Rizzo’s Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

At eight-thirty the following morning, traffic was lighter than usual as Priscilla Jackson drove the Impala toward Manhattan.

“I still say there’s a good chance DeMaris won’t be home when we get there, even if she is still breathing,” Priscilla said to Rizzo. “Friday after Thanksgiving, long four-day weekend.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but we know the office is closed, so she isn’t workin’ today. Like I told you when we went to the literary agencies, it’s best we catch this broad cold, unannounced. It’ll scare her.” He paused before continuing. “And that’s how we want her- scared. The scareder the better.”

“ Scare-der?” Priscilla asked. “You mean more scared?”

“Yeah, okay, Professor, what ever the fuck,” Rizzo replied. “You get my point. See, by now Bradley had to warn her we’re comin’, but not until next week sometime, so he probably hasn’t face-to-faced with her yet to firm up her story. If we catch Ms. DeMaris in her hair curlers and skivvies, cup of coffee in her hand, her blood pressure is gonna spike, Cil, believe me.”

“So: bad cop / worse cop?” Priscilla asked.

“Yeah, like we discussed,” he said, enjoying himself. “If she proves to be what most murder-for-profit people are-a spoiled, conniving, self-centered bastard-we lean on her hard. Both of us.”

Priscilla responded. “Which one am I?”

Rizzo pondered it for a moment. “Bad cop,” he said. “I know the script a little better’n you do, so I’ll be worse cop.”

“Okay, boss, what ever you say. I just hope we don’t find this chick lyin’ on her kitchen floor with her eyeballs poppin’ out.”

As she accelerated onto the Williamsburg Bridge, Priscilla was silent. After a few moments, she said, “Imagine the luck of this poor guy Lauria? There had to be-what?-six, seven book-length manuscripts in his apartment? Plus God knows how many short stories? Thousands of freakin’ pages.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “So?”

Priscilla shook her head. “So he decides to write one damn play, and it winds up a big smash under some other guy’s name, Mallard’s name. And it gets them both killed.”

She turned to face Rizzo briefly. “Lauria couldn’t get anything published in over twenty years of writing. Then, his play hits the big time, and he’s dead. It’s just sad, man. Really sad.”

Rizzo pondered it. “Well, I guess. Sad life, sad death. Some guys get dealt a hand like that. And who knows, maybe some of those other books a his are just as good as the play’s supposed to be. If we learned anything from this case, it was that it helps to have some big name on a play if you’re lookin’ to get it produced.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s the same with getting a book published. Maybe we should take one of Lauria’s manuscripts and put Norman Mailer’s name on it, hype it up like a newly discovered work of a deceased American master. We might come up with a best seller.”

Priscilla pursed her lips. “If we can tie Lauria’s murder to Mallard’s, and it breaks big in the news, Lauria gets his fifteen minutes. I oughta take those manuscripts to my agent, Robin Miller. Maybe the poor schmuck will get published after all.”

“Or maybe we should just steal ’em,” he suggested. “Put your name on them if they’re any good. Better yet, put my friggin’ name on them.”

“We can do the same thing Bradley did, only this time everybody who needs killin’ is already dead,” Priscilla said.

“Yeah, Cil,” Rizzo said. “We can be grave robbers.”

They both laughed, and she added, “What other job can offer that kind of opportunity? And you tryin’ to keep Carol away from all this fun.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Imagine that.”

“Which reminds me,” Priscilla said. “Yesterday at dinner, your mother said something in Italian to your mother-in-law. I got the impression it was about me. What’d she say?”

“You sure you wanna know, Cil?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I can take it.”

Rizzo replied. “Okay. You had just explained to Karen that ah-leech is Brooklyn-Italian slang for anchovies.”

Priscilla nodded. “I remember.”

“Well,” Rizzo said, “I think my mother had the impression your prim and proper WASPY girlfriend wouldn’t put an anchovy in her mouth if her life depended on it.”

“Yeah, probably right,” Priscilla said. “So what’d she say in Italian?”

Rizzo laughed. “She said, referrin’ to you, ‘I bet this one would eat them.’ ”

Priscilla laughed. “Damn,” she said. “Don’t bother to explain, Joe. I get it.”

The fear in Linda DeMaris’s eyes was reassuring, Rizzo thought, as he and Jackson sat across from her at the kitchen table in her small, Lower East Side apartment.

“Recognize that?” he asked deliberately, jutting his chin at the paper he had placed before DeMaris.

She dropped her eyes to the sheet of paper, color coming to her cheeks.

“Pick it up,” he said softly. “Look at it.”

DeMaris, thirty-seven years old with long, jet-black hair and large, beautiful brown eyes, reached a pale hand to the paper, her fingers trembling as she obeyed Rizzo’s order.

“Recognize that?” Rizzo repeated.

Steadying the paper in both hands, she placed it back on the table.

“No,” she said.

Priscilla leaned forward. “No?” she said. “Did you just say ‘no’?”

DeMaris nodded and turned toward Priscilla, avoiding the dark coldness in Rizzo’s eyes.

“It’s… it’s a letter,” DeMaris said.

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “It’s a letter. A letter from the literary agency where you used to work. And with your signature on it.”

DeMaris nodded but remained silent. “

’Course,” Rizzo continued, a transparent casualness in his tone, “that’s just a photocopy.” He sat back in his chair. “We got the original in the precinct evidence lock-up. In a plastic bag. See, at some point, we’re gonna lift prints off that letter. One set will be Robert Lauria’s. We gotta figure the second set will be yours.”

Rizzo smiled. “You know who Robert Lauria was, don’t you, Ms. De Maris?”

She shook her head. “No, I… I can’t say that I do,” she said. “I see the letter is addressed to him, but I handled hundreds of letters like that, maybe a thousand over the years. I can’t be expected to remember-”

Priscilla cut her off. “Lauria is dead,” she said. “Murdered.”

DeMaris’s anxiety seemed to intensify. Rizzo could only speculate how much or how little Bradley had told her in anticipation of this interview.

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “And in the same way Avery Mallard was murdered.”

DeMaris sat back in her seat, eyes wide, breathing shallow. “Why are you here?” she asked in a strained, tense tone.

“Do you wanna tell her or should I?” Rizzo asked.

“Go ahead, Joe,” Priscilla said. “Ruin her day.”

Rizzo folded his hands on the table, hunching his shoulders and leaning slightly forward, closer to the frightened woman.

“We’re here because you stole Lauria’s play A Solitary Vessel. You rejected the work, then took it to your boyfriend, Thomas Bradley. Or maybe you took it to Bradley before you rejected it, I don’t know. But you knew the play was pure gold. Maybe in the beginning, you were legit, who knows? Maybe you figured you and Bradley would just cut the agency out. But then, somehow, Lauria got cut out, too. Then Bradley spoon-fed the play to Mallard-word by word, scene by scene, act by act. Mallard was desperate, blocked for nearly ten years. He was more than willin’ to use what he believed was Bradley’s inspiration. Of course, Mallard did get a little creative, throwing in the love story on his own initiative, and he and Bradley bumped heads over it. So Mallard went to his agent, Kellerman, and got backing for the love triangle; Bradley had to give in.”

Rizzo sat back. “And everybody lived happily ever after,” he said. “Except for Lauria, of course. He got fucked good. And when he contacted Avery Mallard to complain, Mallard went to Bradley and demanded an explanation. Then, one rainy night, Bradley rides over to Brooklyn. He calls Lauria from a pay phone on Fourteenth Avenue and tells him he represents Avery Mallard, and asks if he can stop by for a few minutes. To discuss the play. Lauria says sure, come on. Bradley rushes right over, Lauria doesn’t even have time to put up some tea and get dressed. Bradley walks through the front door and strangles the guy.” He paused, smiling coldly. “Maybe his original plan was to just blow Lauria off if he ever turned up bitchin’ about how his play got stolen. Buy him off or accuse him of runnin’ a scam. But once Mallard got wind of it and refused to cooperate, Bradley had to take some drastic action.

“But… what was one little man in the face of all a this? Who’s more important: Lauria, you, Bradley?” Rizzo leaned in again. “I’m thinkin’ you figured you were, Ms. DeMaris. You and your boyfriend. The only thing left to threaten you both was Avery Mallard. Maybe Mallard kept insisting on doing right by Lauria. So Bradley had to kill him, too. And convince you to alibi him for it.”

DeMaris looked from one cop to the other, her heart racing in her throat, her palms growing moist with perspiration.

“I want a lawyer,” she said hoarsely.

“Yeah, I bet you do,” Priscilla said.

Suddenly Rizzo stood up. “You want a lawyer,” he said harshly. “See, Cil, like I told you, no use tryin’ to be nice to her.” He turned hard eyes back to DeMaris. “You want a lawyer, you can get one at the precinct. You can call one from there. You want a fuckin’ lawyer, you can have one for when we’re grillin’ you. We can get you some kid from Legal Aide.” Now Rizzo placed his hands down on the tabletop and leaned forward, bending to bring his face closer to DeMaris.

“But understand somethin’, lady,” he hissed. “I ain’t some college boy cop from Manhattan South. You’re comin’ to Brooklyn now. And I don’t give a fuck who killed Mallard or Lauria-you or Bradley. For all I know, Bradley’s clean and you killed ’em both. Maybe he’s alibiing you for the night of the murder. I pin this all on you, I clear two cases and still walk away a hero. So if you’re thinkin’ this is about justice, think again. Far as I’m concerned, real justice would be somebody stranglin’ you and Thomas Bradley. That’s fuckin’ justice. Anything else is politics, lady, just politics. And maybe I figure it’s my turn to get elected.”

DeMaris shrank in her seat, perspiration glistening on her forehead. Desperate, she turned toward Priscilla, her eyes imploring the female detective for help.

Priscilla smiled at her, then raised her gaze to Rizzo’s face.

“You know, Joe,” she said in a cold, low tone. “I think maybe she did kill ’em both.”

“No,” DeMaris said loudly, her voice cracking. “I didn’t kill anyone, I swear.”

Rizzo shook his head slowly. “Understand me, lady: it don’t mean shit to me. You want a lawyer, fine. We go to the precinct, you call a lawyer. I arrest you on suspicion of murder, second degree, two counts. Then the lawyer can handle it. If he’s good, better than your lover boy’s lawyer turns out to be, he gets both murders pinned on Bradley. You take a fall on two counts a conspiracy, second degree. You do maybe ten, fifteen years. Bradley does twenty-five to life, twice.” He shrugged. “Best you can hope for. And only if your lawyer is better than lover boy’s.”

After a moment, Priscilla stood and walked around the table, laying a hand on DeMaris’s shoulder. She bent slightly, speaking in a soft, even tone into the right ear of the frightened woman.

“Or maybe you’d like to hear what me and Sergeant Rizzo can do for you?” she asked.

Later, Rizzo and Jackson sat at a table in the small interview room of the Six-Two squad room, a pale, tired-looking Linda DeMaris opposite them.

“Like we promised, Ms. DeMaris, I deliberately kept your statement vague,” Rizzo said. “Far as anyone can tell from readin’ it, you brought the play to Thomas Bradley ’cause you recognized it to be a masterful work. Bradley convinced you to let him handle it, told you to turn down Lauria on behalf of the agency. You were unaware of any problems that occurred later on, after Mallard got the letter from Lauria and confronted Bradley. You were not further involved until Bradley asked you to alibi him for the night of the Mallard murder.” Rizzo paused. “Lucky for you, I’m not a real good statement taker, Ms. DeMaris. The way your statement reads, it’s a little unclear exactly when Bradley approached you for the alibi. Coulda been before he killed Mallard, coulda been after. Better for you, of course, if it was after. We’ll let your lawyer, when you get one, clarify that. As to Lauria, your statement is a little unclear there, too. Seems like Bradley told you Mallard was wise to the plagiarism, but Lauria himself never came up as bein’ the specific source of Mallard’s knowledge and possible anger about the whole situation. Not to you, anyway. So, reasonable doubt could certainly exist as to whether or not you could have known any harm would ever come to Lauria. Far as anybody’s concerned, it could seem reasonable that you didn’t even know about Lauria’s murder till this mornin’ when me and Detective Jackson told you about it.”

DeMaris opened her mouth to speak, but Rizzo held up a hand to silence her.

“No need to comment,” he said. “I got all I need, and I know more about you than I want to. Let me be blunt, Ms. DeMaris. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a thief and a callous, calculating, coldhearted bitch who’s gettin’ away with murder. Let’s just leave it at that.”

The door to the interview room opened and Detective Morris Schoenfeld stepped in.

“Here you go, Joe,” Schoenfeld said, handing some papers to Rizzo. “Signed, sealed, delivered.”

Rizzo glanced at the legal papers he held. “Thanks, Mo,” he said.

Schoenfeld nodded, turning to leave. “This little favor squares us for that counterfeit prescription case you handed me and Rossi. We’re pickin’ up the perp to night.”

“My plea sure,” Rizzo said. He turned to Priscilla as Schoenfeld left the room. “Here, take this court order. Call Homeland Security, give ’em the order number so they can put a freeze on Bradley’s passport.” He waved the other papers at her. “These are the warrants.”

Priscilla left the room. Rizzo turned back to DeMaris, speaking in a softer tone. “I called a friend a mine over at Brooklyn South Homicide. He’s got some juice at the D.A.’s office. They got hold of the homicide bureau chief. He’s comin’ down personally to hear you out, and once he sees that half-assed statement I took, he’s gonna want you to give him a better one. You refuse and speak to him only after your lawyer gets here. I’ll fill the bureau chief in. Because of your cooperation and statement, plus some circumstantial evidence I already had, Detective Schoenfeld was able to go down to court and secure a search warrant for Bradley’s home. I’m hopin’ to get the physical evidence I need to tie him to the Lauria homicide. Without you as his alibi, and with your testimony as a cooperating witness, he’ll fall on the Mallard case, too. Any defense lawyer in the city can cut you a deal you’ll be satisfied with. Bradley’s my target here, he’s the strangler.”

He reached across the table and patted her hand. “Relax, you’re doin’ the right thing. If you’d have bucked me on this, I’d have gladly crucified you. And your boyfriend, too. He was done for either way, so you might as well look out for your own ass. Most you’ll probably do is a couple a years.”

Rizzo stood, his expression now stern. “Not too bad for stealing a play from a lonely, sad dreamer so you could line your own pockets.”

He shook his head and turned to leave. “What ever jail time you wind up with, lady, it ain’t enough. Not nearly enough.”

Back at his desk, Rizzo began making phone calls, first to Dan Cappelli, the Daily News reporter he had spoken to on Thanksgiving night, then the Six-Two squad boss, Vince D’Antonio. He made a perfunctory apology to D’Antonio for disturbing him at home, then filled him in with the briefest of outlines. D’Antonio said he would be at the precinct in less than an hour.

Next he called Lieutenant Dominick Lombardi at Manhattan South. Lombardi was one of the senior investigators assigned to the Mallard homicide. Upon hearing Rizzo’s summary of the situation, he promised to be at the Six-Two as quickly as possible.

As he hung up on Lombardi, Priscilla stepped up to his desk.

“Passport is frozen, boss,” she said. “They got it into the computer while I was still on the line with them.”

“Good, Cil,” Rizzo said. “Sit down. I gotta talk fast, so let me get started. Vince is on his way, and Lombardi from Manhattan South. When they get here, I’ll fill them in. Then Lombardi makes his play to push us off the case and have Manhattan pick up Bradley. That’s when we bend him over and shove it up his ass.”

Priscilla smiled. “Tell me,” she said with a wink.

Rizzo laughed, then grew serious. “Few years back, a bunch of local teenagers jumped a black kid down by the highway. They beat ’im up a little, then chased him. Kid ran out on the highway and got hit by a car. Hurt pretty bad, almost lost a leg.”

“Racial thing?” Priscilla asked.

Rizzo nodded. “Couple a nights before this happened, some old white man got mugged on Cropsey Avenue. Perp was black. So these neighborhood kids figured they’d go vigilante, even up the score, so they grabbed this poor kid. Well, the case got a lotta ink-politicians, activists, all the usual parasites. Me and my partner at the time, Johnny Morelli, we were the assigned.”

“Okay,” Priscilla said. “What’s this got to do with anything now?”

Rizzo continued. “We locked up a bunch of kids. One of ’em wound up sentenced seven-to-ten upstate, a few others did some time, too. One of the kids, Stevie Cappelli, was the son of a guy I happened to know. Well, Stevie wasn’t a bad kid, he was just hangin’ around on the wrong night at the wrong time with the wrong bunch. I couldn’t see ruinin’ his life on account of it. So me and Morelli got a little creative with the DD-fives and the witness statements, and next thing you know, Stevie Cappelli was outta the picture.”

Priscilla shrugged. “Okay,” she said.

“Yeah. Okay. Anyway, how I knew the kid’s father, Cappelli-he was a beat reporter for the Daily News. Handled the Brooklyn police blotter. Nowadays, he’s a big-time feature writer and mainstream reporter. Needless to say, he was very grateful to me for savin’ his kid’s ass. Cappelli was always a flamin’ liberal, very PC. How would it look if his son got caught runnin’ with a lynch mob? So the old man tells me, ‘If there’s anything I can ever do for you…’ Like that.” Rizzo shrugged. “Seems like nowadays Stevie boy is a senior at some journalism college up in Massachusetts, getting all the liberal indoctrination he’ll need for a career in the impartial world of print news.”

“So,” Priscilla said, impatient, “you saved the kid’s life.”

“Yeah, sorta. With a little help from his SAT scores and his old man footin’ the tuition bill. Anyway, I been sittin’ on this payback for a lotta years, Cil. It’s not something I can hand off or pass down to anybody, and Morelli retired to the bottom of a vodka bottle. So the time to cash in is now. It’s why I asked Schoenfeld to run down to the court house for those warrants and the court order freezing the passport instead of sendin’ you to do it. See, Cappelli’s gonna show up here at the precinct. And he’s gonna wanna talk to Vince. Seems as though an anonymous source down at the court house tipped him off to the warrants and this impending bust on the Mallard case. Maybe it was the cop who applied for the warrant, maybe one a the court officers on Cappelli’s payroll, a court clerk-who knows? But Cappelli learned that two Six-Two cops are about ready to break open the infamous Avery Mallard murder. That would be us, Cil, me and you.”

Priscilla laughed. “So when Lombardi tells Vince to pull us off the Lauria case so the Plaza can cut us out of the Mallard case, this reporter, Cappelli, tells them, ‘Not so fast, guys, I already wrote the story.’ ”

Rizzo nodded, smiling. “Exactly. Cappelli gets his liberal righteousness all in an uproar. ‘How dare you bureaucrats attempt to deny the citizenry of its right to know the full truth. If Sergeant Rizzo and Detective Jackson-African-American female Detective Jackson, I might add-are not given their due desserts by the NYPD, the Daily News will demand, in headlines, to know exactly why not.’ ”

“So Cappelli makes a deal,” Priscilla added. “He’ll hold off on breaking his exclusive story until after we lock up Bradley, and the Plaza is forced to let us plant the flag on both cases.”

“Bingo,” Rizzo said. “Everybody and their brother’ll figure we leaked it to Cappelli, but they can’t prove shit. They’re stuck with us. Best they can do is capitalize on my generosity for even callin’ this guy Lombardi. That call will take the edge off, pacify them a little. They can get their pictures in the papers, too.” He paused. “And bottom line, Cappelli still owes me. After all, I’m gettin’ him an exclusive on the Mallard murder.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “Now let’s hope the search warrant turns up a blue raincoat that matches the fiber found on Lauria’s corpse.”

“Oh, it’ll be there, Cil, and it’ll match. But even without it, now we have DeMaris’s testimony. And she’s damn lucky we grabbed her so quickly. Once the pressure started to build on Bradley, he’d have come to one conclusion, that he had to kill DeMaris, just like you’ve been scared of since all this started.”

Priscilla shook her head. “Always treat murder like a solo act, boys and girls. A partner in crime’ll get you busted every time.”

“Amen, sister,” Rizzo said. “Amen.”

“So now?” she asked.

Rizzo shrugged. “Now we wait for everybody to get here. Let the D.A. bureau chief make his preliminary arrangements with De-Maris’s lawyer. Then we talk to Vince and Lombardi, and don’t forget to look surprised when Cappelli walks in.” He stood up. “But right now I want to calm DeMaris down a little, tell her what to expect. I don’t think she realizes she’s gettin’ locked up to night, maybe for two nights before bail is set and posted. Come on, Cil, come with me, I need a witness in there so she can’t claim I copped a feel of her sweet-lookin’ ass.”

“Just give me a heads-up before you do, so I can look away. That way I won’t be lying when I tell I.A.D., ‘Hey, I didn’t see nothin’.’ ”

Vince D’Antonio, his face tight with anger, glared across the desk at Rizzo. They, along with Priscilla, Lieutenant Lombardi, and Assistant District Attorney Raymond Kessler were in D’Antonio’s office.

“Damn it, Joe,” D’Antonio said, “you shoulda told me about all this, you shoulda kept me posted from day one.”

“This aspect of it just come up, boss,” Rizzo said lightly. “Check the DD-fives; everything we had is in there. We just didn’t see the whole picture till now. We followed the leads and next thing we know, we’re lookin’ at this Mallard thing.”

D’Antonio shook his head sharply. “That’s bullshit. You knew where this was goin’ from the moment you and Cil first found Lauria’s play.”

“You’re givin’ me too much credit here, Vince. I ain’t that sharp.”

D’Antonio frowned and began to speak, then suddenly changed his mind. He glanced to Priscilla.

“You got anything to add here, Jackson?”

“Not really, boss,” Priscilla said. “It’s like he told you: we just followed our noses and kinda tripped over Mallard.”

D’Antonio held her eyes for a moment, before turning to Lieutenant Dominick Lombardi.

“What can I tell ya?” he said to Lombardi. “It’s the first I’m hear in’ about any of this.”

Lombardi, a thirty-year veteran of the NYPD, smiled. “Yeah, I got that impression.”

“Well, what ever,” Rizzo said, addressing Lombardi. “What’s done is done. We should drop the warrant on Bradley and look for that raincoat. We got enough in DeMaris’s statement to lock him up right now. Then we wait for the lab test on the fiber. Should be a slam dunk.”

Lombardi’s face brightened. “We?” he said. “I’m not followin’ you here, Sergeant. What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“I mean, we, like us,” Rizzo said. “Like me and my partner. And, of course, you’re welcome to come along.” He reached into his shirt pocket, extracting a packet of Nicorette. “Being how it was your case and all.”

Lombardi laughed. “I like a guy with balls, Rizzo,” he said. “Refreshing change from most of the Plaza boys and girls. But, in this particular case, I gotta say, you’re outta line.”

“Yeah, well, I can see where you might figure that, Loo. But you can ask Vince here-I don’t go outside the lines.”

Raymond Kessler, the homicide bureau chief from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, interjected from Rizzo’s left.

“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, Rizzo,” he said curtly. “But you could use a little work on your statement-taking skills.”

Rizzo responded, wearing a puzzled look. “Oh?” he asked. “And why’s that?”

“Oh, I think you know,” Kessler said. “That statement you took from DeMaris has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. A kid straight outta law school could convince a jury DeMaris was just in it for the plagiarism angle, didn’t know shit about the murders. She can practically walk away from this. The prosecution will have to spit nickels for even a conspiracy count to stick, let alone felony murder.”

“Yeah, Rizzo,” Lombardi said. “If a guy didn’t know better, he might figure you lobbed it in for DeMaris to get her to bury Bradley for you.”

Rizzo turned to Lombardi with a hard expression, his eyes hooded. It drew a shrug from Lombardi.

“ If a guy didn’t know better,” the lieutenant repeated.

Rizzo let his expression soften. “Well, what ever,” he said. “It’s moot now, water under the bridge. Me and Cil made this case, with help from Mike McQueen. Least you can do is accept that, and let’s just move on.”

Lombardi shook his head. “You two are out,” he said simply. “And whoever McQueen is, he’s out, too. As of now, Manhattan South is takin’ jurisdiction on the Lauria case.” He paused before adding, “Sorry, Joe, that’s how the brass wants it.”

Rizzo leaned over toward the man. “You know, Dom, I made a call on you,” he said softly. “Looks like twelve days from now, you get promoted off the captain’s list. If you break the Mallard case, next stop for you is deputy inspector.”

Lombardi shrugged. “Could happen,” he said.

Rizzo turned to D’Antonio. “You gonna sit there, Vince? You gonna let this happen?”

“Look, Dom,” D’Antonio said to Lombardi, his tone hard. “There may be some irregularities here, and maybe you got a right to be pissed. But my guys broke this. Rizzo and Jackson, yeah, but the squad pitched in, too. I can’t let you walk in here…”

Lombardi held up a hand. “Who you need to hear from, Vince?” he asked casually. “Inspector Kelly? The PC? The fuckin’ mayor? Let me know, I’ll make the call.”

Color came to D’Antonio’s face. He shot an annoyed glance at Rizzo, then turned back to Lombardi.

“Don’t lean on me, Dom,” he said. “Don’t try and push me aside. It pisses me off.”

Lombardi sighed. “It’s a tough business, Vince. I’m just a cog in the wheel, is all.”

A tense silence developed, broken after a moment by a knock on the closed door of D’Antonio’s office.

“Sorry to interrupt, boss,” a uniformed officer said as she stuck her head into the room. “There’s some guy here to see you, says it’s important.”

“Not now,” D’Antonio said, his face still flushed with anger.

She hesitated, then spoke again. “Guy’s from the newspapers, boss,” she said, her voice low. “Says he’s here about the Avery Mallard murder. Says he wants to talk to the two cops who broke the case.” She glanced around the room.

“He says he’s writin’ the article now, and he needs to talk to the two cops right away,” she said to D’Antonio. Then, looking at Rizzo she added, “You know, boss. Rizzo and Jackson.”