Rizzo's War

by Lou Manfredo

  McQueen saw the tension drop from her shoulders. She shook her head slightly.

  “Of course,” she said with a tired smile. “Of course, you’re right.”

  She furrowed her brow. “Honestly, though, I can’t think of anyone. Certainly no one in our family. We’ve been very lucky that way, blessed actually. There are no drug problems, no one arrested, nothing like that. And the neighbors, they all seem fine. Those two boys taking care of Spike, great kids. They help my dad out a lot. They’re always there for him.”

  McQueen nodded and took up his pad and pen. “What would their names be?” he asked.

  She frowned at him and seemed about to say something, but then appeared to think twice. Her tired smile reappeared. “The taller one is Jamesy Bruno, he lives next door at thirteen-thirty. The younger one is Petey Mazzilli. He lives across the street at thirteen-fifty-one.”

  McQueen nodded. “How old are they?”

  “Jamesy just turned sixteen and I believe Petey is fourteen.”

  McQueen jotted down their names, addresses, and ages and scribbled in the margin, “check juvenile/family court.”

  When he looked up again, tears were now streaming down her face. She saw the surprised look in his eyes.

  “You just don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking. “You can’t know. This house is all he had left of his life with his wife and children. He refuses to leave it. He loved it here. I’ve tried to get him to come with me. I have an enormous house, he’d have his own apartment. But he won’t leave. He told me once that if he left here, he would be leaving my mother’s spirit all alone, and he could never do that. He loved this house; he’s lived here for over forty-five years. Now every time he walks in, he’ll picture that mess in the living room and that poor, beautiful little dog grotesquely murdered in the very kitchen my mother loved. It’ll just never be the same for him. Can you see that? Do you understand what this will be like for him? He can never leave here, but it will never be the same again. This will kill him, I’m telling you, this will kill him.”

  McQueen watched sadly as she sobbed. He glanced at the old man, lying drugged in a furtive sleep beside them. He cleared his throat before he spoke again. “I have a list and description of everything you say is missing. If it’s recovered, it will all be returned to your dad.”

  When she spoke again, it was in a strange, eerily familiar voice. McQueen shivered slightly as he realized where he had heard that voice before.

  “I’m not an evil or mean person,” he heard her say. “I don’t wish bad on anyone. But when you find the man who did this, I hope you kill him. I hope he forces you to shoot him. I hope he dies.”

  McQueen sat back in his seat. The voice he had heard was an exact match to Rizzo’s when the detective had looked up from the dead dog.

  Despite the closeness and warmth of the room, the voices echoing in his head made him shudder with a sharp, sudden chill.

  LATER THAT night, McQueen sat gazing into the mesmerizing blue of Amy Taylor’s eyes. They were nestled at a quiet corner table near the front window of Romano’s Ristorante, a very old, established family-owned

  and operated restaurant just off the corner of Seventy-second Street on the main commercial artery of Thirteenth Avenue.

  McQueen, not fully familiar with the local restaurants, had taken Joe Rizzo’s enthusiastic recommendation for Romano’s with some misgivings. The place was situated just inside the northwest boundary line of the Sixty-second Precinct, and police department policy was clear: stay out of bars, restaurants, and most other public establishments in your precinct when off duty. The opportunity, or appearance of opportunity, for corruption was too pronounced. But Rizzo had been insistent.

  “It’s a great place to eat,” he had said. “Best clams oreganato in the whole city, and the veal is fantastic. And the pasta. Just don’t let Miss White Bread pour any ketchup on it. Besides, this ain’t Manhattan with all the bosses running around. That ‘stay out of the precinct’ stuff, nobody worries about that around here. Me and my wife eat there every week, no problem.”

  Despite the assurance, Mike had his doubts and, as he listened to Amy speak, began to regret the choice.

  “So,” she said, sipping at her martini. “How are you, Mike?”

  He thought fleetingly of Spike, with his small pink tongue protruding. He shook his head slightly to clear the sight away and dropped his gaze to the caramel-colored liquid of his straight-up Manhattan.

  “I’m okay, I guess,” he said, raising his eyes back to her face. “How about you?”

  She offered a weak smile, and he pretended to accept it.

  “Fine,” she said, and her eyes looked away.

  It was not unexpected, and suddenly McQueen wished he were somewhere else. Things had changed between them.

  Their relationship had been going well, the exciting, dizzying new days of mutual attraction, a perceived affection, the dawning, perhaps, of something special.

  And so, two eve nings before, they had fallen into bed, Mike’s heart bursting with love and desire and his body responsive and strong in anticipation. But it had not gone well, and they both knew it; both now felt its presence at the table between them.

  Mike’s police experience had taught him that victims of sexual crimes often carried with them harsh reminders. He had hoped it wouldn’t be the case with Amy, but now realized it was. She had been awkward, distracted, almost afraid. It had been a perfunctory, sterile encounter, resembling more a dance rehearsal than a session of lovemaking. It had reminded him of his first frightening, mysterious, and unsatisfying sexual experience, the strongest memory being his fervent desire for it to be over with, so he could escape back into the beckoning summer night.

  McQueen sipped his drink. It was icy cold and smooth, and the alcohol soothed him. He sat back slightly in his seat and looked across at the sad, beautiful face of Amy Taylor.

  “We should probably discuss it,” he said, a melancholy smile touching his lips.

  “Why don’t we eat first, Mike? It’ll keep that long.”

  Now they smiled at one another, their first genuine smiles of the eve -ning, and Mike realized that despite the awkwardness, despite the lack of connection, their night of lovemaking had been an intimate one, a touching one. Perhaps in some way more so than a successful physical encounter would have been.

  Just in a different and somber and final way.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice as light as he could make it. “Small talk it is. Let’s see … how’s this? How was your day?”

  Amy laughed and reached out, touching him gently on his cheek. “There you go,” she said. “We can do this. My day was fine, how was yours?”

  “Just another day on the job,” he said.

  She sipped at her drink before speaking. “I’ve heard police refer to their careers as ‘the job.’ Do you see being a police detective as merely a job? Don’t you see it as a career?”

  Mike pondered it for a long moment before answering.

  “That’s a good question. I’m not sure I have an answer. You know, a lot of the guys I’ve worked with over the years, Joe, for instance— especially Joe— they always wanted to be cops. Joe never even considered anything else. He joined the Army right out of high school with the understanding that they would make him an M.P. Then, when he got out, he went to the police department almost immediately. He doesn’t know anything else. I just sort of fell into it. I never saw myself as a nine-to-five kind of guy, and I was young and looking for some excitement. I took the test for the cops while I was still in college, very casually, almost on a lark. I don’t know, it just sort of happened.”

  “Well,” she said, “I think it’s noble. If you do it correctly, and I believe you do, it can be a very noble thing.”

  His mind’s eye, often a troubling companion to him, visualized her assailant, Peter Flain, slumped spread-legged on the toilet, his chest covered in bloody vomit. He remembered the “deathbed confession” Rizzo had concocted
.

  “Yeah,” he said, the sadness of his smile going undetected by Amy, “noble.”

  She nodded and reached for a bread stick. “Truly,” she said.

  Mike considered her words. “You know,” he said, as he watched her bite gently into the bread stick and raise a hand to guard against the crumbs, “Joe said something very similar to me the other day.”

  Amy gave an exaggerated sigh, but her eyes were smiling at him as she spoke. “Why do I always feel like Joe is sitting right beside me whenever I’m out with you?”

  Mike laughed. “I’m sorry. Really. But I do spend a lot of time with the guy.”

  “I know. It’s just that, well, he frightens me a little. But go on, what did he say? You can tell me.”

  “What he said was, over the years he’d met a lot of guys on this job, mostly Irish guys, he claims, that view it as more of a calling than a job or a career. Like being a priest or a minister or a rabbi. That’s pretty much how he sees it himself. A calling. He joked about it, said it was just like being a priest but without the altar boys, but I could see he meant it. He said there’s a purity to it. That’s the word he used, ‘purity.’ It’s really a passion with him. I’ve got to tell you, though, I don’t fully understand it. I may not be sure how I feel about it, but I don’t think I would describe being a cop with words like ‘calling’ or ‘purity.’ ”

  Amy seemed to think it over as the waiter returned with a smile and a casual word. He placed an appetizer of sliced fresh mozzarella and tomato before her and another of sizzling baked clams before Mike. When he had left, she spoke again.

  “Is Joe a good detective? Is he good at what he does?”

  Mike squeezed some lemon over his clams as he answered.

  “Amy, this guy is one of the best. He amazes me just about every tour we pull. He’s got a deep bag full of tricks from years of experience, but lots of guys have that. He has something more, something unique. Instinct, I guess. A feel for which direction to go in, where to look first. In the beginning, I figured it was just lucky guesses, but it’s definitely more than that. He’s way over the law of averages for lucky guesses. It’s instinct and gut feeling. He’s like some kind of savant sometimes, but please, promise me you’ll never tell him I said that. I just don’t understand why he’s still at precinct squad level. He should be hom i cide or some prestige outfit, maybe city wide Major Case Squad. Something.”

  Amy cut a neat square of cheese and topped it with a slice of tomato. She sampled it and raised her eyebrows at Mike.

  “My God, this is delicious. I don’t know what kind of detective Joe is, but he’s an excellent judge of restaurants.”

  As the meal progressed, they fell into an easy sort of rhythm, a pressure having been lifted. Both now knew this would be their last eve ning together, and all that remained were the appropriate words and the soft, chaste kiss good-bye. Amy felt responsible for the breakup and defensively turned the conversation to McQueen’s own ambitions, hoping to ease him along less painfully.

  He responded to her. He told her how he had originally intended to use civil ser vice examinations to advance himself, since he lacked the po liti cal connections and powerful friends within the department required to move up through influence. In fact, he was currently on the list for sergeant and could be reached as early as the following year. But his lucky break in getting the mayor’s bump up to detective had changed his thinking.

  “If I can do a good job and not make waves, catch someone’s eye, maybe I can go back across the river into a special unit. Policy and Planning, maybe, or Community Affairs. Possibly teach at the Academy. There are lots of places to be other than out on the street.”

  The meal played its rituals out, and when the espresso was placed before them, the time was at hand. The specter that sat with them was not that of Joe Rizzo, as Amy had joked, but something worse. Something unavoidable. Something unchangeable.

  Mike smiled around the espresso cup and spoke before he sipped.

  “So,” he said gently. “Who’s going to say ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ first?”

  Amy returned the smile but her eyes were heavy. Once again, as in the confines of her hospital room, Mike saw her deep sapphire eyes moisten.

  “Oh, Mike, believe me. It’s not you. You’re a wonderful guy, my knight in shining armor. But … it’s just that … the other night. The other night. When we … when we made love. It came out so wrong. Oh, we got through it, and you were gentle and wonderful and patient. But all I could see, all I could feel, was that horrid man in that dirty, claustrophobic subway turnstile. It was terrifying. And you’re too much a part of that, too much a reminder. I can never … probably never … get past that. And it’s just too unfair to you. Can you understand that?”

  McQueen downed his espresso in a single gulp and turned for the waiter. Catching the man’s eye, he signaled for the check.

  “Of course I can,” he said gently. “But you have to promise me something. Just one thing.”

  “Of course, Mike, anything,” she said, tears in her tone.

  “Let it be my loss. Just mine. Move past it, get through it. When you meet someone else, get beyond it. Don’t let that junkie ruin your life. It’s just not worth it. Promise me. My loss only. Okay?”

  Amy reached across the table and laid a gentle hand over his. “Of course, Mike. Of course I promise. And thank you for understanding.”

  With that, the waiter appeared and placed the check discreetly before McQueen. Thankful for the normality of the act, he freed his hand from Amy’s and fingered the check. He found himself frowning at it and, in a further retreat from this painful moment, quickly ran the math through his mind. He looked up and, again catching the waiter’s eye, beckoned him back to the table.

  “Shall I take that, sir?” the man inquired innocently, a slight Italian accent tugging at the end of his words.

  “Not just yet. I think there’s a mistake here.”

  The waiter frowned with great concern and leaned inward. He read the check McQueen held, then pursed his lips.

  “No, sir,” he said with great dignity. “I don’t believe there is a mistake. Here,” he continued pointing to the green guest check. “Here, the lady had the chicken francaise. You, sir, had the veal marsala. And there is the bottle of Bolla pinot grigio. No, sir, I believe the check is in order.”

  McQueen’s frown deepened. He glanced at Amy. Through her sadness, she looked quietly confused. McQueen lowered his voice and spoke again.

  “What about the appetizers? The cheese and the clams? The two cocktails? The espressos?”

  The waiter wrinkled his brow.

  “Forgive me, sir, but I have no memory of serving those items you mention. And Mrs. Romano, she personally double checks each order as it goes in and out of the kitchen, as well as each guest check before it is presented. Surely she would have noticed such a large oversight. No, sir, Mrs. Romano will have no more memory of these items than I myself. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is no hurry. Whenever you are ready.”

  With that, he strode with great purpose to ser vice a nearby table.

  McQueen looked up from the check into the now surprisingly amused eyes of Amy. He saw the wine shining impishly in the sea of their blue.

  Damn that Rizzo, McQueen thought.

  THE FOLLOWING afternoon, McQueen sat quietly in the passenger seat of the Impala gazing over the flat green waters of the Narrows, that lower portion of New York Harbor that runs like a river between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Impala was nosed in under the shadow of the Verrazano Bridge, a steady hum of east-west traffic from the Belt Parkway behind them, the bridge traffic sounds droning from above.

  He watched as a young mother pushed a baby stroller on the paved walkway along the far edge of the wide expanse of grass that lay just in front of the car. The sun reflecting off the water behind her gave the woman an almost ethereal appearance. The warmth of the late November day was unusual, and it seemed to enh
ance McQueen’s introspection.

  His thoughts, never far from Amy since he had awoken that morning, now settled on her and their brief, tender relationship. As he watched the young mother disappear around the bend of the walkway, he admitted to himself for the first time that he had loved Amy Taylor. Still loved her.

  But she was gone now. And there would be no getting her back.

  Rizzo sat behind the wheel of the car, scribbling notes for the report he would type up later that day. They had just come from a job at Our Lady of Guadalupe Roman Catholic Church on Fifteenth Avenue. The parish priest had called to report a theft from the poor box. He was required to report it to the police department in order to put a claim in with the insurance company. Rizzo would file his report, call the priest with a complaint number, and never consider the matter again. Neither the detectives nor the priest harbored any illusions of the thief ever being found.

  “Probably one of the altar boys,” Rizzo had remarked with a grin after they had left the rectory.

  “So,” Rizzo said, looking up from his writing. “How’d the date go last night?”

  McQueen turned to face his partner. A sad smile came to his lips as he replied.

  “Like the maiden voyage of the Titanic, I guess,” he said, a sadness in his tone, despite himself.

  Rizzo dropped his eyes from the young cop’s face and turned back to his notes.

  “That’s too bad,” he said casually. “I figured you liked her quite a bit.”

  McQueen hesitated before speaking. Although still new in his friendship with Rizzo, McQueen sensed something in the older man, something more than was first apparent. And despite his usually private nature, McQueen suddenly felt the need to talk.

  “It was more than that. I think, maybe, I may have been in love with her.”

  Rizzo stopped writing and casually slipped his pen into a breast pocket. He fumbled through his jacket and produced a Chesterfield, lighting it and blowing smoke out the open driver-side window before speaking.