Wild World

by Peter S. Rush

  Steve finished putting his clothes in black garbage bags. He stacked several boxes of books and his lacrosse stick and gloves by the door. Roxy was sitting on the bed.

  “I’ll leave the albums.” He motioned to the stack of records against the wall. “Since you have the stereo.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m invited to listen to them whenever I want, right?”

  “You still have your key,” she said, her eyes slightly moist. “It’s just temporary, until the end of the year.” She shifted her weight as she moved to help him carry a bag. Steve sighed heavily, picking up his bag and nodding to her, his lips tight.

  “Are you still going to come to the Gloria Steinem lecture with me?” she asked. “It’s Thursday.”

  “Yeah, I’m on midnight. You won’t mind if I come in uniform?” He smiled crookedly, forcing her to smile, too. It was just what she needed, bringing a cop to a campus feminist speech.

  “Great. I’m sure the girls won’t mind as long as I keep my Chauvinist Pig on a leash,” she said, smiling.

  Several days later in the squad room, Steve reported for duty. Was it going to be another night on punishment post or desk duty?

  “Logan, walking post 12,” the sergeant said in his clipped official cadence while looking at Steve.

  “Yes, sir.”

  As they walked to the patrol car, Crowley said, “A step up for you this time—Atwells Avenue. At least it has people on it.”

  Crowley drove from the station to the Italian area on Federal Hill.

  “Couple of things,” he said in the fatherly tone he had begun using. “I’m not going to jeopardize my retirement, but a couple of pointers in this neighborhood.” He pointed to Spatuzzi Bakery.

  “Vincenzo gets in about four a.m. to do the baking. So when you need to warm up, go around to the back door; follow the smell of the bread. Knock. Also, there are two restaurants that always have someone lurking around.” He pointed to a store with few windows and a brick storefront with a Vending Machines sign over the front door. “Make certain you check that one on all sides for any sign of break-in.”

  “Who wants to break into a vending machine store?”

  “For a college kid, you aren’t very smart. That’s Patriarca’s place.”

  Steve leaned back, the side of his mouth turning upward.

  “Raymond Patriarca. Head of the New England mob. That’s where his family operates from.”

  “Here? In Providence?”

  “Easier to do business. Overhead is lower, I guess. The brass upstairs makes all the decisions and the big money.”

  “But,” Steve hesitated, “who’d want to break . . . I mean, mess with them?”

  “Still not very bright, college boy. The Feds. Upstairs wants to know if the Feds are bugging the place again. Just let me know—I’m just the messenger boy. I don’t know shit and don’t want to know shit.”

  He was getting tired of Crowley’s career advice on how to avoid the brass and any hard police work. Steve didn’t want to be like Crowley, working toward a pension without getting hurt.

  There were a series of shops with windows and recessed doorways where Steve could stand and see the street without being seen himself. After twenty minutes of watching the rhythm of the neighborhood, he walked the street slowly, practicing twirling the baton like an old-time beat cop, looking into each of the different stores. There were two jewelry stores, several clothing stores, and the bakery.

  He stopped at the butcher and watched the live chickens as they pecked for lost scraps in their cage. Hanging in the window were large round provolone cheeses, Prosciutto di Parma, Genoa salami, and other staples. It brought back memories of visiting his Italian grandfather in New Jersey. Now he just needed the rag man with his horse and wagon.

  A liquor store, a fresh-pasta store, fish market, several restaurants, hair salons, and pizza joints filled out the blocks.

  He walked around the Vending Machine store. In the back alley, there was a thick steel door. Smoked windows were ten feet high off the ground in the side alley. Steve shook the door; it seemed padlocked from inside. He completed his sweep and walked down to the next alley, which was filled with the smell of garlic and tomatoes. A late-model car had been parked behind the Italian restaurant. The windows were steamed up, and he could hear grunting and groaning. He tapped on the window with his flashlight. No response. He tapped harder. The window rolled down, and a young Italian man with his shirt off looked up at the flashlight. Steve shone the light at a young Italian girl, holding it on her bare breasts.

  “You gotta go. Can’t stay here,” Steve said, quickly moving the light in an act of modesty as the girl tried to find her blouse.

  “Do you know who I am?” the Italian man asked aggressively.

  “No, but you can’t stay here.”

  “Fuck. You don’t know who you are messing with.”

  “No, but you can’t stay here.” Steve stood tall and used a modulated voice.

  The man got out of the car and took a step aggressively at him. The girl had pulled on her blouse.

  “Shit, you fucking rookie shit. You don’t know who you are messing with. Fuck. My old man doesn’t pay you guys for this kind of shit.” The man was not much older than Steve, with wavy black hair and a slightly pocked face. He had a thin mustache, like an old 1930s movie star.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Steve replied, trying to keep his voice calm as he braced himself for a physical confrontation. The baton was in his right hand.

  “Fuck you don’t. You stupid moron. But the brass sure as shit does—and they will shove it up your ass.”

  “Get back in the car, and take your girlfriend somewhere else,” Steve ordered, firmly but not harshly.

  “Girlfriend . . . Shit,” he smiled and lowered his voice. “She’s just the waitress. I thought I’d bang her and be gone, but you fucked it up.”

  He reached into his pocket, took out a roll of bills, and put $100 into Steve’s pocket.

  “Now you know who I am, so no misunderstanding next time.” He got back into the car. “And you didn’t see nothin’ tonight.”

  Steve watched the man drive away. He slowly walked down Atwells Avenue, shining his light into some of the stores. He knew the mob had influence, but to him, they were just stories. Now, he knew more. The mob had ties at the highest level of the city. Steve was looking at just the daily corruption, the payoffs. But this was bigger and more dangerous.

  At four a.m., the thud from newspaper delivery trucks dropping bundles of the Providence Journal on the sidewalk was the only sound. The cold concrete had penetrated his shoes, and he wriggled his toes to improve circulation. Without gloves, the tips of his fingers had turned a pale pink.

  He walked around to the back of a two-story wooden building and knocked on the door. A middle-aged man in a white apron opened the door and let him into the bakery. The ovens were hot, and the smell of freshly baked bread enveloped him. The baker and his helper were rolling dough, patches of flour on their aprons and faces. Sheets of stainless steel baking pans filled with different shapes sat on the counter, waiting to enter the hot womb of the oven.

  “You new here?” the baker, a small wiry man, asked with a thick Italian accent.

  He put a hot, hard crust roll in front of Steve.

  “Just from the oven. Better than in the old country. You are still a young man. I don’t know much; I’m just a baker, but you have to remember family and hard work. And always, always be honest with your family and friends. Let me tell you a story.”

  The room was warm, and the smell of baking bread was comforting. Steve leaned against the wall, knowing this was going to be a long fight. The warm roll melted in his mouth, releasing his tension and warming his body. He watched the baker work methodically on the dough until he slipped the long baking sheets into the oven. The man sat next to Steve.

  “There were these two brothers, Luigi and Giuseppe. So one day Giuseppe says to Luigi, ‘Lu
igi, my brother. I need some money. Can you help me out?’

  “Luigi says, ‘Giuseppe, you’re my brother. I trust you. Open the top drawer. There is one hundred dollars.’

  “Giuseppe says, ‘Oh Luigi, you’re truly my friend. I’ll repay you.’ Some time passes, and Giuseppe comes to Luigi and says, ‘Luigi, you’re my brother and my best friend since we are children. I need some money. Can you help me out?’

  “Luigi says, ‘Giuseppe, you’re my dearest brother. Of course, I’ll help. Go to the top drawer.’

  “Giuseppe goes to the drawer and opens it. He says, ‘Luigi, Luigi. There’s nothing in the drawer.’ Luigi comes over and looks in the drawer and then looks at Giuseppe. ‘What, you forget to put it back?’”

  He paused. “Always remember to put it back in the drawer.”

  The baker beamed and turned back to his oven. Steve looked at him gratefully as he ate a second warm roll. It wasn’t that simple for him anymore. He had faced up to the captain, but now he would continue to pay for it. This baker and all the other small-shop owners deserved honest, competent police. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t know if it was possible. Who could he trust? Maybe Dylan—he was a stand-up guy, but Dylan was getting married and seemed he was getting comfortable in the system. Maybe others?

  Crowley was interested only in getting to retirement, as were most of the older cops. They had made their peace with the system. Everyone had their little spiff. But there were so many people who were part of the system—how many, he didn’t know, but it was becoming clearer to him.

  The baking bread created a warm embrace. He would be visiting the baker and listening to his stories more often. And he would find out more about how Federal Hill tied into downtown.

  CHAPTER 11

  IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND

  Steve was invited to the weekly basketball game with some of the former cadets at Dylan’s elementary school playground only when they were short on players. Steve wasn’t a good player, but the wisecracks created some sense of camaraderie. There were a lot of deliberate hard fouls aimed at him, but Steve shook them off or returned them in kind. The exercise took the edge off with some guys, but none of them wanted to be seen as his buddy. He knew he was marked, and the upper ranks were still trying to figure out what to do with him.

  “I heard the teaching gig is over,” Dylan said as they walked from the court, his red hair slick with sweat. He picked up his Red Sox sweatshirt and draped it over his shoulders.

  “Yeah, last week. Krieger called me into his office. He said some teachers objected to a cop with a gun in the school. Also some shit that a White cop was trying to entrap the Black kids.”

  “Right, like you’d be that smart,” Dylan said.

  “I was beginning to enjoy it. Getting to know some of the kids—they’re not as tough as they think they are. It was a break from this shit, and the money was okay.”

  Dylan punched him in the arm, and they squared up into boxing stances, exchanging a few slaps between feinting and ducking. “How’d Krieger take it?”

  “He’s smart; made it look like the mayor’s idea. I don’t think the chief ever liked the idea. He probably wanted uniforms there. It was another political clusterfuck. So they declared the project a success because there wasn’t any bad press.”

  “He owes you one.”

  Steve, Dylan, and a few others from their recruiting class sat on the courtside bench with some beers.

  “Hear Thompson wrecked a cruiser drag racing a State Trooper down 95. Fucking captain is ballistic.” They laughed. “It’s gonna be a month of paperwork, which will keep the captain off our asses for a while.”

  “You ever think about where this is going?” Steve asked Dylan as they walked to the parking lot. Dylan had put on some weight since the Academy—too many donuts and sitting in a car for eight-hour shifts.

  “No. I’m trying to live,” Dylan said. “Better here than in Nam. And as a cop, twenty and out with full pension. I’m married, so we’ll have a bunch of kids, a house in West Warwick, and a small boat to go fishing on Narragansett Bay. What could be better?”

  Steve smiled at him. “I could think of a few things.” Dylan had gotten married in February. Steve was the only one from the team not invited to the wedding. Even Dylan needed to think about his career first.

  “Me, too, but I’m not good enough to play for the Sox.” He smiled.

  “Does any of this stuff ever bother you?” Steve asked, not wanting to be too direct.

  “Like what?”

  “You know, the stuff you see or don’t see happening around here?”

  “I try not to give it too much thought. Not my business.”

  “But does it bother you?”

  “I learned in the Army you can’t buck the system, so why beat your head against the wall? I’m a good soldier. Nothing I can do to change it.” He shrugged noncommittally.

  “Something strange happened when I was on desk duty. I was given a bunch of reports to type up from handwritten notes. And there were a series of incidents in Fox Point that didn’t make sense. Like a half dozen calls in a couple of days, including Fire Department reports. When did we start writing their reports? Do you remember a lot of calls?” Steve looked at Dylan.

  Dylan thought. “No, not really, but sometimes the shifts blend together. Whose notes?”

  “Not sure. The captain left them for me. No one signed the reports. So I went by the houses, the locations, on the way home. Four houses, back to back, close to the university.”

  Dylan said, “Leave it alone. You know you don’t like the smell of it. It isn’t the kind of question you ask around here. You didn’t see it.”

  Steve thought Dylan was basically an honest cop who might care. “You think that it could go as far up as . . .”

  “You’re talking upstairs stuff—big money. Way above your pay grade. I hear serious money is being made in real estate by certain people. Redevelopment. It depends upon who you know. It’s more than the weekly scat.”

  “Yeah, but who?

  “That’s what you don’t want to know. You heard about curiosity killing a cat?” Dylan got into his car.

  “This is big stuff. We could break it wide open.”

  “We? Not me. Leave it alone, Steve. You have enough problems. You didn’t see nothing.”

  Steve knew it was there. He had hoped Foley was cop enough to help. He could use a partner to watch his back. But it wasn’t to be.

  Steve stared at the green faces, hundreds of them on the bare oak floor of his apartment. Picking up each pile of Franklins and Grants, he stacked the bills like playing cards and put them into white legal envelopes writing the time, place, and amount in his florid Catholic school script. Ten thousand dollars, almost his annual salary accumulated over the months. His father had never seen this much cash.

  He carefully concealed each envelope in a book and arranged them on the pine shelves held up with cinder blocks. War and Peace had five envelopes in it; Sun and Steel and Plutarch’s Lives had four; The Quiet American, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Feminine Mystique each had three, and so forth.

  Looking around his studio apartment, the only improvements he had made were bedsheets on the windows to keep the sun out so he could sleep during the day. When he had been partnered with that bastard Rizzo, the money flow had increased. He was trying to fit in—if taking the money was fitting in. Running out of hiding places, he needed to make another trip to the bookstore.

  His plan wasn’t fully formed yet, but the direction was clearer. The brutality and money came from the top. The money was part of the proof, but he needed more—that would be the hard part. Being a cop at first was a grand adventure, but now he would have to step up his game since the captain had raised the stakes singling him out for punishment posts. Most of the cops just did their job—at least the job as it was defined. But it had to change. He wanted to discuss it with Roxy; she would pick holes in his thinking.

  She had altered th
e course of his life. He knew love could do that, but this was more than love. She was the reason he was here, counting money—not that she knew about the money. They had questioned law school after Kent State, but he took this different path. Now he had this new plan that they needed to discuss. It would put them back on track.

  His unmade bed was a thick piece of foam covered with grey sheets and a thin blanket. In the galley kitchen at the end of the room, his plate and cup from dinner were in the dish rack, waiting to be reused tonight. He always washed his dishes immediately to keep the cockroaches at bay.

  Stretching his arms over his head, he bent forward and placed the palms of his hands on the floor, keeping his knees locked. He dropped to the floor and counted out fifty push-ups, followed by a quick fifty sit-ups.

  Today, he was working the four to midnight shift. And now he was playing their game; they thought he was whipped. And he was getting more of the rewards.

  Walking to the closet, he took the brown uniform shirt and pants from the dry cleaning bag—no more t-shirts and jeans. Handcuffs, extra bullets, ticket book, black flashlight, Billy club—he went through his checklist. Even now, the clean-cut face and crew cut in the bathroom mirror was a stranger. If the Vietnam War wasn’t going on, would he be here? How had it come this far so fast? Being sucked into the machine was creating a different Steve. He would carefully fight back every day, or they would own him.

  After work, he would stop by to see Roxy. She’d be up studying, probably just back from the library. It was still their apartment despite what had happened. He still had things there, including his stereo and albums. But it wasn’t over. They just needed more space. He needed to tell her what he was thinking and planning. At least she was in less danger without him living there. Now that he had some money, maybe they would travel when school ended: Europe, Paris.

  It was Thursday, so he could ask to spend the weekend because he had a lot to tell her. But he was getting ahead of himself. He should have questioned the New York cop about how he dealt with the looks, the low whispers, and the distrust. He was tense, not knowing if he was being set up. And he didn’t trust his antennae. He would always be the college kid, the outsider, and Captain Lynch still hated his guts. But there was some color on the pieces. Big money was being made up on Federal Hill and steady money from scat around town. There was something about real estate, but he didn’t know what.