Rizzo's War

by Lou Manfredo

  “FBI?” Jen said. “With all this terrorist stuff going on? Joe, I don’t want her doing that either.”

  Joe raised a calming hand. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. I don’t want her involved in any of this any more than you do. But, if worse came to worst and we couldn’t change her mind, that would be the way to go: the lesser of two evils. Trust me on this, Jen. We don’t want her on the streets for NYPD. The lesser of two evils, if necessary, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Jennifer sighed and rose to carry the now full colander to the sink for rinsing. “Should we tell her, Joe? About Internal Affairs? Maybe if she sees that even a smart, honest cop like you can get all jammed up, maybe she’ll …”

  Joe smiled up at his wife, his eyes kind, the sadness out of his tone. “Relax, Jen, we’ll handle it. Even if she takes the test in the fall, it’ll be at least a year after that before they canvass her for the job. Let’s just keep her in school and sit tight. Then we’ll see.”

  Standing before him, the colander clenched tightly before her, the tension in her face stabbed at him.

  “I can’t do it again, Joe,” Jennifer said softly. “I can’t lie in bed at two in the morning and wonder what my young, rookie cop is doing. I did it with my husband. I did it with my nephew. I won’t do it with my daughter.”

  Rizzo nodded. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  She started toward the sink, then paused and looked back over her shoulder to Joe’s determined, set face.

  “I’m glad we agree here, Joe,” she said. “I know your love-hate relationship with that job of yours is mostly love. I’m glad we agree here.”

  Rizzo thought he heard a question in her tone.

  The determined look on his face hardened. His eyes narrowed as he spoke.

  “Do you know what she said to me?” he asked, his voice flat.

  Jennifer turned fully to face him, placing the colander on the table. She had heard that flat tone before.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  “She said she didn’t like college because nothing there is right or wrong, black or white— everything is gray.”

  Rizzo reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of Chesterfields. He stood slowly, fishing his Zippo from a second pocket.

  “Sound familiar?” he asked. “If my baby becomes a cop, she’ll find out there is no right. She’ll see there is no wrong. She’ll see there just is.”

  He turned and walked to the side door, the cigarette in his mouth. He spoke without turning.

  “Two generations of Rizzos living with that are enough. There isn’t going to be a third. And it’s not because she’s a female. I’d feel the same with a son.”

  He opened the door and walked out, closing it silently behind him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JOE RIZZO PULLED HIS CAMRY into the driveway of the neat, two-story brick house he had called home for more than twenty years. Stopping just short of the detached garage’s closed doors and turning off the engine, he glanced at his wristwatch. It was eight-twenty a.m., Sunday morning, June third. He smiled as he climbed out of the car and into the warm morning stillness of the tree-lined Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted through the air. Regardless of the tour he had worked, Jennifer, unless working herself, greeted him with a time-appropriate beverage or meal. One advantage of living in a precinct that bordered the Six-Two was the short commute home. Jennifer knew that unless he had called to tell her different, he would be home fifteen to twenty minutes after signing out and leaving the squad room.

  Joe entered the rear door and walked through the small pantry into the not-much- larger kitchen. The room was clean and uncluttered and showed no signs of the previous night’s elaborate dinner party. Jennifer, clad in cut-off pajamas, her dark brown tresses piled atop her head and secured with a large white hair clip, turned from the stove and smiled her greeting.

  “Hello, Jen,” he said, crossing to her and kissing her offered cheek. “Coffee smells good.”

  “Sit down, I’ll pour you a cup. How’d your night go?”

  Rizzo had worked a long, mostly slow midnight-to- eight overtime tour at the squad room, partnering with the only detective in the Six-Two se nior to himself, Billy Calabrese.

  “Good. Pretty quiet. I managed to grab about three hours’ sleep, so I’m wide awake. I worked with Billy. He crossed another day off his calendar.”

  “When’s he retiring?” Jennifer asked.

  “Three more weeks. That’s one party I guess I’ll have to go to. Billy broke me in when I started over at the Seven-Six. We go back a long way.”

  Jennifer sighed. “I wish it were you getting out, Joe. Enough is enough. Remember the original plan? Do twenty years and get out? We’re way over the limit. I wish we could walk away from it all. The whole mess.”

  Joe laughed. “Yeah, well, I didn’t figure on my firstborn deciding to go to medical school. We should’ve just married her off straight outta high school, like your cousin Rose did with her daughters.”

  Jennifer laughed. “Well, don’t give up hope. Maybe one of the other two will elope. Then we’ll save tuition and a big wedding bill.”

  Joe looked around. “Where are the princesses, anyway? Still asleep?”

  With that, the oldest Rizzo girl, Marie, walked into the small kitchen and smiled at her father. She wore cut-off jeans and a loose-fitting NYPD T-shirt, her black hair pulled straight back and secured with a blue ribbon. Even without makeup, her dark beauty struck Rizzo as it always did, as if he had never seen her before. He smiled at her as she spoke.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Home already? Did you have fun oppressing the masses and violating minority rights?”

  “Sure did, sweetheart. Me and my partner came across this homeless Hindu-Muslim- AIDS victim-Asian- man of color-Puerto Rican, and we got to burn down his teepee.”

  Marie crossed to him and kissed the top of his head. “That’s nice, Daddy. I’m glad you had a good time. And that partner, would that be the young good-looking guy who was here for dinner last night? The one Mom seems to be in love with?”

  “Lust, dear,” Jennifer corrected with a smile as she brought Joe his coffee. “Not love, lust. I only love your father.”

  Joe shook his head and sipped at the coffee. “There has to be a law somewhere about how a man’s wife can talk when he’s sitting right in front of her.” He sighed. “And as for my young partner, no, I didn’t work with Mike. Last night was an extra tour I pulled to help pay your tuition. So a little appreciation would be nice.”

  Marie smiled. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said sweetly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here last night. Carol and Jessica gave Mike two thumbs-up.”

  “Well,” Joe said with a laugh. “All three of you can just forget about him. What have I been telling you ever since you went to the ju nior prom with that Tommy Brennan character? They’ll be no Irish sons-inlaw in the Rizzo home.”

  Marie stiffened her back and bowed her head formally to Joe. “Ah, yes, Papa-san,” she said. “Me remember now.”

  Rizzo sighed. “Everybody’s got an act,” he said.

  The two women sat down and joined Rizzo for a light breakfast. Marie was home for the next three weeks, after which time she would return to Cornell Medical School for her summer lab courses. They continued catching up on one another’s lives as they ate. The two younger Rizzo girls, Carol and twenty-one- year-old Jessica, were still asleep upstairs.

  “You know,” Joe said, “I met a guy not too long ago who had a daughter that’s a doctor. She’s over at Mount Sinai in the city.”

  Marie broke off a piece of buttered toast and handed it to her father, anticipating his need. “That’s a pretty good hospital,” she said. “Where did you meet him?”

  Joe thought of Natale Catanzaro, sitting tightly on his stiff chair, one floor below his brother’s corpse.

  “Through the job. Guy came in one night to make a complaint about some
noisy kids hanging out by his house. We got to talking and he told me about his daughter. He was really proud of her, you could tell.” Joe looked into the deep dark eyes of his oldest daughter. He smiled at them. They were her mother’s eyes. “Almost half as proud as I am of you,” he said.

  She smiled back but raised her eyebrows with her reply. “Well,” she said, “let’s hope I can stick it out and actually graduate.”

  Joe shrugged. “You’ll do your best, honey, like you always do. That’ll be more than good enough, don’t worry.”

  They continued to eat for a while in silence. Joe’s thoughts once again turned to the Catanzaros. He wondered how they were doing in the aftermath of the suicide. The medical examiner had issued a preliminary finding of death by suicide, and the D.A. indicated to Joe that he had no problem looking the other way on the initial attempt by Natale to cover things up. Once the suicide was officially declared, the entire matter would simply fade away.

  Those thoughts brought another case and another man, Dominick Simione, to Joe’s mind. Simione had experienced a pragmatic Sicilian comfort the day Rizzo had stopped by to tell him about Anthony Donzi’s arrest. Now he made a mental note to tell Mike that he had called Simione’s daughter, Mrs. DiPaola, to see how the man was getting on, and the news had been relatively good. Although the old man still grieved for his slaughtered Spike, the family had gotten him a puppy, also a mixed breed. This one he named Luna, and the new dog seemed to be helping. Simione’s grandson was home from college for the summer and moved into the Brooklyn house, and was spending a good deal of time with his grandfather. The neighbors visited often, and the two youngsters who had buried Spike pooled their pocket money and purchased a small marble headstone for his grave. They had placed it there with great solemnity, and the parish priest offered a blessing for them all at the gravesite. Joe now made a second mental note to call the Brooklyn and Manhattan D.A. offices to see how the plea bargain was shaping up with the various charges Donzi faced. Geanna Fago had spent four nights in jail and then paid a five-hundred- dollar fine for her guilty plea to possession of cocaine. Rizzo knew that the best Donzi could hope for, under ideal circumstances, would be ten to fifteen years on a guilty plea to all charges.

  All in all, the best possible outcome. It was all a cop could ever expect, and Joe took quiet comfort and modest pride in it.

  Now he washed those thoughts from his mind and turned to face the day with his family.

  “Finish your breakfast, then go upstairs and wake up Heckle and Jeckle,” he said to Marie. “If we get started showering, shaving, powdering, combing, and makeupping, we just may be able to make the eleven o’clock mass at Regina Pacis.”

  *

  LATER IN the day, with pasta and roast chicken swelling in his stomach, Joe lay, half asleep, on the plush leather La-Z-Boy double recliner nestled in the den where the thirty-two- inch color Sony held dominance. He watched through heavily lidded eyes as the Mets held on to a very tenuous two-run lead going into the ninth inning at Pittsburgh. He was only vaguely aware of a phone ringing as he dropped fully into sleep. A moment later, his wife’s gentle hand on his shoulder awakened him.

  “Honey?” he heard her say softly, the cordless phone held in her hand, the mouthpiece pressed into her side. “Joe? It’s the boss, D’Antonio. He says it’s important.”

  Although of southern Italian heritage, D’Antonio had a shock of thick, full blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and the ruddy complexion of a Scotch-Irishmen. Because of his overall appearance, he was referred to as The Swede by his detectives, albeit not within his earshot. It was almost unheard of for a Six-Two squad detective to get a call from The Swede at home: Joe found himself instantly alert at hearing it was D’Antonio.

  As he took the phone from Jennifer, she hesitated, and their eyes met. Joe sat passively in silence. Jennifer sighed, then, without speaking, turned and left the den, closing the door gently behind her.

  Joe lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Hello, Boss,” he said. “Is New York under attack again?”

  The deep, clear enunciation of the lieutenant’s voice reached through the earpiece to Rizzo.

  “No, Joe, nothing that dramatic. I’m sorry to bother you at home, it couldn’t be helped.”

  “No problem, Loo. Tell me.”

  “You’re on for a midnight to night, right?”

  “Yeah, me and McQueen.

  “Yes, well, that’s why I needed to catch you at home. Get ahold of McQueen, cancel the midnight. I want you both in tomorrow morning, eight, eight-thirty. My office.”

  Joe sighed. “What ever it is, we didn’t do it, Vince. Enter a ‘not guilty’ for both of us.”

  D’Antonio laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. I got a call today from Police Plaza. A community affairs inspector, guy by the name of Manning. Do you know him?”

  Joe thought a moment. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” D’Antonio said, distaste in his tone, “he’s a big-time kiss-ass po liti cal scumbag. Lately, the last year or so, he’s been stroking a guy from out your way, Bill Daily. Know the name?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Joe replied. “He’s a councilman from Bay Ridge, lives a few blocks from me. He also runs the local Demo cratic club. Thinks he’s a real big shot. His old man was a state senator for the district for thirty years. A Republican. The son went over to the Dems because the field was less crowded over there, what with Bay Ridge bein’ pretty straight Republican. He got lucky a few years ago and got elected. Now it’s like he’s the Pope. And you know, people around here don’t change things too quick. Once you get in, you’re in.”

  “You ever meet the guy?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you will. Tomorrow. You and Mike have an appointment with him, at his house. Him and his wife, ten a.m.”

  Joe frowned into the mouthpiece. “And why would that be, Vince?”

  “It’s his daughter. She took off about three weeks ago. She’s done it before, very troubled kid. Diagnosed bipolar when she was fourteen.”

  “Bipolar?” Joe asked. “Manic-depressive?”

  “Yes.”.

  “What does this have to do with me and Mike?”

  “It’s like this, Joe. The kid called up Mommy. It was her nineteenth birthday, and she was way down, depressed as hell. The old lady thought the kid sounded suicidal. She panicked and called a friend of hers in the mayor’s office. The friendtold Daily, he got crazy, had a blow out with the wife. He wants all this kept quiet, he’s got an election coming up and he’s trying to sell himself and his family like a Leave It to Beaver bullshit fairy tale. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for screwy teenage daughters running around loose doing God knows what.”

  Joe shook his head. “Nineteen. Nineteen and sick, and all this asshole cares about is his election. My Carol turns nineteen in a couple a months and I worry she may stub her toe on a desk at college.”

  He heard D’Antonio sigh through the line. “I know. I was just saying the same thing to my wife. But what are you going to do? That’s the way these guys think.”

  Joe paused for a moment. “Again, though, Boss, I gotta ask: What does this have to do with me and Mike? If the kid went missing, she lives in the Six-Eight, it’s their jurisdiction, they cover Bay Ridge. How are we involved here?”

  “Joe,” D’Antonio said, a forcefulness working into his voice. “We’re involved, all of us, because the mayor’s office told the Plaza and the Plaza told us. You come in tomorrow, eight, eight-thirty, and I’ll lay it all out for you. You and Mike are off the wheel, you make your own hours— days, nights, what ever it takes. I got a blank overtime check in my pocket for this one, you can pay some tuition. It can work out okay, Joe. Meet me halfway on this one.”

  Joe blew air gently through his nostrils, loudly enough for The Swede to hear. “Yeah, sure, Loo. What ever you say. It all sounds real legit so far.”

  “In the morning, Joe. Save it for the morning.”

  The line we
nt dead. Joe dropped the phone onto the seat of Jennifer’s half of the recliner. He sighed and stood up slowly, trying to remember where he had left his address book.

  He needed McQueen’s home number. He had never really memorized it.

  MIKE MCQUEEN had just returned home when the shrill ringing of his telephone sounded. He walked through the apartment and answered it on the fourth ring.

  “Hello?” he said.

  Joe Rizzo’s voice, clear and distinctive, sounded in his ear.

  “Hello, Mike, hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Not at all, Joe. I just walked in. Caught a movie with a couple of friends. What’s up? Anything wrong?”

  “No, kid, right as rain. But don’t ruin your night. We’re off midnights. The Swede wants us in at eight tomorrow morning for a special assignment. Some politician’s kid went missing and we’re supposed to find her. Very hush-hush, the guy’s got an image to protect.”

  Mike frowned into the mouthpiece.

  “Does this sound okay to you, Joe? I mean—”

  Joe cut him off. “I know what you mean, Mike. And no, it doesn’t sound okay to me. But The Swede has his balls between the Plaza and what’s okay, so guess what? He’s goin’ with the Plaza. But it’s not a big deal. We’ll work it all out tomorrow. Take the night off and I’ll meet you at the squad at eight. We’ll get the whole story then and decide how to play it. We’re off the wheel and The Swede more or less told me we can write our own paychecks till we settle this. It’ll be okay.”

  “I hope so. I’m too new at this to be getting involved with some politi cal bullshit.”

  Joe laughed. “Yeah, so I gathered from your buddy-buddy adventure with the mayor.”

  “That was different, Joe. That was just dumb luck. This … this could be trouble. Especially with us walking on eggshells with that Morelli thing. We don’t need to go stepping on our dicks right now.”

  “No way. I’ll handle it. Let’s hear The Swede out and then we can make a decision. It’ll all work out. Trust me, I won’t let us get hurt.”