Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

  This caressing continued for some time, with perhaps another kiss, then Clara said something too softly for Ellie to understand her . . .

  crouched back and lowerand, her hands holding hard, gripped Ellie’s hips and turned her over . . . then stroked her, not as tenderly as before, murmured, bent, and after a few moments commenced to lap as neat as any cat-making in time, as if by magic, Ellie’s thighs to slowly spread in presentation, her knees to slowly rise, and causing her at last, from the comfort of her pillow, to call into the dark.

  ill

  CHAPTER 4

  “What the hell is his name-what happened to that cute little intro they’re supposed to do? What happened to waiting to see if the wine’s O.K.?” Rebecca flicked the rim of her wineglass with a crimson fingernail. -It was . nexpensive glassware, and made barely a tink as she did.

  Trystal, my ass.” Rebecca said.

  “It tastes pretty good.”

  “On a salad, it would taste pretty good. I’m not pouring this upstate shit down my throat-not if I can help it.” She pursed her lips and made a sharp, sudden kissing sound-loud enough, apparently. Ellie saw their waiter, heading past, quickly swerve toward them, a basket of rolls, a little plate of butter flowers in his hands.

  “What’s your name, honey? —Christ, he’s young enough to be my kid.”

  “Raoul,” the waiter said. He was slender, seemed gently gay, and presented damp dark eyes. His white cotton jacket was clean as new night snow.

  “Now listen to me, Raoul,” Rebecca said. “If I was paying for this lunch, I wouldn’t dream of complaining about the upstate wine. -Since my friend is paying, and she’s too ladylike to make noise, I have to tell you that this wine sucks.”

  Raoul nodded sympathetically. “It is a little sharp,” he said.

  Rebecca set the wineglass down on the butcher block with a clack. “Will you please go out to the kitchen, Raoul, and tell Tony-if Tony still works here-that it would be better to keep the vinegar where it belongs.

  And if he has a nice fat jug of some California Chablis, to for Christ’s sake pour me a glass-and one for my friend-and put this New York State shit where the mon key put the pineapple! -And I don’t want to hear some bull about a French wine. We don’t want this, and we don’t want some sour overpriced French crap. California wine, Raoul-40.K.?”

  Raoul was not shaken. “No problem,” he said. “-I’ve seen something obese on the shelf back there. Some kind of California Cellars .

  “Bring it.”

  As Raoul swung away with his rolls and butter, Rebecca said, “The best goddamn light table wine there is, and they keep trying to serve anything but! -What is that? The will to fuck up, Or what?”

  “I don’t mind this,” Ellie said.

  “My fault,” said Rebecca. “We should have gone to the Dove.” She cocked her head slightly to the right, and seemed to look at Ellie harder with the advanced, left eye. “-Something bothering you-beside your lousy job?”

  “You look like a guitar string ready to pop-you need to get laid, that’s the answer to that. I’ve got a guy-nice good-looking Jewish guy, has a personality shlong and a long, strong back; he’d be happy to give you a ride. -No money in it, though.”

  “Will you cut that crap out?”

  “So—get a vibrator. Don’t get mad. -Get a bigger vibrator! Don’t get mad; I’m your guest here.”

  “Eat your salad,” Ellie said.

  “This, they do pretty well,” Rebecca said, carefully selected her smaller fork, and stuck it into a slice of avocado. “-House dressing’s supposed to be O.K.”

  “What do you hear about the Gaither thing?”

  “I hear that the regular Homicide guys think it’s a bullshit case. A friend of mine-Larry Ergin? The bartender?-makes Raoul look like Clint Eastwood-says that some cops were talking about it at Clinkers. Drinking on the cuff, as usual. -And what the hell do they know? They were talking about that case . . . other cases, too. You’re a smart gal; and that wop hoodlum you go around with-at least he has muscles. What they can do-you can do. Don’t pay any attention to the fuckers; that’s my advice. I learned a long time ago it doesn’t pay to be scared of cops. It’s just like dealing with some dog.

  Show him you’re scared, and he’s all over you-kick him in the tush, and he leaves you alone - “

  “Don’t ever trV that kick on me,” Ellie said, “—or that’ll be your last free lunch.” The avocado salad was pretty good; there were small slices of hard-boiled egg in it.

  “Hell, you’re a woman. You’re a friend-not just a cop - “

  Depressing to hear. Ellie thought Of Poor Marty, Nardone’s informant.

  So scared and lonely. Calling for mpany-likely spilling the beans for company, too, as co much as for the helping hand if he took a fall.

  Ellie thought that perhaps Rebecca wasn’t as impervious as she seemed.

  Not tough enough to be alone.

  “Rebecca,” she said, “-you are full of shit as a Christmas turkey.”

  “So … ? That makes me different?”

  Raoul swooped up to their table for two-alongside the bare-brick wall-and set two glasses of white wine in front of them. “Compliments of the house,” he said, and scooped up the other two glasses. “By the way—Tony quit. This is compliments of Frank Cosumo … new manager”-spun half around and slid gracefully away.

  “Wheel that squeaks,” Rebecca said, satisfied, and took a sip. Ellie noticed she left a faint print of lipstick on the glass rim.

  “O.K.-unless we get the kitchen revenge.”

  “What?”

  “They spit in the food.” Rebecca used her knife and lad fork to carefully fold and refold a leaf of lettuce sa into a pale-green little package, small enough to eat at a bite.

  It had been a bad morning. Watching the meticulous leaf folding, Ellie felt that even lunch with Rebecca was better than the morning had been.

  She’d been halfway through a report she and Nardone shouldn’t have had to file at all-a follow-up on two state troopers who’d gotten into a fight at the Blackthorn Bar on Seventh Avenue the week before. The quarrel had begun over which game to watch on the bar TV, and, everyone involved being drunk (especially the troopers, who were in town celebrating the birth of one’s son at Presbyterian-the trooper’s wife having had complications in Tarrytown, and been ambulanced down), the quarrel had turned to punching. No weapons had been shown but fists, and the officers responding had settled the fight, tuned the TV to a game show, and left, taking nobody in.

  All well, and ending well-but the bar owner, a woman named Grace Aline Moran, had sued the troopers for damages, and, at least so far, had refused to listen to reason, citing a broken bar rail and long mirror, and two damaged tables.

  Result: a necessary investigation and report-the report to be filed with the State Police in four copies, each signed by the investigating officers, and Lieutenant Leahy, and Captain Anderson. Nardone had called the troopers upstate the previous week and suggested a payout on the damages; the troopers had been willing. Their commander-unfortunately an asshole-wouldn’t hear of it. Complained to Leahy, in fact, that Nardone’s call had “tainted the inquiry.”

  It was the remnant of this silly case that required Ellie to processin eleven pages-strictly by the book-of interviews: one cabby; three black rack pushers from the garment district (the men who’d come to fisticuffs with the troopers); the bartender; another customer (an incoherent alcoholic)-and the squad-car officers who’d responded.

  The baby boy-Michael Edward Irwin-was back upstate with his mother, and doing fine.

  There was this to finish, and the report on the Queens thing yesterday, and the additional at Sally Gaither’s apartment yesterday afternoon-zip, but additional time to account for. All morning at the keyboard, was what it amounted to-and lunch with Rebecca to follow.

  Ellie had been working on a proper explanation of why the alcoholic’s testimony-that one of the troopers had been a small Puerto Rican youth wh
o’d drawn a gravity knife during the disturbance-of why this testimony was unsound, and might be safely disregarded. She’d just decided to use the phrase on interview, SUBJECT, a substance abuser, proved unreliable-when she heard raised DAYDRE”S

  voices (raised even higher than usual) at the entrance to the squad room.

  She turned from the computer-Nardone, in shirtsleeves, sat across the aisle at his ease, drinking his second cup of tea, and reading a follow-up sent in on Detective Johnson of Internal Affairs, and his acquaintance, Porfirio Cruz, bookmaker. ‘-The same shit’as before,”

  Nardone had already said. Ellie turned to look toward the noise, and saw a detective named Medina (with Buddy Serrano, the only other officers in the room) trying to reason with and restrain an angry man-a cop, by the way they were dealing with him.

  “You get the fuck out of my way!” this man said, and followed that up by shoving Serrano against a desk. The strange cop was short, thick-chested in an expensive tan sports jacket; carefully cut blow-dried black hair framed a face as furious as an angry dog’s.

  “Where is this bitch?” he said, looked around, and saw Ellie down the aisle.

  “You!” He shoved past Medina, and stood in the aisle, legs apart, and crooked his finger at her. “You-you fuckin3 bitch. Come here!”

  Before she thought-so peremptory was the orderEllie stood up and took a step toward him. Nardone put down his tea and reached up to take her arm, hold it for a moment.

  “Where you going’?”

  “You … !” The angry man crooked his finger at her again. “I want to talk to you … !”

  “I think it’s Ambrosio,” Ellie said, and giggled.

  Nardone looked over his shoulder down the aisle. “No bet,” he said, picked up his tea, and went back to reading the Johnson report.

  The cop, who was likely Sergeant Charles Ambrosio, shrugged Serrano’s hand off his heavy shoulder and came down the aisle like a vehicle.

  Ellie wished Tommy wouldn’t just sit there. She wished Lieutenant Leahy would come back to the office. -He’d gone down the corridor to Personnel to complain about the month’s roster, just distributed, which showed the two young black detectives working on the racing-odds scam as belonging to Division Bunko, rather than to C Squad, Headquarters-which they absolutely did.

  “You’re the fuckin’ cunt came to my house, Friday!”

  The sergeant was pointing a thick finger into Ellie’s face as he came up to her. He was a little shorter than she was, but that seemed to make no difference.

  “You came to my goddarnned house!” He had a hairy hand wide as both of Ellie’s. “—Come out to my fuckin’ house and scare my wife? Mess with my mother? My wife is expectin’ a kid!” He was so angry, his voice was shaking. “Who the fuck you think you are … from this shit Squad-you fuckin’ ass-kissers comin’ out fuckin’ with a man’s family!”

  “You go to hell,” Ellie said, but not as loud as she’d wanted to.

  Ambrosio reached out and took her by the arm-just above where Tommy had held her. With that grip, holding her firmly, but not hurting her, he began to shake her slightly back and forth. “You dirty cunt,” he said,

  “-if you or any of your faggot buddies come out to my house again …

  An’ you made goddamn sure I wasn’t there……

  Ellie saw Nardone put down his tea, the report on Johnson and the bookie.

  “Tommy, don’t,” she said, ashamed. “-I’ll handle it.”

  Ambrosio turned to look down at Nardone, and said, “You were out there, too-right? You, I don’t have to go easy on. You get up outa that chair, you motherfucker, I’ll break your fuckin’ jaw!”

  “Hey, now!” Serrano said, he and Medina standing just up the aisle.

  “Hey, now-take it easy, you guys.”

  Nardone, looking satisfied, stood up. “-That new kid’s probably not yours, anyway, Sergeant,” he said.

  Ambrosio let go of Ellie’s arm, turned, feinted a punch with a grunt-and kicked hard at Nardone’s balls. He didn’t quite have room enough to make it good.

  Then, the sergeant-slugging, kicking-was seized and lifted into the air, shaken very severely, and thrown down hard across Ellie’s desk (sending the computer sliding off and slamming to the floor, and crushing a coffee cup and prune Danish beneath the back of his fine sports jacket).

  From the desktop, recumbent, Ambrosio swung up several punches which hurt and frightened Ellie when they hit Nardone’s face and head, smack, smack, smack!

  so that she jumped forward and tried to wrestle in between them, but Nardone casually elbowed her back so erfully that she slipped and fell on her rump in the pow aisle-startled, as she always was, by men’s strength.

  Serrano and Medina were also trying to grapple at the fight, but Nardone paid no attention to them. -Reaching down, he gripped Ambrosio’s head in both hands (as an adult holds a child’s head to lean down and kiss it). He raised the sergeant’s head high-then slammed it back down on the desktop.

  Nardone did that once, and still Ambrosio struck at him-and tried to draw up a heavy-muscled leg to kick, as well. Ellie was up, then, shouting at Nardone, trying with the other two detectives to wrestle him off. It was like handling moving machinery.

  Nardone did it again-Ambrosio’s head whacking solidly against the scarred wood (sounding like a softball, well hit). Ambrosio reached up, fumbling, to Nardone’s wrists, trying to break his grip.

  “What the hell’s going’ on here?” Fat Leahy, just arrived, manhandling Medina to get past.

  Nardone had lifted Ambrosio’s head once more, and with a grunt of effort cracked it down onto the desktop even harder than he’d done before. -At that, the sergeant settled, and lay beneath him slack as a sated lover when Leahy came bustling to haul Nardone off and away.

  Lieutenant Leahy, fresh from a minor victory over Captain Cahill of Personnel, and not intending to have that triumph wiped away by a trumpeting of this embarrassment (though news of it would certainly leak in time) took hold in a very creditable way. -Leading a stumbling Charles Ambrosio back into his small office (where the sergeant, slightly confused, vomited into Leahy’s sink), the Lieutenant had first asked if he wanted someone to come down from the P.S.“s office to take a look at him (Ambrosio said no)-and had then sat listening patiently to the details of the Sergeant’s complaint, before informing Ambrosio that he was an asshole who was asking for official trouble that (believe Leahy) he wouldn’t like and suggesting that unless he wanted it widely known that he’d had his ass kicked in front of a whole squad room, including a woman officer, he’d be well advised to keep his big mouth shut. -And would be further well advised to sell that new bass boat, that new Z car, and that new Buick-and, in short, to stop being such a fucking thief.

  This advisory, Ambrosio (seated, his mouth rinsed, his ears still ringing) listened to without replying. When Leahy finished talking, the sergeant rose, smoothed his mussed hair with both hands, and walked from the Lieutenant’s tiny office, down the long squadroom aisle, and out looking neither left nor right as he went.

  “The salad was OX.,” Rebecca said. “-Good house dressing.” She put her fork on her salad plate; she’d left nothing on the plate but half a radish. “Lots of garlic.

  You can always tell class salad-no skimping on the garlic.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Did you finish yours? You didn’t finish yours. -Honey, the salad a girl can always eat; keeps you from making a pig of yourself with the rich stuff.”

  “Nothing keeps me from making a pig of myself with the rich stuff.”

  “It will; finish the damn thing,” Rebecca said, and Ellie picked up her fork for another try. The morning had ruined her’ lunch-probably ruined her day, though Nardone had appeared to find it all funny. `-That head sounded hollow to me,” he said more than once, to applause from the detectives as they drifted in to make phone calls, do their reports, lie to Leahy about progress here and there. It pleased the Squad that they had, in Tommy’s person, achi
eved an impression on at least one regular Division guy, and a sergeant, at that.

  As to any difficulties that might result from cracking another cop’s head-albeit a thief of a cop-and right in a Headquarters squad room, too, Nardone didn’t seem to consider it. “Oh, thay . . - ” he’d said, doing his gay impression (something he did only when exhilarated), “-I thurely hope there won’t be any trouble!” He had a cut on his upper lip, near the left corner of his mouth, and there was a dark smudge of bruise beneath his right eye. Ellie found it uncomfortable to imagine what it had felt like to be hit in the face by Charley Ambrosio. Hit in the face several times.

  Nardone hadn’t seemed to mind it, either, when Leahy, forms ready to hand, came out for his signature-reference the charges for the computer’s repair or replacement.

  He’d signed with a flourish.

  “Here we go,” Rebecca said, and Raoul steered to them with entr6es–curried chicken for Rebecca, salmon mousse for Ellie. “Small portions-but if it’s as good as Bloomies does it,” Rebecca prodded the chicken, “I won’t complain.”

  Raoul raised an eyebrow to Ellie, refilled their water glasses, and slid away.

  “Good news,” Rebecca said, ‘-I talked to Susan Margolies, and she’s very interested in meeting you.” She ate a forkful of curried chicken.

  Ellie put her knife and fork down hard, and a piece of salmon mousse fell off her plate onto the tablecloth.

  “What in hell is the matter with you?” she said. “You’re not stupid, Rebecca, -Are you trying to get cute with me, or what?”

  “I knew you’d be pissed-will you just listen to me. .

  “I won’t listen to shit, Rebecca-“