Inside Job

by Levinson, Len

  “Thank you.”

  Brody opened the door and entered a medium-sized office with a green rug on the floor. A modern wooden desk was at one end, and behind it sat a powerfully built man with a bald head and rosy cheeks. He wore a light green suit, white shirt, and yellow tie. The waves of hair on each side of his head looked coated with shellac. Farelli got up and held out his hand. “Hello Brody.”

  “Hello.”

  “You can throw your coat over the sofa there, and have a seat here.”

  Brody took off his topcoat and lay it on the sofa. He thought his blue suit made more sense that Farelli’s green one. Sitting on the chair, he took out his pack of Luckies and said, “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead.” Farelli was looking at the resume Brody had mailed him. “Well, this is very impressive,” he said. “When can you start?”

  Brody widened his eyes. “Huh?”

  “I said when can you start?”

  “Next Monday.”

  “Good.” Farelli kept looking at the resume, then lay it down. “Your starting salary is a hundred and fifty dollars for a forty hour week. You’ll have our major medical plan and one week vacation with pay the first year, and two weeks the second year. You’ll have to supply your own uniforms, of course.”

  Brody stared at him. “What uniforms?”

  “The uniforms our security men wear. We sell them at cost - it won’t be any great expense, and you can pay for them out of your salary at the rate of twenty dollars a week.”

  Brody smiled and shook his head. “I’m not interested in a job as a security man. I’m a detective.”

  Farelli shrugged and turned down the corners of his mouth. “You mean you were a detective. Do you know how many detectives are out of work in New York right now? Go ahead—take a guess.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “More than five hundred. And most of them have more experience with you. Some of them have been on the force for two or three years. And then there are all the detectives who’re retired but still in their forties and with all that experience behind them. Frankly, you look too young to be a detective.”

  “Well, I’m not interested in being a security man.”

  “ Why not? It’s an easy job. We’ll just put you on some block or in a fancy building someplace, and you just hang around. If there are any problems, just call headquarters on your walkie-talkie, and we’ll have the cops there before you can say Mayor Crotch, I mean Koch.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not for me, Mister Farelli.” Brody got up from his chair.

  Farelli looked at him.” What’re you gonna do—stay on unemployment?”

  “That’s right.”

  Farelli shook his head. “I don’t think much of a man who’d rather be on unemployment that have a good honest job. The problem with this country is that there are too many people like you who don’t want to work.”

  Bordy picked up his topcoat. “It’s been great talking to you, Mister Farelli.”

  Farelli frowned. “Are you trying to be a wise guy, Brody?”

  “Who, me?”

  Farelli arose behind his desk. “The trouble with you fucking New York cops is that you think you own the world. You think you’re better than everybody else. Even if they take your badge away you still think you’re a New York cop. But you’ll get the message one of these days, Brody. You’ll realize you’re just another piece of shit in this world, and I think you’ll wish you took the job I offered you.”

  Brody opened the office door and looked back at Farelli. “No way.”

  Chapter Ten

  Brody rode back to Queens on the subway, slouched on the fiber glass seat, trying to figure out his next move. It was clear to him that his cop days were over. He couldn’t work for the police departments of other cities, he wouldn’t work for a private protection agency, and he doubted that he could survive as a private detective on his own. There were too many unemployed cops in the city. The competition was too fierce.

  He wondered about the other types of jobs that he could get. He wouldn’t mind doing construction work, but there wasn’t much construction work being done in the city, and besides it was hard to get into the construction unions. The plain fact was that it was hard to get any good jobs, especially when you had no experience in them and no union connections. Maybe he could go back to school and become a computer programmer or something like that, but who the fuck wanted to be a computer programmer. After five years of carrying a gun in the give and take of New York street life, he could never sit behind a desk or be nursemaid to a computer. Maybe the thing to do was send Doris out to work and just be a fucking bum.

  He arrived at his apartment building, checked the mailbox out of habit, and was surprised to see a few bills in there. Why hadn’t Doris got the mail today? Maybe she’d been very busy. She seemed to be very busy and agitated lately. He took the elevator upstairs and approached his door.

  The living room was empty and dark. All the furniture, the pictures on the walls, and the rug, had disappeared. Brody blinked. He opened the door and checked the number on it, to make sure he was in the right apartment, without stopping to think that his key couldn’t open any other apartment. It was his apartment number. This was his living room and it was empty. He walked to the bedroom. It was empty too. The same with the kids’ bedroom. The pots and pans were gone from the kitchen. All that was left was his bottle of bourbon. He realized all at once that Doris had left him at last, and that bottle of bourbon was her goodbye message.

  Brody returned to the living room and lit a cigarette. He sat on the floor and tried to think things through. His first impulse was relief, because he wasn’t happy with her. His second impulse was anger, because she’d done it so sneakily. She could’ve at least been decent enough to tell him what she was going to do. His third impulse was to think about his kids, Little Mike and Denise, whom he usually paid very little attention to. He missed them now that they were gone. How could that fat bitch take his kids away and not say anything about it? They were his kids too! Who in the fuck did she think she was anyway!

  He wondered where she had gone. He returned to the kitchen, got his bottle of bourbon, and took a swig. There were no glasses. There were half a dozen places where she could have gone. Maybe the super knew. He took another swig of bourbon, then left the apartment and took the elevator downstairs.

  The super was a Cuban named Renaldo and he lived in the basement with a woman not his legal wife and eight mangy cats. The basement had gray walls and dim light, and women were afraid to do their laundry down there at night because they expected rapists to leap at them from out of the shadows, although nothing like that had ever happened in the history of the building. Brody rang the bell on the super’s door.

  The woman opened the door.

  “Renaldo in?” Brody asked.

  “Uno momento.” The woman went back into the apartment, and a few minutes later returned with Renaldo, who was a happy chap with and mustache and an imperishable smile.

  “Hello there Mister Brody,” Renaldo said in his Spanish accent. “I bet I know what you want to know.”

  “Where did my wife and kids go?”

  “I knew you was going to say that. In fact, when she was moving out I was thinking that you’d come here to see me, and well, since you’ve been so generous to me in the past with little gifts and so forth, I thought maybe I should ask the man who was driving the moving truck, who happen to be from Panama by the way, and he told me, and I wrote down the address.” Renaldo opened his shirt pocket and took out a notepad. He tore off the top sheet and gave it to Brody.

  Brody looked at it. It was the address of Doris’ mother on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Jamaica. Doris’ mother owned a three story house, and now it all made sense to Brody. Her mother would take care of the kids while Doris went to work and sued Brody for alimony, child support, and maybe some of his blood. He looked at Renaldo. “Thanks a lot.”

  “It’s okay my friend.”

>   On Queens Boulevard, Brody caught a cab. He knew that a man in his financial condition shouldn’t be taking cabs across Queens, but he couldn’t be reasonable at a time like this. The cab let him off in front of his mother-in-law’s dreary looking brown house. He looked up and saw someone looking down at him from the corner of a white curtain. They were probably expecting him. Well, they were getting him whether they wanted him or not.

  He climbed the steps, crossed the porch, and banged on the door although there was a door bell he could’ve pushed. The door was opened by Doris’ brother Rick, who was about six-foot-two, weighed in at 230 pounds, and had a job as a structural steelworker. He had curly black hair and the shoulders of an ox.

  “What do you want?” Rick asked.

  “I want to see my kids.”

  “You’re not welcome in this house, Mike. Hit the fucking road.”

  “You’d better get out of my way, motherfucker, or I’ll go right over you.”

  “Is that so.”

  “You’re fucking right it’s so.”

  Brody took a wild swing that Rick blocked easily, pivoting to the side, and landing a left jab on Brody’s jaw, and Brody went sprawling backwards onto the porch. Rich remained in the doorway, smiling sarcastically as Brody’s predicament.

  “You always made everybody think you were a tough cop,” Rick said, “but you ain’t shit.”

  Brody got up, brushed himself off, and charged. Rick braced himself. Brody feinted with his left, feinted with his right, and landed a hard left haymaker right on Rick’s nose, which crackled and spurted blood. This time Rick went backwards, and Brody stayed close, throwing lefts and rights to the head, blocking Rick’s wild punches, slamming him in the guts and kidneys so he’d piss blood for a week, and then working on his face again. They were in the hallway of the house now, and upstairs women were screaming. Rick was reeling and Brody threw one that came from the floor. It caught Rick on the ear and he crashed against the wall. Rick slid to the floor.

  Brody figured the kids were upstairs. He went back to the staircase, looked up, and saw Doris at the top of the stairs, a butcher knife in her hands.

  “If you try to come up here, I’ll kill you, Mike.”

  “You dumb fucking cunt,” he replied, breathing heavily.

  “You can call me anything you want, but you’re not going to come up here.” She was wearing her double-knit green pants that sagged at the knees.

  “I want to see my kids.”

  “ You’d better get out of this house. My mother already called the cops.”

  “I’m going to see my kids.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  He started up the stairs. Davis began trembling. “Don’t come any farther.”

  “I said I’m going to see my kids.”

  “I’ll kill you, Mike.” She brandished the knife awkwardly.

  “Don’t be an idiot all your life.”

  When he got close, she dropped the knife and ran away screaming. He walked along the second floor landing, opening doors. Halfway down the landing he opened a door and saw his son and daughter playing with toys on a rug.

  “Hiya kids,” he said with a big smile.

  They looked up at him as though he was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They looked at each other and began to cry. He got down on one knee.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see your daddy?”

  They shook their heads no.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you any presents or anything, but...”

  Doris, who was standing in the doorway, interrupted him. “Since when have you ever brought them presents.”

  He turned around. “I can’t help it if I’ve been busy trying to support you. Jesus, Doris—how can you keep wearing those ugly goddamn double-knit slacks. They make you look like a fucking elephant.”

  “How dare you talk in front of my children that way!”

  “Your children? They’re my children too!”

  The sound of sirens sliced through the conversation.

  Doris smiled. “The police are coming for you. Now you’ll get what you deserve.”

  He stood up cockily, and straightened his tie. “We’ll see about that.”

  She ran out of his way as he moved to the door. He descended the stairs, and at the bottom was his mother-in-law. She had the personality of a witch. She was opening the front door. Rick was leaning against a wall, holding a handkerchief to his nose. Doris stood at the top of the stairs.

  “What’s the problem, ma’am?” asked a male voice outside, a voice Brody recognized as patrolman officialese.

  “My son-in-law broke into my house, beat up my son, and threatened my daughter and her children,” the old witch said. “He’s right inside, and he’s dangerous.”

  The two cops entered the hallway. They looked at Mike.

  Mike smiled. “Hi.”

  The cop on the left had long red hair underneath his hat. The other cop looked Italian or Jewish.

  Rick stepped forward, holding the bloody hanker-chief to his nose. “I want you to put this son-of-a-bitch in jail.”

  “Did he beat you up?”

  “I sure as hell didn’t walk into a wall.”

  Brody snorted. “You’re dumb enough to walk into a wall.”

  The redheaded cop said, “Are you people willing to press charges.”

  “Yes,” said Doris, her mother, and her brother in unison.

  The redhead looked at Brody. “You’d better come with us.”

  “Anything you say, officer.”

  Brody followed them out to the patrol car, his shoulders squared and head held high. A group of people were standing around staring. Now he knew what the criminals felt like when they were taken away. They felt guilty even if they hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Get in back,” the dark-haired cop said.

  The opened the door, he got in, and they locked the door. He felt sick. Looking toward the porch, he saw Doris, her mother, and her brother smiling victoriously. The fucking bastards.

  The red-headed cop got behind the wheel, and drove away.

  “Where are we going?” Brody said in a friendly way.

  “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  “What precinct are you with?”

  They didn’t answer.

  “I was with the Nineteenth Precinct in Manhattan until the lay-offs a month ago,” Brody said hopefully.

  The redhead and the other cop looked at each other. The dark-haired cop turned around and looked at Brody, then faced front again. Both of them shrugged.

  At the 34th Precinct in Queens he was booked for aggravated assault and trespassing, and was permitted to make one call. He phoned a bail bondsman he knew, and then was locked up.

  The cells were in the basement of the police station. There were no windows, and each cell faced a wall three feet away that had a radiator on it. It was hot and humid, stinking of urine and vomit. Bordy’s cell wasn’t much more than eight feet square, and had a cot and a commode that stank to high heaven. He sat on the cot and couldn’t believe he was in the slams. Boy, am I fucking up, he thought. Just when he figured he couldn’t fall any lower, something happened to prove him wrong. What could be worse than jail for a cop?

  The bail bondsman had an office in downtown Manhattan and he didn’t get out to Queens until eight P.M. because of the rush hour traffic. His name was Nick Traficante and he posted the one-thousand dollar bail. Brody was released and given a court date. Traficante drove Brody to Brody’s vacant apartment.

  Brody went inside, and his footsteps sounded hollow in the empty apartment. In the bedroom he found his clothes hanging in the closet, and his stuff had been packed in boxes and stacked at the bottom of the closet.

  At least she had left him his clothes. That was nice of her.

  He needed a suitcase, or maybe two suitcases. He would pack the essentials and leave the rest behind. Then he would find a furnished room som
eplace and try to pull his life together.

  He went out to the McDonalds for some food, and brought it back to the apartment, eating it while sitting cross-legged on the floor. When he finished he thought it would be nice to go to the Firehouse for a few beers, but he realized that his hanging out in bars days were over. He couldn’t afford it anymore. He had to learn to live alone on unemployment. He knew already that Doris had withdrawn all the money from their joint savings account. There was no point in even going to the bank.

  He felt tired, depressed, and lonely. From somewhere he had to find the strength and will to keep going, keep trying, keep searching for an improvement in his situation. Deep in his heart he felt that he had been betrayed by the politicians and the N.Y.P.D. itself. They shouldn’t have fired him. They had no right to ruin his life. What was he supposed to do—die?

  He spread some clothes on the floor for a mattress, and rolled up other clothes for a pillow. He took off his clothes and lay down. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the morning, Brody went to Roosevelt Avenue and rented a furnished room on a side street not far from the Firehouse. His neighbors would be Puerto Ricans, alcoholics, and pensioners. He wondered if he ever really had hung out at the Dublin Pub with the Jets and Yankees, and screwed the classy dames who went there, or if it all had been a dream.

  Then he went to one of the cheap stores and bought two cheap suitcases. Returning to his apartment, he packed his stuff, and left. He moved into his new room, hung up everything in the smelly closet, stacked his underwear and socks and shirts in the rickety drawers of the dresser, and left for the unemployment office to report his change of address. He was wearing jeans, a blue chambray shirt, and his leather jacket.

  The unemployment office was filled with losers as usual, but a different bunch from the ones on the day he usually reported. He got in line at the information desk, and didn’t feel impatient at all; he’d become used to waiting in lines and getting hassled.

  “Hey Brody, don’t tell me they got you, too?”

  Brody turned and saw Anthony Ricci, whom he’d seen last in the Property Room of Police Headquarters. “I thought you were going to get a transfer into the First Dep’s office.”