The Ninth Step

by Gabriel Cohen

  “Nothing new from your boss about getting more cooperation from the feds?”

  Jack snorted. “Here’s the thing about Tanney: He cares the world about all the externals of the job—performance reviews, getting promoted, playing it smart with department politics. Most of the time, though, he barely gives a rat’s ass about the only thing that’s really important, as far as I’m concerned—and that’s the actual work.”

  Richie nodded. “I hear that. How about Lieutenant Cardulli? He seems more sympatico.”

  Jack shrugged. “He is. But Tanney is so insecure that if I say anything to the Loo, he’ll make a big stink about me violating the chain of command.”

  He waved to the bartender for another beer. “I’m gonna shut up now. I hate cops who sit around and gripe all the time. We’re freakin’ lucky, no matter what happens: we get to work in the greatest city in the world, on the greatest police force. And—despite all the pencil pushers—we’ve still got the best damn job.”

  Richie’s cell phone trilled. “Excuse me,” he said. He took the call, then hung up and turned back to Jack. “The wife. I gotta go. See you tomorrow, okay?”

  Jack nodded and raised his glass in salute. “It’s good working with ya.” He pictured his partner going home and spending the rest of his evening at home with his wife: a red-haired woman, Irish maybe, rather stout and busty.

  He decided that he would stay on just long enough to finish his second beer. (He wasn’t much of a drinker either.) So he sat there, while the old-timers chatted amongst themselves, and the sports channels played with no sound up on the TVs, and Pat restocked the beer coolers for the night shift.

  He thought about cases. They might be baffling for a while, but when it came down to it, the solutions were simple. He didn’t have to plumb the deep mysteries of the human heart or ponder why things played out the way they did in the grand scheme of life. He didn’t have to explain why good people died young or bad people died old, or why it was so damn hard for parents and their kids to get along. He just needed to come up with concrete evidence to prove one simple fact: person x killed person y. That was the job.

  Sometimes, when the bigger mysteries—love, family, what the hell he was doing on the planet in the first place—started to weigh him down, the only way to find some relief and release seemed to be to connect the dots and solve one of the solvable puzzles. To make a little sense of something; maybe even provide a bit of cosmic justice. Take one killer off the street; give the friends and relatives of one victim some sense of balance and fairness and possibly even peace.

  Right now, though, he wasn’t making progress on any front, and even being in Monsalvo’s, this friendly, dumpy little bar that often provided a small oasis from life’s big concerns, wasn’t doing him a whit of good.

  It was time for a little direct action.

  BY THE TIME HE reached his destination, the late afternoon sun was glowing golden orange against the top stories of the little brick buildings, Brooklyn’s magic hour.

  Joey Gallo’s old block might have turned into overpriced yuppie real estate, and humble little Smith Street here was now a paradise for young hipsters, a row of trendy bars and boutiques. But there were still a few places where the old-timers held sway. Aside from tossing bocce balls or betting on the ponies at the OTB, little old men who had been big shots in the Mob’s heyday stood around chatting in groups with their hands clasped behind their backs over on Court Street, or took their wives to fancy dinners at the Fontana di Trevi restaurant, with its parking valets and starched white tablecloths. And they still whiled away the time in a few remaining social clubs like this one.

  The three-story building had an unassuming brick façade. There was no sign out front—just a blacked-out picture window and an old metal door with a diamond-shaped little window cut in the center, blocked by a faded red curtain. It would have been very easy to miss, distracted as you might be by the flashy boutique next door and the French-Asian restaurant on the other side.

  Inside, it looked as if nothing had changed for the past fifty years, and certainly not since the only other time Jack had been here, two years earlier. The same old geezer in a beige leather sports jacket finally admitted him after making him wait outside; the same beefy guys in track suits were playing dominoes at a card table in the middle of the room; the place still reeked of cigar smoke and looked like a grubby 1950s basement rec room. And John Carpsio Jr., the man Jack had come to see, looked exactly the same: a small, trim, middle-aged man, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a rather nondescript, putty-colored face. The Mob boss was behind his club’s wet bar, puttering around with a fancy espresso machine. At first, he barely acknowledged Jack’s presence; he looked down at his machine with disgust. “I can’t believe I paid two grand for this piece ’a shit—I can get better coffee out of a ten-dollar stovetop son of a bitch.” He looked up. “Well, well, well. Lookit who’s slummin’ in the old nabe.”

  He and Jack had a bit of a history. They had both grown up in Red Hook and even attended the same elementary school, though they were several grades apart. A couple of years ago, the detective had inadvertently done the criminal a favor, and then Carpsio had tipped him off on the whereabouts of a killer. But it pained Jack to even look at the man. “Can we talk?” he said.

  Carpsio shrugged. “So? Talk.”

  Jack’s shirt collar felt tight and he tugged it away from his neck. “This, ah … this isn’t an official visit.”

  “You been jonesing for a game of dominoes?”

  “Not exactly.” Jack looked around: the others in the club were yards away, and the TV overhead—showing some kind of afternoon spouse-versus-spouse freakshow—was loud enough to mask their conversation. Still, he hated even mentioning Petey in public, in this shithole. “The last time I was here, you said that you remembered my brother. And what happened to him.”

  Carpsio shrugged. “Of course. He got shivved by some mooley.” Mooley, for mulignan. “That kinda crap didn’t happen in Red Hook every day.”

  “No,” Jack said, nodding. “It didn’t.”

  “I told you: your family should’a let us handle it,” Carpsio said, and there was no doubt who he meant by us. “We would’a taken care of them punks by nightfall.”

  Jack crossed his arms. “But see, here’s the thing. I happen to know for a fact that it wasn’t just some random mugging. There was someone from the neighborhood behind it.”

  Carpsio’s eyes narrowed and his whole manner changed. “Someone from the neighborhood. What the fuck are you saying?”

  “I think this had something to do with my father. That he pissed someone off.”

  “So what are you comin’ to me for?”

  Jack raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not saying that you or your, ah, friends had anything to do with it. I was just hoping you might have heard something about my father that would help me make sense of this thing.”

  Carpsio drew himself up. “That last time you did me a solid and I was glad to repay the favor. But I don’t know what the hell you want from me here. You want I should tell you about your own old man? You think I know more about him than you do?”

  Jack shrugged. “You were older than me. Maybe you heard things.”

  Carpsio shook his head. “I’m only two, t’ree years older than you, guy.”

  “Look: this is ancient history. I’ve been thinking about who might’ve been in cahoots with any black guys back then, and the only person I can think of is Joey Gallo. He’s been dead for over thirty years, so I can’t imagine that there’s any harm in talking about him, right? I just want to know what happened. Did you ever hear anything besides the official story?”

  John Carpsio Jr.’s eyes were like ice and they didn’t give away anything. But his next words did.

  “Listen up, Leightner, and listen good. You did me a favor once, and I’m gonna do you another one right now. And this one is on the house. Get the fuck out of this neighborhood and stay the fuck away, unles
s you’ve got some kinda official business that’s got nothing to do with this cockamamie bullshit.” He stood up, indicating that their little talk was over, but he had one final word. “You go poking a stick around in a goddamn hornet’s nest, don’t come cryin’ to me if you get stung.”

  Jack walked toward the door, bearing one small grain of satisfaction. He hadn’t had much of a plan, coming in here, but he had figured he would do exactly what Carpsio had just said: poke around in the hive with a stick and see what flew out.

  Now he knew for sure what Larry Cosenza had only hinted at: this story wasn’t ancient history at all, and some thug much more alive than Joey Gallo was directly involved.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE MORNING SUN WAS bright on Coney Island Avenue and Jack shaded his eyes, thinking that it was time to dig out his sunglasses for the season. The light made him squint as if he had a bad hangover, which he didn’t; he simply had not enjoyed a good night’s sleep ever since he received his surprise visit from Darnel Teague.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Richie said, addressing a plump Pakistani woman in a bright blue sari, pushing a shopping cart stuffed with laundry bags. “I’m with the New York Police Department. We’re looking for people who might have passed by here at about this time on Monday morning.”

  The two detectives were out in front of the deli again: it was always a good idea to return and canvass an area at the same time of day that a crime had been committed. That was the best way to find someone with a regular routine—commuting to work, making deliveries—that might have brought them by this spot at the same hour on the earlier date.

  The woman looked up at Richie suspiciously. She raised her hands—“no English”—and then pushed her cart off down the block.

  Jack stepped out in front of an elderly Caucasian man stooped over with scoliosis; he wore a heavy tweed coat more suitable for the middle of winter. “Excuse me. Do you live around here?”

  The man squinted up. “Yah. Why?”

  “Is there any chance that you might have passed by here at around this time on Monday morning?”

  “You cops?”

  Jack nodded. “We’re checking out an incident that took place here that day.”

  “The murder, huh? Terrible. This whole neighborhood’s gettin’ shot to hell.”

  Jack brightened. “Were you around?”

  The old man shook his head. “Nope. But I’ll tell you somethin’.” He turned and pointed at the far end of the block. “Ya see those windows on the second floor? With the red curtains? Ya know why they’re red? I’ll tell ya: they got hookers in there! And nobody’s doin’ a goddamn thing about it!”

  Jack refrained from frowning. “Thanks very much for the tip. I’ll pass it on to the vice squad.”

  “My pleasure,” the man said. “You know, my grandson wants to be a cop.”

  “That’s great,” Jack said, pulling out his cell phone. “Sorry—I gotta take a call.” He moved away; he didn’t really have a call, but he didn’t relish the half-hour monologue he was in for otherwise. The old man tottered off.

  Richie wandered over. “It’s after nine. Whaddaya wanna do? Should we go back to the Brasciak angle?”

  Jack shook his head. They could keep going, digging deeper to see if they could come up with anything else, but he kept thinking about the fed in his radiation suit.

  He squared his shoulders. “I think I’ll take a little trip into Manhattan. Pay a visit to Federal Plaza. Our Homeland Security friend.”

  Richie’s eyes widened. “You think that’s wise?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s wise. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna keep plugging away in vain here, when this Charlson jerk could just save us the trouble.”

  Richie nodded—“Let’s go”—but Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. I suspect some fur might fly here, and there’s no need for you to get caught up in it.”

  The veteran from the Seven-oh grinned. “Hey, I’ve got my twenty in. They wanna bust my balls, let ’em try.”

  AS JACK DISCOVERED WHEN he took another look at Charlson’s business card, the man’s office was not actually downtown in Federal Plaza (next to the FBI and City Hall)—it was in midtown, near Grand Central. As the two detectives got out of their car a couple of blocks away, they could see the building, a forbidding black monolith rising high above Third Avenue. Jack was staring at its tinted windows when a voice called him up short.

  “Hey, mister!”

  He paused in the flow of pedestrians. An old homeless man wearing a stained green Army jacket was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning back against the front of a Starbucks coffee shop and staring directly at him.

  “Hey, mister,” the man repeated. “I’ll bet you three bucks I can tell you where you got your shoes.”

  The crazy offer snapped Jack out of his musings about federal agents and their arrogance. He stepped out of the pedestrian flow and confronted the stranger. “Whaddaya mean? You’re gonna tell me I bought them in New York or something?”

  The homeless man shook his head earnestly. “No, sir. I can tell you exactly where ya got em.”

  Jack thought for a second: he had bought his footwear in a little store in Bay Ridge one afternoon when he’d been out there on a case. He looked at his partner and they both chuckled. Jack turned back to the stranger. “Okay, sure. If you can pull this off, it’ll be worth three bucks.”

  The man grinned. “You got ’em on your own two feet.” He held out his hand.

  Jack laughed, pulled out his wallet, and handed over the money, with absolutely no hard feelings. He had to give credit where credit was due.

  Inside the skyscraper, the detectives took an elevator up to the State Office of Homeland Security, which looked like an impressive, well-funded government headquarters, with its official seals and photo of the president in the lobby.

  An elderly blonde sitting behind a reception desk offered up a starchy smile. “May I help you?”

  Jack flashed his tin. “I’m Detective Leightner and this is Detective Powker. We’re here to see Brent Charlson.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Jack crossed his arms. “Nope. But it’s urgent.”

  The receptionist picked up her phone. “I’ll try his office.” She dialed. “Hi, Deb. I’ve got a couple of NYPD detectives here asking for Mr. Charlson.” She listened. “Leightner. And Powker. From—”

  She looked inquisitively at Jack.

  “Brooklyn South Homicide.”

  She repeated that, listened for a few seconds more, then hung up.

  “I’m sorry—Mr. Charlson is not in the building right now.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack replied.

  Her smile curdled. “Excuse me?”

  Jack leaned over the desk. “I just called his office about thirty seconds ago. And he answered the phone.” He had hung up as soon as he heard the man’s voice.

  The woman rose from her seat. “Could you wait here a moment?” She disappeared through a side door.

  Jack turned and grinned at his partner. “As my son used to say, we seem to be about as welcome as a screen door in a submarine.”

  After a minute, the door opened and the receptionist returned. “You’ll need to go up to seventeen.”

  Up they went. This floor looked anonymous, no seals anywhere, not even signs on the doors, except for the suite numbers. Jack raised his eyebrows and gave his partner a grin. “Either we’re on the super-duper top-secret floor, or this guy is just some flunky.”

  BRENT CHARLSON DIDN’T LOOK at all put out by the sudden visit.

  “Sorry about that,” he said briskly, offering them a seat in his office, with its rich wood paneling and plush blue carpet “Our gorgon downstairs might be a little too efficient.”

  Jack didn’t believe the receptionist had anything to do with it, but he held his tongue. Instead of sitting, he walked across the surprisingly large corner office to take in the views of midtown skyscraper
s and the shining East River. By the looks of things, Charlson was hardly a flunky.

  “What can I do for you?” the man said pleasantly. Jack would have expected him to ask if they’d had any success in tracking down the deli perp, but Charlson just waited. Jack didn’t take a seat; he preferred the psychological advantage of standing, as he would in a more routine station house interview. He stared down at the fed, who sat back in a swanky executive chair with his hands steepled together and a mildly curious expression on his face. Grandfatherly, Jack thought again.

  “My partner and I have a bit of a problem here,” he said. “The thing is, we’ve got a murderer walking around our city right now. And it really troubles me that we’re out there pounding the sidewalks, looking for this guy, with what seems to be incomplete information.”

  Charlson considered this statement thoughtfully. “I want to assure you gentlemen that I’m not out to disrespect you in any way or to maintain any secrecy that’s not absolutely necessary.” He didn’t continue.

  “Okay. I’m glad to hear that. Maybe you could explain why secrecy is necessary at all.”

  “Were you on the job in ’ninety-three, detective?”

  Jack nodded.

  “I don’t know how much you remember about what happened back then, with the first attack on the World Trade Center, but it was a major cock-up. The men who plotted that bombing had been under surveillance by the FBI for some time, but the surveillance was dropped just months before the attack. And there were confidential informants who were handled quite poorly.”

  Jack leaned forward. “What are you saying? There’s some kind of terrorist plot going on here?”

  Charlson took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I can tell you that we’re in the middle of an investigation. But this kind of case is incredibly sensitive. You bring too many people into the loop and lives get jeopardized. Or plotters hear about surveillance and they go deep into hiding.”

  Richie entered the conversation. “We understand. But we’re not some rookies, running around shooting our mouths off. We know how to run an undercover operation. Do you know who our perp is? Did you already have him under surveillance?”