Rizzo's War

by Lou Manfredo

  McQueen scanned his e-mail as he ate, then checked his messages. A known car thief they were after had been arrested in the neighboring Sixtieth Precinct. A house wife, reported missing by her husband the week before, had turned up in Atlantic City, New Jersey: her boyfriend’s cousin, a divorce attorney, had just served papers on the bewildered husband. A raid on a Manhattan pawnshop had produced three items related to a Six-Two commercial burglary from back in February. Mike jotted down some notes and turned back to his coffee. He saw Rizzo walk in and waved him a greeting. Joe smiled back and said, “Hiya, kid,” and went to his own desk.

  At nine o’clock, the squad room door opened and the day tour supervisor of patrol, a tall, lanky Irishman, walked in. Mike was standing next to Rizzo’s desk, talking to his partner, when the uniformed officer approached them.

  “Hello, Joe,” he said, glancing and nodding a greeting in an offhand manner to McQueen.

  “Why, it’s my favorite lieutenant, Francis McLoughlin. What can I do for you, Frank? I gotta tell you, though, I don’t have any beer in my desk drawer. Sorry.”

  The lieutenant did not appear amused. “That’s good, Joe. Let me see, I’m Irish, it’s nine in the morning, so I must want a beer. Is that it? Is that the joke? Did I get it right?”

  Joe chuckled and McLoughlin turned to McQueen and said, “Mike, it’s a wonder you haven’t shot this dago yet. You must have the patience of a parish priest.”

  “So, Frank, what brings you up all those stairs to the squad? What can we do for you?” Rizzo asked.

  The lieutenant leaned his buttocks on the side of Joe’s desk and folded his arms against his chest before speaking.

  “Joe, we got a shooting. Over on Bay Twenty-third Street in Bath Beach. Few more blocks south and it woulda been the Six-O’s problem.”

  Rizzo frowned up at the man. “What kinda shooting? Mob thing?”

  McLoughlin shook his head. “No. Looks like a breakin got nasty. I don’t have all the details yet, I’m about to go over there. I got three sector cars and a sergeant there now.”

  “What’s the status of the victim?” Joe asked.

  “Dead.”

  Rizzo ran a hand through his slightly thinning brown hair. “You call in Brooklyn South yet?”

  He was referring to the Brooklyn South Hom i cide Squad, which held responsibility for murder investigations in a half dozen Brooklyn precincts, the Six-Two included.

  “I did that, yes, of course. But Joe, spring is in the air and they got a heavy body count from the weekend and two more last night. They want you guys to handle it, at least initially. I called D’Antonio at home and he said to give it to you, you’re se nior detective sergeant working. Rossi and Schoenfeld are in the field, I called them in to assist. They said they’d meet you at the location in about an hour.”

  Vincent D’Antonio was the fifty-three- year-old detective lieutenant who ran the detective squad at the Sixty-second Precinct.

  Rizzo rose silently and stretched out his back muscles. He looked over at McQueen. “You up for some blood and guts, Mike?”

  McQueen shrugged. “What ever,” he said, turning to go get his jacket.

  “Here’s the address,” McLoughlin said, handing Rizzo a yellow Post-it. “I’ll see you over there.” He turned and left the room.

  Twenty minutes later, Mike pulled the gray Impala to a stop in front of the two-story brick home of the address McLoughlin had given them. He double-parked behind one of the five police cars scattered before the house. Two of the cars had dome lights swirling, the regimented metallic clicking of their drive gears sounding a depressing counterpoint to the musical chirping of springtime robins perched in the trees that lined the neat, quiet, narrow block of single-family homes.

  The two detectives approached the house, eyed silently by the small weekday morning crowd gathered there— mostly older, retired men and women and young mothers clutching at outer street garments thrown hastily over bedclothing. Rizzo and McQueen climbed the steps up to the broad, open, stone-covered porch. The small garden plots bordering the steps had not yet begun to bloom, but their statues of Mary and Jesus were clean and well maintained. The front door stood slightly ajar, a full color bust of Jesus, imposed over a Sacred Heart, hanging from it in greeting. McQueen pushed the door fully open, and they entered.

  The shooting had taken place in the upstairs apartment, a large, six-room dwelling that encompassed the entire second floor of the house. The inside staircase led to an entry door that opened into the simple kitchen. Rizzo saw McLoughlin standing among a tight circle of uniformed officers.

  He spread his hands wide in front of his chest and said, “First on the scene. Tell me.”

  Two young uniforms stepped forward. The older of the two, a twenty-six- year-old Hispanic male, cleared his voice.

  “We caught the initial call, Detective. This is our sector.”

  Joe looked at the cop and smiled. He could hear the disappointment in the young man’s voice and found himself instantly liking him. The cop was sad that someone in his sector had been shot on his watch. It somehow seemed a failure on his part. Rizzo remembered the feeling. He knew it would not survive the young cop’s entire career, but instead wall itself away in some secret corner of his psyche, and disappear from his tone and mannerisms.

  “Tell me,” Joe repeated, keeping his voice soft.

  The cop looked down to the note pad clipped into the inside cover of his bulky summons book. He scanned it, flipped a page, scanned some more, then raised his eyes to speak to Joe. He checked his notes sporadically as he spoke.

  “We were on our way back to the precinct, seven forty-five. We were midnight to eight. We get a call, shots at this location, citizen down, ambulance on the way. We got here just before they did. The guy that lives downstairs, he owns the house. Lives here with his wife. Guy is sixty-one, wife is sixty. The victim lives up here alone, he’s the landlord’s older brother, sixty-six. They’re basically immigrants, even though they came here from Italy over thirty years ago. They all speak Italian to each other, they got statues and saints all over the place— you know the drill.”

  Rizzo nodded, yes, he knew the drill. There were nested enclaves within the enclave of Bensonhurst itself: along certain stretches of Eighteenth Avenue, En glish simply was not required. A person could shop, see a doctor or dentist, rent an apartment or even buy a house without knowing or speaking a single word other than Italian in either the Sicilian or Neapolitan dialect. Over recent years, there may have been a slight shrinking of the borders of the inner enclaves, but only slight.

  “Go on,” he said to the cop, whose name tag read “Silva.”

  “Well, we get here and the guy and his wife are out on the porch. They tell us they went out to the market around seven. They picked up some fruit and some cheese for breakfast and came back home. They put the car around back in the detached garage, and just as the guy’s closing the garage door, he hears a shot— from inside the house, upstairs. He tells his wife to call the cops from a neighbor’s house, and he goes in the back door. He runs through the downstairs apartment into the front foyer and up the steps to his brother’s place, and he finds the guy dead.”

  “Where?”

  Silva indicated with a leftward tilt of his head. “In the bathroom.

  ” Rizzo turned to Mike. “You bring gloves?”

  McQueen nodded, producing two pairs of latex gloves from the pocket of his sport coat. He gave one to Joe and, as he followed Rizzo down the corridor leading off the kitchen, he pulled the other pair onto his hands.

  The house was at least seventy years old, probably older. The bathroom, although obviously well maintained, looked original, with intricate one-inch black and pink ceramic floor tiles and matching four-inch pinkish-purple wall tiles edged in black. The tub rested against the far wall opposite the door, a separate built-in shower stall located on the near wall to the left of the entrance. The smooth pink porcelain of the tub was immaculate, and it glistened in t
he light from the fluorescent above the small sink on the far left wall.

  Rizzo stood in the doorway, scanning the scene. He only glanced at the body, which lay fully clothed in the bathtub. After a moment, he stepped fully into the room. McQueen walked in behind him and focused his attention on the built-in hamper on the right wall, allowing only his peripheral vision to include the corpse in his sight. The scent of blood was in the air.

  Rizzo turned to his left and opened the shower curtain slightly. The separate shower stall was done in darker pink tiles. They also glistened as though new. On the floor of the shower, three litter boxes sat neatly aligned. Each held an unspoiled flat expanse of sand-colored cat litter.

  “I guess this guy has cats,” Joe said.

  McLoughlin, standing in the foyer just outside the room, answered. “Three of ’em. They been running from under one piece of furniture to another since the cops got here. Every time somebody gets near one, it takes off. They don’t like people much, it seems.”

  Joe released the shower curtain and went to the tub. He knelt beside it and, without turning, beckoned for McQueen to come closer. Mike felt himself flushing and knew he had somehow annoyed Joe by hanging back. He moved to the tub and squatted down. Rizzo turned to face him and their eyes met.

  Joe smiled at him. “Relax a little, kid,” he said, just barely loud enough for Mike to hear him. Then Rizzo turned to the corpse.

  The body was fully dressed in street clothes. Nicely creased black pants, a clean, freshly ironed shirt. Black gold-toed socks.

  Joe glanced down to the floor near the foot of the bathtub. A pair of black wingtip shoes, brightly polished, were perfectly placed there.

  The man’s head was to Joe’s left. It was tilted to the left and leaning against the tile wall. A small black and purple bruise, centered by a smaller dark hole, appeared just under the temple. A gray-black spattering haloed the wound site.

  Joe pointed to the spatter. “Powder burn. Gun was real close,” he said, presumably to Mike, but seemingly more to himself.

  The tile wall behind the head was coated with a violent splash of red and gray matter, a fine sprinkling of white bone splinters adhering to it. Both arms were fully inside the tub, splayed across the front of the body. A slight fecal odor nudged at the blood scent. About a quarter inch of blood pooled at the center bottom of the tub.

  Rizzo reached a gloved hand into the tub and lifted first one, then the other of the arms, examining the hands carefully.

  “No bruises, no cuts,” he said in the same low tones. “Probably no struggle.” He gently replaced the arms onto the body, looking down at the neatly cut, filed and buffed fingernails. He reached in and took hold of the pant material on first one, then the other leg, lifting each, looking underneath them. He looked behind the small of the back and moved the body slightly to see behind its left side. Then Rizzo slowly stood from the tub. McQueen rose with him.

  “Let’s get started,” he said.

  Rizzo turned to face McLoughlin, who now joined them in the small bathroom.

  “What do you need, Joe?” the lieutenant asked.

  “You going to hold the morning tour over, Frank?” he asked.

  McLoughlin nodded. “I already told the eight guys here I’d authorize the overtime. Plus, Rossi and Schoenfeld got here, they’re downstairs. They’ve started to canvass the neighbors.”

  Rizzo nodded. “Good. Get the uniforms to look for any sign of forced entry. All the doors, all the windows, upstairs, basement, everywhere. And have them walk up and down the whole street. I want the plate number of every car parked out there, and up on Bath and Benson Avenues, near the corners. While they’re at it, let ’em look in the bushes and under the cars. In the garbage pails, too. We need that gun.”

  “Alright, Joe. I’ll take care of it. I’ll call the house, get a couple more guys over here from the day shift to help out. Anything you want me to handle personally?”

  “Yeah, Frank, if the gun don’t turn up, call the Department of Environmental Protection. Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations, it’s out in Queens someplace. Tell them we may need a search on the sewers. They need twenty-four hours’ notice, then they can send a crew out here to check the storm sewers for the piece.”

  “Okay, Joe, I’ll take care of that. Anything else?”

  “If you can, do a permit search for everybody who lives in the house. I doubt if you’ll get a hit for a pistol permit, but you never know. Did you call in for a forensic team?”

  “Yeah. They’re backed up. Probably get here late this afternoon.

  ” Joe smiled a tired smile. “Business is booming, alright. Well, we need somebody to check out that tub. It looks like the bullet cleared the skull and took some bone out the left side of the head. But it didn’t penetrate the tile wall. Might not’ve even hit it, who knows? But that bullet is probably somewhere in the tub, under the blood. I checked all around; it didn’t ricochet and land out in the room somewhere. We could really use that bullet.”

  McLoughlin nodded and turned away, reaching for his cell phone as he walked.

  “Mike,” Rizzo said after a few minutes. “Go get Silva for me, okay? I’m gonna look around a little more.”

  Rizzo departed the bathroom and turned left at the hallway, walking its length to the rear of the apartment. He glanced into what would normally serve as a second bedroom, its paneled door hanging wide open. The immaculate parquet floor shone in the morning sunlight streaming through the room’s two windows. There was not a single item in the empty room, not even a picture on any of the walls.

  When he reached the very end of the hall, Joe entered the master bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, he left the room. Slowly, he walked back through the kitchen. He looked into the sink. The gleaming white porcelain reflected Rizzo’s image. It held no dirty dishes. The drain rack next to it was also empty. No dinner dishes, no breakfast dishes. Rizzo crossed the room and opened the refrigerator. It was well stocked. Each shelf contained at least a few items. Rizzo smiled at them: just as he had found in the bedroom, everything was arranged in neat, orderly rows, in size place, labels facing outward. He reached in and removed the bottle of ketchup. Unscrewing the cap, he examined the neck of the bottle opening. Clean. No residual ketchup. He turned the cap over in his hand. The inside was also clean, not a trace of ketchup. He replaced the cap and put the bottle back, closing the refrigerator door.

  McQueen reentered the apartment with Silva following closely behind him. He had found the young officer walking the block, copying down plate numbers and looking for the gun.

  “Silva,” Joe said. “Did the brother mention if the front door of the house was open? You know, when he ran through his apartment and into the front foyer to go upstairs, did he say if the front door of the house was open?”

  “No. No he didn’t mention it.”

  “Did you or your partner ask him?”

  The young cop looked uncomfortable. His eyes dropped away from Joe’s for an instant. When he regained his composure, he looked Joe in the eye.

  “No. We didn’t think of it.”

  Joe nodded. “Okay, thanks. Where’s the guy now?”

  “In his apartment. He’s real upset.”

  Rizzo smiled and glanced at Mike.

  “Yeah, I bet he is,” he said.

  “SOMETHING IS. very wrong here, Mike,” Rizzo said, drawing on his Chesterfield and blowing smoke out the passenger window. “This don’t add up.”

  McQueen sat behind the wheel of the Impala, still double-parked in front of the house. He watched as the ambulance that had initially responded pulled away. The EMT on board had declared the victim dead. The body would wait for an official pronouncement from the medical examiner and remain in the bathtub. There was no further need for an ambulance.

  Before Mike could answer, the rear door of the Impala swung open and Detective First Grade Morris Schoenfeld climbed in, dropping heavily into the seat. He immediately began to fan the air in front of h
im.

  “But damn it, Joe,” he said. “Still with those goddamned cigarettes?”

  Rizzo laughed and flicked the nearly gone butt out onto the sidewalk.

  “Yeah, Mo, it’s good to see you, too. Whatda ya got?”

  Schoenfeld shifted in his seat and looked down at his notes as he spoke.

  “No one outside when the shot went off. First anyone knew something had happened was when the radio cars started to light up the block. Except for a Mrs. Cottone, lives next door. The landlady ran to her place to call the cops. Then the landlord made a second call saying somebody shot his brother.”

  Joe scratched at his forehead. “What about the gossip?”

  “Well,” Schoenfeld went on, “there is that. Seems like the victim was a class-A nut. Sweet guy, but a real screwball. Would only go outside on odd-numbered days. Would only walk one way on the block: toward Bath Avenue. If he needed to go up to Benson Avenue, he’d come out, walk toward Bath, then go all around the block. A few people told me the same kind of shit, he wouldn’t step on cracks in the sidewalk, always carried an umbrella no matter what the weather, stuff like that. Obsessive-compulsive type. But they say he was a nice, gentle guy, wouldn’t hurt a fly and kept to himself, a real loner.”

  McQueen asked, “What about the brother? How’d they get along?

  ” Schoenfeld sighed. “It ain’t going to be that easy, Mike. We can take a look at the brother, but I doubt it. All the neighbors me and Nick talked to said the same thing: these two guys loved each other.”

  Now Joe spoke. “Where is Nick?” he asked, referring to Nick Rossi, Schoenfeld’s partner.

  Morris smiled. “Oh, there’s a thirty-year- old divorcée lives in the house down there on the right. Nick just remembered a coupla more questions he had for her.”

  Rizzo grunted but sat in silence. After a while, Schoenfeld spoke.

  “Is Brooklyn South gonna take this?”

  Rizzo shrugged. “I doubt it, but I don’t know. Anyway, there might not be anything to take.”