Slide

Ten

Joe Miscali was a good guy. You ask anyone and they’d go, “Joe? Yeah, he’s a good guy.” It seemed like everybody loved Joe and you had to wonder-where’s the flaw? what’s wrong with this picture? — since Joe was a cop and, yeah, a damn good one.

He’d worked out of the 19th Precent so long that they called him Joe Nineteen. Even the bad guys kinda had a soft spot for Joey Nineteen. He was divorced-sure, came with the doughnuts and the buzz haircut-but even his ex old lady had nothing but nice things to say about him. She’d go, Joe? Oh, yeah, Joe, he’s a good guy.

Joe didn’t work at being Mr. Nice. He was just one of those rarities, a good man in a bad situation.

He was built like a brick shithouse-pug face, broken-veined complexion, hands thick as shovels. A typical Joe Miscali outfit: polyester pants with a nylon shirt and a plaid sports coat. Note to Norman Mailer: Good guys wear plaid. He was born in Queens, loved the Mets, Jets and Nets. He watched re-runs of The Odd Couple, like, a lot. He loved to quote from the show, insert lines into casual conversation even if no one understood what the hell he was talking about. Silly, yeah, but Joe got a kick out of it.

His lineage was that old volatile mix of Italian and mick. So how’d he wind up with such a sunny disposition? Go figure.

Joe had a pretty good record of closing cases. Not that he was a great cop but he was smart, knew snitches were the way to go. He’d been lucky, often getting to the right snitch at the right time. Thing is, like luck, snitches had a very short shelf life, so you got as much as you could from them before their mouths or dope took them off the board.

If there was a sadness in Joe’s life, it was for Kenneth Simmons, an old buddy from way back. They’d gone to the Academy together and the son of a bitch had been a hell of a cop-relentless, never let go. Joe admired that, but it would turn out to be Kenny’s downfall. Last year, he was after Max Fisher, a smarmy, smug businessman who was on the hook for killing his wife and another woman. Over brews one night, Kenny’d told Joe, “The schmuck is guilty and I’m gonna nail him.”

But someone’d nailed Ken before the case got up and running, and no one had ever really gone down for it. Joe kept an eye on the Fisher punk, knowing that somehow, in some goddamned way, he’d been the cause of Kenneth’s death.

Kenneth had had a partner, a cocky mother named Ortiz. Joe could never figure the deal out-Kenneth, a sweetheart and Oritz, a badged prick. But, hey, like marriage, you never knew what glued people together.

After Kenneth bought the farm, Ortiz had let the case go. Time to time, Joe would ask him if anything was breaking on the deal, but it seemed like Ortiz had given up. Then, one night, Ortiz was killed instantly in a smash-up on the Jersey Turnpike on his way to A.C. to-rumor had it-screw some bimbo he had down there. And this with a wife, eight months pregnant, home in his apartment in the Bronx. Nice guy, huh? What was left of Ortiz they shoveled back to some small town in Santa Domingo.

Joe kept an eye on Max, hoping to get some closure for Ken. Yeah, it had become personal to Joe. There was sure some weird karma around that Fisher fuck, like everyone round him got wiped and he just kept on keeping on.

Then Fisher went off the radar. Joe heard he’d fallen on hard times, gone broke somehow, was drinking his ass off, got into a couple of bar fights. Did Joe shed any tears? Like fuck he did. He was secretly hoping that Max would piss the wrong guy off at some bar, get his ass nailed to the wall.

A couple months went by and Joe didn’t hear much of anything. Then imagine how surprised he was when he heard that Fisher was back and, word was, he was dealing. You fucking believe it?

Joe put a tag on Max. Yeah, he could’ve nailed him for a couple of small-time crack deals, could have at least slapped him with Possession with Intent. But the DA wanted the whole deal and didn’t want Joe to move in too quick. So Joe got a hold of a new snitch-a stripper-slash-prostitute named Felicia Howard. No surprise there-Fisher was as smarmy as they came and he had a thing for busty broads. Fisher’s old flame, Angela Petrakos, had also been built.

Felicia was promising-Joe had scared her and good. He had her on prostitution charges for taking money from the clients she danced for and was hanging three-to-five, no parole, over her head. He could tell she was probably sick of Fisher herself. There was no way in hell she’d go down for that jackass.

The early stages with a snitch were always tricky. He had to build up trust, or if not trust, at least a relationship. He never had any problem with paying his informants. Some cops, they used intimidation, bullied the poor fucks into giving up information but Joe knew, that way you only got half the story. First thing Joe did, always, was slip them a few bucks and it worked every time. Nothing like cash money to loosen up somebody’s lips. And paying hookers for info usually worked out really well. If they’d give away their bodies for some green, why wouldn’t they give up info?’

But Joe had been working with Felicia for over a week now and he was getting impatient. He felt like she was stalling.

He arranged to meet her at the Green Kitchen diner on Seventy-seventh and First. They did some mean meatloaf there, not a bad rice pudding either. When Joe was seated at a booth toward the back he spotted a dog-eared paperback with a torn cover that somebody had left on the cushion. He could barely read the title-was it Cockfighter?

Whatever, he thought, and shoved it aside.

Felicia arrived. It was hard not to notice her in the short skirt and with all the cleavage. Practically every male head in the diner turned to watch her pass. A few women too. When she sat across from Joe, he smiled. He gave great smile. Ask anybody.

He gave Felicia that look, then went, “You need anything?” and took out his wallet, showing her the corner of a twenty sticking out. Figuring he’d whet her appetite right off the bat.

“Why you so good to me, Detective Miscali?” Felicia said. “I ain’t used to kindness.”

He knew she was full of shit, went, “You’re full of shit.” And yeah, here was his handkerchief, all sympathy and bull, and he said, “Felicia, I’m your friend, I’m gonna get those minor charges wiped but you gotta give me something on Fisher, you know, keep my bosses happy. And call me Joe, okay?”

She nodded, wiping daintily at her eyes, and said, hesitantly, “Maybe I do got something for you…Joe.”

He was all focus now, cop antennae on full alert. Asked, “What is it?”

“Hold up,” she said. “What am I gonna get?”

“You get not to go to jail.”

“I mean what am I gonna get’s green and white, has presidents on ’em.”

“Look, Felicia,” Joe said. “Just because I haven’t played hardball with you yet, doesn’t mean I’m not capable. Yeah, I’m a good guy, but I have a hardass side to me, too, and, trust me, you don’t want to meet it.”

Joe was trying to intimidate. He knew it wasn’t working-hell, she knew he knew it wasn’t working-but he kept the glare going anyway.

She nodded, said, “I’m just playin’ with you. You know how bad I wanna help you, right? But I just hope there’s more twenties like that in yo’ wallet, know what I’m sayin’?”

“How many twenties we talking about?” Joe said, smiling.

“Fifty,” Felicia said.

The smile went. Joe said. “Look, if you think I’m giving you a thousand bucks you’re out of your fucking mind.”

“Five hundred,” Felicia said.

“Two hundred,” Joe said.

“Deal,” Felicia said.

Joe, feeling like he’d been taken, went, “Do you have anything for me or not?”

“Yeah, I got somethin’ good for you,” Felicia said. “You gonna be thankin’ me for this shit. He’s in with some Colombians.”

Joe waited a second then said, “You mean Colombian Colombians. From Colombia.”

“Ain’t talkin’ about no District of Columbians,” Felicia said. “He’s movin’ up-way up. Motherfuckers are from some drug cartel or some shit. They having a big meeting in Staten Island tomorrow night. You show up there, you can get ’em all.”

Felicia gave Joe all the info about the meeting and Joe didn’t think she was bullshitting. When you worked with snitches you had to have a good bullshit detector, and Joe had one of the best in the business. He wrote everything in his pad, meticulous to get every detail down. After a few minutes or so of this, he looked up at Felicia and said, “Can I ask where you got this?”

“How you know Max didn’t tell me?”

Joe gave her a look, like, Was I born yesterday?

Felicia recognized the look, went, “From Kyle, some white boy from Alabama. The boy’s hung, know what I’m saying?”

Joe smiled at his snitch, proud of how well everything had worked out.

“Nice work,” he said. Then he grabbed a menu and went, “Now how about we get some food on the table, you hungry girl you.”