by Tim O'Mara
“It was a murder scene, Raymond.”
“I didn’t know that at the time.”
“No,” he said. “Just after you committed a little B and E.”
“I didn’t break in,” I said. “The neighbor gave me a key.”
“The detective didn’t give you shit on that?”
“A little, but he didn’t push it.”
Uncle Ray grinned. “He didn’t push it because your last name’s Donne.”
“He said he took a course with you at the academy. Detective Royce?”
He thought about the name for a bit. “Big black guy? Looks like he coulda played defensive end in college?”
“That’s him.”
“Yeah. He did pretty well, if I remember correctly.”
“Said you were a hard-ass as an instructor.”
“Don’t know where he got that idea.” Uncle Ray finished his drink and held the empty out for Officer Jackson. “So, what do you need me to do? Royce change his mind and decide to break your balls on illegal entry?”
“No,” I said. “We’re past that, I—”
“Past that? You know better than that, Raymond. You don’t enter an apartment just because some neighbor gives you a key. You knock, you wait, but”—he tapped his golf club on the fake grass to accent the next four words: “You. Do. Not. Enter. You call it in.”
“Call what in?” I asked. “You think the cops are going to rush over to the Southside because I can’t find a fourteen-year-old?”
“What the hell was the goddamned rush?”
“There was a dead body in there.”
“You didn’t know that at the time.”
“I felt something was wrong, Uncle Ray. And I was right.”
“Ahhh.” Uncle Ray leaned his golf club against the wall next to his pitching wedge. “Here we go.”
“Here we go, what?”
“You’re still getting those … feelings.” He wiggled his fingers in the air and added a spooky quality to his voice. “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.”
“I was taught to go with my instinct. By you. What? That’s all bullshit now?”
“Instinct,” he repeated. “What you’re describing is intuition. Cops have instinct. Psychics … women … have intuition.” He picked up his pitching wedge. “If you honestly felt that something was wrong, you should’ve called it in. For Christ’s sake, you coulda called me, and I coulda sent a car over there. Instead, you entered a private residence illegally and risked contaminating a crime scene. You know better than that. At least, you should.”
I looked at my uncle’s face—the wrinkles a little deeper and the circles a little darker than I remembered—and said, “I’m coming to you now.”
Uncle Ray turned away, and with the business end of his pitching wedge, tipped the golf ball off the tee. He lined himself up and stroked the ball about thirty yards away, where it landed just short of a yellow flag. Out beyond where the ball fell, past the nets I doubt anyone could reach, a green and white Circle Line boat headed south on the Hudson, filled with curious folks who wanted to see what New York City looked like from the water.
“Coming to me for what?” Uncle Ray asked, lining up his next shot. “You said they’re not pressing you on the entry. Something else they’re squeezing your nuts over?”
I reached into my pocket and felt the hundred-dollar bill. “I found something.”
“Good for you, Nephew.”
“Regarding the case.”
He drove the next ball.
“Excuse me?” he said, turning back to face me.
I had a sudden craving for a Diet Coke, so I went over to the cooler and grabbed a can from the ice. I took a sip and faced my uncle.
“I went by to see Royce yesterday,” I said. “To see how the case was progressing.”
Uncle Ray leaned forward. “You did what, now?”
“On my way home,” I said. “I had this—”
“Urge to stick your nose into an active investigation?”
“I didn’t stick my nose into anything. I thought I had something to offer him.”
“What,” my uncle said, not trying to hide his annoyance with me, “could you possibly have to offer the lead detective in a homicide case?”
I was about to say, “A clue,” but I wasn’t in the mood to hear another one of my uncle’s Encyclopedia Brown jokes.
“I thought there was an avenue of investigation he may have overlooked.”
He laughed. “Listen to my nephew, Jackson.” Jackson took a tentative step toward us, uncomfortable with having been drawn into this conversation. “‘Avenue of investigation.’ Where’d you pick that up? A televised police drama?”
“I’m trying to help someone out, Uncle Ray. You don’t need to talk to me like I’m a kid.”
“Then don’t act like one,” he said. “Damn, Raymond.” He shook his head and gave me the look. “You’re still collecting strays.”
I hated the grin he had on his face. It was the same one my dad used just before telling me where, and in how many ways, my thinking had been wrong.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Uncle Ray turned to Jackson again. “I ever regale you with the story about my nephew and Lassie, Jackson?”
“No, sir,” Jackson answered. “I don’t believe you have.”
“What was the name, Raymond,” my uncle asked, “of that crazy guy used to live around your block? Security guard for Grumman.”
Crazy guy around the— “Borrelli?” I said, the name coming from somewhere in the back of my head. What the hell did this have to do with…? Oh.
“Borrelli, that was it. The wacky wop.” Uncle Ray chipped the ball into the air. “I forget the name of his big old collie, but I just called him Lassie.”
“Bandit,” I said.
“Whatever. Old Man Borrelli used to treat that dog like a red-headed stepkid. Anyways, Jackson, one day Lassie—Bandit—shows up on Raymond’s front lawn, lying there like it’d been hit by a truck. Raymond’s dad is away on business, so Raymond takes the mutt in. Gets a bunch of old pillows and blankets and sets up his own veterinarian’s office in the back shed.”
“I was just trying to take care of him,” I explained.
“Right,” Uncle Ray said. “Too bad you never got your dad’s okay, huh?”
Yeah. Too bad.
“Well, my brother finds out what’s been going on in the backyard for the past few days, and he loses it. Takes the dog—which by now was looking a world better, but still can’t walk too good—puts him in a wheelbarrow, and brings him back to his master. Borrelli goes nuts. Screams bloody murder, threatens to have the boy arrested for dognapping. Christ.”
It was up there with the angriest I had ever seen my father. I wasn’t sure what he was more furious about: that he didn’t know about it, or that my mom kept it from him. Maybe if he’d been home more often.
“Two days later,” my uncle continued, “the dog shows up again on the Donne Family’s front lawn. Only this time, he’s dead. Ray’s mother, bless her Catholic heart, calls the animal control folks, and they take it away. I thought the old guy dumped it on the lawn like that, but Ray here explains to me that dogs know when they’re going to die and find a safe place to spend their final moments.”
I used to believe that. I remembered looking out the living room window at Bandit and wanting to go to him. But between my dad and Borrelli, I was too scared to do anything. It wasn’t until my mom made the call that I knew for sure the dog was dead.
“You wanna tell the rest of the tale, Nephew?”
“What’s left to tell, Uncle Ray? Bandit died. I cried for a couple of days and then got over it. That about covers it.”
“Not quite. What about the part about Old Man Borrelli’s house?”
“I never knew anything about that,” I lied. “Even Dad said—”
“I know what your dad said. I was there.”
“So,” I said to Jackson, “end of s
tory.” To Uncle Ray, I said, “Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane.”
“Not done until we get to the good part,” he said as he chipped another ball off the green surface. “What happens next, Jackson, is that a few days after the dog’s taken away, Old Man Borrelli comes a-knockin’ at the Donne Family door—screaming bloody murder again—only this time, seems that sometime during the wee hours, when Borrelli was off guarding airplane parts or some such, somebody busted every window on the old fuck’s house. Every. Single. Goddamned. Window.” Uncle Ray used his club again to accent the last four words.
Officer Jackson looked at me and said, “You?”
I shook my head.
“Bullshit,” my uncle said. “Borrelli starts screaming he’s gonna have the boy arrested and sue my brother for everything he’s got. Now, I’m over there having a cup of coffee on my way out to Montauk, and I’m watching and listening, and finally I ask my brother does he want me to badge the guy, threaten to kick his ass. And my brother gets this look in his eye I swear I never saw before. Tells me, no, he’ll handle it, and walks across the front lawn toward Borrelli—I mean John Wayne walks—goes right up to the guy, grabs him by his shirt, and pulls him in real close. Then he whispers something into the guy’s ear and pushes him away like he’s nothing. Borrelli’s standing there, trying to come up with something, but he can’t. After about a minute of this, he skulks away like the douche-bag dog beater he was. Remember that, Raymond?”
“Yeah,” I said. Good times.
“What did he say to the guy?” Jackson asked.
I had no idea, so we both waited for Uncle Ray to finish.
“Told him that no one accuses a member of his family of wrongdoing unless he’s got a shitload of evidence to back it up. And if he wanted to go ahead and press charges, my brother would file a countersuit, call the ASPCA, and get together with his lawyer buddies down at the county offices and see what else they could come up with.”
“See,” I said. “He knew I had nothing to do with the windows being busted.”
“Wrong, kiddo. He knew that you did.”
“If he thought I had anything to do with that, he’d have grounded me for life and made me spend the rest of my childhood paying off those windows.”
“Unless,” Uncle Ray said, “he thought you were right.”
Whoa. “Excuse me?”
“Your old man figured Borrelli got what he had coming. Thought he deserved a little more, actually—but what you did?—your dad figured leave it go at that and let Borrelli make noise if he wanted to.”
“So the point of this story is…?”
“Understand what you’re getting into when you mess with strays, Raymond.”
I’d had enough of this. “Look, Uncle Ray. I need your help. Two kids need your help.”
“Save the dramatics. Whatta ya want me to do? Call Detective Royce and let him know you’ve had another intuition, and would he please do what you say?”
I reached up and squeezed the area between my eyes, just above the nose. I’d been going since seven in the morning and had to remind myself that Uncle Ray deserved my respect. Especially if I was asking for his help. I pulled the bill out of my pocket and held it at my side.
“I drove up to Highland today,” I said. “I wanted to talk to John Roberts. He is—was—Rivas’s boss. The victim. Frankie had a picture of the house in his notebook, and I figured…”
“You might as well interfere with an active police investigation? You were out the day they covered obstruction of justice at the academy?”
“Are you going to let me finish?” I waited for a response, and when none came, I continued. “I spoke with Roberts’s wife, Anita. She’s Frankie’s cousin, on his mother’s side.”
“The kids’ mom?”
“Died a while ago. Anita says she has no idea where the kids are and hasn’t seen them since Christmas.”
“So?”
“So she asked me to leave…”
“Smart woman.”
“… after I found this on her property.”
I held out the hundred, and Uncle Ray took it. He turned it over a few times. “This your boy’s handwriting?”
“Yes.” And before he could ask, I said, “I know Frankie’s handwriting. I’ve had him for two years now.”
Uncle Ray nodded. “This would be what we in the police academy call a ‘clue.’”
“I know,” I said. “I was there that day.”
Uncle Ray handed the bill to Jackson, who slipped it into his front pocket without so much as looking at it.
“So your boy—Frankie?—was up at the Highland house?”
“Yes.”
“And the cousin says she had no idea?”
“That’s what she said.”
“You believe her?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She seemed genuinely surprised when I found that.” I left out the part about the bill being found by a three-year-old girl and my dumb luck. “But that’s when she decided she didn’t want to answer any more of my questions.”
“And now you’d like me to…”
“Show the bill to Royce. He needs to know that Frankie and Milagros were up at that house. If I bring it to him, we’ll waste a lot of time discussing what I was doing up there.”
Uncle Ray considered all that for a few seconds, then turned back to his golf. He leaned the wedge against the wall and picked up the driver. He moved his hips, mumbled something about “tempo,” and swung. I watched as the ball traveled in a beautiful arc and landed just shy of the 250 marker.
“If you’re right, Raymond,” he said, “they’re running from something.”
“Or someone.”
“What’s Royce think about your boy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does he like him for knocking off his dad?”
“I don’t think so. He’s got it out there as a possibility, but I don’t think he really believes Frankie killed his father.”
Uncle Ray grinned. “You obviously don’t.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t. Not possible.”
“Because you know him?”
“Because I know the kind of kid he is. Yes.”
The grin mutated into a laugh. “And what kind of kid is that? The kind that wouldn’t murder his father?”
“I know this kid, Uncle Ray.” I wanted to get loud, but stopped myself. “You are not going to suck me into this conversation. Let me know what you decide to do with Royce and the hundred-dollar bill.” I stepped over to Jackson and said, “Good luck to you. I’m sure you’ll make a good detective.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jackson said.
“Good-bye, Uncle Ray.”
“And just what conversation was I going to suck you into, Raymond?” he asked.
“The one,” I said a bit too loudly, but, shit, I was tired, “where you remind me that the world is mostly black and white and I try too hard to see the gray.”
“You do,” he said. “Tell me, Ray. What kind of kid would kill his father? Ask any mother on the street, ask ’em if their kid would kill them. Or commit rape. Or steal. Whatever. You know what they say? ‘Oh, never. Not my child.’ Then who’s committing all these rapes and murders and shit? Gotta be somebody’s kid, right?” Uncle Ray took a deep breath and pointed his finger at me. “That’s what you did on the job, kiddo. You thought too damn much.”
“And that’s a problem for a cop, right? Thinking?”
“Too much,” he said, tapping his finger against his temple. “I said thinking too much.”
“Make sure you’re getting all this down, Jackson.” Jackson gave me a look that said he wanted no part of this. “I’m heading home, Uncle Ray. I’ll talk to you when I talk to you.”
I turned to go, but I stopped when my uncle said, “Ahh, don’t be in such a rush to head out, Raymond.” He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Give me a minute or two to lighten my load a bit, and we’ll talk some more. In the meantime, chat with Offi
cer Jackson here. Hell, talk about me behind my back. I don’t mind.”
When my uncle had been out of sight for fifteen seconds, Jackson said, “He’ll do what you asked.”
“You sure about that?”
“You presented him with a good case and a solid piece of evidence. He’s got to give you shit about the way you obtained the evidence, but that doesn’t mean he’ll ignore it.”
“You’re learning a lot from him, huh?”
“You know that grin he gave you?” Jackson asked. “Right before the dog story?”
“Know it? It used to send chills down my spine as a kid.”
“It took me a while to get it. I used to think it was condescending, but it’s not. It’s him saying, ‘I’m right until you prove to me otherwise.’ You did.”
“I hope you’re right about that.”
“I am.” Jackson grabbed my uncle’s driver and set himself up in front of the tee. He moved his hips as my uncle had and hit the ball just shy of the 200 marker. “He talks about you a lot, you know. How good a cop you were and how sorry he was when you decided to leave.”
“That decision was kind of made for me, Jackson. I got banged up pretty good.”
“I know. He told me. He also told me that he could have arranged it so that you’da stayed on and still moved your way up.”
“I didn’t want it that way. I wanted it to be on my terms.” I was suddenly very aware of my knees. “My body wouldn’t let me be the kind of cop I wanted to be. I don’t think my uncle understands that.”
“He hears ya. He’s not there all the way, and maybe never will be, but he does hear ya.”
“How long have you been with him?” I asked.
“Three months.”
“Halfway home.”
“I guess.”
“You don’t sound too enthused.”
Jackson reached into the cooler and pulled out a soda. He took a sip and pressed the can against his forehead.
“I’m learning a lot. Shit they’d never teach you at the academy. I want to learn it all.”
“But…”
“I want that detective shield so bad I can taste it. But, like you said, I want it because I proved I’m a good cop, not because I know when he wants his drinks strong or what club he wants next.”
“Hey,” I said. “You make it through six months with my uncle, you deserve whatever they give you.”
