Onion Street

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

On a Friday night two weeks after the events at the warehouse, Detective Casey picked me up at my folks’ apartment and we went drinking at the Onion Street Pub. Although I didn’t know it then, the Onion Street Pub was a cop hangout. The place was crowded and loud and full of cigarette smoke. The jukebox was blasting, and the atmosphere was much friendlier than I’d found it during my first visit. Even Angie, my dance partner, was there, but she’d let her blonde hair down. Of course, I didn’t realize until later that she was a cop groupie. A lot of bar patrons stopped by our spot at the bar to pat Casey on the back. He had, after all, just made one of the biggest heroin finds in New York City history.

“Six fucking kilos,” one drunk cop said, hugging Casey around the shoulders. “How the hell did you do it, man? I didn’t even know you were working narcotics.”

“Clean living,” Casey said, “and luck.”

“There’ll be a bump in it for sure, you lucky son of a bitch. Let me buy you and your buddy here a shot to celebrate.”

It was apparently bad form to turn it down, so Casey agreed and the bartender lined up three shots of Scotch. We clinked glasses and gunned the shots in single gulps, slamming the overturned glasses down on the bar when we finished. After another round, this one on Casey, the drunk guy faded back into the crowd.

The good cheer vanished from Casey’s face. He turned, staring straight ahead. “Pretty amazing.”

“What, the Scotch? I never really drank it before, but it’s not bad. What kind is it?

“Cutty Sark. Smooth as razor blades,” he said. “But that’s not what I’m talking about, Moe.”

“Then what?”

“The anonymous phone tip I got telling me where to find all that heroin.”

“Like you said, Detective Casey — ”

“Just call me Casey,” he said. “Everyone calls me Casey.”

“Like you said, Casey, it’s luck. Maybe it’s like they said in the papers.”

He curled up his lips into a joyless smile. “That it was the Anellos. I don’t buy it. Those guys would rather eat their young than rat out even their worst enemies.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Who knows?”

“You’re right, and besides, not all my luck has been good. The garage where I keep the van I used to deliver the dummy explosives was broken into.”

“Can’t be a good thing to steal a police car. I hope the moron who did that got outta town quick.”

“I didn’t say the van was stolen, Moe. Only its window was busted, and the guy took my shotgun and the shells I kept in there for protection.”

“Hope it turns up.”

“I doubt it will,” he said. “My bet is the shotgun’s at the bottom of a lake somewhere.”

Before Casey could see me turn pale, two more well-wishers stopped by and bought a few more rounds. By the time they left, I couldn’t see straight.

Casey said, “I hear your buddy turned up, but that he was in rough shape.”

“Huh? Oh, Lids, yeah. I heard that too.” I wasn’t sure if it was my head or the room that was spinning, nor was I sure it was all a product of the Scotch. Casey was scaring the shit out of me with his talk of the shotgun and the drugs. I needed some fresh air, and I bolted.

Outside, the cool early March air was giving me some relief. Relief or not, I found it difficult to stand, so I sat down on the sidewalk, my back to a cold brick wall. Above my head, lazy jet after lazy jet, engines whining, followed the end of the glide path to the runways at JFK. I was so drunk that I swear I thought I could make out the faces of individual passengers. Some of them seemed to be staring right at me, pointing down at me. Why I should matter to them was beyond me. I wasn’t a circus freak. I wasn’t feeling guilty about things. I hadn’t killed anyone. I hadn’t gotten anyone killed.

Mostly, besides feeling woozy, I was feeling profoundly lost. Before all this happened, what I thought of as being lost was really just aimlessness; I was adrift. School was then at least an anchor, if not a sturdy one. Now even that was gone to me forever. I had tried going back to class, but it was no good. I just couldn’t force myself to care after seeing so much death, and the capacity for darkness inside people’s hearts. There had to be something in the world for me to keep me out of the dark. I was watching another jet when the silhouette of a man blocked my view.

“Having fun out here?” It was Casey. He stepped out of my way and sat down beside me.

“Just thinking,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking too, Moe.”

“Yeah, about what?”

“About you.”

“What about me?”

“Look, I may seem like just a big dumb schmuck, but I didn’t get my gold shield by being one. The Suffolk County PD, they’ve got no reason to connect you or Bobby to those two dead assholes in the warehouse. On the other hand, it didn’t take me long to find that Irving Prager was one of the original investors in that warehouse. Frankly, the world’s a better place without guys like Tony P and Jimmy Ding Dong, so you got nothing to worry about from me.”

“I agree,” I said. “The world’s a better place.”

“You know, you’ve got all the makings of a great cop.”

“Pardon my manners, Casey, but get the fuck outta here.”

“No, I’m serious. Whether you’re gonna admit to anything or not, you got to the bottom of two huge cases. You busted up a major heroin ring, and you saved your friends’ lives. You did all that without an ounce of knowledge about how to do it. You’re tough. You’re smart and you give a shit. You’re already a better goddamned detective than I am. You do a few years in uniform, and you’re a lock for a gold shield. And there’s something else; you’re comfortable in there,” he said, pointing back at the bar. “It’s all cops in there, and you fit in.”

“Maybe because there aren’t any asshole cops in there like Nance.”

“You want things to change, make ’em change. Be a cop, set an example instead of whining about it. And it’ll get you outta the war.”

We laughed about that last part there. It got quiet between us for a minute after that. Casey didn’t realize at the time, but he’d given me the chance I’d been looking for since that night at the warehouse. I’d struggled with how to let someone inside the NYPD know that Sam and Marty had been murdered as a direct result of a dirty cop.

“Three cases,” I said, “not two.”

“What are you talking about?”

I didn’t answer directly. “You know a detective named Patrick Fitzhugh?”

“He’s a real prick. A face on him not even his mother loved. Why?”

Again, I didn’t answer directly. Instead I took Sam’s badge out of my pocket and handed it to him. “You found out about my dad owning part of the warehouse without too much trouble. Look into who that badge belonged to and see what you come up with.”

Feeling a little better, I got up and went back into the bar. I turned around to see Casey palming the badge and starting to put two and two together.