this godforsaken corner of Brooklyn, he sees this woman. For a moment, he forgot why he had come.

“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked as he stood in her sight.

He blinked himself back and cleared his throat. He glanced down to the blank page of the notepad in his hand, just to steal an instant more before he had to speak.

“Yes, yes, Ms. Taylor. I’m Detective McQueen, six-two detective squad. I need to see you for a few minutes. If you don’t mind.”

She frowned, and he saw pain in her eyes. For an instant he thought his heart would break. He shook his head slightly What the hell? What the hell was this?

“I’ve already spoken to two or three police officers. I’ve already told them what happened.” Her eyes closed. “I’m very tired. My head hurts.” She opened her eyes and they were welled with tears. McQueen used all his willpower not to move to her, to cradle her head, to tell her it was okay, it was all over, he was here now.

“Yeah, yeah, I know that,” he said instead. “But my partner and I caught the case. We’ll be handling it. I need some information. Just a few minutes. The sooner we get started, the better chance we have of catching this guy.”

She seemed to think it over as she held his gaze. When she tried to blink the tears away, they spilled down onto her cheeks. She made no effort to brush them away. “All right,” was all she said.

McQueen felt his body relax, and he realized he had been holding himself so tightly that his back and shoulders ached. “May I sit down?” he asked softly.

“Yes, of course.”

He slid the too-large-for-the-room chair to the far side of the bed and sat with his back to the windows. He heard rain rattle against the panes and the sound chilled him and made him shiver. He found himself hoping she hadn’t noticed.

“I already know pretty much what happened. There’s no need to go over it all, really. I just have a few questions. Most of them are formalities, please don’t read anything into it. I just need to know certain things. For the reports. And to help us find this guy. Okay?”

She squeezed her eyes closed again and more tears escaped. She nodded yes to him and reopened her eyes. He couldn’t look away from them.

“This happened about 11, 11:10?”

“Yes, about.”

“You had gotten off the train at the 62nd Street subway station?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“What train is that?”

“The N.”

“Where were you going?”

“Home.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“My art class in Manhattan.”

McQueen looked up from his notes. Art class? Rizzo’s inane preamble resounded in his mind. He squinted at her and said, “You’re not originally from Boston, are you?”

For the first time she smiled slightly, and McQueen found it disproportionately endearing. “No, Connecticut. Do you think I sound like a Bostonian?”

He laughed. “No, no, not at all. Just something somebody said to me. Long story, pay no attention.”

She smiled again, and he could see it in her eyes that the facial movement had caused her some pain. “A lot of you Brooklynites think anyone from out of town sounds like they come from Boston.”

McQueen sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in mock indignation. “‘Brooklynite?’ You think I sound like a Brooklynite?”

“Sure do.”

“Well, Ms. Taylor, just so you know, I live in the city. Not Brooklyn.” He kept his voice light, singsong.

“Isn’t Brooklyn in the city?”

“Well, yeah, geographically. But the city is Manhattan. I was born on Long Island but I’ve lived in the city for fifteen years.”

“All right, then,” she said, with a pitched nod of her head.

McQueen tapped his pen on his notepad and looked at the ugly bruise on her temple. He dropped his gaze to the splinted, bandaged broken fingers of her right hand.

“How are you doing? I know you took a bad fall and had a real bad scare. But how are you doing?”

She seemed to tremble briefly, and he regretted having asked. But she met his gaze with her answer.

“I’ll be fine. Everything is superficial, except for the fingers, and they’ll heal. I’ll be fine.”

He nodded to show he believed her and that yes, of course, she was right, she would be fine. He wondered, though, if she really would be.

“Can you describe the man to me?”

“It happened very fast. I mean, it seemed to last for hours, but… but…”

McQueen leaned forward and spoke more softly so she would have to focus on the sound of his voice in order to hear, focus on hearing the words and not the memory at hand.

“Was he taller than you?”

“Yes.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five-eight.”

“And him?”

She thought for a moment. “Five-nine or — ten.”

“His hair?”

“Black. Long. Very dirty.” She looked down at the sheet and nervously picked at a loose thread. “It… It…”

McQueen leaned in closer, his knees against the side of the bed. He imagined what it would be like to touch her. “It what?” he asked gently.

“It smelled.” She looked up sharply with the near panic of a frightened deer in her eyes. She whispered, “His hair was so dirty, I could smell it.”

She started to sob. McQueen sat back in his chair.

He needed to find this man. Badly.

“I want to keep this one.”

McQueen started the engine and glanced down at his wristwatch as he spoke to Rizzo. It was 2 in the morning, and his eyes stung with the grit of someone who had been too long awake.

Rizzo shifted in the seat and adjusted his jacket. He settled in and turned to the younger detective.

“You what?” he asked absently.

“I want this one. I want to keep it. We can handle this case, Joe, and I want it.”

Rizzo shook his head and frowned. “Doesn’t work that way, kid. The morning shift catches and pokes around a little, does a rah-rah for the victim, and then turns the case to the day tour. You know that, that’s the way it is. Let’s get us back to the house and do the reports and grab a few Zs. We’ll pick up enough of our own work next day tour we pull. We don’t need to grab something ain’t our problem. Okay?”

McQueen stared out of the window into the falling rain on the dark street. He didn’t turn his head when he spoke.

“Joe, I’m telling you, I want this case. If you’re in, fine. If not, I go to the squad boss tomorrow and ask for the case and a partner to go with it.” Now he turned to face the older man and met his eyes. “Up to you, Joe. You tell me.”

Rizzo turned away and spoke into the windshield before him. He let his eyes watch McQueen’s watery reflection. “Pretty rough for a fuckin’ guy with three days under his belt.” He sighed and turned slowly before he spoke again.

“One of the cops in the ER told me this broad was a looker. So now I get extra work ’cause you got a hard-on?”

McQueen shook his head. “Joe, it’s not like that.”

Rizzo smiled. “Mike, you’re how old? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? It’s like that, all right, it’s always like that.”

“Not this time. And not me. It’s wrong for you to say that, Joe.”

At that, Rizzo laughed aloud. “Mike,” he said through a lingering chuckle, “there ain’t no wrong. And there ain’t no right. There just is that’s all.”

Now it was McQueen who laughed. “Who told you that, a guru?”

Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pockets and produced a battered and bent Chesterfield. “Sort of,” he said as he lit it. “My grandfather told me that. Do you know where I was born?”

McQueen, puzzled by the question, shook his head. “How would I know? Brooklyn?”

“Omaha-fuckin’-Nebraska, that’s where. My old man was a lifer in the Air Force stationed out there. Well, when I was nine years old he dropped dead. Me and my mother and big sister came back to Brooklyn to live with my grandparents. My grandfather was a first grade detective working Chinatown back then. The first night we was home, I broke down, crying to him about how wrong it was, my old man dying and all, how it wasn’t right and all like that. He got down on his knees and leaned right into my face. I still remember the smell of beer and garlic sauce on his breath. He leaned right in and said, ‘Kid, nothing is wrong. And nothing is right. It just is.’ I never forgot that. He was dead-on correct about that, I’ll tell you.”

McQueen drummed his fingers lightly on the wheel and scanned the mirrors. The street was empty. He pulled the Impala away from the curb and drove back toward the Belt Parkway. After they had entered the westbound lanes, Rizzo spoke again.

“Besides, Mike, this case won’t even stay with the squad. Rapes go to sex crimes and they get handled by the broads and the guys with the master’s degrees in fundamental and advanced bullshit. Can you imagine the bitch that Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug would pitch if they knew an insensitive prick like me was handling a rape?”

“Joe, Bella Abzug died about twenty years ago.”

Rizzo nodded. “Whatever. You get my point.”

“And I told you already, this isn’t a rape. A guy grabbed her, threatened her with a blade, and was yanking on his own chain while he held her there. No rape. Abuse and assault, tops.”

For the first time since they had worked together, McQueen heard a shadow of interest in Rizzo’s voice when the older man next spoke.

“Blade? Whackin’ off? Did the guy come?”

McQueen glanced over at his partner. “What?” he asked.

“Did the guy bust a nut, or not?”

McQueen squinted through the windshield: Had he thought to ask her that? No. No he hadn’t. It simply hadn’t occurred to him.

“Is that real important to this, Joe, or are you just making a case for your insensitive-prick status?”

Rizzo laughed out loud and expelled a gray cloud of cigarette smoke in the process. McQueen reached for the power button and cracked his window.

“No, no, kid, really, official request. Did this asshole come?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. Why?”

Rizzo laughed again. “Didn’t want to embarrass her on the first date, eh, Mike? Understandable, but totally unacceptable detective work.”

“Is this going somewhere, Joe?”

Rizzo nodded and smiled. “Yeah, it’s going toward granting your rude request that we keep this one. If I can catch a case I can clear up quick, I’ll always keep it. See, about four, five years ago we had some schmuck running around the precinct grabbing girls and forcing them into doorways and alleyways. Used a knife. He’d hold them there and beat off till the thing started to look like a stick of chop meat. One victim said she stared at a bank clock across the street the whole time to sort of distract herself from the intimacy of the situation, and she said the guy was hammering himself for twenty-five minutes. But he could never get the job done. Psychological, probably. Sort of a major failure at his crime of choice. Never hurt no one, physically, but one of his victims was only thirteen. She must be popping Prozac by the handful now somewheres. We caught the guy. Not me, but some guys from the squad. Turned out to be a strung-out junkie shitbag we all knew. Thing is, junkies don’t usually cross over into the sex stuff. No cash or H in it. I bet this is the same guy. He’d be long out by now. And except for the subway, it’s his footprint. We can clear this one, Mike. You and me. I’m gonna make you look like a star, first case. The mayor will be so proud of himself for grabbing that gold shield for you, he’ll probably make you the fuckin’ commissioner!”

Two days later, McQueen sat at his desk in the cramped detective squad room, gazing once again into the eyes of Amy Taylor. He cleared his voice before he spoke, and noticed the bruise at her temple had subsided a bit and that no attempt to cover it with makeup had been made.

“What I’d like to do is show you some photographs. I’d like you to take a look at some suspects and tell me if one of them is the perpetrator.”

Her eyes smiled at him as she spoke. “I’ve talked to about five police officers in the last few days, and you’re the first one to say ‘perpetrator.’”

He felt himself flush a little. “Well,” he said with a forced laugh, “it’s a fairly appropriate word for what we’re doing here.”

“Yes, it is. It’s just unsettling to hear it actually said. Does that make sense?”

He nodded. “I think I know what you mean.”

“Good,” she said with the pitched nod of her head that he suddenly realized he had been looking forward to seeing again. “I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. Do I look at the mug books now?”

This time McQueen’s laugh was genuine. “No, no, that’s your words now. We call it a photo array. I’ll show you eight photos of men roughly matching the description you gave me. You tell me if one of them is the right one.”

“All right, then.” She straightened herself in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. She cradled the broken right fingers in the long slender ones of her left hand. The gentleness made McQueen’s head swim with — what? — grief? — pity? He didn’t know.

When he came around to her side of the desk and spread out the color photos before her, he knew immediately. She looked up at him — and the sapphires swam in tears yet again. She turned back to the photos and lightly touched one.

“Him,” was all she said.

“You know,” Rizzo said, chewing on a hamburger as he spoke, “you can never overestimate the stupidity of these assholes.”

It was just after 9 on a Thursday night, and the two detectives sat in the Chevrolet and ate their meals. The car stood backed into a slot at the rear of the Burger King’s parking lot, nestled in the darkness between circles of glare from two lampposts. Three weeks had passed since the assault on Amy Taylor.

McQueen turned to his partner. “Which assholes we talking about here, Joe?” In the short time he had been working with Rizzo, McQueen had developed a grudging respect for the older man. What Rizzo appeared to lack in enthusiasm, he more than made up for in experience and with an ironic, grizzled sort of street smarts. McQueen had learned much from him and knew he was about to learn more.

“Criminals,” Rizzo continued. “Skells in general. This burglary call we just took reminded me of something. Old case I handled seven, eight years ago. Jewelry store got robbed, over on Thirteenth Avenue. Me and my partner, guy named Giacalone, go over there and see the victim. Old Sicilian lived in the neighborhood forever, salt-of-the-earth type. So me and Giacalone, we go all out for this guy. We even called for the fingerprint team, we were right on it. So we look around, talk to the guy, get the description of the perp and the gun used, and we tell the old guy to sit tight and wait for the fingerprint team to show up and we’ll be in touch in a couple of days. Well, the old man is so grateful, he walks us out to the car. Just as we’re about to pull away, the guy says, ‘You know, the guy that robbed me cased the joint first.’ Imagine that? — ‘cased the joint’ — Musta watched a lot of TV, this old guy. So I say to him, ‘What d’ya mean, cased the joint?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, two days ago the same guy came in to get his watch fixed. Left it with me and everything. Even filled out a receipt card with his name and address and phone number. Must have been just casing the place. Well, he sure fooled me.’”

Rizzo chuckled and bit into his burger. “So,” he continued through a full mouth, “old Giacalone puts the car back into park and he leans across me and says, ‘You still got that receipt slip?’ The old guy goes, ‘Yeah, but it must be all phony. He was just trying to get a look around.’ Well, me and Giacalone go back in and we get the slip. We cancel the print guys and drive out to Canarsie. Guess what? The asshole is home. We grab him and go get a warrant for the apartment. Gun, jewelry, and cash, bing-bang-boom. The guy cops to rob-three and does four-to-seven.”

Rizzo smiled broadly at McQueen. “His girlfriend lived in the precinct, and while he was visiting her, he figured he’d get his watch fixed. Then when he sees what a mark the old guy is, he has an inspiration! See? Assholes.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing,” McQueen said. “I haven’t run across too many geniuses working this job.”

Rizzo laughed and crumpled up the wrappings spread across his lap. “Amen,” he said.

They sat in silence, Rizzo smoking, McQueen watching the people and cars moving around the parking lot.

“Hey, Joe,” McQueen said after a while. “Your theory about this neighborhood is a little bit off base. For a place supposed to be all Italian, I notice a lot of Asians around. Not to mention the Russians.”

Rizzo waved a hand through his cigarette smoke. “Yeah, somebody’s got to wait the tables in the Chinese restaurants and drive car service. You still can’t throw a rock without hitting a fucking guinea.”

The Motorola crackled to life at McQueen’s side. It was dispatch directing them to call the Precinct via telephone. McQueen took his cell from his jacket pocket as Rizzo keyed the radio and gave a curt “Ten-four.”

McQueen placed the call and the desk put him through to the squad. A detective named Borrelli came on the line. McQueen listened. His eyes narrowed and, taking a pen from his shirt, he scribbled on the back of a newspaper. He hung up the phone and turned to Rizzo.

“We’ve got him,” he said softly.

Rizzo belched loudly. “Got who?”

McQueen leaned forward and started the engine. He switched on the headlights and pulled away. After three weeks in Bensonhurst, he no longer needed directions. He knew where he was going.

“Flain,” he said. “Peter Flain.”

Rizzo reached back, pulled on his shoulder belt, and buckled up. “Imagine that,” he said with a faint grin. “And here we was, just a minute ago, talking about assholes. Imagine that.”

McQueen drove hard and quickly toward Eighteenth Avenue. Traffic was light, and he carefully jumped a red signal at Bay Parkway and turned left onto 75th Street. He accelerated to Eighteenth Avenue and turned right.

As he drove, he reflected on the investigation that was now about to unfold.

It had been Rizzo who had gotten it started when he recalled the prior crimes with the same pattern. He had asked around the Precinct and someone remembered the name of the perp. Flain. Peter Flain.

The precinct computer had spit out his last known address in the Bronx and the parole officer assigned to the junkie ex-con. A call to the officer told them that Flain had been living in the Bronx for some years, serving out his parole without incident. He had been placed in a methadone program and was clean. Then, about three months ago, he disappeared. His parole officer checked around in the Bronx, but Flain had simply vanished. The officer put a violation on Flain’s parole and notified the state police, the New York Supreme Court, and NYPD headquarters. And that’s where it had ended, as far as he was concerned.

McQueen had printed a color print from the computer and assembled the photo array. Amy Taylor picked Flain’s face from it. Flain had returned to the Six-two Precinct.

Then Rizzo had really gone to work. He spent the better part of a four-to-midnight hitting every known junkie haunt in the precinct. He had made it known he wanted Flain. He had made it known that he would not be happy with any bar, poolroom, candy store, or after-hours joint that would harbor Flain and fail to give him up with a phone call to the squad.

And tonight, that call had been made.

McQueen swung the Chevy into the curb, killing the lights as the car rolled to a slow stop. Three storefronts down, just off the corner of 69th Street, the faded fluorescent of the Keyboard Bar shone in the night. He twisted the key to shut off the engine. As he reached for the door handle and was about to pull it open, he felt the firm, tight grasp of Rizzo’s large hand on his right shoulder. He turned to face him.

Rizzo’s face held no sign of emotion. When he spoke, it was in a low, conversational tone. McQueen had never heard the older man enunciate more clearly. “Kid,” Rizzo began, “I know you like this girl. And I know you took her out to dinner last week. Now, we both know you shouldn’t even be working this collar since you been seeing the victim socially. I been working with you for three weeks now, and you’re a good cop. But this here is the first bit of real shit we had to do. Let me handle it. Don’t be stupid. We pinch him and read him the rights and off he goes.” Rizzo paused and let his dark brown eyes run over McQueen’s face. When they returned to the cold blue of McQueen’s own eyes, they bored in.

“Right?” Rizzo asked.

McQueen nodded. “Just one thing, Joe.”

Rizzo let his hand slide gently off McQueen’s shoulder.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ll process it. I’ll walk him through central booking. I’ll do the paperwork. Just do me one favor.”

“What?” Rizzo repeated.

“I don’t know any Brooklyn ADAs. I need you to talk to the ADA writing tonight. I want this to go hard. Two top counts, D felonies. Assault two and sexual abuse one. I don’t want this prick copping to an A misdemeanor assault or some bullshit E felony. Okay?”

Rizzo smiled, and McQueen became aware of the tension that had been hidden in the older man’s face only as he saw it melt away. “Sure, kid,” he nodded. “I’ll go down there myself and cash in a favor. No problem.” He pushed his face in the direction of the bar and said, “Now, let’s go get him.”

Rizzo walked in first and went directly to the bar. McQueen hung back near the door, his back angled to the bare barroom wall. His eyes adjusted to the dimness of the large room and he scanned the half-dozen drinkers scattered along its length. He noticed two empty barstools with drinks and money and cigarettes spread before them on the worn Formica surface. At least two people were in the place somewhere, but not visible. He glanced over at Joe Rizzo.

Rizzo stood silently, his forearms resting on the bar. The bartender, a man of about sixty, was slowly walking toward him.

“Hello, Andrew,” McQueen heard Rizzo say. “How the hell you been?” McQueen watched as the two men, out of earshot of the others, whispered briefly to one another. McQueen noticed the start of nervous stirrings as the drinkers came to realize that something was suddenly different here. He saw a small envelope drop to the floor at the feet of one man.

Rizzo stepped away from the bar and came back to McQueen.

He smiled. “This joint is so crooked, old Andrew over there would give up Jesus Christ Himself to keep me away from here.” With a flick of his index finger, Rizzo indicated the men’s room at the very rear in the left corner.

“Our boy’s in there. Ain’t feeling too chipper this evening, according to Andrew. Flain’s back on the junk, hard. He’s been sucking down Cokes all night. Andrew says he’s been in there for twenty minutes.”

McQueen looked at the distant door. “Must have nodded off.”

Rizzo twisted his lips. “Or he read Andrew like a book and climbed out the fucking window. Lets us go see.”

Rizzo started toward the men’s room, unbuttoning his coat with his left hand as he walked. McQueen suddenly became aware of the weight of the 9mm Glock automatic belted to his own right hip. His groin broke into a sudden sweat as he realized he couldn’t remember having chambered a round before leaving his apartment for work. He unbuttoned his coat and followed his partner.

The men’s room was small. A urinal hung on the wall to their left, brimming with dark urine and blackened cigarette butts. A cracked mirror hung above a blue-green stained sink. The metallic rattle of a worn, useless ventilation fan clamored. The stench of disinfectant surrendered to — what? — vomit? Yes, vomit.

The single stall stood against the wall before them. The door was closed. Feet showed beneath it.

McQueen reached for his Glock and watched as Rizzo slipped an ancient-looking Colt revolver from under his oat.

Then Rizzo leaned his weight back, his shoulder brushing against McQueen’s chest, and heaved a heavy foot at the stress point of the stall door. He threw his weight behind it, and as the door flew inward, he stepped deftly aside, at the same time gently shoving McQueen the other way. The door crashed against the stall occupant and Rizzo rushed forward, holding the bouncing door back with one hand, pointing the Colt with the other.

Peter Flain sat motionless on the toilet. His pants and underwear lay crumpled around his ankles. His legs were spread wide, pale and varicosed, and capped by bony knees. His head hung forward onto his chest, still. McQueen’s eyes fell on the man’s greasy black hair. Flain’s dirty gray shirt was covered with a brown, foamy, blood-streaked vomit. More blood, dark and thick, ran from his nostrils and pooled in the crook of his chin. His fists were clenched.

Rizzo leaned forward and, carefully avoiding the fluids, lay two fingers across the jugular.

He stood erect and holstered his gun. He turned to McQueen.

Morte,” he said. “The prick died on us!”

McQueen looked away from Rizzo and back to Flain. He tried to feel what he felt, but couldn’t. “Well,” he said, just to hear his own voice.

Rizzo let the door swing closed on the sight of Flain. He turned to McQueen with sudden anger on his face. “You know what this means?” he said.

McQueen watched as the door swung slowly back open. He looked at Flain, but spoke to Rizzo.

“It means he’s dead. It’s over.”

Rizzo shook his head angrily. “No, no, that’s not what it fucking means. It means no conviction. No guilty plea. It means, ‘Investigation abated by death’! That’s what it means.”

McQueen shook his head. “So?” he asked. “So what?”

Rizzo frowned and leaned back against the tiled wall. Some of the anger left him. “So what?” he said, now more sad than angry. “I’ll tell you ‘so what.’ Without a conviction or a plea, we don’t clear this case. We don’t clear this case, we don’t get credit for it. We don’t clear this case, we did all this shit for nothing. Fucker would have died tonight anyway, with or without us bustin’ our asses to find him.”

They stood in silence for a moment. Then, suddenly, Rizzo brightened. He turned to McQueen with a sly grin, and when he spoke, he did so in a softer tone.

“Unless,” he said, “unless we start to get smart.”

In six years on the job, McQueen had been present in other places, at other times, with other cops, when one of them had said, “Unless…” with just such a grin. He felt his facial muscles begin to tighten.

“What, Joe? Unless what?”

“Unless when we got here, came in the john, this guy was still alive. In acute respiratory distress. Pukin’ on himself. Scared, real scared ’cause he knew this was the final over-dose. And we, well, we tried to help, but we ain’t doctors, right? So he knows he’s gonna die and he says to us, ‘I’m sorry.’ And we say, ‘What, Pete, sorry about what?’ And he says, ‘I’m sorry about that girl, that last pretty girl, in the subway. I shouldn’ta done that.’ And I say to him, ‘Done what, Pete, what’d you do?’ And he says, ‘I did like I did before, with the others, with the knife.’ And then, just like that, he drops dead!”

McQueen wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not following this, Joe. How does that change anything?”

Rizzo leaned closer to McQueen. “It changes everything,” he whispered, holding his thumb to his fingers and shaking his hand, palm up, at McQueen’s face. “Don’t you get it? It’s a deathbed confession, rock-solid evidence, even admissible in court. Bang — case closed! And we’re the ones who closed it. Don’t you see? It’s fucking beautiful.”

McQueen looked back at the grotesque body of the dead junkie. He felt bile rising in his throat, and he swallowed it down.

He shook his head slowly, his eyes still on the corpse.

“Jesus, Joe,” he said, the bile searing at his throat. “Jesus Christ, Joe, that’s not right. We can’t do that. That’s just fucking wrong!”

Rizzo reddened, the anger suddenly coming back to him.

“Kid,” he said, “don’t make me say you owe me. Don’t make me say it. I took this case on for you, remember?”

But it was not the way McQueen remembered it. He looked into the older man’s eyes.

“Jesus, Joe,” he said.

Rizzo shook his head, “Jesus got nothin’ to do with it.”

“It’s wrong, Joe,” McQueen said, even as his ears flushed red with the realization of what they were about to do. “It’s just wrong.”

Rizzo leaned in close, speaking more softly, directly into McQueen’s ear. The sound of people approaching the men’s room forced an urgency into his voice. McQueen felt the warmth of Rizzo’s breath touching him.

“I tole you this, kid. I already tole you this. There is no right. There is no wrong.” He turned and looked down at the hideous corpse. “There just is.”

Eating Italian by Luciano Guerriero

Red Hook

Buoy bells in Buttermilk Channel gave DeGraw and Mintz lazy company as they started their waterfront stroll at India Wharf off Summit Street. Even as late as 3 in the morning, the constant hum of vehicles entering the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel off the Gowanus Expressway lent the bells a pleasant harmony.

The nightly foot patrols these cops made through the labyrinth of freight containers and warehouses were keeping Wild Willy’s crew — Red Hook’s Mafia bad boys — from molesting the busiest stretch of freight piers left in the big city. Every year, the derricks at the water’s edge offloaded 120,000 containers of cocoa, coffee, salt, pumice, and all sorts of other goods — especially those of the electronic variety — that became catnip to thugs looking to take their taste of things.

There was pressure for DeGraw and Mintz to look the other way, a lot in the way of temptation thrown at them. But they resisted the escalating bribe offers, even arrested some of Wild Willy’s tougher customers, and this patch of waterfront got so quiet on the overnight shift that the dynamic duo started hating the isolation, felt cursed by their own success. With nothing much to do, even the night watchmen of the local freight hauling companies left them alone, retreating to some dim office somewhere to play poker.

DeGraw tried to get the duty changed so that at least some of the other overnight cops could split patrol time in the waterfront area, but Mintz followed him in to the brass and argued against it, the son of a bitch.

DeGraw couldn’t understand being blocked by a partner who went behind his back. It bugged him. But then, for their two years together, Mintz was always a strange partner. He was a bundle of quirks and nerves and had a bad habit of busting balls just a little too often. Sometimes it made DeGraw question where Mintz’s head and heart were.

Ultimately, though, DeGraw decided that Mintz was just a strange guy — one who sometimes played dumb so he could shirk some duty, sure, but one who wouldn’t sell you short when it really counted. He believed that for all his faults, Mintz was a decent enough cop, clearly not a gung ho type but a guy who’d stood up during some heavy-duty moments they’d faced together. DeGraw figured he could do worse for a partner.

And maybe Mintz had been right to fight for the water-front patrol. The piers even began to grow on them when they realized that the duty was cake. In fact, the precinct commander was so happy to reap the glory for their accomplishments that they were given latitude to freelance with no brass looking over their shoulders, a rare privilege for cops in uniform. Long as they got back to Red Hook Park when they were supposed to patrol it, the duty sarge let them do as they pleased. Wasn’t the first time what started as a crap assignment turned out to be okay.

They were so isolated as they made their way from India Wharf south across Commercial Wharf and onto Clinton Wharf, tugging on all the locked warehouse doors, looking down all the alleys and between the big metal containers, that they’d taken to eating their lunch on the Clinton pier head near the railroad yard, under one of the big red derricks. If the weather was right, it was actually a pretty peaceful spot, except for the occasional turf war that broke out between armies of river rats.

On a clear night, the partners could see Lady Liberty standing vigil on the Jersey side of upper New York Bay, but on this balmy mid-September night, rain was forecast. Taking lunch, DeGraw and Mintz could hardly see Governor’s Island across the Buttermilk because a fog was starting to blanket the water where the upper bay became the East River.

Mintz dropped the last piece of crust from his meatball Parmesan hero and it didn’t bob on the undulating black water for even five seconds before some unseen creature snatched it under.

Probably a striped bass, DeGraw figured.

“Prob’ly a striper,” Mintz said.

Still trying to drown the breakup of his marriage, DeGraw’s lunch consisted of four bottles of tepid beer and eight cigarettes. Draining the last bottle, he flipped the empty into the water and let go a satisfying belch.

After a still moment spent staring at the water, they stood up on the pier, unzipped, and started peeing into the brine — another nightly ritual.

“Actually got plenty of time, you know,” Mintz said.

“Might as well finish up early,” DeGraw said, “go back and get the park done.”

“What’s this job do to your mind, Frankie?” Mintz said. “I mean, we’re out here foiling the bad guys all the time, we gotta imagine how these skells think, don’t we? Gotta do something to the way we think, don’t it?”

“Nah, we thought like this to begin with,” DeGraw said, peeing on and on. “Some of us, if we don’t put on a uniform, we end up doing exactly what the skells do.”

“You sayin’ I have a criminal mentality?”

“We look at these buildings and containers and we see what the criminals see. God help me, Lou, but if we’re not wearin’ these uni’s, you and me are in there even before Wild Willy’s guys, taking shit outa here and fencin’ it. I do believe that’s true.”

“I sold fireworks when I was a kid,” Mintz said. “Made myself fat green while the other guys got pinched. Guess I got a talent for puttin’ the other guy ’tween me and danger.”

“Criminal mentality,” DeGraw said. “I boosted cars, sold nickel bags. Then we lied on the police interview, another dishonesty. Face it, pal. Takes one to know one.”

“Guess that’s true, with, uh…” Mintz said, “with that other stuff you do.”

DeGraw almost came back at Mintz for making mention of his outside activities. As far as DeGraw knew, Mintz was the only one on the force who was aware that he sold illegal guns, and DeGraw had made it understood that the touchy subject was to be off limits. DeGraw kept it all fairly well hidden, but unnecessary talk could put him in jeopardy. Still, DeGraw thought better of scolding Mintz, because it would have required him to talk about it.

They let go the last drops of pee in silence, shook themselves, and zipped up.

“… ’Cuz we’re two friggin’ corrupt sons a bitches…” Mintz muttered as they made their usual way out toward Ferris and Wolcott, checking doors and alleys as they went. “… And remember, whatever I learned about crime I learned from you, Frank. So if all that’s in our bones, why do we play it straight? Why don’t we go, you know, like they say in the movies, to the dark side?”

“Don’t know about you,” DeGraw said, “but I don’t wanna get too fat on the ill-gotten gains, ’cuz ya never know when that feast’ll be over, and then yer fucked. Keepin’ it more or less clean, maybe I don’t eat so good but at least I eat in peace.”

Then DeGraw stopped short. In the dim diffuse light, the hand on the sidewalk at the head of the alley didn’t look real. The yellow skin with black splotches looked like painted latex, but the ragged end of the wrist gave it away; it trailed strands of sinew and a small ooze of blood. Accepting the possibility that the hand was real, DeGraw waved Mintz over and started to go queasy.

Mintz didn’t say a word, his mouth agape at the sight of the hand.

“Who’s goin’ in?” DeGraw whispered, using his chin to point down the alley.

Mintz put a hand to his belly and backed away a step, stammering, “But, but I… I can’t… I… I…”

DeGraw signaled for Mintz to stand watch as he turned and gazed into the alley’s murk. They both drew their 9mm Glock handguns, dangled them at their sides, clicked off the safeties.

Stepping into the alley, DeGraw slid a big Maglite from his belt and clicked it on. He still couldn’t glimpse the length of the alley. Not much more than a small mountain of stacked garbage was to be seen from the sidewalk, so he moved to it, peeked around it, and crept forward, all while Mintz stayed put.

When Mintz said, “Careful,” DeGraw jumped because he thought Mintz was warning of an attacker. He lost his grip on the flashlight and it clattered to the ground. Stifling his impulse to go back and pummel Mintz, DeGraw stooped to retrieve the Maglite. Light rays glinting off something ten feet hence caught his eye. Then the bulb blew out and the alley fell into blackness again.

Rather than retreat, DeGraw went to where he’d seen the red flash, stooped, and opened his eyes as wide as he could. He noticed wetness on the cement. Squatting, DeGraw could smell the distinct odor of blood. Then he made out objects in the center of the blood puddle. Setting his feet close to it, he hunched over and went down to one knee, feeling blood soak into his pants. Squinting until he knew what he was looking at, he saw a scrotum, and about a foot away from that, a severed penis.

Mintz, agonizing, broke the silence again, “Whatcha got?”

“Fuckin’ set of balls and a mutilated thingy,” DeGraw said with more calm than his heart commanded.

“Friggin’ Christ,” Mintz moaned. “Are you shittin’ me?”

There’s an extremely unhappy man in Brooklyn tonight, DeGraw thought as he stood, found the wall with his shoulder, and crept further down the alley, gun out front. He knew he was walking through more blood, soon coming to a severed human arm without a hand, and eventually to a torso that was missing the sex organs, one arm, and its head. He noticed that the head had been propped on a barrel against the opposite wall, eyes open like it was viewing the scene.

His heart trying to pound its way out of his chest, DeGraw wanted to run. But he filled his lungs to the brim and exhaled out loud, forcing himself to do his job, make observations. The victim seemed to be a male Caucasian, late twenties/early thirties, minus the aforementioned body parts.

DeGraw lit a cigarette and then held the lighter in front of the victim’s vaguely familiar face. It was bloody, mouth twisted in what had to be either the victim’s final agony or some kind of sick last laugh.

Holding the lighter up, he could see nobody else in the alley, which ended at a solid wall. He scanned up the sides of both buildings and could see no one on a rooftop, so he turned back to the sidewalk, away from the victim and toward Mintz.

Emerging from the alley, gun holstered, DeGraw remained silent because he wanted to make Mintz ask, just to bust nuts a little bit.

“Well?” Mintz said.

“Well what?”

“What’d you find?… Jesus Christ, Frank.”

“Call it in. Rest of the guy’s down there, in pieces.”

As Mintz pulled his radio, DeGraw walked over to a puddle, patting at his pockets. “Gimme some gloves, Louie.” DeGraw took one last drag from his cigarette and flicked it away. Then he slipped on the surgical gloves Mintz handed him, lifted a soggy wallet, and flipped it open. Mintz held his Maglite on it, peering over DeGraw’s shoulder.

As if DeGraw needed another shock right at that moment, he saw the driver’s license photo of a man he was now sure he recognized.

“Hold that call,” DeGraw said, and then looked over at Mintz. “Know who we got here? None other than William Montemarano.”

“Wild Willy?” Mintz said. “And they left him here?… Why, Frank?”

“’Cuz we put him outa business for good, I guess,” DeGraw said. “Aw, fuck, and I never knew before this second, but this guy’s the scumbag who goes out with my ex.”

“Wait, Sandra? How the hell’s Sandy go out with a Mafioso like Wild Willy?”

“I don’t think she knew he was the same guy. I sure didn’t To me, he’s just Bill-some-Italian-guy, Bill the guy who owned a tow truck company. We never ran into him down here anyway, just his crew, so I didn’t know what he looked like. Did you?”

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Mintz said. “She serious about this guy?”

“Fuck,” DeGraw said, face going dark as the full extent of the situation dawned on him. “Whole time together, I never laid a hand on my wife she didn’t want me to…”

“What?” Mintz said, not quite following the train of thought.

“You know, I just spanked her and stuff like that, but…”

“Frank, I don’t wanna know about… Why you talkin’ about yer sex life?”

“Was just a game,” DeGraw said. “Never, and I mean never did I raise my hand to Sandy in anger.”

“Fine. But what’s that gotta do with Wild Willy in pieces in the alley here?”

“Once, Lou, one time only, I hit Sandy. Big argument, she was slammin’ me with a telephone ’cuz I wouldn’t let her make a call to this mutt, this new boyfriend.”

“Who turns out to be Wild Willy, but okay, what does you hittin’ Sandy…?”

“I wasn’t even outa the house yet and she’s whorin’ herself with this guy. I’m givin’ her shit about it, and she’s really pummelin’ me in the chest. Which is fine, but then she clips me in the face and I just react, on reflex. I cuff her one on the chin and she goes down in a heap like I’d really hauled off, which, you know, I absolutely did not do.”

“Okay, got it, stormy freakin’ romance,” Mintz said. “But…”

“I shouldna had those beers at lunch.”

“Wait a minute,” Mintz said. “Yer makin’ turns here…”

“I just had four frickin’ beers, dunce, and six before we started the shift.”

“So what, there’s nobody around,” Mintz said. “Yer not makin’ sense.”

“If we call this in, they’ll around. They find out I know the victim, they’re gonna sit me down for questions, and I don’t want no beer on my breath, okay?”

“All right, but we gotta call this in,” Mintz said. “We’ll get ya some mints when we go back. And yer not drunk anyway, so what da fuck ’er ya talkin’ about?”

“Listen,” DeGraw said, grabbing Mintz by the arms. “One time I was violent with my wife over the guy, and another time… I threatened this guy’s life.” Mintz’s jaw went slack again as DeGraw continued, pointing each word, “He was smackin’ her around, so I threatened him in front of half my friggin’ neighborhood in Gravesend. They all heard me threaten to cut Wild Willy’s balls off if he hit Sandy again in front of the baby.”

“Whoa,” Mintz said, breathing heavier. “When did this happen?”

“Couple weeks ago, Labor Day. I stopped in to see the baby. So I’m inside, and everybody’s outside drinkin’, and then he and she start to argue over something, I don’t know what, and things fly outa hand. So I go out, and he’s manhandlin’ her, and all of a sudden I’m handin’ the kid off and steppin’ in. Big friggin’ scene, right in the street.”

“And you don’t tell me this weeks ago?”

“Fuck you,” DeGraw said. “You gossip way too much.”

“And I just heard twelve too many details for one night, so shut the fuck up.”

DeGraw poked a finger at Mintz’s chest. “You and me, we gotta get on the same page here, or this thing’s gonna get nasty.”

“Oh, it’s already nasty,” Mintz said, half-laughing with a hysterical little whoop. DeGraw recognized it as Mintz’s nervous habit when he felt he was in over his head.

“I need ya, Lou. I ain’t sittin’ in a cell for somethin’ I had nuttina do with.”

“Hold on, just hold on and tell me something,” Mintz said, mustering his courage, taking a breath and squaring himself in front of DeGraw. “Did you ice this guy?… No, no, no, don’t tell me, please don’t tell me, I don’t want to know…”

“You fuckin’ hump,” DeGraw said, grabbing his hat from his head and swiping a meaty paw across his face and through his hair. “I mean, you really think…”

“It’s a proper question,” Mintz said, trying to beat back another whoop. “And if you can’t handle it comin’ from me, how you gonna do when they sit you down?”

DeGraw let his body go slack. He needed Mintz to be as cool as possible, for moral support at the very least, and maybe more than that. “Awright, listen, Mintzy. Everybody knows the world’s a little better now that this guy stopped breathin’. Cripes, I’d like to be able to say that I did do this guy. But it just so happens that I did no ice this muthuh. And now my footprints are down there in his friggin’ blood okay?”

“Oh shit.”

“Oh shit is right,” DeGraw said. “What am I gonna do with all this?”

“Wow, I don’t know, Frank. What do ya think?”

“Look, my footprints are down there. You think maybe you could walk down there too and put your footprints all over? Then we could maybe say you were the one who went down and not me, I stayed out here.”

“Geez,” Mintz said, trying not to hyperventilate. “You want me to say I’m the one who found him?”

“Now that I think about it,” DeGraw said, “there might be a lot of footprints down there, how you gonna step into all the ones that are mine?”

“Exactly.”

“And second, I already got his blood on my shoes, in my pants, and who knows where else. When somebody tells a detective how I threatened Willy on Labor Day, I’m an instant suspect. And when they test this uniform for Willy’s blood, I am screwed.”

“But I can still vouch for ya, Frank,” Mintz said. “We were together all night.”

“Which makes you a secondary suspect.”

“Well, then fuck it, the only thing I can do is read you your rights,” Mintz said, whooping as he removed handcuffs from their belt holster. “You are under arrest.”

“Just cut it out, all right?” DeGraw said as Mintz laughed. “You know, I hate it when you enjoy my predicaments.”

“Somebody’s gotta lighten this mood, Frank, ’cuz lemme tell ya, this mood sucks.”

DeGraw leaned back on the wall and eyed the bloody hand on the sidewalk, taking out cigarettes. He put one in his mouth, gave Mintz one, then lit them both.

“Awright, face it, yer screwed anyway,” Mintz said, fighting for control. “They gonna find out what you said to Wild Willy on Labor Day, so ya gotta figure goin’ in they’re gonna take a good hard look at you, at least as a formality. Holy shit, yer fucked.”

“Do me a favor and stop laughin’, ya prick.”

“Just nerves, Frank. You know I get this way. Don’t be mad at me.”

“It makes me frickin’ nuts, so stop it, okay? What am I gonna do here?”

“What do you mean, do?” Mintz said. “We gotta call this in.”

“I don’t know, is that true?”

Mintz contemplated his meaning for a second. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute…”

DeGraw said, “Where are we?”

Mintz didn’t understand the question. “Red Hook.”

“Red Hook waterfront,” DeGraw said, like he was leading an idiot. “And what are those? Those things right over there, and all over here?”

“Metal drums.”

“Some rusted, with holes in ’em. And over there we got cinderblocks.”

“Oh no,” Mintz said. “Oh God, no, no, no.”

“Why not?”

“But, but, but, but…”

“But give me one reason.”

“How ’bout it’s against the LAW goddamnit!” Mintz said.

“We are cops,” DeGraw replied. “We’re on the right side of the law, my friend.”

“But you’re not guilty,” Mintz whined. “What would you be coverin’ up for?”

“Bear with me,” DeGraw said. “It’s clear this blood is fresh, and we’ve been together all night. So if I get jammed up for this, you do too, right? So, since you got a stake here, I say the freakin’ Mafia dumps so many bodies out there in the Buttermilk you can practically walk across to Governor’s Island — and don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. So let’s just pick up the pieces of Wild Willy, stuff ’em all in a barrel with cinderblocks, walk it out to the pier head there — and finish the frickin’ job.”

“Jesus,” Mintz said, gulping air and whooping again. DeGraw was speaking in earnest, but kept his tone even.

“What would be left to find? Blood? It’s gonna rain the rest of the night and tomorrow too. Guaranteed there’s no blood to notice between these two warehouses when the sun comes up. Then it’s a missing-person case at most and chances are it never goes beyond that.”

“Interesting theory,” Mintz said. “You willin’ to stake your career on that?”

“I’m willin’ to stake my freedom on that, and nobody would hate jail more than me, Louie. And we might as well face another fact while we’re at it — this thing ain’t no coincidence It’s aimed right at me.”

“Oh sure, like the world revolves around you,” Mintz said. “How ya figure?”

“The wallet. They wanted this guy found and identified.” Mintz began to pace back and forth while DeGraw held up the warehouse with his back and thought out loud. “I think chances are excellent that somebody, maybe some twisted individual right in Gravesend, who maybe witnessed me threaten this guy with murder and mutilation…”

“Not necessarily in that order,” Mintz said.

“And maybe that sick individual has one huge case of the hots for Sandy, which could be the key here…”

“She is pretty hot, if you don’t mind me sayin’, Frank.”

DeGraw went on, “And maybe he got in his mind that if he conks this Willy guy on the head, cuts him up and puts him exactly where he knew I’d be tonight, he can run with the opportunity I myself inadvertently provided on friggin’ Labor Day.”

“Wait, you’re sayin’ all this happens because the guy wants a shot at Sandy?”

“Smart move, ain’t it? With means, motive, and opportunity, the heat is right on me. I could go away for a long time off this or maybe even end up on Death Row.”

“I apologize for puttin’ it this way,” Mintz said, “but you yourself said many times in the past coupla years that a guy ain’t gotta murder nobody to get in Sandy’s pants. You call that woman a slut all the time. So who better than you would know that all it takes is a coupla seven-and-sevens and you’re in like Flynn.”

“I divorced her, didn’t I? How do you know she drinks seven-and-sevens?”

“You told me once, a long time ago. Anyway, so okay, so who needs to commit a murder and pin it on you to get a piece of yer ex-wife?”

New emotions began creasing DeGraw’s face. “’Tween you an’ me — my son don’t even look like me. I hate to say it. It kills me. But I can’t shake this feeling.”

“Stop it, stop it right now,” Mintz said. “The kid looks just like you and that’s that. If not exactly, then close enough. So put it all right outa yer head.”

DeGraw reined in his feelings and pushed on, “All right, I’ll give you another motive, Louie. We been doin’ too good a job around here, breakin’ up Wild Willy’s gravy train. Face it, they might even like Wild Willy, but if his corpse means they can get back to the way they were haulin’ hot shit outa here, Willy is dead. Or maybe they’re pissed off for some unrelated reason and want Willy out of the picture. So off of that alone, partner, maybe some enterprising mob wanna-be sees a chance to take Willy out and pin it on the very cops screwed things up on the waterfront, so he takes a shot.”

“Much as I hate to admit it,” Mintz said, “that one makes a certain sense. With both Willy and us gone, things go back to normal… But can we really do this?”

“Come on, partner,” DeGraw said, taking another pair of surgical gloves from Mintz’s pocket. “Nobody here. All we do is introduce what’s left of Mr. Wild Willy to the depths of the East River, where the little fishies will enjoy eating Italian once again. Then we’re home free: no murder, no suspects, no change on the Red Hook waterfront.”

“God help me,” Mintz answered, closing his eyes and trying to force a swallow through a dry throat, “but I just can’t do this. It’s too risky.”

Deflated, DeGraw slumped back against the building. “Okay, man. I understand.”

“Look, Frank, I’m sorry, but I just…”

“It’s okay, partner. I’ll handle it… how I handle it. Why don’t you just call it in.”

Mintz lifted the radio and hesitated, fingering the broadcast key without activating the call. “Wait a minute, what am I thinking? We have to do this.”

“No we don’t,” DeGraw said. “I’ll handle it.”

“No you won’t. You’re right about what they’ll do. They’ll investigate you.”

“Right,” DeGraw said, noticing that Mintz was calmer now.

“And you know, they might not find that you iced ol’ Willy, but if they nose around into your activities, they’re bound to find out about the boosted guns, don’t ya think?”

“That’s not for you, that’s for me to worry about. How many times do I…”

“I’m sorry for bringin’ it up, Frank, but you could end up stuck with gun charges off of Wild Willy bein’ found dead here, so we gotta do what you suggest, right? We gotta dump Willy in the channel. Just promise me, Frank, if this goes wrong, you’ll step up and protect me.”

“I got yer back from now till the tomb, partner,” DeGraw replied, slipping the gloves onto Mintz’s hands.

“Faster we’re outa here, better I’ll feel,” Mintz said. “Let’s go.”

Stomachs in knots, they collected all the parts of Wild Willy — including the Mafioso’s wallet — and packed them into a rusted barrel, which they topped off with cinderblocks. Then DeGraw used the side of his Glock to tamp down the metal tabs on the barrel lid until it was secure, and they rolled the barrel to the end of the pier where, without ceremony, they sent the creatures of Buttermilk Channel fresh Italian to eat.

This took longer than they expected. They were late, so they trotted out from the warehouses, heading along Wolcott, making a left on Richards, and sauntering into Red Hook Park.

A sector car was waiting for them.

Nico Dounis, a Greek patrol sergeant everybody called Nicky Donuts, got out of the car when they approached. “Don’t nobody answer the radio no more?”

Mintz looked down at his belt and found the radio turned off. “Shit, sarge, I guess I accidentally turned it off.”

“You two have a brawl?” Dounis asked.

“No,” DeGraw said. “Why?”

“You’re all sweaty.”

“Don’t know what yer talkin’ about, sarge,” Mintz said. “Not sweaty at all.”

“Climbing around the warehouses,” DeGraw said.

“Humid out tonight,” Mintz added. “Uh, horseplay, you know, boys’ll be boys.”

DeGraw recognized three too many excuses when he heard them.

Dounis did too. “Okay, what’s goin’ on?”

DeGraw could see Mintz’s mind go into overdrive, a panicky thought making its way toward the lips, so he took Mintz’s arm and turned him away, stepping forward himself to answer. “Little argument, that’s all. Nothin’, really. He don’t know a guy’s still got feelings for his ex-wife even if they get divorced, so I had to straighten him out.”

Dounis studied DeGraw through squinted eyes, but he stifled an urge to pursue it.

“Hey, it’s late,” Mintz said. “We should walk the park.”

“I walked it myself,” Dounis said. “It’s done.”

“But we’re not that late, are we, sarge?” Mintz asked, and again DeGraw wanted to pound him into unconsciousness, but resisted the urge.

“Forty-five minutes I’m callin’, and I got no word on the radio,” Dounis said. “What’s that on your knee, Frank?”

They all looked down and saw the purplish-red splotch visible even on DeGraw’s navy blue pant leg.

“Oil, I guess,” DeGraw said. “I knelt down to tie my shoe.”

“I ain’t no dope and I don’t appreciate bein’ treated like one,” Dounis said. “Yer late, ya don’t answer the radio, yer all disheveled like ya been fightin’, ya smell like a frickin’ brewery, and ya got blood on yer pants. Don’t tell me that’s oil, ’cuz I know the difference.”

The two patrolmen were stunned. Mintz was ready to speak again but DeGraw spoke first: “Yer absolutely right, sarge. We were negligent. We had a few beers at lunch and lost track of time. Then he insults my ex and I had to straighten him out. Only he don’t show proper respect, so we scuffled a little bit. I took a head butt to the nose and bled, after which I knelt in it when I went down to tie my shoe.”

DeGraw and Mintz waited a tense second while Dounis processed the new information.

“Over here,” Dounis said, walking Mintz about twenty feet away.

Much as he tried, DeGraw couldn’t make out what they were talking about.

Dounis then returned to DeGraw while Mintz stayed behind.

“Turn away from Mintz,” Dounis said, and DeGraw obeyed. “Exactly where was it you two went at each other?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” DeGraw answered. “What the hell did we ever do to you?”

“Where was it you bled? I need to know exact.”

“I don’t know, one of the piers.”

“The piers is your whole patrol, asshole. Which one?”

“How’m I s’posed to know? They all look alike. Like Greeks.”

“After two years, you know those piers like they was yer own pecker.”

“Somewhere around the railroad yard, I’m guessing. Can’t be sure, sarge.”

“That’s not what Mintz said.”

“What d’ya want from me? One of us is right and the other forgot. No big deal.”

“I gotta do somethin’ about this, don’t I?” Dounis said.

“Yer bein’ a hardass, Nicky Donuts. What’s wrong?” DeGraw said. “I never crossed you, not even once.”

Dounis turned to Mintz and said, “Don’t come over here and don’t you two talk to each other.” Then Dounis sat in the cruiser and made a call to the precinct while DeGraw and Mintz could only stare at each other, reading worry on each other’s faces.

When, within a minute, five police cruisers came tearing to that corner of Red Hook Park, Dounis had DeGraw and Mintz taken into custody.

Unfortunately for DeGraw, the forecast was wrong. It never rained that night. Wild Willy’s blood stayed on the pavement and was collected by the crime scene unit.

By noon, DeGraw had spent hours in an interrogation room at the 76th Precinct, where he was interviewed by Catucci and Bourne, two homicide detectives, and Gonzalez, an ADA who’d been summoned from the Brooklyn homicide bureau. Cho and Santos, of Internal Affairs, also watched through the two-way mirror.

To show good faith, DeGraw had waived the “forty-eight-hour rule,” which gives a policeman accused of a crime the chance to arrange for representation without having to answer questions. But he had invoked his right to have his Policemen’s Benevolent Association representative present, so Ken Stanley sat off in a corner.

Not hearing a radio check from DeGraw and Mintz, Dounis had sent other officers onto the piers to look for them. When they arrived, unnoticed in the thickening fog, they watched DeGraw and Mintz pack Wild Willy into the barrel with the cinderblocks and then roll it into the drink.

What was worse, DeGraw soon found out, was the fact that Mintz had turned on him under the pressure of the questioning and was offering his full cooperation against DeGraw in return for a clean walk — which he was granted. It left DeGraw dumfounded.

“But how?” DeGraw asked. “How can he say I did the friggin’ murder? I was with him the whole time, and I swear, we didn’t kill the guy, we just dumped him.”

“’Cuz you were scared you’d be a suspect,” Bourne said, and DeGraw nodded.

“Not a bad story, but not good enough,” Gonzalez said. “Mintz told us everything. And they just raised the barrel, so I got a slam-dunk case against you. Do yourself a favor, pal, cop to a plea and I’ll cut you the best deal I can.”

“Be smart, Frank,” Bourne said. “Wait for your lawyer before you cut any deals.”

DeGraw hung his head and wondered how it all could have gone so wrong so fast.

At that same moment, Lou Mintz was a free man, cruising the streets of Brooklyn in his brand new Lincoln Navigator while singing off-key to a Dean Martin CD.

He hung a right on Bay Parkway and stopped on the corner of Cropsey Avenue, half-dancing his way into Bensonhurst Park. His feet felt like they were barely denting the grass as he approached two men sitting on a bench. One was an older gentleman named Bonfiglio, although Mintz knew him only as Big Fig.

“Nice new car, huh?” Bonfiglio said. “Pretty flashy.”

“That’s my new baby,” Mintz said. “Ride’s like a dream.”

Bonfiglio reached into his inner blazer pocket as Mintz sat next to him, then stuffed a bulging envelope into a copy of the New York Post and placed it on the wooden bench slats. Mintz picked it up and held the newspaper open while thumbing through a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills.

“Count it if you want,” Bonfiglio said.

Mintz sat back, putting the newspaper down again. “Looks about right.”

“Suit y’self, but later, when you do count it,” Bonfiglio said, “you’ll find more than we bargained for, just to show how appreciative I can be for a job well done.”

“’Preciate that,” Mintz said, and leaned forward to look at the other man. “Ya get the same appreciation, Nico?”

“More,” Nicky Donuts replied. “I got more.”

“Why him and not me?” Mintz said to Bonfiglio.

“He set it up,” Bonfiglio answered.

“But I did all the work,” Mintz said. “And damn good work it was.”

“Management always takes less risk and gets a bigger cut,” Dounis said. “Ain’t you hip to that yet?”

Bonfiglio laughed. “God rest him, but Willy never knew that, and now look.”

“Shit, I still gotta testify,” Mintz said. “Hardly seems fair that I get less.”

“Don’t worry, kid,” Bonfiglio said. “Cashflow won’t be no problem once we’re back to business in Red Hook. You’ll get everything what’s comin’ to ya.”

“Know what? I believe ya,” Mintz said, sashaying back toward his Navigator with the Post and envelope clenched under his arm. “Have yerselves a great day, gents.”

Five minutes later, Mintz turned off Shore Parkway onto Bay 17th Street, parked in the driveway of a quaint little white clapboard house, and went in through a side door. Without a word, he went upstairs to a bedroom.

Entering, Mintz tossed the Post and envelope onto the bed. Sandy turned away from the bureau and folded herself into Mintz’s arms.

“Went off without a hitch,” Mintz said, nuzzling her neck.

Mintz, the neurotic weasel who’d shy away from a dicey situation and whine about the danger, was now gone. Sandy gasped as this new Mintz balled her hair in his fist, tilted her head back, and took the front of her throat in his teeth. Then he trailed his tongue to her ear and took the lobe between his lips, all while she rubbed up against him.

“I can’t get enough of you,” she said, and when he moaned, she added, “Shush, the baby’s down for a nap.”

“I won’t wake him up,” Mintz whispered, leading her into the baby’s room. Watching the ten-month-old sleep, Mintz couldn’t help but smile.

“Looks just like his old man,” Sandy whispered.

Mintz beamed, patted the kid’s foot, and led her out of the room.

In the hall, Mintz kissed her and said, “Dress up nice and call the sitter, I’m takin’ us out tonight, special celebration.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Where?”

“Carmine’s, Italian place in the city,” Mintz said. “Food is absolutely to die for.”

Back at Bensonhurst Park, Dounis and Bonfiglio were still enjoying the high sun and the salt air that was wafting in off Gravesend Bay.

“The case against DeGraw?” Bonfiglio said.

“As much of a sure thing you can have against a cop,” Dounis said.

“Even with just the word of the guys you sent in there?”

“They watched the whole thing,” Dounis said. “Their testimony is all we need.”

“I don’t like the attitude on this Mintz,” Bonfiglio said. “The cocky ones like that, they’re trouble.”

“And spreading money around? This flashy car all of a sudden?” Dounis said. “Fuckin’ idiot don’t even know he’s forcin’ us ta be responsible here. And it’s too fuckin’ bad, I don’t care if he did do us a good job last night. He’s now officially dangerous.”

“Okay, so since we don’t need him for the case,” Bonfiglio asked, “where’s he gonna be tonight?”

“He told me he’s eatin’ at Carmine’s. Upper West Side.”

“Shall I let him have his meal first, or make sure they do him on the way in?”

“Mintzy’s a good kid,” Dounis replied. “Let him eat, drink his wine.”

“You old softy,” Bonfiglio said, laughing. Dounis didn’t laugh.

“When it might be my time,” Dounis said, “I hope I get the same consideration.”

“Cripes, yer goin’ all emotional in your old age,” Bonfiglio said.

“Guess I am.”

“It’s kinda sweet.”

“He did good work for us, Fig, helped us get Red Hook back. Give the kid his last meal, I happen to know he loves eatin’ Italian.”

“Hell, who don’t?”

They both nodded and thought of their favorite Italian dishes.

That night at the 76th, DeGraw still hadn’t been arraigned or made bail, but he didn’t have to stay cooped in a cell. Instead, the detectives gave him the professional courtesy of letting him wait it out in the relative comfort of an interrogation room. They even brought him pizza from Mario’s Place down the block, just the way he liked it: piping hot Sicilian slices with extra mozzarella cheese and spicy Italian sausage. Much as it pleased DeGraw’s palate, it still left him with indigestion.

After a sweaty hump and a few hours’ nap on DeGraw’s ex-bed, the babysitter came over and Mintz drove Sandy to Carmine’s Restaurant, Broadway between 90th and 91st Streets on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The large upper room was crowded and festive, as usual. People flocked to this place that prepared such sumptuous Southern Italian fare and served it in great, heaping platters. Folks didn’t just grab a bite at Carmine’s place, they ate big and left feeling like they’d participated in an event.

Mintz fingered the wad of hundreds in his pocket and ordered up more bottles of Carmine’s best Montepulciano D’Abruzzo to go with the seafood antipasto that was as large and fulfilling as most normal meals. He and Sandy swooned over practically every sip of the red wine in between bites of the calamari, baked clams, baccala, whiting, muscles, bay scallops, and butterfly shrimp, the tangy red sauce sopped up with fresh homemade garlic bread.

A middle-aged gent at the next table couldn’t help but notice them. “Excuse me, but it’s my first time here and it’s great to see you two look like you’re enjoying yourselves. That food as good as it looks?”

“Better,” Mintz said. “You eatin’ alone?”

“Uh, well, blind date,” the professorial gent said. “Internet kind of thing. I guess either something went wrong or she got cold feet.”

“Tough stuff, buddy,” Mintz said. “Might as well go ahead and order. This shit’s too good not to eat once yer here.”

The gent shrugged and nodded with a sad smile.

“Fuck ’er,” Sandy added. “She don’t know what she’s missin’, does she? Might as well enjoy your evenin’.”

“I’d invite you to join us,” Mintz said, “but this is kind of a special occasion, and, well, you understand.”

“Oh, by all means,” the tweedy gent said. “Enjoy your meal.”

He thanked them with a nod when Mintz had the waiter put a glass of their Montepulciano on his table and then raised the glass in a silent toast.

After that, while the gent ate alone, he took sidelong glances to see Mintz and Sandy happily tucking into entrees of Lasagna Bolognese, Fettuccini Alfredo, penne in olive oil with broccoli, gnocchi, bragiole, veal Parmesan.

The gent was amazed when Mintz and Sandy ordered dessert: espresso, tiramisu, spumoni, and chocolate-covered mini-cannoli. Then they topped it all off with large snifters of Sambuca Romana, a sweet anise-tasting Italian liqueur sipped with three coffee beans floating in it.

They had of course ordered far more food than they’d consumed, and had the leftovers wrapped to take home with them, good Italian food always tasting even better the next day. The containers filled two shopping bags, which Mintz carried in one hand as they rose to take their leave. He turned to say goodnight to the gent, but the guy wasn’t at the table and Mintz couldn’t remember seeing him go.

The cool night air made their bodies glow with the alcohol and the great food, as Mintz and Sandy sauntered back around the corner toward where the new Navigator was parked. Just when the world seemed like a perfectly lovely place and Sandy hooked her hand around Mintz’s arm, the gent stepped out from behind a van, raised the gun with a silencer attached, and began pumping shots into them.

Head-shot, Sandy was dead before she hit the sidewalk. Unable to grab his off-duty gun and already hit in the chest, all Mintz could do was swing the shopping bags at the gent, who raised his free arm to fend them off. The bags burst open and the containers rained great food all over the sidewalk.

When Mintz also fell dead, the gent plucked a piece of penne from the shoulder of his cashmere overcoat and popped it into his mouth. Then he pocketed the handgun and walked away.

Within seconds, a big black stray mutt happened upon the bodies of Mintz and Sandy and straightaway began to enjoy the best Italian meal he’d ever had, although truth be told, he really didn’t care much for the broccoli.

Thursday by Kenji Jasper

Bedford-Stuyvesant

There’re a lot of ways to deal with what “The Stuy” doles out. Some drink. Some get high. Some beat the shit out of the spouse within closest reach. But me, I fuck. This is not to say that I do not engage in the act of making love. Nor is it to imply that I’m one of those dudes who suffers from that meeting-in-the-ladies’-room catch phrase known as emotional unavailability. I just know that when you’re bending her legs back as far as they go, aiming a stiff rod toward the uterus while her head indents the drywall, as your sweat lines the valley that runs from between her shoulder blades to the crack of her ass, that it cannot be considered an act of intimacy

They like it because what I have to give isn’t as watered down as what they get at home, the sum of what’s left after their men’s hard days at bullshit 9-to-5s. I don’t care if she leaves traces of my semen on her kids’ cheeks. I don’t care if she picks up another ten pounds from eating Doritos and watching Divorce Court. I only ask that she leave before I start caring.

“You got any more of that tea?” Jenna asks.

She’s the only one I’ve ever let stay, because I love her, or at least I used to, until she left me for another dude after she caught me in a three with Sarah and Dahlia, these two bi-broads I’d met at The Five Spot the night of one of my little book things. They were in the mood for dick and I had one, not to mention a dub of weed and a queen-size mattress with fresh sheets.

Jenna didn’t live with me but she had keys, the unavoidable side effect of my dislike for feminine whines and complaints. Nothing gets to me more, not even the inevitable loss of privacy that comes with giving someone carte blanche access to your home. One night she started missing me just as I wasn’t missing Dahlia’s g-spot, with Sarah adding a little tongue to the mix.

I can’t even say that I remember their faces, only a fleshy set of buttocks and thick nipples harder than granite. One Cuban, one Jewish, and both light on their feet when Jenna started swinging the antique coat rack.

My friends in other boroughs don’t believe me when I tell them stories like this one. They dismiss them as something like the fodder passed off as correspondence in the pages of Penthouse Letters But they don’t live in The Stuy. They don’t understand that anything out here is possible as long as you believe it is, a crisscross grid of blocks and corners waiting to be remade just the way you want them, as long as you got juice, dough, or even better, both.

I’m a writer, if you haven’t figured it out yet. The words are the way I live, except when the freelance checks come late, or sometimes not at all. Then I’m left to the mercy of the streets, and a pile of manuscript I’ll probably never sell. But this isn’t about writing, this is about money, money on a Thursday, and how I ended up with it. The “what” I needed it for comes six graphs away from this one.

Flakes of jasmine in the metal ball you drop into boiling water. Add exactly three tablespoons of honey and let it steep. This is what makes Jenna happy. She comes to see me whenever her man’s away, or when there happens to be a hole in my busy schedule, which is rather often. By the time I get the cup back to the bedroom, she’s already clasping the bra behind her lovely back.

“It’s gonna take a second for this shit to cool,” I say as she takes the cup. Her skin is the color of coal and without a single blemish. Narrow shoulders and torso spread into wide hips and delicious quads that could choke a small animal. I still love her, even though she ain’t mine no more.

“I might have to take it with me,” she says, tucking the cranberry blouse into jeans of the deepest blue. “I got people in the chair all day.”

Of all the women to fall in love with, I had to pick a braider. Twelve-hour days and one Saturday a month off. Her man sees less of her than I do, even though he works at the home where they now live, three blocks over on Marcy and Jefferson.

If you have to know, I stay on Halsey and Bedford, though everyone will say it’s Hancock and Nostrand, where the more famous author happens to live. We’re both the same age and from the same town, and yet we’ve never been in the same place at the same time. But perhaps that’s a good thing. I read his last book and would be really tempted to hurt his feelings if he happened to ask me for a critique.

“He wants to take me to Brazil next month” she says, after sucking the hot liquid down to half. Her tongue has always been made of fire-retardant foam.

She says this only to make me jealous, knowing that I hate when she goes away, not to mention with him. It is my punishment for that night two years ago. I can have her body for the rest of eternity, but someone else will always hold the title to her soul.

“I’m sure he wants to do a lot of things,” I say. “But that kinda trip costs the kinda cake he has to save up for a year for.”

She zips her bag and wraps the butter-smooth leather I bought her around the blouse, and then smiles. She knows something that I don’t.

“He doesn’t have to save anything. He put his tax return in a nine-month CD at seven percent. He’s gonna cash it in on Monday.” And after that bit of data she departs, down the three flights of stairs to the inner door, followed by the outer, and then to the street.

She still knows the tender spots, especially in the after-glow. Brazil was the only place she’d ever wanted to go that she hadn’t made it to yet. I’d sold a big article and used the check to get us advance tickets and a good hotel. I couldn’t even get a refund because she backed out too close to the departure date.

And now she is going with Mr. Right, a four-inch one-minute man who a few of my homegirls have sampled over the years, all less than impressed. She is doing it just to spite me. Jenna does everything just to spite me.

She has no intention of going on that trip in those weeks ahead. If that’s what she wants, she never would’ve told me about it. She knows how determined I am. And she knows that even though I write, I am also a man of action when it comes to handling my business. So she also has to know that there’s no way in hell I’m going to let her roll anywhere below the equator with that clown. I’ll have this sewn up by the end of the day, no problem.

“Twenty-three-hundred, forty-seven, ninety-six,” Winston utters, his eyes never leaving the calculator on his computer screen. “You want me to book it now?”

The Bogart Travel Agency is a custom-made 2000-megahertz computer system hacked into the DSL substation box at Fulton and Classon. In other words, Bradley siphons all his business and info from the big travel agency up the street. It’s nothing personal. They just happen to have what he needs for this season’s hustle. Come December he’ll be into something else, somewhere else.

I’ve got about six yards in my stash box over at Carver Bank, which is far from enough. Winston doesn’t have a layaway plan, nor does he accept bad checks. And his price is the best I’ll ever see on such short notice.

Winston’s almost forty years old and he still lives in the house he was born in, not far from the room he’s renting to accomodate his bootleg travel setup. Lewis and Madison used to be a whole lot worse than it is, which just means that you no longer need someone to cover you with a pistol every time you get the mail. He always talks about moving back to Guyana with his grandma, even though she’s on oxygen and hasn’t left the house for years.

“How long can you hold the fare?” I ask.

“End of the day, max,” he replies, his eyes now locked on Judge Hatchett’s new hairdo, which means it’s after 11 and I need to get moving.

“So that’s 5 p.m., right?”

“It’s actually 6 in the travel biz.”

“Then I’ll be here at 5:55.”

“White people got ahold of everything now,” Shango Alafia tells me between bites of french toast at the Doctor’s Cave, this little hole on Marcy where I take a meal every once in a while. Shango’s there every day though, mainly to eye Jean, the dreadlocked and beautiful better half of Tim, who prepares all of the meals he loves so much. Shango also happens to be Winston’s brother-in-law and third cousin twice removed. But that’s an entirely different story.

“I put in the best bid on that pair of brownstones down on Greene. Had the shit locked for like three days, and then eight hours before the cutoff some whiteboy coalition comes in and chops my head off.”

“Hey, real estate’s a cutthroat business,” I say. The frown on his face softens into a smile. He knows something I do not.

“You’re right. That’s actually why I called you down here.”

Shango and I never use land lines, cells, or even e-mail. If he needs to see me, the right corner of the front page of my Daily News will be missing. If it’s a little piece, I’ll find him at the gym over on Kingston. If it’s a lot, he’s over at Jean’s.

Shango’s sort of like my agent in this maze of a neighborhood, and has been ever since I moved here five years ago. He helped me out with a certain situation, involving certain people that you don’t need to know about, or at least not in the context of this particular tale.

“So what’s the deal?” I ask him.

“Reuben’s got a problem,” he says, dabbing his lips with one of the moist towelettes he carries everywhere he goes.

Reuben Goren owns a nice piece of Fulton Street, mostly storefronts that have been in the family for almost two generations. Needless to say, any problem he has is likely to be an expensive one.

“What kind of problem?”

“Yardies want that corner building he’s got on Fulton and Nostrand, you know the one with the optician and the furniture store up top?”

“I see it every time I go to the train,” I say. “So what, they’ve got him under pressure?”

“You could say that. But more importantly, they’ve got us under contract.”

“Under contract to do what?”

“A little FYI.”

“FYI?”

“We need to let him know they’re not fuckin’ around.”

“And let me guess, he wants me to come up with a plan.”

“Plan and execution.”

“For how much?”

“Five.”

“That’s a little low, isn’t it?” I say, knowing that it’s more than I need. Greed is the most deadly of all sins.

“It’s more than what you need for those Brazil tickets,” he says, signaling Jean for coffee just so she can show him her behind while she pours.

“Always ahead of my game, huh?”

“I gotta be to take fifteen percent.” My brain calculates options at the speed of light. Then my compass points me north. “I already took my fee out of the number by the way.”

“Figured as much,” I nod, still pensive. Then it comes to me. “I’m gonna need to see Sam.”

Shango smiles again. “I told him you’d be there in thirty minutes.”

“You know anybody that needs four .45s with no firing pins?” Sam asks, twenty-three minutes later.

He’s a barber by trade. But he picked up a few other skills during the early nineties, when that nappy ’fro trend kept a lot of his usual cake out-of-pocket. On the table before him are four lines of coke and a plate of short ribs. He snorts and chews in twenty-second intervals, using the nostril that isn’t outlined with crusted blood.

“I might,” I say, the most strategic answer to give.

The rear of Sam’s Shears is the local arsenal. You come to him for both offense and defense, for gaining ground and covering your ass. For pistols, rifles, hollow-tips, and even explosives, he’s the undisputed motherfuckin’ man, and the key element to my equation on this particular Thursday.

“But what I need,” I continue, “is something that blows. Compact with high impact.”

“What for?”

“It’s on a need-to-know basis, my friend,” I say with the wave of a finger. “Besides, curious cats end up in the carry-out.”

“You make any money from that writing shit?” he asks, just before doing another line, his gray t-shirt now smeared with barbecue sauce and pork grease.

“Sometimes,” I say.

“What about the rest of the time?”

“I do this. But look, Sam, I’m kinda on a schedule. Can you get me what I need?”

“Already got it. It’s right there under the blanket.” I remove the fabric to reveal a half-liter nitro glycerin charge with a twelve-second trigger. He makes them for a third of what seasoned pros might charge. A half-liter is a little much, but it’ll have to do.

“Did I hit the nail on the head?” he asks.

“More like a fly with a hammer. But I’ll take what I can get.”

Sam and I don’t deal in cash. Favors are our particular currency. So while such equipment would easily go for five figures on the Stuy market, I’ll take it off his hands for no money down, as long as I get him what he wants.

“You know, there’s only one cruiser in each precinct with a shotgun?” he asks, as if making small talk. But I know what’s next. I’m finally one step ahead of somebody.

“Nabors,” I begin. “He’s the dayshift patrolman for the Marcy projects. Pump-action Mossberg with a wood-grain slide. Takes a large curry chicken for lunch at 4:55 every day. Corner of Fulton and Nostrand.”

“Right across the street from the optician and the furniture store.”

“What a coincidence,” I grin. “That’s what you want?” He nods. For some reason the coke makes him subdued instead of hyper. He doesn’t want the gun to sell, but for something more inventive. Perhaps one of his clients would enjoy the irony of killing the officer with his own weapon.

“Yup, that’s it.”

“I’ll send my man by for the hardware,” I say on my way out. “And pencil me in for a shape-up tomorrow at 4.” Arsenal or not, Sam gives the best cuts in The Stuy.

“I miss jail,” Brownie tells me from the beanbag recliner by the window. He did six months in Otisville for intent-to-distribute before they gave him time served for rolling over on some whiteboys, one of whom, Brownie had discovered, was fucking his girl.

He is the clinical definition of a sociopath, a man who has raped and killed, six feet and 295 pounds of evil that just happens to deal the best weed in the neighborhood. Thus, I allow him into my home from time to time, for as long as the high lasts.

“What do you mean, you miss jail?” I ask, pulling on what that remains of the once-ample spliff. He is called Brownie because of his fudge-colored face. His real name can only be found on the lips of his elderly mother or on the rap sheet longer than my bedspread, or duvet, as Jenna describes it.

“A nigga like me needs some discipline,” he says. “I realize that now. In there they told me what to be and where to go. Kept me in a cage and made me follow the rules. Out here I just get into shit. Out here I’m a fuse ready to blow.”

Sam used to be married to Brownie’s older sister, but that was before she divorced him and moved back to Panama. Sam had apparently been tapping some high school girl. But Brownie and Sam are still like brothers. The local arsenal even had a chrome Desert Eagle with a filed serial number waiting for him the minute he got out of the clink.

“You sound like you’re itchin’ to get knocked,” I say, swigging bottled water to wash away the taste of smoke. “What you gonna do? Go out and fuck up on purpose?”

Instead of answering, he climbs to his feet and goes over to one of the windows to look down at the street.

“That’s the only thing I hate about the inside,” he grins. “You never get windows this big.”

“You don’t get to leave either. You don’t get to see your kids. You don’t—”

“Fuck my kids!” he explodes, turning to me. “Neither of them bitches won’t even let me see’em no how, unless I got some cash. Besides, it ain’t like I’m even close to bein’ a good daddy. I’m a street-nigga man. That’s the only shit I know.”

On any other day there might be a speech for me to offer, something about him not needing to go back to jail to find the happiness he seeks. It would be this existential rant about how what he does isn’t wrong, that he only does what God wants him to do. I would say it all with conviction just so he’d have that thirty-dollar bag for me every other Thursday. But I’m trying to cut down. And besides, I need him to play a part in my plan.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” he says.

“If you were gonna get yourself knocked, how would you do it?”

He turns to me with a pensive look, like a child trying to solve a Sajak puzzle.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I been thinkin’ about it though. Why? You got an idea or sumpin’?”

I connect four just as he ends the question.

“I might,” I say.

“Where you goin’ with all that food?” Miel Rodriguez asks me, her bedroom eyes narrowed to slits outside of the Splash and Suds on the corner of Nostrand and Halsey. I am carrying two large bags of food from Yummy’s carry-out, a half-gallon of shrimp fried rice, three small wanton soups, four egg rolls, and a six-pack of grape soda.

Miel would dig me if I was all about the Benjamins, or if I drove an Escalade with twenty-two-inch rims like the one she’s seated in, compliments of her man of the moment. But I’m a writer, and she doesn’t read. So we only flirt every now and again. I wouldn’t mind getting my lips on those D-cups of hers. But intuition tells me that Jenna could outfuck her any day of the week.

Miel is beautiful though, with those dark brown eyes and golden flesh, long Indian hair shiny with oil sheen. The man of the minute is a lucky one, if he can hold on to what he’s got.

“I got some people in town,” I tell her.

“From where?” she asks.

“Atlanta,” I say. “I went to school there.”

“Oh,” she replies, interested in nothing beyond the five boroughs. Twenty-three years old and she suffers from the worst ailment of them all, Hoodvision, that inability to see past the blocks where she was born.

Behind the front seats are two different shopping bags, each topped off with a folded knit sweater. Beneath one is her current man’s stash of product, the other, his take for the week, to be dropped off at an undisclosed location at the end of the day. Heroin has been in short supply since the DEA raid on Jefferson a few days ago. Her boy was suspiciously the only one to make it out before the siege.

It’s not that I don’t know his name. I just choose not to use it. He’s an X-factor in the day’s proceedings, perhaps a catalyst, perhaps a not-so-innocent bystander. We’ll know soon enough.

“How come you never try and talk to me?” she asks, offering a sexy smile, her slight overbite gleaming in the sunrays from above.

“I’m talking to you right now.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she says.

“What about your man?” I ask.

“His days are numbered,” she says.

“What’s he doing in the laundromat anyway?”

“Droppin’ off his clothes. We gotta come back and pick’em up at 5.”

I glance at the bags in the rear again and know that Miel is carrying. There’s no other way this guy would leave her alone in the ride for this long. I see him starting out of the building and know it’s my cue.

“Well, lemme get this food, home girl. I’ll see you around.” I start away, knowing she’ll do anything to have the last word.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she says, just as her boy hits the sidewalk.”

“I know,” I yell back, picking up the pace. It’s almost 3:00. I have to move quickly.

The Le Starving Artist Café has barely been built, but there are already rats living in the basement. Not the disease-carrying rodents that infest the city, but four motherfuckers who I have a score to settle with. They are two sets of brothers, Trevor and Neville of Gates Avenue by way of St. Kitts, and Steve and Stacy of Harlem by way of grandparents that moved there from the Carolinas in the 1940s.

Weeks ago they took a stab at looting my crib while I was away at a speaking gig. They jimmied the front doors and came right up the stairs to the cheap wood my landlord assumed would keep out thieves. He was wrong. They made off with some DVDs and my 100-disc changer, ignoring the original Basquiat and twin lamps from Tiffany’s.

Tesa Forsythe saw them from across the street and told me about it. Now the time has come to make things right.

They live in the basement beneath this café. Blankets and space heaters have kept them alive since the autumn chill began. Various hustles keep them fed and functioning. But what’s money worth when there’s no product close by? And the prices in Crown Heights are already through the roof.

“Good lookin’ out,” Stacy yells, draped in the same Pittsburgh jersey he’s been wearing since Monday. They’re all short on costumes since most of the dough vanishes into the good veins they have left.

Food won’t make their jonesing any easier. But it’ll give them more energy, which they’ll be needing shortly. They immediately tear into what I’ve offered.

“Anything I can do for my peoples,” I say. The “peoples” part is not fully untrue since we all used to play ball together in the summer, before they started sniffing and shooting, before the Internet crash that killed their entrepreneurial dreams. But that’s another story. Seems like everybody in The Stuy has a story.

“Besides, I know y’all sufferin’ right now.”

“What you talkin’ about!” Trevor demands, pulling a sleeve down over the arm he punctures most often.

“It ain’t like he don’t know,” Neville argues between mouthfuls of shrimp fried rice. “The man looks like he got somethin’ to say.”

“Only if you want to hear me,” I reply, watching them tear into the food.

“We want to hear you,” Steve assures me as he slurps his soup. The warm liquid returns the yellow to his fair skin.

“You need powder and I need money,” I say. “Somebody’s got both less than a block from here.”

“Who?” Trevor demands.

“I can’t say. But I can say what he drives. ’03 Escalade. Twenty-two-inch rims. Two shopping bags in the backseat. He’s picking up his laundry at 5. Just him and his girl.”

“How do you know?” Neville asks.

“I know the girl,” I say. “And she says this dude’s days are numbered, if you know what I mean.”

They all look at each other, some trembling with the shakes, others shivering from the chills. Like most addicts, they don’t think things through. They just react, moths drawn to the proverbial flame.

“But we ain’t got no heat,” Stacy laments. “I mean, we can’t just run up on the car with nothin’. You know he’s gonna be strapped.”

“Yeah, and ain’t no way to get four gats in a hour and a half.”

I clear my throat. “I might be able to help you there.”

It is a quarter to 5 when I get the urge for something to drink. It happens every once in a while during Texas Justice and today is no different. But for some reason I’m also in the mood for yoga. So I grab the carrying case for my mat on the way out the door, but forget the mat itself.

Both sides of Nostrand are packed with beings headed in every rush-houred direction. From their trains to their homes, from those homes to stores for the ingredients to make meals in time for the best that TV has to offer. Kids of all ages journey from one block to the next to bond with friends and more-than-friends alike.

I see patrolman Nabors enter the Golden Krust carry-out at the corner. I see Miel Rodriguez and her man pull up to the laundromat between Halsey and Macon. I see a gypsy cab slow to a halt in front of Reuben Goren’s precious storefront. Then it all unfolds.

Brownie emerges from the cab’s rear with a half-liter nitro glycerin charge. He kicks a hole in one of the storefront windows and tosses it in. The boom all but deafens everyone in a four-block radius and coats the entire street in shattered glass. The blast knocks Brownie to the ground, but he gets up quick-ly and begins to run down Fulton Street and into patrolman Nabors’s field of vision, knocking over a grandma and a pack of teenage moms with an endless supply of strollered kids.

Officer Nabors IDs the perpetrator and calls for backup, dropping his large container of curry chicken to the ground as he begins to chase the man on foot. Fulton Street, or at least the people on it who are not still climbing up from the explosion, cheer both men on as the chase moves westward.

I then turn around to see four armed men surrounding the Escalade that’s just pulled up in front of the laundromat, their .45 pistols trained on the driver and passenger. Moments later they are chased off by the loaded weapons of those inside of the vehicle.

The thieves are shocked to find that the pistols they’d gotten on loan from a man called Sam were without firing pins. They should’ve known better though, especially since the quartet stiffed the very same man for a pair of Glocks the previous summer, having sprayed him with mace before making a run for it with the merchandise. Addicts don’t think. They just react.

Backup units arrive to aid Nabors, and some splinter off to chase the armed men fleeing from the laundromat. But none of the blue boys notice that the driver’s-side window on Nabors’s squad car is down. Nor do they see the young writer reach through the opening to commandeer the Mossberg shotgun in the holster next to the shifter. The writer slides the weapon into a nylon sleeve normally used for his yoga mat and slings it over his shoulder before disappearing into the local Bravo supermarket for a bottle of Snapple Peach Iced Tea. People see him, but they are not the kind to snitch to the authorities.

Brownie is tackled, clubbed, stomped, kicked, and then arrested by several white officers who don’t have the brains to make it in any other profession. Trevor and Steve take one for the team as they too are apprehended by officers with few other career options.

Twenty minutes later the fire department is taming the blaze. Three men are on their way to Brooklyn central booking and the young writer is on his way back down Nostrand to his residence, having never earned as much as a glance from the authorities during the entire mêlée.

Sam has his Mossberg by 5:35 p.m. Shango has my money fifteen minutes later. Reuben Goren has a concussion and a cake of shit in his pants. And by five to the hour, Winston will be handing me my tickets.

I am smiling on the inside as I turn onto Madison, anticipating the surprise I’ll find on Jenna’s dark and lovely face. It’s the last house on the left at the end of the block. She lives with a thirty-eight-year-old man who still rents. Tsk tsk.

But then I notice the taxicab in front of the rented residence they share, the place she moved into to remind me of my past transgressions. Perhaps he’s heading into the city to buy some testicles, or maybe a rug for that hairline that keeps going back. Then I see that he’s carrying bags. And she’s right behind him, holding what appears to be a pair of plane tickets.

That’s when I know that the trip to Brazil begins today. The whole “next month” thing was a screen of smoke to throw me off. She knows me so well. She still knows how to make me suffer.

Another rock rolled up that long steep hill, another show of cunning and strength, before I stumble and fall, bouncing all the way back to the beginning. Jenna and I are the only loop I can’t escape, the only checkmate that always evades me. She is like the sound Coltrane chased in his dreams, never to be had, never to be held, never to be won, in a season of games that lasts forever.

One more for the road by Robert Knightly

Greenpoint

Officer David Lodge stumbles when he attempts to enter the blue and white patrol car triple-parked in front of the 94th Precinct, dropping first to one knee, then to the seat of his pants. His nightstick, which he forgot to remove from the ring attached to his belt, is the most immediate cause of his fall. When it jammed between the door and the frame, Lodge had one leg in the vehicle with the other just coming up. From that point, there was nowhere to go but down.

Lodge ignores the guffaws of his colleagues, the eleven other cops of the midnight-to-eight tour, the adrenalin pumping as they mount up to ride out to patrol their assigned sectors. For a moment, as he struggles to gather himself, he stares at a full moon hanging over Meserole Avenue. He wonders if the moon’s bloated appearance is due to the brown haze and drenching humidity trapped in the atmosphere. Or if it’s just that his eyes won’t focus because he passed the hours prior to his tour at the local cop bar, the B & G, just a few doors down from the precinct. Lodge has reached that stage of inebriation characterized by powerful emotions and he stares at the moon as if prepared to cradle it in his arms, to embrace a truth he is certain it embodies.

“Yo, spaceman, you comin’ or what?”

The voice belongs to Lodge’s partner, Dante Russo. Lodge works his way to his feet, then yanks his nightstick free before getting into the car. He is about to address his partner, to offer a halfhearted apology, when the radio crackles to life.

“Nine-four George, K?”

Russo fires up the engine, shifts into gear, and pulls away. “That’s us, Dave,” he reminds his partner.

Lodge brings the microphone to his mouth. “Nine-four George, Central.”

“George, we have a 10–54 sick at one-three-seven South 4th Street. See the man. A woman unconscious in the hallway.”

“That’s in Boy’s sector, Central.”

“Nine-four Boy is on another job, K.”

“Ten-four, Central.”

Russo proceeds down Metropolitan Avenue at trolling speed, passing beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, before turning onto Morgan Avenue. The job on South 4th Street is now far behind them.

“Where we goin’, Dante?” Lodge adjusts the louvers on the air-conditioning vents, directing the flow to his crotch. “The job’s in the other direction.”

“We’re goin’ where we always go.”

“Acme Cake? You serious?”

Lodge steals a glance at his partner when his questions go unanswered. Dante’s thin nose is in the air, his jaw thrust forward, his lips pinched into a thin, disapproving line.

Not for the first time, Lodge feels an urge to drive his fist into that chin, to flatten that nose, to bloody that mouth. Instead, he settles his weight against the backrest and faces the truth. Without Dante Russo, David Lodge wouldn’t make it through his tours, not since he started having black-outs. Nobody else will work with him, he knows. Shitkicker is what they call him. As in, You hear what the shitkicker did last night?

“What about the job?” he finally says. “What do I tell Central if they wanna know where we are?”

Russo sighs, another irritating habit. “C’mon, Dave, wise up. We both know it’s gonna be some junkie so overdosed her buddies dumped her in the lobby like yesterday’s garbage. Now maybe you wanna go mouth-to-mouth, suck up that good HIV spit, but me, I’m gonna let the paramedics worry about catchin’ a dreaded disease. They got a better health plan.”

When Lodge and Russo finally roll up on the scene twenty minutes later, two Fire Department paramedics are loading a gurney into an ambulance. A woman strapped to the gurney attempts to sit up, despite the restraints.

“You see what I’m sayin’?” Dante Russo washes down the last of his frosted donut with the last of his coffee. “Things worked out all right. No harm, no foul.”

Three hours later, Russo breaks a long silence with an appreciative whistle. “Well, lookee here, just the man I want to see.”

Lodge brings a soda bottle to his mouth and takes a quick sip. The one-to-one mix of 7-UP and vodka lifts his spirits. He is on the verge of a blackout now, and predictably reckless.

“What’s up?”

“The Beemer.” Russo jerks his chin at a white BMW trimmed with gold chrome, stopped for the light at the intersection of Metropolitan and Kingsland Avenues.

“What about it?”

“That’s our boy.”

“What boy?”

Russo pauses long enough to make his annoyance clear. “That there car belongs to Mr. Clarence Spott.”

“Who?”

“Spott’s picture is hangin’ in the muster room. He’s one of the bad guys.” Dante’s mouth expands into a humorless smile. “Whatta ya say we bust his balls a little?”

“Fine by me.”

When Russo momentarily lights up the roof rack and the BMW pulls to the curb, both cops immediately leave their car. They are on Metropolitan Avenue, a main commercial street in the northside section of Greenpoint. The small retail stores lining both sides of the avenue are long closed, their gates down and padlocked, but several men stand in front of an after-hours club across the street. David Lodge stares at the men till they turn away, then he joins Russo who stands a few feet from the BMW’s open window. Lodge knows he should approach the vehicle from the passenger side, that his job here is to cover his partner on the driver’s side. But David Lodge has never been a by-the-book officer, far from it, and knowing his partner won’t object, he settles down to enjoy the show.

“Why you stoppin’ me, man?” Clarence Spott’s full mouth is twisted into a pained grimace. “I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Step outa the car,” Russo orders. “And that’s officer, not man.”

“I ain’t goin’ no place till I find out why you stopped me. This here is racial profilin’. It’s unconstitutional.”

Russo slaps his nightstick against the palm of his hand. “Clarence, you don’t come out, and I mean right this fuckin’ minute, I’m gonna crack your windshield.”

The door opens and Spott emerges. A short, heavily muscled black man, his expression — eyes wide, brows raised, big mouth already moving — reeks of outrage. Lodge can smell the stink from where he stands. And it’s not as if Spott, who keeps his hands in view at all times, isn’t familiar with the rules of the game. There’s just something in him that doesn’t know when to shut up.

“Ah’m still axin’ the same question. Why you pull me over when I’m drivin’ down a public street, mindin’ my own damn business?”

Russo ignores the inquiry. “I want you to put your hands on top of the vehicle and spread your legs. I want you to do it right now.”

Spott finally crosses the line, as Lodge knew he would, by adding the word pig to his next sentence. Lodge slaps him in the face, a mild reprimand from Lodge’s point of view, but Spott sees it differently. His eyes close for a moment as he draws a long breath through his nose. Then he uncoils, quick as a snake, and drives his fist into the left side of David Lodge’s face.

Taken by surprise, Lodge staggers backward, leaving Spott to Dante Russo, who assumes a two-handed grip on his nightstick before cracking it into Spott’s unprotected shins. When Spott drops to his knees on the pavement, Russo slides the nightstick beneath his throat and pulls back, choking off a howl of pain.

“How you wanna do this, Clarence? Easy or hard?”

As Spott cannot speak, he indicates compliance by going limp and crossing his hands behind his back.

Russo eases up slightly, then pushes Spott forward onto his chest. “You all right?” he asks his partner.

“Never better.”

David Lodge brings his hand to the blood running from a deep cut along his cheekbone. Suddenly, he feels sharp, even purposeful. As he watches his partner cuff and search the prisoner before loading him into the backseat, he thinks, Okay, this is where it gets good. His hand goes almost of itself to the soda bottle stuffed beneath the seat when he enters the vehicle. He barely tastes the vodka as it slides down his throat.

“You got any particular place in mind?” his partner asks as he shifts the patrol car into gear.

“Not as long as it’s private. One thing I hate, it’s bein’ interrupted when I’m on a roll.”

Lieutenant Justin Whitlock sets the precinct log aside when David Lodge and Dante Russo lead Clarence Spott into the nine-four. Both sides of Spott’s face are bruised and he leans to the left with his arm pressed to his ribs. His right eye, already crusting, is swollen shut.

Whitlock is seated at a desk behind a wooden railing that runs across the nine-four’s reception area. He glances from the prisoner to Russo, then notices the blood on David Lodge’s face and Lodge’s blood-soaked collar.

“That your blood, Lodge?”

“Yeah. The mutt caught me a good one and we hadda subdue him.”

Whitlock nods twice. The injury is something he can work with.

“I want you to go over to the emergency room at Wyckoff Heights and have that wound sewn up. Count the stitches and make sure you obtain a copy of the medical report. Better yet, insist that a micro-surgeon do the job. Tell ’em you don’t wanna spoil your good looks.”

“What about the paperwork on the arrest, loo? Shouldn’t I get started?”

“No, secure the prisoner, then get your ass over to Wyckoff. Your partner will handle the paperwork.” Whitlock’s expression softens as he turns to Russo. “How ’bout you, Dante? You hurt?”

Russo flicks out a left jab. “Not me, loo, I’m too quick.”

Whitlock glances at the prisoner. “I see.” When Russo fails to respond, he continues. “Did the mutt use a weapon?”

“Yeah, loo, that ring. That’s what cut Dave’s cheek.” Russo lifts Spott’s right hand to display a pinkie ring with a single large diamond at its center. “You know what woulda happened if Dave had gotten hit in the eye?”

“He’d be out on the street with a cane.” Whitlock’s smile broadens. He and Russo are on the same track. “Charge the hump with aggravated assault on a police officer. That should keep the asshole busy. And make sure you take that ring. That ring is evidence.”

Spott finally speaks up. “I wanna call my lawyer,” he mumbles through swollen lips.

“What’d he say?” Whitlock asks.

“I think he said something about your mother, lieutenant,” Russo declares. “And it wasn’t complimentary.”

Russo leads Spott through a gate in the railing, then shoves him toward the cells at the rear of the building. “Hi ho, hi ho,” he sings, “it’s off to jail we go.”

Smiling at his partner’s cop humor, David Lodge trails behind.

Five minutes later, Dante Russo emerges to announce, “The prisoner is secure and Officer Lodge is off to the hospital.”

“You think he’s sober enough to find his way?”

Russo starts to defend his partner, then suddenly changes tack with a shrug of his shoulders. “Dave’s out of control,” he admits. “If I wasn’t there tonight, who knows what would’ve happened. I mean, I been tryin’ to straighten the guy out, but he just won’t listen.”

“I coulda told you that when you took him on as your partner.”

“What was I supposed to do? When I was told that nobody wanted to work with him? I’m the PBA delegate, remember? Helping cops in trouble is part of my job.”

From David Lodge, the conversation drifts for a bit, finally settling on the precinct commander, Captain Joe Hagerty. Crime is up in the precinct for the second straight year and Hagerty is on the way out. Though his replacement has yet to be named, the veterans fear a wholesale shake-up. Dante Russo, of course, at age twenty-five, is far from a veteran. But he’s definitely a rising star within the cop union, the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, a rising star with serious connections. Dante’s uncle is the trustee for Brooklyn North and sits on the PBA’s Board of Directors.

They are still at it thirty minutes later when Officers Daryl Johnson and Hector Arias waltz an adolescent prisoner into the building. Dwarfed by the two cops, the boy is weeping.

“He done the crime,” Arias observes, “but he don’t wanna do the time.”

“Found him comin’ out a window of the Sung Ri ware-house on Gratton Street,” Daryl Johnson adds. “He had this TV in his arms, the thing was bigger than he was.” Johnson gives his prisoner an affectionate cuff on the back of the head. “What were ya gonna do, jerk, carry it all the way back to the projects?”

“Put him in a cell,” Whitlock says, “and notify the detectives. They’ll wanna talk to him in the morning.”

“Ten-four, loo.”

Within seconds, Daryl Johnson returns. Johnson is a short, overweight black man long renowned for his deadpan expression. This time, however, his heavy jowls are lifted by an extension of his lips unrelated to a smile. “That mope locked up back there? I mean, it’s none of my business, but who does he belong to?”

“Me,” Russo responds. “Why?”

“Because he’s dead is why. Because somebody caved in his fucking skull.”

The evidence implicating David Lodge in the death of Clarence Spott is compelling, as Ted Savio explains in the course of a fateful meeting on Rikers Island several months later. Ted Savio is Lodge’s attorney, provided gratis by the PBA.

Although Savio’s advice is perfectly reasonable, Lodge is nevertheless reluctant to accept it. Lodge has been ninety days without a drink and the ordeal of cold turkey withdrawal has produced in him a nearly feral sense of caution. Alone in his cell day after day, he has become as untrusting as an animal caught in a snare. At times, especially at night, the urge to escape the inescapable pushes him to the brink of uncontrolled panic. At other times, he drops into a black hole of despair that leaves him barely able to respond to the demands of his keepers.

“You gotta face the facts here, Dave,” Savio patiently explains, “which, I note, are lined up against you. You can’t even account for your movements.”

“I had a blackout. It wasn’t the first time.”

“You say that like you maybe lost your concentration for a minute. Meanwhile, they found you passed out in the basement. Holding a bottle in your hands.”

“I knew that’s where it was kept,” Lodge admits. “But just because I was drunk doesn’t mean I killed Spott.”

“You had the victim’s blood on your uniform and your blood was found on the victim.”

“That could’ve happened when we subdued the mutt.”

“We?”

“Me and my partner.”

“Dave, your partner didn’t have a drop of blood on him.” Savio makes an unsuccessful attempt at eye contact with his client, then continues. “What you need to do here is see the big picture. Dante Russo told Lieutenant Whitlock that he had to pull you off Clarence Spott. He said this before the body was found, he repeated it to a Grand Jury, he’ll testify to it in open court. That’s enough to bury you all by itself, even without Officer Anthony Szarek’s testimony.

“The Broom,” Lodge moans. “I’m being done in by the fucking Broom.”

“The Broom?”

“Szarek, he’s a couple years short of a thirty-year pension and the job’s carrying him. He spends most of his tour sweeping the precinct. That bottle they found me with? That was his.”

“Well, Broom or not, Szarek’s gonna say that he was present when you and Russo brought Spott to the holding cells, that he heard Russo tell you to go to the hospital, that he watched Russo walk away…”

“Stop sayin’ his name.” Lodge raises a fist to his shoulder as if about to deliver a punch. “Fucking Dante Russo. If I could just get to him, just for a minute.”

“What’d you think? That you and your partner would go down with the ship together? Maybe holding hands? Well, Dave, it’s time for you to start using your head.”

Lodge draws a deep breath, then glances around the room. Gray concrete floor, green cinder-block walls, a table bolted to the floor, plastic chairs on metal legs. And that’s it. The room where he confers with his attorney is as barren as his cell, as barren as the message his attorney delivers.

“Face the facts, Dave. Take the plea. It’s not gonna get any better and it could be withdrawn.”

“Man-one?”

“That’s right, first-degree manslaughter. You take the deal, you’ll be out in seven years. On the other hand, you go to trial, find yourself convicted of second-degree murder, you could be lookin’ at twenty-five to life. Right now you’re thirty seven years old. You can do the seven years and still have a reason to live when you’re released.”

Though Lodge believes his lawyer, he still can’t bring himself to accept Savio’s counsel. At times over the past months, he’s literally banged his head against the wall in an effort to jog his memory. Drunk or sober, he feels no guilt about the parts he can vaguely recall. Yeah, he tuned Spott up. He must have because he remembers Russo driving to a heavily industrial section of Greenpoint, north of Flushing Avenue, remembers turning onto Bogart Street where it dead-ends against the railroad tracks, remembers yanking Spott out of the backseat. Spott had resisted despite the cuffs.

But Spott deserved his punishment. He’d committed a crime familiar to every member of every police force in the world: Contempt of Cop. You didn’t run from cops, you didn’t disrespect them with your big mouth, and you never, under any circumstances, hit them. If you did, you paid a price.

That was it, though, the full extent as far as Lodge was concerned. To the best of his knowledge, he’d never beaten a prisoner with any weapon but his hands. Never.

“What if I’m innocent?” he finally asks his lawyer.

“What if there’s a million black people residing in Brooklyn who already think you’re guilty?”

One week later, suspended Police Officer David Lodge appears before Justice Harold Roth in Part 70 of the Criminal Term of Brooklyn Supreme Court. Lodge is the last piece of business on Roth’s calendar late this Friday afternoon. It’s a cameo shot, posed in front of the raised dais where Roth sits — Lodge, his lawyer Savio, and the deputy chief of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau — nobody is in the audience in the cavernous courtroom.

Justice Roth is not one to smile unduly or waste words. “Well, counsellor?”

“Yes, your honor,” Savio marshalls his words. “My client has authorized me to withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and now offers to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree, a class-C violent felony, under the first count of the indictment, in satisfaction of the entire indictment.” Savio stops then, but does not look at Lodge, who is three feet to his right, standing ram-rod straight, staring fixedly at the judge. Lodge heard not a word Savio said.

“Is that what you want to do, Mr. Lodge?” Roth asks, not unkindly.

Mister Lodge. The words rock him like a blow to the body. Yet he remains transfixed, mute.

A full minute has passed. Roth has had enough. “Come up.”

The lawyers hasten up to the bench, huddling with Roth at the sidebar. Savio earnestly explains that his client is unable to admit guilt because he was in the throes of an alcoholic blackout when he allegedly bludgeoned the victim, and so has no memory of the event. After several minutes of back-and-forth, Roth ends the debate.

“He can have an Alford-Serrano. Step back.”

At Lodge’s side, Savio explains their good fortune. In an Alford-Serrano plea — normally reserved for the insane — Roth will simply ask Lodge if he is pleading guilty because Lodge believes that the evidence is such that he will be found guilty at trial. Savio whispers urgently in Lodge’s ear, an Iago to his Othello.

Suddenly, David Lodge’s body goes slack, his gaze falters. Lodge has an epiphany. He sees the faces of all the skells he’d ever arrested who’d whined innocent, and for the only time in his life he’s flooded with a compassion, till the fear takes hold — the fear of a small child upon awaking alone in the dark in an empty house.