Skells

by F. P. Lione

  “They should be done here within a half hour,” Hanrahan said to Joe and me. “Open it up when they finish, take down all the crime scene tape, and take your meal. I’ll have Romano take his meal while you guys are here.”

  “Sure, Boss,” I said.

  The detective came back with the victim’s girlfriend. He put her in the car to take her back over to Bellevue. I guess the hospital was better than the cardboard box she’d be going back to.

  “What’s she gonna do now?” I asked Fiore.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. They were homeless, she had no place to go.”

  “Where’s her family?”

  “It didn’t sound like she had one,” he said.

  “What a waste. Stabbed in the chest ’cause of some crackhead.” I shook my head. “I hope she was worth it.”

  Fiore didn’t say anything. He knows me well enough now to let me vent.

  “What I don’t get is how you’d rather live on the street outside Port Authority so you can get high,” I said. “Don’t they want to do something with their life?”

  “It probably doesn’t start out that way, Tony,” Fiore said. “It’s a habit, like smoking or drinking. The drug has a hold on them, and they’re in bondage to it.”

  “Yeah, Joe, all the skells on 8th Avenue are stabbing each other over a pack of Marlboros,” I said.

  “Okay, maybe not from cigarettes, but people are living on the street from drinking.”

  “And a lot of people aren’t—it’s their choice.”

  “I’m sure nobody who’s living on the street from smoking crack or drinking thought that’s where they’d end up.” He looked at me. “You seem to think it could never happen to you because you’re different than they are. And even though you say you wouldn’t be in a position to be living on the street, you could have ended up the same way as that guy.”

  “How?”

  “Drunk, in a fight over some girl. Maybe some guy breaks a beer bottle and stabs you in the chest. Didn’t you say one of your uncles is doing time upstate for the same thing?” He shrugged and put his hands up in a “it could happen” gesture. “The bottom line is,” he continued, “they’re caught up in it. If you get down deeper into a person, you’ll see there’s a reason for things like that. Nobody wants to be a drunk or a crackhead—they’re struggling, just like you were struggling.”

  I always thought it was mind over matter, but the truth is I couldn’t have quit drinking without God’s help. I just thought I was never that bad. I mean, I wasn’t like the skells on the street, so how could I wind up like one?

  “That’s what happens with a lot of Christians, or so-called Christians,” Joe said. “They forget where they were when they start having a relationship with God, or they never lived the way the people they call ‘sinners’ do, and they look down on them. Smoking crack is a big thing to them, but they forget that judging someone is just as bad, or even worse, when we’re supposed to know better.”

  “Is that what I was doing, judging them?” I asked.

  “Were you looking down on them, writing them off because they were crackheads?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. But I’m better about the skells than I used to be,” I said honestly.

  He smiled. “I know.”

  At 5:30 some knucklehead yuppie tried to pick up the crime scene tape and walk through.

  “Sir, you can’t go in there,” Joe said.

  “I have to go to work,” he said.

  “Where do you work?” Joe asked in case it was one of the buildings within the secured area.

  “Forty-first and Broadway.”

  “Go over to 41st and walk up,” Joe said.

  “But I walk this way every day,” he insisted.

  “Not today you don’t—today you’re gonna take 41st Street,” I said.

  He sighed loudly and shook his head, mumbling, “This is ridiculous” as he walked toward 41st Street.

  “Is it me?” I asked Joe. “He sees it’s a crime scene.”

  Joe chuckled and shook his head. “You threw his whole day off.”

  Sometimes I wonder how people get through life. How difficult is it to walk a block over when someone gets murdered?

  At 6:30 the crime scene guys started packing up their stuff. They called over to Joe and me, “We’re done here if you guys want to open this up now.”

  “Let me get the tape down before we open the street up,” I told Joe. I walked east on 40th Street to the cardboard condos and took the tape down. I wrapped it up extension cord style as I walked back over toward Joe. I threw him a wave and he opened up the street. I’d throw the tape in the garbage at the precinct so nobody used it to make their own crime scene somewhere.

  The sun was up as we drove back to the precinct, and the streets were filling up with people on their way to work.

  When we walked up the steps to the precinct, McGovern was outside alone smoking a cigarette.

  “Going back out?” I asked.

  “No. O’Brien went home early, so I’m stuck in the cells for the rest of the tour,” McGovern said.

  “Why’d O’Brien leave?”

  “He said he had a lot to do tomorrow, so he took lost time and caught the 1:30,” he said, meaning the Long Island Railroad out of Penn Station. After 1:30 the trains get real sporadic, and O’Brien lives out in Suffolk County.

  “Who’s taking your sector?” I asked.

  “They gave it to two rookies from the other squad.”

  The two detectives from Manhattan homicide were standing by the desk, talking to the lou. They seemed to know each other and were laughing at something. I went into the 124 room where the civilians do paperwork and got the complaint and aided numbers, which is the next successive number from the last complaint report. I wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed it to Mahoney, who said thanks and shook my hand, then went back to talking to the lou.

  Terri Marks put us in the book for our meal and gave Fiore a wink and threw me a wave as we went downstairs. We took off our vests, shoes, and gun belts. I asked Joe about that part in the Bible about protection from lawsuits. I sat on one of the benches in the lounge and read it before I went to sleep. I added a prayer to protect me from whatever this lawsuit was about. I reminded God that he said right there in Isaiah that he would. I wasn’t worried, but it was on my mind.

  In recent years, lawsuits involving police violating the rights of perps have turned into an easy way for perps to get money and press coverage. The careers and lives of police officers, even those not involved, have been destroyed because their names were even mentioned in stuff like this. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, but if something happened to this guy in custody and I was even peripherally involved, it could cause a lot of trouble for me.

  I tried to sleep until 9:30, when I changed into my street clothes and went upstairs to talk to the detectives about the letter I got from the Advocate’s Office.

  Detective Toomey was on the phone when I got there, writing something down on a piece of paper and adding the paper to the pile on her desk. She was Italian looking, with short dark hair, so I guessed Toomey was her married name. I didn’t see Jack Sullivan, her partner, so I walked toward her.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” she asked as I approached.

  “Not much, Eileen. I got a letter from the Advocate’s Office. I’ve been named in this lawsuit, but the name isn’t ringing any bells,” I said.

  “What’s the name in the case?”

  I scanned the paper. “Edwin Sharp, but you and Sullie are also listed on the lawsuit. I don’t remember locking anyone up by this name.” I didn’t add that if the guy had been tuned up during the arrest, I would have remembered it.

  “Oh, I got the same letter. You didn’t lock him up, Sullie and I did.” She rifled through her desk, picked up the file, and handed it to me.

  I started reading through the file, but it took me a minute to realize what it was. A little over a year ago, my old partner, John Conte, an
d I answered a job for a larceny in the past. It was a graphic arts business over on 5th Avenue, with a side entrance on 37th Street. The owner was in at 7:00 in the morning, going over a videotape he had set up because someone was stealing computer equipment from him over the last couple of months.

  On the tape he caught one of his newer employees stealing a laptop and other computer components. He said in the past two months over ten thousand dollars’ worth of equipment had been stolen in small pieces. He set the camera up for a couple of days and caught the guy. On the day he called us, the employee had stolen about three grand worth of stuff the day before. The boss came in early on a Friday morning to watch the tape.

  We waited until the guy came in, but his name wasn’t Sharp, it was Alan Houston. I remember because John said, “Houston, we have a problem” to him when he came in and saw us there. He tried to look bewildered and innocent while denying everything until I said, “Let’s go to the videotape,” and the four of us watched him steal the stuff.

  He choked a little then finally came clean. The owner seemed like a decent guy and just wanted his stuff back. Houston said he could get the stuff back. I think he figured if he got the owner his stuff back, he would drop the charges.

  John and I took him back to the precinct and started the paperwork on the arrest. We went up to talk to the detectives about getting the stuff back, because they’d need a warrant for whoever he fenced it to.

  That was the extent of my connection to the arrest. I processed him, so my name was all over the paperwork. The detectives got a warrant later on and went into this guy Sharp’s apartment out in Queens. They used the Queens warrant squad to enforce the order, and apparently when they went in there, Sharp’s family was home.

  Sharp was suing for the way his family was traumatized by seeing their apartment searched and their husband/father arrested. He claimed he suffered loss of service because his wife won’t sleep with him, his kids won’t hug him, and apparently the dog cowers every time he’s in the room. He felt that a cool ten million would wipe away all the trauma from their lives and they’d all be fine again.

  The lawsuit didn’t mention the five thousand dollars’ worth of stolen equipment that was recovered from the apartment or the fact that the cops could have locked up the wife right along with him and sent her children to child protective services. I’m sure everyone involved didn’t want to make this any worse for the kids.

  “You believe this?” I said to Toomey. “He’s got the stolen merchandise in his apartment and he’s suing us.”

  “Loss of service,” she said, laughing. “We enforced a warrant. If he didn’t want to get locked up in front of his family, he shouldn’t have stolen merchandise in the apartment with his family. Where do these people get off?”

  “Why would a lawyer even take a case like this?” I asked. Talk about frivolous lawsuits.

  “Because the police department doesn’t need any more bad press, and sometimes they’ll settle on something like this to keep it out of the papers. Don’t worry about this, Tony, you weren’t even there. I’ll talk to the Advocate’s Office. If they need you, they’ll give you a call, but I don’t think they will,” Toomey said.

  Sullie was on his way in, so I thanked her, stopped to talk to him for a couple of minutes, and left the precinct by 10:00.

  4

  The sun was warm, with a nice spring breeze blowing as I walked out to my truck. It’s a black 1999 four-wheel drive Nissan Pathfinder, not that I ever use the four-wheel drive, but it sounded good at the time.

  I drove down the West Side toward the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Rush hour was over, and I made it through Brooklyn and over the Verrazzano Bridge without a hitch. The usually murky waters along South Beach sparkled in the sunlight, giving them a deceptively clean look.

  My otherwise easy commute was ruined by a garbage truck on Lincoln Avenue that stopped to pick up pails every ten feet, backing up traffic for three blocks. I cut down Freeborn Street and across Greely to get home.

  I now live in the basement of a white brick ranch, an older home that has a double plot of land. I used to live in an old colonial in Shore Acres, which is on the Narrows of New York Bay. The house was sold last September, the final legal salvo in the war between my parents, Vince and Marilyn Cavalucci. They’ve been divorced for years, and the house was the last legal tie they had.

  A couple of years ago, my brother, Vinny, and I renovated the house for my mother. I think she expected Vinny to buy it, but I was the one with my eye on it. Once the house was finished, my father and Marie took my mother to court and a judge forced her to sell it.

  Vinny helped me get the apartment here for seven hundred bucks a month including utilities, which, let me tell you, is a steal.

  My landlord, Alfonse, was outside tending to his garden when I pulled up. “What a day, is this beautiful or what?” he said. He put his hands out and looked up at the sky.

  I smiled and shook his hand. “Yeah, it’s a beauty. What are you planting today?” Every week or so he added something new to his garden as the spring progressed. He had uncovered the fig trees about a week before, and I could see small buds on the figs and the grapevines.

  “I put some lettuce and arugula there.” He pointed to a section that already had what looked like escarole growing. “I planted the Roma tomatoes.” He pointed to the tomato section, where he grew several varieties. There were beets and beans, eggplant, zucchini, peas, string beans, and barlotto beans.

  We talked for a couple of minutes about the garden and the grapes.

  “You garden, Tony? You seem to know a lot about it,” Alfonse said.

  “My grandfather always had a garden, down in South Beach,” I said.

  “Where in South Beach?” he asked.

  “Off Olympia Boulevard on Wentworth Avenue.” It was actually the house my grandfather grew up in, and then he and my grandmother took it over and raised my father and my aunt and uncle. My great-grandfather came over from Italy and always raised chickens and rabbits for food at their house in South Beach.

  He kept asking me questions about my grandparents. Being from Italy, Alfonse loved hearing about anyone who came from the mother country.

  “They raised rabbits?” His face lit up. “My mother made the most delicious rabbit with an orange sauce.” He kissed his fingers. “You can’t get that anymore. Does your grandmother still make it?”

  “She hasn’t made it in a long time, but I’m sure she still knows how to do it.” I hoped not—the only time I ate it, I threw up after they told me it was rabbit.

  “Did he make his own wine?” he asked.

  “Yeah, wine and Strega,” I said, remembering being little and my father and grandfather laughing as I tried to keep a straight face and pretend I liked it. The Strega was like 90 proof, and the bottle used to have sugarcane in it. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old and they were giving me homemade wine and Strega—I guess the alcohol problem later on was a no-brainer.

  I said good-bye to Alfonse and went downstairs to my apartment. It was cool and dark; I keep the blinds closed so I can sleep during the day. Now that we turned the clocks ahead, I would open them later to get some light. I had no messages on my answering machine. Michele’s a teacher out in Shirley, Long Island, and sometimes I’ll hear from her during the day if her class has art or music and they’re out of the classroom.

  I grabbed half of a meatball parmigiana hero left over from last night, still wrapped in foil on a paper plate from the pizzeria. I was debating whether to eat it cold or waste the energy popping it in the microwave, when the phone rang.

  “Hey,” Michele said when I answered.

  “Hey yourself, where are you?”

  “At school. My class is in music, I can talk for a couple of minutes,” she said.

  “What’s up?”

  She chuckled. “I wanted to finish our discussion from last night.”

  I love Michele like crazy, and I find her good manner
s amusing.

  “It was a fight, babe—okay, maybe not a fight, but definitely an argument,” I said.

  “Things are getting out of hand, Tony. I think we need to back off a little,” she said quietly.

  “We didn’t do anything wrong, Michele,” I said, probably a little sharp.

  “Yes we did—we’re putting ourselves in a position where we could compromise our decision on staying—” she searched for a word, “from being intimate until we get married.”

  “After that sermon I heard on Sunday, I’m rethinking that decision,” I said.

  “How could you say that?” She actually raised her voice. “Pastor was saying that anyone you are intimate with, biblically you’re married to.”

  “That’s right, so basically I’m married to everyone but you. I figure we could get married now, you know, biblically, and make it legal in November at the wedding,” I said, warming up to the idea.

  “Tony, that was not what he meant,” she said dryly.

  “Michele, what if we wait till we’re legally married and the whole thing’s a dud? I think we need a few practice runs, then when we know we’re good to go—”

  She cut me off. “Tony,” she warned, “we’ve discussed this before—”

  I heard a commotion on her end of the phone, her class coming back into the room.

  “They’re back early,” she said. “We’ll finish this later.”

  “I’ll call you about eight,” I said.

  “I love you,” she said quietly.

  “I love you too.”

  I’ve been spending a lot of time out at Michele’s house. We had met with an architect and had plans drawn up for an addition on the house. We started the construction, adding a second floor and opening up the downstairs of the house. The upstairs has three bedrooms, one of them a master suite complete with a jacuzzi in the bathroom and a fireplace. It’s still a mess from all the work we’re doing, but the contractor is good and it should be finished and ready to paint by July.

  The way we did it was I paid for the addition with the money I got from my parents when they sold their house. I had been using my own money to renovate my parents’ house, figuring I’d either put it toward the house if I bought it from them or they’d pay me back when they sold the house.