Walking the Perfect Square

by Reed Farrel Coleman

“So how’s the knee?” the gruffly affable voice of Rico Tripoli wanted to know.

  Rico Tripoli was my oldest buddy from the department. We were in the same class at the academy, but didn’t know each other then. When we got posted to the Six-O in Coney Island after probation, Rico and I took to each other right away. Both of us Brooklyn boys without a hook—a friend or family member already on the job with some juice, someone who could get you a plum assignment or help you when you got jammed up—we sort of watched out for each other. We still did. Even after they split us up six years ago, we would meet for dinner every few weeks.

  “The knee would be a lot better if I didn’t have to keep getting up to answer the god damned phone. How you doing?”

  “I’m breathin’,” he said.

  “How’s the Auto Crime Task Force working out?”

  “I stepped in shit. We’re workin’ a career maker. A year from now,” Rico bragged, “I’ll be polishin’ my gold shield.”

  “Get the fuck outta here. With the city’s budget, you could solve the Lindbergh kidnapping and the riddle of the Sphinx and they wouldn’t make you detective.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So listen, buddy, about dinner, I—”

  “That’s not why I’m callin’,” he cut me off. “Besides, wife number two isn’t so thrilled with our little nights out.”

  “Why not? You met her on one of our nights out,” I reminded him.

  “That’s right,” he said, “when I was still married to wife number one.”

  “I guess I see her point. So what’s up?”

  “How short are you and that wop-hatin’ brother of yours in the cash department?”

  “Come on, Rico,” I chided, “not this song and dance again.”

  For going on three years, Rico had tried to buy into the partnership with Aaron and me. Even after the divorce settlement, he had the finances to do it. His maternal grandfather had willed him a bundle. In fact, if we took only a quarter of the cash Rico had offered, we could sign the lease tomorrow on Aaron’s perfect store. But in spite of all my arguments on Rico’s behalf, Aaron refused to let anyone from outside the family in on the deal.

  “I know,” Rico said, “Aaron doesn’t hate all Italians, only me.”

  “That’s not right. He hates everybody, but especially you. So why’d you bring up the—”

  “Patrick M. Maloney.”

  “Who the fuck is Patrick Maloney, another investor my brother’ll say no to?”

  “Patrick M. Maloney,” he corrected.

  “Jesus, Rico! Who the fuck is Patrick M. Ma—”

  “What’s a matter, you don’t read the paper no more? You don’t watch TV?”

  “Rico, you don’t stop this bullshit, I’ll shoot you before you get that gold shield.”

  “He’s a college kid that disappeared in the city about six, seven weeks ago. Don’t you have eyes? His picture’s on every lamppost, traffic light pole and bulletin board in the city.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me. These days I walk around with my eyes on my legs, trying to make sure I don’t trip over my cane and fall on my ass. Anyway, what’s this got to do with the store?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow over lunch at Molly’s. You know, that little place up by me.” He hesitated: “Say one, one-thirty.”

  “You want me to drive all the way up—”

  “It’ll be worth it. What else you got to do with that knee a yours? In the meantime, go to the library and read some old newspapers. Ciao!”

  RICO WAS RIGHT about one thing. Patrick Maloney’s smiling countenance adorned the first lamppost I saw as I left my apartment building. And like a man with a new car becoming acutely aware of similar cars passing on the road, I began noticing Patrick Maloney’s face everywhere. Maybe, I thought, I had seen him before; when I was in the hospital, perhaps, on one of the news broadcasts. Given the amount of pain medication I had ingested during the month after my surgery, I probably could have convinced myself I had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary dancing the Latin Hustle with John Travolta.

  Maloney was a good-looking kid with a Hollywood smile; all square white teeth, rich lips and charm. His skin was clear and clean-shaven but for a trim moustache. His thick hair carefully coifed, not too shaggy or short. It was dark. Complexion too, I’d guess. How dark I couldn’t say. The poster shot was grainy black and white. His clefted chin was squarely perfect, but his slightly crooked nose played off nicely against it. Dressed in a tuxedo as he was in the picture, he looked like a happy, handsome boy on the way to his brother’s wedding.

  All the papers showed the very same picture. I had no reason to believe there was anything unusual in that. All the stories said pretty much the same things. Patrick Michael Maloney was a twenty-year-old junior at Hofstra University on Long Island. An accounting major, he was a popular if unremarkable student who was a low-ranking member of the student government.

  On December 7th, a Tuesday night, the student government and several other student groups held a fund raiser at a Manhattan bar. Patrick had bartended during the early part of the evening. After his stint behind the sticks, he joined friends and other members of the student government for drinks. At approximately 1 A.M., after noticing his friend Christine Valentine wasn’t looking well, Maloney offered to drive Miss Valentine back to campus. Miss Valentine accepted Maloney’s offer and they made their way through the thinning crowd to the door. Before they reached the door, however, Miss Valentine felt herself getting ill and ran for the bathroom. Patrick, she recalled, had shouted after her that he would meet her outside when she was finished.

  When Christine Valentine emerged from the restroom and exited the bar, Patrick M. Maloney was nowhere to be found. She made a few inquiries as to his whereabouts, but no one seemed to have noticed him. She simply assumed Patrick, a little drunk himself, she remembered thinking, had grown impatient and left. Though leaving without a word was very un-Patrick-like, she was quoted as saying, Miss Valentine didn’t give it a second thought until several days later. She was too drunk and nauseous at the time and there were plenty of other available rides back to campus. Of the other students who had attended the fund-raiser, none could recall seeing where Patrick had gone. The trail was already pretty cold when, two days later, the NYPD was alerted to Maloney’s disappearance by his worried parents.

  I would like to say I spotted something unusual in the newspaper accounts of Patrick Maloney’s disappearance, but I couldn’t. I had read similar stories before. As a uniform, I’d worked cases that, but for a change of name, sex or hair color, were nearly identical. The cold fact was that, short of a magician’s hat, New York City was about the best place in the United States in which to vanish. Sometimes people vanished by choice. Sometimes not. There was one thing in the articles, though, that caught my attention: the Maloneys were from Janus, N.Y., up in Dutchess County. That sort of gave me a clue as to Rico Tripoli’s involvement.

  In 1975, Rico, like a lot of New York’s Finest, had fled the city. Most moved over the Queens’ border to Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. Some moved beyond the Bronx to Westchester and Rockland. A few pioneering types had gone even further north to discover the rustic charms, relative crimelessness and better real estate values in Orange and Dutchess counties. Want to guess where Rico had fled? But clarifying Rico Tripoli’s role as facilitator in this did not help me understand what he had in mind for me.

  January 29th, 1978

  THEY WERE ALREADY sitting there when I hobbled into Molly’s. Like all cops, Rico sat facing the door. He acknowledged my arrival by making a gun of his thumb and forefinger and shooting me hello. He began to get up to help me, but the anger in my eyes made him reconsider. The anger ran quickly out of my face. It was hard to stay mad at Rico.

  Rico, a dead ringer for the young Tony Bennett, seemed tired. His boyish good looks had started to fray a bit around the edges. There were purple bags under his eyes and deep creases where gentle folds had once m
arked the outlines of his face. His gut was just beginning to creep over his belt. This was exaggerated, of course, by the tight fit of the shiny print shirt he wore beneath a hideous double-knit suit. I don’t know which I hated more: disco music or the fashion it inspired.

  As I approached the booth, though, my attention turned to the man seated opposite Rico. He didn’t share my curiosity. His bald head never turned to look my way, not even after Rico had stood to greet me. He simply continued cradling a white coffee cup just below his chin. Rico and I embraced for a long few seconds, kissing cheeks before letting go. Out of the corner of my eye, I snuck a peek at the bald-headed man’s reaction. From the sour look on his puss, I figured he disapproved. Either that or he’d swallowed a live goldfish with his last gulp of coffee.

  “Hey, paisan,” I slapped Rico’s cheek, “you’re looking good.”

  “I look like shit, you lyin’ Jew bastard. This Auto Crime case is gonna get me a shield, but the hours . . . mah—ron! They’re gonna kill me. At least,” he smoothed the wide lapel of his suit jacket, “I get to work plainclothes.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You got a peculiar definition of plain clothes.”

  Rico laughed. “I know. I’m wearin’ so much polyester I’m afraid to light a friggin’ match.”

  Baldy cleared his throat.

  “Sorry. This,” Rico said, gesturing to the seated man, “is—”

  “—Francis Maloney,” I completed the thought, offering my right hand.

  Maloney took it and tried squeezing the life out of it before giving it back. He had a ruddy, freckled complexion, an unsmiling mouth and blue eyes like cracked ice.

  “You’re Prager,” Maloney scoffed in a voice as cold as his eyes. “So you’ve guessed my name. Pardon me if I don’t applaud.”

  He wasn’t impressed by my powers of deduction. He wasn’t the type to be impressed by much. Maybe, I thought, if I pulled a silver dollar from behind his ear . . .

  “I can read a paper and put two and two together,” I said, finally sitting down. “Is there a reason I should be trying to impress you?”

  Rico ordered me a coffee, a Molly’s meatloaf platter and attempted to strike up some diplomatic chitchat. Francis Maloney wasn’t having any, his thick impatient fingers tapping out a message for Rico to get on with it.

  “The Maloneys want your help,” Rico said.

  “How can I help?” I wondered, staring at Maloney’s clothes. Maybe it was the neat creases in his impeccably ironed work shirt, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it seemed to me he wore his clothes like a uniform.

  “Angela . . . that’s Mrs. Maloney,” Rico said, “she heard about you finding the kid that time in -”

  “Christ!” I threw up my hands, “is that what this is about?”

  Marina Conseco was the seven-year-old daughter of a divorced city fireman. On Easter Sunday 1972, her father took Marina and his four other children to Coney Island. When the father returned from buying hot dogs at Nathan’s Famous to where he had left his kids, he saw that Marina, the youngest, was gone. Three days later, she was still gone.

  Coney Island was a very dangerous place for a seven-year-old girl. Beside the potential human predators, there was the ocean, a filthy canal, abandoned buildings, dilapidated rides, a bus depot and a confluence of subway lines. And if she had been used to satisfy someone’s twisted obsession, there were miles of dark boardwalk and elevated highway under which the body of a little girl could be buried in amongst piles of bald tires and broken glass.

  By the fourth day, the cops and off-duty firemen who’d volunteered to search, had pretty much stopped calling Marina’s name. The hope of finding Marina alive had silently mutated into a determination to find her corpse. After my shift that fourth day, I went out with a crew of two firemen from a ladder company in the Bronx. As we rode down Mermaid Avenue toward Sea Gate, I found my eyes drifting upward. Probably because I was so tired, my eyes were rolling up in my head.

  I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car. When the two firemen followed me out of the car and saw what I was pointing at, they shook their heads in agreement. I wondered how many of those old wooden, rooftop water tanks there were in Coney Island. We agreed to count; one rooftop at a time.

  We found Marina Conseco at the bottom of the fifth tank in half a foot of dirty water, alive! Her skull was fractured, as were her right arm and left ankle. She was in shock and suffering from hypothermia. She had been molested for two days and thrown into the tank to die. But as her family had said, Marina was a willful girl, and wasn’t about to cooperate with her attacker’s plans.

  Finding that little girl was the only outstanding thing I ever did on the job. At another time, in another place, I might’ve gotten my shield for saving her. I wouldn’t have wanted to make detective on the back of Marina Conseco’s misery and on the strength of a lucky guess. The medal they gave me was embarrassing enough. One of the geniuses in my precinct took to calling me Truffle. That lasted for about an hour. When I informed him that truffles were fungi that pigs rooted out, the nickname lost its appeal. It’s funny, cooking shows make me remember that stupid nickname. But then, I also think of Marina Conseco.

  “Hey,” Rico motioned for me to calm down, “Angela is my wife’s cousin. She’s a superstitious guinea like me. I told her the story about the Puerto Rican kid and—”

  “Look, Mr. Maloney,” I shook my head, “I’m really sorry about your boy, but I think my buddy Rico here sold you a bill of goods. I found the girl six years ago and it was a lucky shot at that.”

  “Luck, Mr. Prager, is all we’ve got left,” he admitted.

  “But—”

  “Listen, Prager,” he dispensed with the niceties, “I’ve neither the time nor the temperament for bargaining. I know you people like to bargain and if it was up to me alone, I wouldn’t have any of your kind involved.”

  Rico buried his head in his hands. It didn’t take a code breaker to figure out which people Maloney was referring to. Maybe if I’d been brought up in a different era or if I hadn’t been a cop, I might’ve reached across the table and introduced Francis Maloney to my left hook. But race baiting within the ranks of the NYPD was an Olympic sport and I’d been as willing a participant as any officer with whom I’d served. I suppose the least I should have done was leave. I didn’t.

  “You always this charming when you want someone’s help?” I asked, my voice calm.

  “If it wasn’t for your kind,” he continued his screed, “this country wouldn’t have the trouble with the niggers we do. But that doesn’t matter to me now. I’d kiss your rabbi and the starting lineup of the Knicks on their balls if it would relieve my wife’s grief.”

  Other than the obvious tastelessness of his words, I found something about them both horrifying and intriguing. Maloney didn’t give me time to explore the matter.

  “Here’s my offer,” he said. “Rico tells me you and your brother are looking for a liquor store in the city and that you’re short on scratch.”

  “A wine shop, but yes.”

  “If you help me on this and any information you come across leads to the boy’s whereabouts, you’ll receive a tax-free reward,” he touched his index finger to his nose, “for the amount of money you need for the store. Second—”

  “Hold it! Hold it! Look, I’m not an investigator. I never even made detective. And my bet is you’ve got a lot of other people more qualified than me working this. All I did was get lucky once. Don’t you think I’m kinda low on the food chain to be making me an offer like—”

  “First of all, boyo, don’t you worry about my ability to make good on my word. Second, a desperate man plays even the low cards in his hand when the picture cards aren’t winning. And last, you haven’t heard the entire offer. Now show me the courtesy of hearing me out.”

  I nodded. “You’ve made your point. Go ahead.”

  “I want you to be clear on this, Prager. If you throw in with us and I’m convinced you really put your h
eart in it, I’ll smooth the way for your liquor license whether or not you find the boy. You know, I’m certain, how hard it can be to obtain a liquor license in this state. The hurdles are enormous. Why, many is the man who has the money, but can’t get the license. You get my meaning?”

  “I’m not sure whether you’re asking me to help or threatening me,” I said.

  “I’m not asking you for anything,” he stood abruptly from his seat. “I’m making you a proposition. Think about it. Rico will know how to reach me.”

  I watched the fireplug of a man march out Molly’s door without once looking back. Even then I knew Maloney wasn’t the sort of man to look back, not at anything nor anyone. Rico started to explain, but I asked him to wait until after I’d had time to digest what had just transpired and a few bites of meatloaf.

  “So,” I said, gazing up from my plate, “what the fuck was that all about?”

  Rico shrugged. “The guy’s desperate.”

  “More angry than desperate.”

  “I guess,” Rico agreed. “Look, I didn’t know he was gonna get all weird on ya. Me and the wife was over their house a week ago for a family thing and I’d had a few and I was tryin’ to give Angela some hope. You know how it is. We were in the kitchen, just me and Angela, and I told her the story about the Conseco girl. I swear on my mother I wasn’t anglin’ for an in on the wine store. Truth is, until Francis called me up two nights ago, I didn’t know Angela had repeated what I told her. When he did call me up, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get him to help you and your brother. I hope I didn’t do wrong.”

  “I don’t blame you, but you know I woulda helped if you just asked me.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rico confessed. “But I figured I could do you a little good for your trouble.”

  I was skeptical. “Can Maloney really deliver on his word?”

  “You wanna know if he can deliver? Come on. Come with me.”

  We got into Rico’s car and drove a few miles to a VFW Hall. We parked across the street and watched a crowd of about twenty people gather out front. They were equally divided in gender, all middle-aged or older. A coffee truck pulled up and the driver handed out coffee, sandwiches, whatever. Strange thing, though, no money changed hands. About five minutes after the coffee truck pulled away, a charter bus pulled up. The crowd piled in and the bus moved off. During this whole series of events, Rico shushed me whenever I began to ask a question.