Rizzo's War

by Lou Manfredo

  “Suicide, Natale,” he said softly. “Your brother committed suicide.”

  “No!” Catanzaro said sharply, looking to Rizzo with anger. “No! He was killed. Slaughtered like the innocent lamb he was.”

  Rizzo shook his head. “No, he wasn’t. You knew it was a shot you heard because you knew there was a gun in the house, an illegal gun you and half the people in Brooklyn keep for protection. You knew it came from upstairs because that’s where your brother was. You knew that somehow Vincente must have found the gun, even though you had it hidden away somewhere. You knew he found it and used it. You knew right away. Maybe he’d been depressed lately, maybe he even said something to you. I don’t know. What I do know is that you sent your wife to call nine-one- one, and you ran into the house to try and help him. And when you found him and he was dead, you still tried to help him. You took the gun, you took the letter he left, and you hid them. They’re in this house somewhere right now. I can get a search warrant, and we can sit here while your home is torn apart until we find it. And then, Natale, I’ll have to lock you up for obstruction. The D.A., maybe he’ll want to add a promoting suicide charge. That’s an ‘E’ felony, by the way. Hell, who knows, he might even want a manslaughter count against you, I can’t say.”

  Catanzaro suddenly jumped to his feet. McQueen felt his stomach begin to knot and instinctively positioned his feet on the deep carpeting for possible quick action.

  But the man made no movement toward Joe. Instead he said sharply and simply, “No! No suicide! Omicidio!”

  Now Rizzo stood deliberately and slowly crossed the room, placing a gentle hand on Catanzaro’s arm. As he did so, the last reserve of composure left the man. His shoulders slumped with a dead weight, and his eyes pooled with tears.

  “Non e’ una disgrazia per Lei, Signore,” Joe said in soft tones indicating there was no disgrace to Natale. “Nessuna disgrazia.”

  The man sobbed as he answered. “Si, e’ una disgrazia. Per la mia famiglia. Per la Chiesa. Per Dio stesso.”

  Rizzo shook his head, no, no, there was no disgrace to his family or his Church: certainly none to God.

  “Lui trovera’ la pace solo quando Lei mi dira’ la verita’,” Joe said. “The truth, Natale. He can only rest in peace if you tell me the truth.”

  Natale Catanzaro, a strong man seasoned by sixty-one years of life’s cruelties, sighed. He sat back down, Joe’s hand sliding gently from his arm.

  “Si,” he said softly. “The truth. I will tell you the truth.”

  RIZZO, ALONG with McLoughlin, left for the precinct, where they would take a formal statement from Natale and Katarina Catanzaro. McQueen had stayed behind to wait for the medical examiner. He had carefully placed the Ruger thirty-two- caliber revolver, now tucked safely into a clear plastic evidence bag, onto the floor in exactly the same spot that Natale had found it. He also held a photocopy, made earlier by Detective Rossi at the corner drugstore, of the short, neatly written suicide note Vincente had left for his brother. The original had gone, also in an evidence bag, back to the precinct with Rizzo.

  The forensic team arrived at the same time as the medical examiner, both fresh from the scene of a double hom i cide in Coney Island. Photographs and mea sure ments were taken, the body officially pronounced dead and finally removed to Kings County Hospital morgue for autopsy. The spent bullet was found, as Joe had imagined it would be, submerged in the blood at the bottom of the tub. It, too, was bagged, and now rested in the pocket of McQueen’s sport coat.

  When at last they had left, McQueen and a uniformed officer sealed off the room with yellow crime scene tape, then went down to their vehicles. Mike returned to the precinct to voucher the gun and bullet and prepare his own supplemental DD-5 report to add to the one Rizzo had already completed before leaving for the night. When he was finally finished at eight-fifteen p.m., he was physically and mentally drained.

  It had been a very long day, and Mike was glad it was over. He wished his night promised some bright plea sure to counterpoint the seemingly endless darkness of the day, now, finally, behind him.

  But there was no bright promise. Only an elegant, empty apartment.

  He left the precinct for the black Mazda and drove slowly home.

  CHAPTER SIX

  June

  “WHAT TIME IS MIKE COMING for dinner to night, Dad?” Carol Rizzo asked as the waitress placed breakfast down before her.

  It was early Saturday morning, and Joe Rizzo gazed across the small dinner table and smiled into the large brown eyes of his youn gest daughter, her nineteenth birthday just a few months away.

  “I told him about seven,” he answered, nodding a thank-you to the waitress as she moved away. “Plenty of time for you to doll yourself up. Just remember what I told you: no dating cops.”

  His smile broadened as he reached for his toast. “You just can’t trust most of ’em,” he said.

  He expected a smile in return and was surprised to notice a flicker of discomfort pass over her face. Carol was the third of Rizzo’s daughters, and he had learned a lot about raising girls over the years. Between his parental experience and his cop’s instinct, he knew he was sitting with a young lady who had something to say. One of the things he had learned was that honesty, although not necessarily the best policy, was more often than not the lesser evil when dealing with one’s offspring.

  “So,” he said, his voice easy and light. “Let’s see what we have here. It’s eight-thirty on a Saturday morning and you’re up, dressed, and out with the old man for breakfast— on your summer break from college, no less. Plus, you got that look on your face.”

  Carol’s brow furrowed and her eyes dropped to her suddenly attention-craved eggs.

  “Look?” she asked. “What look?”

  Rizzo laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that ‘Why’s the sky blue, Daddy?’ look. You know, that ‘Why does Grandma have a mustache?’ look. That look.”

  This time it was Carol who laughed. “Oh, God, remember that?” she said raising her eyes back to his face. “At the dinner table, Christmas eve, no less? In front of the whole family. How old was I?”

  Joe chuckled. “Four, I think. It was the first Christmas eve I wasn’t workin’ since you’d been born. Grandma Falco gave me a look that burned out my ret i nas. Like I had said it instead of you.”

  They ate in silence for a few moments, remembering. Then Carol spoke, her voice more somber.

  “Am I that transparent, Dad? How do you really know I have something to tell you?”

  Rizzo shrugged. “It’s been awhile since you went to breakfast with me, honey. Lunch, yeah, but breakfast? You’re a teenager. They don’t do breakfast. Not before noon, anyway.”

  Their eyes met across the table.

  “Look, honey,” Joe said, putting down his fork and smiling with kind eyes at the child who had suddenly turned into a grown woman. “Don’t let me have to figure this out. Just tell me. What ever it is, you know I’m on your side. We’ll handle it. It can’t be that bad.”

  A puzzled look crossed Carol’s face. Then, slowly, recognition began to enter her eyes, and she twisted up her lips and dipped two fingers into her water glass. Flicking water at Rizzo’s somber, set face, she stuck her tongue out and raspberried him.

  “Is that what you think, Daddy, I have something to tell you, so right away I’m pregnant? Is that what you think?”

  Rizzo smiled and brushed water off his cheek. “Honey, I’ve got three daughters and a wife: I gave up domestic thinking years ago. I’m just sayin’, what ever it is, tell me. I promise, I can help.”

  Carol tapped her fingers on the tabletop and allowed herself to cool off. Then she raised her right hand and said in an exaggerated, mock Italian accented voice, “I’mma swear I’mma no gonna havea no baby and I’mma nicea girl.”

  Rizzo laughed and retrieved his utensils, then said, “Basta che non fuma. ‘As long as you don’t smoke.’ ”

  Now Carol laughed and her anger, at worst brief
and fleeting, was fully gone. She felt the easy, comfortable security her father always seemed to instill in her, and she leaned in toward him and spoke.

  “I absolutely, positively hate college. It’s like locking myself into an asylum full of reality-disconnect lunatics endlessly debating the nature of the debate and never getting to the heart of anything. Everything is gray: nothing is ever black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. Blahblah-blah. I tried it for one whole year. I’m done with it. I want to quit.”

  Rizzo sipped at his coffee. “That’s it? That’s what this is?”

  Carol nodded and leaned back into her seat. “Oh, and I’m addicted to heroin and killed two of our neighbors and stole their money. You know, to buy drugs.”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry for what ever it is you thought I thought, okay? Forgiven?”

  She nodded. “Reluctantly,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll take it.”

  They ate in silence for a moment or two. Then Joe spoke.

  “Look, honey. You know my ‘options’ speech? You’ve heard it?”

  “Dozens of times, Daddy. Dozens.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s one of my better ones. There’s no need to go over it again. Let’s just apply it here. You get a degree, then you have options: go on to graduate school, or start any career you want, or get married, what ever. You don’t get a degree, you cut out some options. The more options you have, the easier life is. Period. Undeniably correct. You can look it up. Google it, even.”

  She nodded, her shoulder-length brown hair bobbing about her pretty, round face. Rizzo noticed the intensity in her eyes and wondered, “Where have all these years gone to? When did this child become a woman?”

  “I have a plan, Daddy. I know what I want.”

  Rizzo smiled. “That’s great, honey. But tell me, does getting a degree cancel out the plan? How could it hurt? Maybe next year, sophomore year, will be different, better. You take more electives in the second year, stuff you’re interested in, less of the required courses. You should talk to your sister, talk to Jessica. Once she started to focus on that art history stuff she loves, college became fascinating to her. It still is, and she’ll be a se nior next year already. Besides …”

  Carol held up a hand, palm out, in front of him.

  “I want to be a cop,” she said softly. “Like you.”

  Rizzo put his utensils down and sat back in his seat. He shook his head slowly and looked into her determined, wholesome, sincere face.

  He smiled sadly and sighed.

  “Couldn’t you just be pregnant instead?” he said, and wondered if he was joking.

  THE BAR was housed in a battered, nineteenth-century redbrick building on a weary, littered street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The recent influx of young professionals and their gentrifying ways had not yet visited this par tic u lar block.

  Joe Rizzo parked his Camry at a broken meter and tossed his NYPD plaque onto the dashboard. He crossed diagonally to the bar and went in. In contrast to the bright afternoon sun, the barroom stood in semidarkness, an odor of alcohol and dankness hanging in the air.

  Rizzo scanned the room, his eyes narrowing as he found his man. Slowly, he crossed the room to the rear corner and slid a scarred wooden chair back from the table. He sat heavily.

  The lone man at the table, a bottle of Fleischmann’s vodka and a rock glass before him, looked up at Rizzo.

  “Hello, Joe,” the man said with a slight slur and a bitter, crooked smile. “Whatdya know?”

  Rizzo looked into the bloodshot, lifeless eyes in the bloated face. He shook his head slightly as he spoke.

  “Hello, Johnny,” he said. “You look like shit.”

  John Morelli laughed. He seemed genuinely amused by Rizzo’s remark. He leaned to his right and waved a hand at the thin, el der ly man serving as bartender.

  “Hey, Sammy,” he called out. “Bring another glass and some ice over here, will ya?”

  Rizzo twisted in his seat and made eye contact with the man.

  “Cancel that, Sammy,” he said coldly. He turned back to Morelli.

  “You seem okay with drinkin’ alone, Johnny. I’ll pass,” he said.

  Morelli shrugged and raised his glass in a toast to Rizzo. “What ever you say, partner. You was always the boss, anyway. What ever you say.”

  They sat in silence, Morelli sipping absently at his drink, Rizzo stony and cold, his mind swimming with memories and regrets.

  “It’s partly my fault, Johnny,” he said at last, a sad softness in his voice.

  Morelli lowered his glass and leaned forward, focusing slowly on the man before him. “You going liberal on me, Joe? Wringin’ your hands and guilty as hell? Do me a favor, keep it to yourself. My stomach churns enough, I don’t need to hear this bullshit from you. Okay?”

  Rizzo sat back in his seat and remembered the man he used to know. The man whose body was now inhabited by this twisted, pitiful drunkard. He shook his head as he spoke.

  “Alright, Johnny. No problem.”

  Morelli drained his glass and reached for the bottle. He poured four fingers into it and swirled it around the glass, then lifted it slowly. He took a long drink and placed it down again. Then he raised his watery eyes to meet Rizzo’s.

  “You think I set that rat up to get whacked, don’t you, Joe?” he asked in a low, somber tone. “You think I got The Chink to wipe my tab for it, don’t you?”

  Morelli referred to Louie Quattropa by his nickname, Louie The Chink.

  “Don’t you?” he repeated, leaning forward and speaking more forcefully.

  Rizzo nodded. “Yeah, Johnny, sometimes I guess I do,” he said.

  Morelli nodded. “So, okay,” he said. “So what’s the fuckin’ problem then? Walk away and forget about it. You’re a cop. You’re good at walkin’ away and forgettin’. It comes with the job.”

  Rizzo reached out and laid a gentle hand on Morelli’s.

  “Did you, John?” he asked softly. “Did you set that guy up?”

  Morelli held Rizzo’s gaze as he answered.

  “Fuck you, Joe,” he said in a barely discernible hiss. “Take your I.A.D. wire and get the fuck out of my sight.”

  Rizzo removed his hand from Morelli’s. He stood slowly and reached for his wallet.

  “I’m sorry, John. I thought, all those years, I thought I was helping you somehow. But I wasn’t. I see that now. I was just what the counselors call an ‘enabler.’ I helped you, alright. Helped you right into that fuckin’ bottle. I thought I was protecting you, nursing you along toward the pension. But I was really doing the opposite. I was helping you go right down the shit-hole.”

  Rizzo pulled two twenty dollar bills from his wallet and dropped them onto the scarred tabletop. Before turning to leave, he leaned his weight onto his arms, palms down on the table. With his face just inches from Morelli’s, he spoke in a soft, flat whisper.

  “I’m sorry, John. I hope you can forgive me. I can never repay you for what you did for me. But you’re dead now. Dead to me. Dead to yourself.”

  Rizzo stood and looked down into the flat, lifeless eyes. “I might as well finish the job, Johnny. Take those twenties. The rest of the day is on me. Me and Jennifer.”

  He turned and left the bar. It was getting late, and his new partner would be at the house for dinner in a few hours.

  It was time to move on.

  LATER THAT afternoon, Rizzo sat at his kitchen table and looked into the angry eyes of his wife, Jennifer Rizzo. A pile of fresh string beans sat between them as they methodically snapped off the ends of each bean, tossing the plump bodies into a stainless-steel colander. The eve ning’s activity, a family dinner party hosting Rizzo’s young partner, had taken a backseat to a more pressing family affair.

  “But Joe,” Jennifer said, her dark brown eyes flaring in the well-lit kitchen, “of all things, a cop? Just as we’re reaching a point where soon you’ll retire, the worrying can start all over again? This can’t be h
appening.”

  Rizzo reached out for a fresh handful of beans.

  “Nothing is actually happening yet, hon,” he said. “We left it off that she would stay in Stony Brook. She wanted to transfer to John Jay for an associate’s degree in criminal justice. I told her two years full-time college credit would qualify her for the job, and she’d only lose credits if she transferred. She’s going to stay in Stony Brook for now. Besides, what was I supposed to do? We’ve spent the last twenty-four years telling our daughters they could be anything they wanted to be, go anywhere they wanted to go. Remember? If a boy could do it, a girl could do it. Remember?”

  Jen’s eyes softened and she smiled sadly. “Except pee standing up,” she said.

  Rizzo wrinkled up his brow.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  Now Jen laughed, and the sound of it pleased Joe. “As I recall,” she said, “on Marie’s twelfth birthday, one of us told her exactly that. And it wasn’t me.”

  Rizzo pursed his lips as he remembered. “What ever,” he said. “The point is, with Carol, we need to focus on keeping her in school. Forget about tryin’ to talk her out of going on the cops. We’ll fight that battle another day. The next test for the job isn’t until the fall. A lot can change between now and then. For now, we just need to keep her in Stony Brook.”

  Jen shook her head. “I don’t know, Joe, you know these kids. When they make up their minds they’re as focused as you are. Marie with medicine, Jessica with her art. What makes you think Carol will be different?”

  Rizzo scratched at his head and frowned. “I don’t know,” he said, a soft sadness in his voice. “But I’ll be damned if I let her go on this job. It’s changed too much, it’s different from when I was her age. We keep her in school, then, when the time comes, if she still wants to be a gang-buster, I know a couple of guys over in the city. FBI guys. They owe me a favor or two. And another guy over in Newark, with Customs. If I have to, I’ll get them to hook her into the feds. It’s a whole lot safer and cleaner than NYPD. Look at this mess I’ve got with the Morelli thing. Can you imagine Carol dealing with this?”