Skells

by F. P. Lione

The coffee vendor was packed in front of the courthouse, so we went down the ramp to 60 Centre Street to punch in with our ID cards, figuring the line would be shorter when we got back.

  When we came back up, the line was doubled, but we only waited ten minutes for coffee and blueberry muffins. The vendor had bagels, but they were disgusting. The muffins were pretty good.

  We brought our coffee and muffins into the Criminal Court building and took the elevator to the seventh floor.

  There was a receptionist there when we got off the elevator, a pleasant middle-aged woman with blond hair who’s been here as long as I have. She never lets anything get to her; she handles a waiting room full of people, twelve phone calls, and an office full of ADAs without breaking a sweat.

  “Good morning, Officers,” she said.

  “Good morning, Yvette,” Joe said, remembering her name. “We’re here to see ADA Flannigan.”

  “Let me see if he’s in yet,” she said as she dialed a number. “He’s not in his office,” she reported. “Have a seat, and I’ll see if I can find him.”

  We’d sat in the waiting room for about fifteen minutes when Flannigan walked in with a cup of coffee and a briefcase. “Be right with you,” he said as he walked past us and down the hall to his office.

  He called me in first, and I followed him down a hallway with sets of offices on both sides. The offices were small at first and got larger as they reached the end of the hallway. The four corner offices belonged to the bureau chiefs who worked right under the district attorney.

  Flannigan was the second to last, and he shared it with one ADA instead of two like the newer ones.

  “I’m only putting you and Romano on,” he said.

  We were there on an evidentiary hearing or some other crap the attorneys come up with to slow down the trial if their perps are out on bail. The case was something that Romano, Fiore, and I all wound up on together.

  It happened this past winter on 8th Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets at one of the porn places. This place had peep shows, videos, booths, and live dancers, more like a porn department store. Joe and I had just dropped Romano off at his post and were heading out on patrol. A cab was about thirty feet in front of us, with two guys sitting in the backseat. A guy came running out of the porn place and grabbed Romano, telling him the two guys robbed him before they jumped in the cab.

  Romano yelled to Joe and me to stop the cab, so I threw the lights on and whooped him with the siren. We pulled up behind him before he even got a chance to merge into traffic, and Joe and I stepped out of the RMP. As we walked over to approach the cab, Romano and the complainant came running up behind us saying the guys in the cab had a gun.

  Fiore went back to the RMP and told them over the PA system to put their hands on the back of their heads. They didn’t comply the first time, but the second time I saw three sets of hands go up behind their heads, the two perps’ and the cabbie’s.

  We took them out of the car at gunpoint, me on the left, Joe on the right. Romano and I tossed and cuffed our guy while Joe got the other one. The gun was on the floor of the cab’s backseat. The complainant pointed out who had the gun, the guy Romano and I had tossed. We also found the peep show coins and the fifty-five bucks he took off the complainant.

  It was a pickup, a good collar, but Romano didn’t want it. I think he was intimidated by the whole thing, but he told us he was picking up his daughter in the morning and couldn’t take it. Joe and I took the collar, but because Romano talked to the complainant and initiated the stop, he was called in.

  I went over what happened with the ADA again. Apparently the perp was saying that the gun was already in the cab when he got in.

  “What else is he gonna say?” I said. He wasn’t gonna admit it. He knew the ins and outs of the judicial system and how fickle juries can be.

  Romano went in next, and then we all went up to the twelfth floor to the courtroom. The ADA went through the dark wood double doors, and Romano, Fiore, and I went down the hallway to the witness room.

  It was a small room with a table and chairs and no AC, but the window was open to let in a warm breeze.

  We sat there until 11:00, when the ADA came in to say we wouldn’t be going in until after lunch. He had us wait until 11:30 just in case the judge called us, and then told us to be back by 12:45.

  “You mind if we stop and see my father first?” I asked Joe and Romano. I’d been thinking about what my mother told me, and for some reason I wanted to see him.

  “Where is he?” Romano asked.

  “Over at the Federal Courthouse,” which is only a couple of blocks away.

  My father started working security for the Federal Courthouse with a bunch of retired cops he knows. Frank Bruno, his partner from the job, started working there first and got about six other cops, including my father, in with him.

  We crossed Baxter Street and walked through a courtyard to the next block. We crossed again and went in the side entrance to the Federal Court Building.

  Frank Bruno was at the entrance with another old-timer. They were dressed in pants and a blue jacket—not a suit or a uniform, but they all wore basically the same thing.

  “Tony!” Frank Bruno smiled. “Good to see you! Ready for the big party Sunday?” he asked as he waved us around the metal detector. I guess he was invited too.

  I smiled. “Oh yeah, can’t wait. Is my dad here?”

  “Yeah, he’s down in the break room. You remember how to get there?” I’d been there once before and knew the way.

  Frank pressed the code for the door lock to let us in. We took the stairs right inside the door and walked a long hallway to the break room.

  It was a conference room with white walls and had a big round table with chairs around it. There was a couch and love seat at the far end of the room, where my father was sitting with two other guys.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said. He looked surprised and happy all at once and got right up. It’s funny, at Grandma’s he barely gave me a nod.

  “Hey, Tony, what are you doing here?” he asked as he hugged me.

  “We got court today and had some time on our hands.” “Pete, you know my kid, right?” my father said to one of the other guys that I’d met before.

  “Yeah, sure. How you doing, Tony?” He shook my hand. “Congratulations! I heard you got engaged, and your father told me you made Cop of the Month last month.” He was smiling, still shaking my hand.

  “Yeah, we’re down here on that case.”

  What I don’t get is that my father’s so nasty in front of the family and so nice when his friends are around. Actually I do get it, I just don’t understand why an outsider’s opinion of him, someone who’s not even blood, should be more important than mine.

  “Dad, this is my partner, Joe.” I pointed to Fiore. My father never met Joe, but I know he feels Joe is partially responsible for me not drinking and meeting Michele.

  My father shook Joe’s hand while he eyed him up and down. “I heard a lot about you,” my father said, smiling a cynical smile.

  “Same here.” Joe gave a genuine smile.

  “Dad, this is Nick Romano.” I pointed to Nick.

  “How you doing, Mr. Cavalucci?” Nick said, putting out his hand.

  “Hey, kid,” my father said, dismissing him.

  Normally retired cops don’t mind talking to rookies. They miss the job and like talking about it. My father still works with a bunch of cops, so I guess he hasn’t had to lower himself to talk to a rookie yet.

  “Come on, take your stuff off. Put it on the chair, relax,” he said, pointing to one of the chairs at the conference table.

  We took our gun belts off and opened our shirts. There was no air-conditioning in this room either, and we were getting warm from the weight of all our gear.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” Pete asked.

  “No thanks, we’re taking our meal soon,” I said.

  “So how’s work?” Pete asked, looking at my collar brass that
says the name of my command. “Hey, you work at the South. Is Richie Ingrassia still a sergeant up there?” he asked.

  “No, he retired last year,” I said.

  “How about Brian Gallagher?”

  “He’s out at the end of the month. In fact, tonight we’re going to his retirement party,” Joe said.

  “Where is it? Maybe I’ll stop by,” Pete said.

  We named the pub up on 45th Street and gave him the time.

  “If I don’t make it up there, tell him Pete Catalano wishes him the best. And tell him if he’s looking for an easy gig once he’s out of there, to give me a call.”

  We stayed a little while and talked about the job. Apparently all the old-timers who worked here were on a health kick. They had a gym there that they worked out at every day. The conversation moved on to the yogurt and flaxseed they’ve been eating for breakfast and some herb they were taking for their enlarged prostates. Something to look forward to.

  Pete said the marshals had been testing them and tried to sneak weapons past them by having people act like lawyers and putting dismantled weapons in their briefcases.

  “Your dad got ’em,” Pete said affectionately. “Nailed ’em right at the door.”

  “Good for you, Dad,” I said.

  Obviously my father talked a lot about me. I could tell by what Pete was saying that my father was proud of me, but I’d never know it by the way he acted. We got up to leave and my dad said, “I’ll walk you up, I gotta relieve Vito anyway.”

  He walked us upstairs to the side entrance, hugged me, and shook Joe’s hand. He threw Romano a nod and said, “I’ll talk to you later, Tony.”

  We walked over to Little Italy to a deli that we have lunch at while we’re at court. They’re expensive, but the lunch specials are a good buy, usually eight bucks. Today’s specials were roast chicken or an eggplant hero.

  Romano got a dish of roast chicken and risotto with mushrooms and peas. Joe and I got fried eggplant with mozzarella and roasted peppers on Italian bread. They each came with a soda and a small salad or potatoes and escarole. Romano and Joe got the salad; I got the escarole and potatoes.

  We took our food back over to the courthouse and ate it in the witness room. If we weren’t in uniform, we would have eaten in Columbus Park.

  We finished our lunch and started reading. Romano and I had the newspapers; Joe had his Bible and devotional books. Once he was done, we’d switch off and I’d read one of those daily devotional books.

  I read an article about how the city got rid of the last of the coal-burning furnaces in the public schools, then moved on to an article about how the last garbage barge arrived at the Fresh Kills dump on Staten Island. According to the article, the city’s been dumping its garbage on Staten Island since 1948, for fifty-three years, to be exact. It went on to talk about the high cancer rate in the people who live around the dump and the poor air quality and number of asthma cases. It only took them fifty-three years to figure out that surrounding people with toxic garbage is gonna make them sick—that’s a record.

  “Joe, did you know they were having problems last year with the lobsters on the Long Island Sound?” I asked him as I scanned the paper.

  He looked up from his reading. “Yeah, the lobstermen were saying it’s pesticide runoff. They lost a lot of lobster.”

  “Yeah, well the paper says it’s a parasite.” The article said hundreds of thousands of lobster died off and that up until 1999, the Long Island Sound brought in 11 million pounds of lobster a year. The only two other places in the country that had more lobster than us were Maine and Massachusetts.

  “I didn’t know we had an earthquake here in January,” Romano said as he read the paper.

  This is the kind of mindless thing we do to pass the time. I bet if they ever made a game show out of worthless trivia, cops would be winning money left and right.

  “Yeah, it was in the city,” Joe said. “It happened like five miles under the Upper East Side, but it was a small one.”

  “It was 2.5 on the Richter scale. But it says that people felt it all the way out to Queens. I don’t remember anything about it,” Romano said.

  “You were probably in the bar with Rooney and thought you just had too much to drink,” I said.

  “Did you feel it?” Romano asked me sarcastically.

  “Nope, but I heard about it.”

  “My stomach feels funny,” Romano said, getting up. “I’ll be right back.”

  He came back ten minutes later, sweating and chalky looking.

  “That food ran right through me,” he said.

  “Is testifying making you this nervous?” I asked him. “No. But I hate judges and I hate lawyers and I hate this job. Once I’m at FD, I’ll never have to testify again.”

  “It’s funny, Nick, I was just reading about the Supreme Court of heaven,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet there’s no defense attorneys in heaven—they all went the other way,” Romano said. “What’s it say?” he added.

  “It’s talking about that in the High Court of heaven, God is the righteous Judge, and we will have to stand before him and give an account of our lives. He isn’t influenced by politics or bribes, and he doesn’t base his decisions on public approval or votes. His decisions are based on his Word alone.”

  “What does that mean, the Ten Commandments? Like if we steal and lie and stuff?”

  “Yeah,” Fiore said, “but we’re only judged if we don’t judge ourselves and repent.”

  “How do you judge yourself?”

  “Confess your sins to God. It says in 1 John 1:9 that if we confess our sins—”

  “I know, God is faithful to forgive us and not give us unrighteousness,” Romano said from memory, even though it was wrong.

  “Close.” Fiore smiled. “‘He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ If we’re cleansed of our sins, then we’re not guilty of them anymore. Just say you’re in heaven, God is the Judge, and there’s no jury there—he’s the boss. There’s a prosecutor, a mean-looking guy, evil as anything.”

  “Okay,” Romano said.

  “You get a lawyer, Jesus, your brother, God’s Son. Hopefully, before you get before the throne room, you’ll be familiar with him and know him when you see him.”

  Romano nodded.

  “The prosecutor is presenting his case before God, showing all your sins and saying he’s got the evidence to back it up. He tells how you lied and cheated, slept around, anything deep and dark you didn’t want anyone to know about. He’ll bring up stuff you forgot you did, every vile, filthy thing you ever did or thought of doing. Once he’s done presenting his case, he’ll say that you are guilty of these sins and the wages of sin are death, and you should be condemned to hell.”

  Romano and I were both staring at Fiore.

  “Then your lawyer gets up and approaches the bench. He smiles at the Judge, who smiles back at him just the way you smile, Nick, when you see your daughter. He tells the Judge that his client is innocent and asks to see the evidence in question. The court officer brings up a videotape and puts it in a machine. He presses play, but there’s nothing but static. Next is an audiotape that is silent. Books with empty pages are submitted. The Judge looks at you and asks how you plead. What do you say?”

  “There’s no evidence?” Romano asked.

  “Nope. If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died on the cross for your sins, and you acknowledge him as Savior and Lord, then your sins are forgiven. He’ll remember them no more,” Fiore said.

  “Then I walk,” Romano said.

  “Yup, you walk.”

  He looked at Fiore for a couple of seconds. “I’m not ready. I’m still too mad about my father.”

  Fiore nodded. “Don’t wait too long.”

  “You always find a way to get this stuff in there, don’t you, Joe?” Romano asked.

  Fiore smiled. “I thought it would take your mind off having to testi
fy.”

  As if on cue, the court officer came in and said, “Romano?”

  Romano threw him a wave.

  “You’re up, buddy.”

  “So did those two mutts say anything after I left?” I asked Fiore, talking about the assault from the other night.

  “No. Rooney and Connelly must have humbled them before they got back.”

  “You were pretty upset the other night—not that I blame you,” I said.

  “I’m sorry about my language,” he said, and I almost laughed.

  “We catch these two almost killing this girl, and you’re gonna apologize for cursing? Don’t worry about it.” I did laugh now. “You’re funny.”

  “Nothing about that was funny.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  Romano was in there for about fifteen minutes and came out looking frazzled. He put his head down and said, “Good luck, Tony,” as the court officer called me in.

  I wondered what I was in for as the court officer walked me up to the witness stand. He swore me in and poured me a glass of water from a pitcher and handed it to me.

  The perps looked a little cleaned up, but you could dip these guys in bleach and they’d still look like perps. There were two sheister-looking public defenders with them. One had greasy hair and a cheap suit; the other looked like he should be working for Save the Whales or something.

  The ADA went through it with me first. “State your name, shield, and command.” I repeated it back to him in that order, spelling out my last name. I told the story, how the gun was retrieved, who the complainant pointed to. Then he asked if I could point out the perp in the courtroom. I played it a little, scanning the room to look at the judge, stenographer, and court officer before pointing to the perp sitting right in front of me. “The gentleman with the black shirt sitting at the table,” I said.

  He showed me my voucher from when I vouchered the gun, then he was finished.

  The greasy public defender strutted over and said, “Officer Cavalucky.”

  “It’s Cavalucci,” I countered.

  “Right. Did you have a conversation with the DA, Flannigan, before this hearing?”

  “That’s ADA Flannigan,” I said, because his next thing would be “Are you telling me you spoke to the district attorney of Manhattan before you came in here?” Then I said, “Yes, we had a conversation before I came in here.”