As for me, I want back on the SWAT team and the Fugitive Apprehension Squad. I want both of those things and I want them bad enough to play along.
* * *
“Anything I can do for you, I’m ready,” I finally say. “You know that.”
“It’s about your cousin, Joanna.”
“The Slinky?”
“Pardon?”
“That’s what I call her, Uncle Mike. The Slinky.”
He bursts out laughing. “Yes, I can understand why you’d say that.”
Joanna Kelly embodies the concept of slender. Her fingernails are slender, her elbows, her teeth. On those rare occasions when I’m with her, I feel like the Incredible Hulk.
“It wouldn’t be so bad, Uncle Mike, if she didn’t wear those dresses.”
He nods agreement, his narrow smile widening slightly to indicate genuine amusement. “Ah, the dresses.”
Joanna likes plunging, short-skirted designer frocks. When she attends family gatherings, male attention drifts her way like dust to a vacuum cleaner.
“So what about Joanna?”
“Paulie assaulted her last night.”
“I thought Paulie was in prison?”
“He was paroled a week ago.”
“So pick him up and violate him. What’s the big deal?”
Paulie Malone is Joanna’s ex-husband. He’s an all-around knucklehead and he pretty much beat Joanna from the earliest days of their marriage until she finally called down the wrath of Uncle Mike and the rest of the Kelly clan. Then, within hours, Paulie was off the street, his bail denied, his lawyer made to understand that no plea bargain would be forthcoming. A short trial was followed by a conviction and a three-year sentence, the max for second-degree assault.
“I could have him picked up eventually,” Uncle Mike concedes, “but I’ll tell ya, Jill, if he hasn’t gotten the message by now, he’ll never get it. He’s incorrigible.”
“So what exactly do you want from me?” The words have an air of defiance, but my tone is resigned. Do it, or else: That’s how I understand the offer.
“Your cousin needs protection.”
“Only if you let Paulie stay on the street.”
“Okay, I won’t argue. Joanna needs protection until Paulie is taken into custody.”
“You’re telling me Paulie’s not to be found?”
“He never reported to his halfway house or his parole officer. His whereabouts, as we in the policing business like to say, are unknown.”
I look out the window at a nondescript street in a nondescript neighborhood. The stores on the other side of Pitkin Avenue survive from month to month. A barber who makes book, a candy store that hawks cigarettes smuggled in from Virginia, a cop bar named Melvin’s Hideaway.
“Jill?”
“I’m still listening, Uncle Mike.”
“Then I’m still insisting. Joanna needs twenty-four-hour protection.”
“And you want me to do the protecting.”
“I think Joanna would be more comfortable with a woman, and you’re the only woman I trust to do the job.”
The rumor in the Kelly family is that Uncle Mike continued to offer Joanna his support long after Paulie went to prison, that Joanna found a suitable way to express her gratitude. I’d never cared enough to check it out, but now it begins to make sense. Under no circumstances would Uncle Mike allow his main squeeze to be locked in, 24/7, with a male cop.
“Am I gonna do this in uniform?”
“Sad to say, the job doesn’t provide bodyguard protection to battered women.” He shakes his head. “I’ve arranged for you to take your vacation. Later, I’ll make it up to you.”
I’ve got a big mouth and I say the first thing to enter my mind. “Ya know, I really wanna tell you to go fuck yourself.”
Uncle Mike leans forward, his blue eyes twinkling, “Well, darlin’,” he croaks, “don’t waste your breath. If I could, I’d already have done so.” He gets up, comes around the desk, and offers me his hand. “Let’s take a walk, Jill. I feel the need of some fresh air.”
He’s right about the fresh air. Spring has penetrated the steel-and-concrete heart of the city. Tight buds crown every twig, and weeds push up through cracks in the sidewalk. For a few minutes, I keep pace with Uncle Mike, who walks with his hands behind his back as if pondering some weighty matter. Then, mostly because I’m getting bored, I decide to give him a break.
“You want me to kill him, Uncle Mike? That what you want?”
“That’s harsh, Jill.”
“If you were gonna bust him, send him back to the joint, you could just make Joanna disappear until Paulie surfaces.”
He bares his teeth and grips my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. “The Kellys don’t run,” he announces. “Never.”
The effort to raise his voice makes him sound like a spooked chicken, but the point is clear enough. Paulie Malone has defied the Kelly family for the second time and he’s not gonna get another warning. The other part, about taking him into custody, was pure bullshit.
“That makes Joanna the bait.” When he doesn’t respond, I add, “And me the executioner.”
“Well, it won’t be the first time, will it?” That said, Uncle Mike shifts gears. “Sooner or later, Paulie’s going to kill her. We both know that, Jill. You may not like Joanna, but you can’t deny that she has a right to her life.” He takes a deliberate step, then another. “The sad truth is that I wouldn’t trust anyone else in the family to handle this.”
I ignore the flattery. “What if he shows up without a weapon, Uncle Mike? You want me to shoot him down, maybe go to prison for the next fifteen years?”
“Last thing on my mind.” He reaches into his pocket, comes out with a battered .38, holds it up for my inspection. The grip, hammer, and trigger guard are wrapped with cloth tape. “I’ll be able to control the post-shooting investigation. You just make sure this is laying on the ground next to Paulie and that you call me first.” Suddenly, he takes my hand and grips it hard. His fingers are bony and cold. “Do this for the Kellys, Jill. Do it for us.”
Repulsed, I pull my hand away. “So where’s Joanna living these days?”
“She has a little house in College Point.”
Again, it makes sense. I got to know the small neighborhood of College Point well in the two years I worked at the 109th Precinct in Queens, my first assignment out of the Academy. The Point’s white working-class population is protected on one side by the East River, on the others by a solid wall of industry. The Asian explosion in Flushing, only a few miles away, has barely made a dent in the community’s ethnic makeup. To Joanna, who was raised in Howard Beach, the mix of Irish, Germans, Italians, and Jews must seem like home.
But I know that Joanna’s comfort is a secondary concern to Uncle Mike. Far more important is getting to and from her bed without being spotted by anybody who knows them.
Uncle Mike fancies himself the Kelly patriarch, and his authority goes unchallenged for the most part. Even as a Deputy Chief, he still has the ability to grant favors and deliver punishments. So the clan doesn’t object to his relationship with Joanna, as long as he doesn’t throw it in his wife’s face.
“Yes or no,” Uncle Mike finally declares. “I need an answer.”
I take the .38 and shove it into my pocket. Though I haven’t decided what, if anything, I plan to do, I don’t have the cojones to refuse outright. I don’t have the balls to seal my fate.
“Yes,” I tell him.
* * *
Joanna has a right to her life, small and miserable though it may be. It’s the only part of Uncle Mike’s argument that holds up. It doesn’t matter that a minute after I walk through the door, Joanna tells me I should let my hair grow out and change the color. Or that she wears a slinky jogging suit that cups her breasts and butt as though paying homage. Or that her arms and legs are firm without being muscular and she’s so perfectly made up, the black-purple bruises on her face look as if they’re part of the ove
rall design. Joanna has a right to her life.
After a perfunctory air-kiss, Joanna leads me into the kitchen, where she evaluates my potential as if I was a coat on a rack. “So, you seein’ anybody?” she finally asks. When I don’t respond, she says, “I could fix you up, but you scare the kind of guys I know.”
“Actually, I’ve got a boyfriend, Joanna. Joey Kruger. He’s hung like a horse and he can hump all night. What more could I possibly ask from life?”
As usual, my words, no matter how crude, have no appreciable effect on Joanna. Instead, she opens a cabinet next to the refrigerator, withdraws a can of Colombian coffee (the one with the likeness of the grateful peasant), and fits it into an electric can opener. I note that her arms appear boneless, then turn away.
“I’m gonna go outside, take a look around.”
Ten minutes later, I’m back in the kitchen, hoisting a cup of coffee. “When did the fence go up?” I ask Joanna.
“Three months ago.”
“What about the outdoor lights? When were they installed?” “The same time.”
“And the window bars on the first floor?”
Joanna glances into my eyes, the gesture sly, then looks down at her coffee. “Me living here by myself, Uncle Mike thought it would be a good idea. For my security.” She rubs the back of her hand across her brow, as if to erase the lie. “It’s getting warm in here. Do you think I should turn on the air-conditioning?”
Instead of answering, I lower the metal blinds, then set tables and lamps in front of as many windows as possible. When I finish, I’m nearly certain that Paulie won’t be able to see into any room. Then I go back through the entire house, including the basement, checking every lock on every window and door. As I work, I become more and more pissed off by the obvious fact that Uncle Mike set this up months ago, that he knew Paulie was coming out, that he made his preparations well in advance.
When I reenter the kitchen, I find Joanna touching up her nail polish. I lay Uncle Mike’s taped .38 on the table, say, “If Paulie gets past me, you’re gonna have to use this.”
Without looking up, Joanna asks, “How’s he gonna get past you, Jill? I mean . . .”
What she means is that I’m a trained sniper, that there’s not a cop in the city who can shoot with me. What she means is that the way Uncle Mike arranged things, Paulie’s gonna have to come through the front door and he’s gonna make a lot of noise in the process. What she means is that if I do my job, if I decide, mercilessly and without warning, to execute Paulie Malone, she won’t need the .38.
Joanna inspects the nails on her right hand, then blows softly across the drying polish. Her fingers are as supple as her arms and shoulders. If she has knuckles, I can’t see them.
“From here on out,” I tell her, “I want you to stay upstairs as much as possible.”
“Fine by me. I was gonna go up and change for dinner anyway.”
“Joanna, it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon.” I glance at the stove. “And you haven’t started cooking yet.”
The corners of her mouth pull down and she rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna take a bath,” she announces. “I need to calm my nerves.”
I wait until Joanna’s in the tub, then toss her room. Beneath a pair of lime-green panties in her second lingerie drawer, next to a .32 caliber automatic and a box of ammo, I find a small bundle of letters written on prison stationery.
It only takes me a few minutes to read through them. Like every wife beater, Paulie is both contrite and optimistic. He knows he’s done the wrong thing, but now he’s straightening himself out. He’s in therapy. He goes to Mass every Sunday. His shrink loves him. Father O’Neill loves him. Even the warden loves him.
None of this interests me very much because I saw a lot of domestic violence when I worked patrol. Once you put them in cuffs, wife beaters are always remorseful. But what does capture my attention is Paulie’s reference to a note sent by Joanna: Your letter gave me hope for the first time. I know I don’t deserve another chance, but when you wrote that you never stopped loving me . . .
I slip the .32 and the ammo into the pocket of my blazer, scatter the letters on Joanna’s bed where she’s sure to notice them, and finally go downstairs to open the blinds on a window in the living room. From a chair set back in the shadows, I can see most of the front yard. I note that there are no trees and no tall shrubs between the house and the seven-foot fence. The newly mown lawn is a killing zone.
* * *
By the time Paulie Malone opens the gate, steps inside, closes it behind him, I’m sure of only one thing: I’m not gonna whack him before I give him a chance to mend his ways.
I understand the implications. This means that I have to speak to Paulie close up. It means a dedicated knucklehead with two years in prison behind him might decide that I’m the enemy and beat me to a pulp. But as I rise from the chair and head for the front door, I know I’m just gonna have to take the chance. My one consolation is that if Paulie gets past me, he’ll probably murder Joanna, who’s still in the bathtub.
I meet Paulie just as he reaches the top step of the little porch. He jerks himself to a halt, but neither of us is willing to be the first to speak. I drop my gaze to the middle of his chest and wait. Two seconds, then three, then four, then ten, until there’s nothing left to us but violence. I watch his torso rotate slightly, then I grab his balls, drop to one knee, and yank down as hard as I can. When his body naturally follows his jewels, I snap my head up and catch him flush on the mouth.
He goes over backwards, slams his head into the porch railing, and drops, facedown, on the floorboards. I pull my Colt and jerk the slide back to draw his attention to the bottom line, his miserable life. He pulls himself to a sitting position, then leans against the railing and brings his hand up to his bloody mouth. Finally, he raises his eyes to look at me.
I have to blink twice before I can meet his gaze. Paulie Malone has the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen, a fact that a moment before completely escaped me. Now I remember him when times were better, at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Even in the best of moods, even laughing, the pain never left his eyes.
“You comin’ back here, Paulie? Huh?” I center the Colt on his forehead. “Because if you do, I’m gonna personally serve you with the only order of protection that really matters.”
But my words don’t penetrate the wall of his obsession, and Paulie responds by listing his grievances. Although he once made forty bucks an hour working the high steel at construction sites, Joanna spent every penny and more. She openly flirted with men, even with family members, even in his presence. She not only refused to cook, clean, or do laundry, she wouldn’t lift a finger to augment the work of a weekly housekeeper. Worst of all, though she’d known how much he wanted children, she’d had an abortion without his permission or knowledge.
Nice, right? But not relevant. I lower the Colt and shake my head. “Shut up for a minute, Paulie.” When he quiets down, I continue: “Look, I don’t like Joanna either. But I handle it by avoiding her as much as possible. Whereas you, Paulie, you keep comin’ back. What’s the point? You can’t win.”
I squat down about six feet away and lean against the front door. While it’s nearly 6 o’clock and the sun has dropped behind the house, the air is still warm enough to caress my neck and face. From down the block, I hear children arguing, the echoing clang of a basketball against a hoop. “What’s the point?” I repeat.
Paulie strips off his T-shirt, wads it up, and presses it to his mouth. “I can’t let her go.”
“Why not, Paulie? It’s not like she’s the only game in town.”
“I know she loves me, Jill. The letters she wrote . . . She always said she loved me.”
“The letters were a setup. You understand that? Joanna doesn’t love you because she doesn’t love anybody except herself.” When he doesn’t respond, I push his buttons again. “Joanna was your punching bag for eight years. You can’t get her back. You’ll never get her back. I’ll kill y
ou first.”
After a moment, Paulie opens up. “I don’t understand it,” he admits. “When I was with my counselor or with Father O’Neill, it always seemed easy. Turn my back, start over, there’s a new life right around the corner. But at night, after the final count, Joanna would march into my brain like a storm trooper. It was an invasion, Jill. I’d try to throw her out, think about something else, but she stuck to me like a leech. You ever get so mad you felt as if you were gonna fly apart?”
“Recently, Paulie. In fact, just this afternoon, when I saw what you did to Joanna’s face.”
He pulls the T-shirt away from his mouth and stares down at his own blood. “Something’s wrong with me,” he says, “and I can’t fix it. When I think about losing Joanna, I feel like my heart’s gonna fall out.” He probes his ribs, as if checking for leaks. “I came here yesterday sure that Joanna really wanted me back. I thought she was gonna give me another chance. When she wouldn’t let me in the house, I was just blown out of the water. I asked her about the letters, what she’d written, and she told me she wrote them because she was bored. She said, ‘I shouldn’t have done it. Like I’m sorry, all right?’ Jill, I went nuts. I couldn’t help it.”
Any sympathy I might have felt dropped away with the last bit: I couldn’t help it. That’s what all the wife beaters say. I couldn’t help it. She made me do it. It’s not my fault.
“There’s still a way out, Paulie. Go to your parole officer, tell him what you just told me, get yourself violated. That way you’ll have some time to think it over.” I’m wasting my breath. I can see it in his eyes, see the pain marching back through a hundred lifetimes.
After a struggle, Paulie manages to stand upright. He limps across the yard, through the gate, and out into the street. When he releases the gate, it snaps back into place so hard the fence quivers on either side. “I came,” he calls back over his shoulder, “to tell Joanna how sorry I am. I came to make it up to her.”
New York City Noir Page 99
