Outrage

21

Graziani sat in the sedan across the street and down a block from the aging row house in the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx. It was a quiet neighborhood and the streets were nearly deserted at midnight.

The headlights of a car appeared from around a corner and moved toward him as he scrunched down in his seat. He’d driven past the row house before dawn that morning and saw the car that was now approaching parked on the street. So he knew that was where his target would park again.

Graziani glanced over at the alley on the side of the row house and thought he could detect the dark figure of a man within the general shadows. Suddenly a wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him and he thought about calling the whole thing off.

Some part of him, a leftover vestige perhaps of that idealistic rookie cop he’d been some twenty-plus years earlier, was freaking out. He knew that he was crossing a line he’d never have imagined even two weeks ago. This wasn’t taking money from drug dealers, shaking down pimps, or accepting envelopes of cash from businesses looking for a little extra “police protection.” This is a whole new ball game, that rookie cop warned him, but it’s not too late.

Not if you want to finish your career working the traffic division in the Bronx, Joey baby, a different voice said, this one belonging to the street-weary cop whose idealism had been drained away over the years like leaking oil from an old car. And go ahead and stay a detective second grade. That’s if you’re lucky. It will probably get a lot worse if this Acevedo case blows up in your face after the shit that got you kicked out of the Two-Six in the first place. They’ll “make an example” out of you and if they don’t find a reason to kick you off the force and take your pension, they’ll stick you in a basement cubicle, filing reports until you quit or stick a gun in your mouth.

Graziani swallowed the bile that had risen from his gut and hardened himself to the task at hand. It’s the only way, he told himself again. He wasn’t going to let some dirtball meth dealer screw it up.

The other car pulled over to the curb and stopped. He glanced at the alley and saw the dark figure emerge and creep up behind the car. The assassin timed his approach so that when the driver opened the door and started to get out-and was at his most vulnerable-he moved quickly to intercept him.

Something silver in the assailant’s hand flashed in the streetlight as he raised it and then plunged it toward the chest of the driver. It flashed again and again in rapid succession. The victim reached out with both hands for his assailant but then slumped back onto the seat of the car with his legs hanging out.

The assassin stood up and looked toward Graziani, who was nearly overcome with the urge to drive away as fast as possible. But he knew better than to assume that the job was done. Graziani picked up the. 380 pistol with the silencer from the seat next to him and got out of the car. He walked down his side of the street until he was even with the murdered man’s car and then crossed over.

Graziani ignored the assassin and peered inside the car. Detective Phil Brock lay back on the seat, his shirt dark and wet with blood from several knife wounds. He was still alive, his breath coming in ragged, bubbling gasps.

As Graziani started to stand back up, Brock raised his head. His expression changed from one of puzzlement to one of understanding and then scorn. “Just to get out of the Bronx?”

“’Fraid so,” Graziani said as he raised the gun and shot the other detective twice in the head. The quick pffft pffft of the shots was lost in the night as Brock’s body twitched and went still.

“Is the fucker dead?” Ahmed Kadyrov said, smiling as he tried to look in the car at the dead detective.

Graziani pushed him back and pointed the gun at his pale face. “He’s a better man dead than you ever were alive, you piece of shit,” he snarled.

“No, don’t, man!” Kadyrov pleaded, throwing his hands up to ward off the bullet he thought was coming.

Instead, Graziani lowered the gun and stuck it in the top of his pants. He reached in and took Brock’s wallet from his jacket pocket and the watch off his wrist. Finished, he started walking quickly toward his car, motioning for Kadyrov to follow him. “Don’t worry, asshole, I’m not going to shoot you, as long as you do what you’re told,” he said as they walked. “But let me repeat what I told you earlier: I’d rather shoot a hundred dirtbags like you than the man I just had to kill, so if you fuck with me, I will shoot you without batting an eye. And don’t think for a minute that you could turn on me and get away with it. I don’t care how far you run; even if I can’t get to you myself, I’m a cop, and someday, someone with a badge will coming looking for you.”

Kadyrov looked frightened. “I get it… don’t fuck with you,” he said.

“That’s better,” Graziani said as they reached his car. He got in and rolled down the window to speak to Kadyrov. “Now, like I said, you got a problem with this friend of yours, Vinnie Cassino. It’s what happens when you open your big fucking mouth and tell other scumbags that you killed three women. Take care of it.”

Kadyrov nodded and the smile returned. “I’ll take care of him and his little sooka.”

Driving to his home in Queens, Graziani tried to get the image of Brock’s scornful eyes out of his mind. Had to be done, he reasoned, it was him or me. Was going to choose a loser like Felix Acevedo over a brother cop.

His mind flashed over to Kadyrov. He’d lied when he told Brock he didn’t know him. He’d come across Kadyrov while working Narcotics in the Two-Six and knew him as a small-time burglar and sometime snitch who would sell out his own mother for enough “reward” money to buy another hit of meth.

What really bothered Graziani was that while working with the Yancy-Jenkins task force, he’d been going through case files of perps who did daytime burglaries and Kadyrov’s file had come up. But he’d dismissed him as a poor candidate for a sex killer. The irony that he could have been the hero in all of this-without having to kill another cop or frame an innocent man-was not lost on the detective. Him or me. It was him or me.

Graziani reminded himself that he still didn’t know if Kadyrov was the real killer. Nor did he care, which is what he told the drug addict when he tracked him down that afternoon with the help of a couple of meth dealers he put the screws to.

“But I will say that Vinnie Cassino is running around telling cops that you admitted to him and his wife that you’re good for the murders,” he’d told Kadyrov. “Personally, I don’t believe it. I’ve got the killer and his name is Felix Acevedo. However, there’s this detective who believes Cassino and is out to get you.”

Kadyrov started to panic. “I didn’t do it. But what do I do?”

“I don’t think you have a choice,” Graziani told him. “I know for a fact that other than me, the only people who are saying this are the detective and the Cassinos. If they were all gone, your problem would be gone too.”

It took Kadyrov a minute to figure out what Graziani was saying. But when he did, he smiled, exposing his drug-rotted teeth. “So you want me to get rid of the problems.”

Graziani shrugged. “That’s what I would do if I were you.”

“And if you were me, how would you get to this cop?” Kadyrov said.

That’s when Graziani suggested that Brock might be persuaded to leave his apartment that night with a telephone call about a possible lead on the Atkins case, and he’d be vulnerable when he got back home.

Graziani had dropped the junkie off in the Norwood neighborhood after first driving by the apartment building and pointing out Brock’s car. He then warned him that betraying him would be “the same as committing suicide by police officer.”

Everything had then gone according to plan, except that the stupid junkie had left Brock alive so that Graziani had to finish him. He could still see the scorn in the other detective’s eyes and hear it in his voice- Just to get out of the Bronx?

Graziani pulled up in front of the modest two-bedroom on Richmond Hill in Queens where he lived with his second wife. At least for the time being, he thought. She was fifteen years younger and tired of waiting for him to move up in the ranks and earn more money so that she could spend it. He suspected that she was having an affair but that everything would be okay again, like when they first met, if he was the hero who solved the Columbia U Slasher case.

In fact, when news broke of the arrest and he’d been photographed by television crews leaving the Four-Eight, they had sex for the first time in a month. And she even acted like she enjoyed it.

Graziani walked in the door of his home and poked his head in the bedroom, hoping, but his wife was asleep. Doesn’t matter, he told himself as he went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a beer. It’s going to be all right once the Cassinos are out of the picture.

The detective thought again about Brock and suddenly gagged on the bile that rushed into his mouth. He washed it down with a swig of beer. Forget about it, he thought, wiping his mouth. You got it under control.