The Last Crusade: A Harry Cassidy Novel

by Henry Hack

  Sitting in the shadows of the last booth in the back Smoky Lyles got ready and put his finger gently on the trigger of the TEC-9 machine gun. It had cost him a grand but Kwame Mombura had assured him it was well worth it. “Smoky, my man,” he had said grinning, “this is by far the biggest bang for your buck. Got a seventy-two round capacity circular magazine on it now and I’m throwin’ in a spare fifty round box magazine, too. How many dudes you plan on taking out?”

  “Just one, Kwame. One big mothafucka.”

  “Man, you must really want to be sure, and this will do it. Ever fire one a these before?”

  “No.”

  “It’s full automatic, so all you gotta do is press the trigger once and you can empty out the whole magazine. But it tends to move up, so start low on your target and it will take off right up to his head.”

  “Perfect,” Smoky had said, and now the moment was upon him. He heard Carver say to the bartender, “What’s the problem Jimbo? There ain’t anybody in here.”

  Jimmy Zito pulled his radio car up behind Sector C just as Smoky arose from his hiding place and made his move. Jimbo said, “I didn’t call, Officer. They ain’t no trouble here. You can see that.”

  “Yeah, let’s go Denny.”

  Smoky came into view, out of the shadows, blazing away just as Rita and Zito entered the bar. He raked Julie from his legs, through his torso and up to his face where, oblivious to the three other cops in the room, he struggled to keep it, a snarl of hatred and determination locked on his face.

  At the first sound from the TEC-9 Rita, who already had her hand on her gun, drew it and began firing at Smoky. Dennis and Jimmy also reached for their guns, but they were too late. As Rita emptied her gun into Lyles he jerked from the impact of her bullets causing his arms to leave his target. As he fell to the floor, his finger still on the trigger, a line of bullets tracked in a deadly march over Rita Becker’s neck and face. Dennis and Jimmy now had their guns out of their holsters and emptied them in a frenzy into Smoky Lyles as he lay on the floor. The entire gun battle had lasted just about a minute.

  Denny was the first to break the sudden silence in the smoke-filled bar, sizing up the situation and reacting like the experienced street cop that he was. “Jimmy, go out and call for back up. Tell the dispatcher that you are taking Sergent Becker to Queens Hospital Center in your patrol car and I’m taking Julie in mine. Tell them to have emergency people waiting for us at the door. We’ll be there in five minutes. Got all that?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said voice trembling as he ran out the door to comply with Denny’s directives.

  Jimbo the bartender slowly rose from his protected position behind the bar. Denny could just make him out through the gunpowder haze that hung stubbornly in the air. He reached out a big hand and grabbed Jimbo around his neck and said, “Were you in on this set up, you scumbag?”

  “No way, Officer! I’m terrified and…and I shit myself!”

  As in confirmation of Jimbo’s statement a vile odor assaulted Denny’s nose. He released his grip on Jimbo’s neck and said, “Help me get my partner in my car then wait here for the detectives. Don’t move anything and don’t touch anything.”

  On the way to the hospital Denny wondered if he should have requested an ambulance for the unknown shooter, but he figured whoever the hell the bastard was, he was way beyond medical intervention. And as he frantically moved toward the hospital, lights flashing, siren yelping, he prayed that his longtime partner, Julie Carver, and that good sergeant, Rita Becker, would both somehow pull through.

  But Dennis O’Neill’s prayers were not to be answered this cold December morning. There were no responses from Rita and Julie and both were pronounced dead ten minutes after they arrived at the hospital. Denny took Julie’s right hand in both of his own, bent over his body, and cried like a baby. Jimmy Zito, trying to sort out what he had just gone through, stood silently off to the side, tears just beginning to roll down his young cheeks.

  A half hour after the shooting in Jamaica Sergeant Harry Cassidy, on supervisory patrol in Manhattan, received a radio notification to call the stationhouse on a landline. The desk lieutenant informed him that Rita had been shot and was already being treated in emergency at Queens Hospital Center. “Harry,” he said, “you are authorized to leave the boro and get right over there.”

  Harry looked at his driver and said, “Head for the Midtown Tunnel. My girlfriend’s been shot. Step on it.”

  “Jesus, Sarge, I’m sorry,” Rich Gordon said. “How bad is she?”

  “I don’t know,” he said as a lump began to form beneath his breastbone.

  By the time Harry got to the hospital the bodies had been moved down to the morgue and Denny and Jimmy were still with them. In a repeat of the scene between Denny and Julie, Harry took Rita’s hand in his, bent over her body and cried. Then he kissed her once beautiful face, now bloodied and torn by bullets, straightened up and said to Denny, “What happened?”

  “We got the shooter, but there’s more to this.”

  “The shooter wasn’t Dukie Greens?”

  “No, he hasn’t been ID’d yet, but we all figure Dukie was behind this. Julie was the target and when Sergeant Becker shot him his gun jerked over to her. Jimmy Zito got her here as soon as he could, but it was too late.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” Harry said extending his hand to the rookie. When Jimmy took it Harry noticed it was cold and clammy and a look at his face showed dilated pupils and a deathly pale pallor. “Denny, he’s going into shock, let’s get him upstairs quick.”

  When they got back upstairs Rita’s CO was there and Denny introduced him. Jenkins said, “I’m so sorry for the loss of Rita. We got the shooter as you know and his name is Smoky Lyles, one of Dukie’s guys. We’re looking hard for Dukie now.”

  “I’d like to join the hunt,” Harry said. “And I’m sure Denny would also.”

  A middle-aged man in civvies said, “I’m Inspector Walsh from the detective boro chief’s office and I’m going to form a Task Force to track Dukie down. However I can’t put you and Denny on it. If we get into a situation where we have to shoot it out with him I don’t want it to appear that we allowed you two to gun him down in retribution.”

  “I understand your reasoning, Inspector,” Harry said, “but if Denny and I find Dukie before your Task Force does he will be one dead motherfucker. Let’s go Denny we have arrangements to make and families to notify and then we have to talk about Dukie.”

  After collecting Rita’s clothing and equipment at the morgue and saying one final good-bye to her he knew he had to notify Stan and Rose that their only daughter was dead, and he knew he needed help to do that. It was 5:22 a.m. when Pop Hunter answered his phone and heard Harry say, “Pop, it’s Hoppy.” Pop knew immediately something was terribly wrong.

  Harry gave him the details and said, “Pop, I need you to go with me to the Becker’s.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at the hospital in a half hour.”

  They pulled up in front of the Becker’s modest house just as dawn was breaking. Harry took out his cell phone and dialed their number. The phone rang a long time before Rose answered. “Harry? Oh…Harry!…oh…oh, my God! It’s Rita isn’t it? Something’s happened to our Rita…what…?”

  “Rose, Rose…calm down. I’m at the front door with Pop Hunter. Wake Stan and come down and let us in.”

  Their grief was muted as Harry sat between them on the sofa and related the circumstances of their daughter’s death. He hugged both of them and then the tears began to drop and finally the recriminations. From Rose—“Why did she have to become a cop? Why did she transfer to a dangerous job? Why…? Why…?”

  And from Stan—“Why my daughter? Why did they have to murder my daughter? Why…?”

  “I’ll hunt Dukie Greens down,” Harry said.

  “It’s too late now, isn’t it? Will that bring her back to us?”

  “No, it won’t. Let’s call the funeral parlor.
Pop and I will stay here and help with the arrangements.”

  It was after eight when Pop and Harry left the Becker’s. “I’m calling Vera,” Pop said. “I’d like you to stay with us.”

  “Thanks, but I want to go back to our place for today. You understand. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take you up on your offer.”

  “You’ll be all right, Hoppy?”

  “I won’t be all right for a long time, but I’m not going to suck my gun if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “No, just wondered if being alone is the right thing for you now.”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  He opened the door to the apartment and turned on the lights. Rita should have been home now, either sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him, or asleep in bed. But she wasn’t there. Only empty chairs and a made-up bed greeted him. He placed the bag with her uniform and equipment on the kitchen floor and sat in a chair at the kitchen table staring across it at emptiness. Was it only ten hours ago that they had both sat here together before leaving for work? And the thought that they would never again sit together at this table in the kitchen of the apartment they shared was incomprehensible.

  He thought back to the last words they had said to each other as they left last night. She had smiled at him and said, “See ya later, lover boy.”

  And he had smiled back and said, “Not if I see you first, lover girl.” And, how ironic, he had seen her first after all. Seen her dead. He walked into their bedroom and fell onto the bed, not bothering to take down the covers. He hoped sleep would come and silently prayed to the God of the Jews and the Christians for the safe passage of the soul of Rita into paradise.

  The day after the funeral Harry awoke and rolled over in the bed and reached out for Rita, but she was not there. With a suddeness akin to a bucket of ice water being hurled directly onto his face, he realized why her side of the bed was empty. Rita was dead. His soul mate and future wife had been shot to death by a low-level hood. Collateral damage, they call it. But she was just as dead. Never again would he caress that curly-brown hair, kiss those soft, red lips and make love to her knowing they would live out their lives together in wedded bliss.

  His wife, Peggy, had divorced him; his former lover, Susan Goldman, had betrayed him; and when real happiness in his life seemed within his grasp, Sergeant Rita Becker, posthumous recipient of the New York Metropolitan Police Department’s Medal of Honor, got herself killed. A feeling of complete and utter loneliness washed over him in a wave of self pity. Christmas was less than three days away and he desperately did not want to spend that day alone. He knew Pop and Vera, or Mike and Mary, or even Rita’s parents, Stan and Rose, would welcome him into their homes with open arms. But then his thoughts began to focus on his children, Patty and Lizzy, and he knew that was where he wanted to be. When the fogginess in his head finally began to clear, he reached for the phone and dialed his ex-wife’s number.

  “Hello, Harry,” she said. “How are you holding up?”

  “Not great. Lonely. I was…”

  “Harry,” she interrupted, “Why don’t you come out and join us for Christmas? I’m sure Patty and Lizzy would love to see you again. It’s been two months since you were last here.”

  “Great. I’ll come out on Christmas Eve, okay?”

  “Sure, Harry, that will be fine. I’ll tell the girls you’re coming.’

  Harry put the phone down. His spirits had risen measurably, and now he had another mission besides the hunt for Dukie Greens—he had to go shopping for Christmas gifts.

  Harry arrived in Pennsylvania at three in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and left the large shopping bags filled with presents in the trunk of his car. Patrick and Kathy O’Rourke came over at five for cocktails, and they both once again expressed their condolences for Rita’s tragic death.

  Peggy and Kathy went into the kitchen to bring out the corned beef dinner. “This is just for starters,” Peggy said. “Mom is cooking a huge turkey at her place for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner.”

  After the dishes were washed and put away, they all relaxed waiting for the girls to get tired and go to bed. The O’Rourke’s left for home at nine and Peggy announced, “Bedtime! Santa will not come unless you two are sound asleep. You know that.”

  They didn’t argue as they were very tired anyway. When Peggy was certain they were indeed asleep and not faking it, she and Harry got the presents she had hidden in the basement, and he got the ones from his car, and they placed them all under the tree in the den.

  “My God, what a pile,” she said. “They will be spoiled now for sure.”

  “Ah, Peg. They’re only young a short time. And they’re not spoiled. You did a good job raising them.”

  “You were there for awhile, too.”

  “Hey,” he said, reaching into the pile of gifts for an envelope. “This one’s for you.”

  “Me? But Harry, I didn’t get you anything. I…”

  “Sure you did. You gave me a corned beef dinner and cocktails, but more importantly you gave me something money can’t buy. You gave me my family back for Christmas.”

  She opened the envelope, blinking back tears. There was a beautiful Christmas card—to a dear friend—and a gift certificate for $250 at Saks Fifth Avenue.

  “Pick out something you really want, Peg—something for yourself, not the house.”

  “Harry, you shouldn’t have, but I’m so happy you did.”

  Harry slept on the pullout sofa in the den across from the Christmas tree. He dreamed many dreams, of Rita, and Peggy, and Susan, and the Christmases of his past, and the times before the divorce, when his little girls would shake him awake on Christmas morning shouting….“Daddy! Daddy! Wake up!”

  “Huh? Where…?”

  “Daddy!” Lizzy yelled. “Look at all the presents Santa brought!”

  Then he realized this was no dream. This was real. This was Christmas Day.

  The next morning Harry drove back to Queens from eastern Pennsylvania alone with his thoughts. The memories of the smiling faces of Patty and Lizzy, and the gracious hospitality of Peggy and her parents, faded with each passing mile.

  He was going home to an empty apartment on a gloomy winter day. Rita would not be there. Her smiling visage filled his mind, and he too smiled until suddenly her face became filled with bullet holes and covered in blood. In sadness he drove, dreading the moment when he would enter their place—and she would not be there—ever.

  He found a parking spot on the street two blocks from the apartment, and walked hunched over against a raw east wind. The clouds, low and thick, threatened snow. He entered the living room, turned on the lights and raised the thermostat. A desperate feeling of loneliness washed over him as he put on a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table staring at the empty chair across from him. He had nothing to do, and wondered how long he could stay here in their apartment with her memories.

  That night Harry had a vivid dream, but it was not the typical one of months ago—there were no green-faced witches, or stabbings, or betrayals. Richie Winston, Julius Caesar, yellow-clawed devils and rotting corpses attempting to grab his silver shield did not show up. All those who had peopled his nightmares that began shortly after he was shot on the Ides of March were absent. All those terrible nightmares which Rita had explained, and finally eliminated from his tortured mind, did not recur this night. No, this was a happy dream—a beautiful dream—at least most of it was.

  Harry lifted up Rita’s white bridal veil and kissed her on the lips. The attendees at their wedding cheered and applauded their first kiss as husband and wife. Father Tom Ryan and Rabbi Samuel Taub smiled and congratulated the happy couple. All their friends and family were there—Harry’s buddies from the Job, Pop and Vera, Nick Faliani, Aunt Mary and Uncle Mike, Teddy Stavros, Mario Colletti, Rita’s parents, Stan and Rose, and numerous aunts and uncles—all were there. Susan Goldman, his former lover and Rita’s best friend, was the maid of honor and even his ex-wife, Pegg
y, showed up with their two daughters.

  Everyone went into the reception hall and they danced and drank and sang until well past midnight. There were no fights, no arguments, no bitterness over past differences, and no snide remarks. Everyone was so damned happy. Rita and Harry drove to a Manhattan hotel and went up to the bridal suite. They made passionate love for the first time as husband and wife, and fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Harry awoke first the next morning. He nudged Rita and said, “Wake up, lover girl. We have to pack for our honeymoon.”

  Rita did not respond, and when Harry nudged her a bit harder, he realized his hand had not touched bare skin, but heavy cloth. He looked over and saw Rita was dressed in full uniform. She was lying on her side facing away from him. He grabbed her right arm and turned her toward him. He bent to kiss her and then leaped out of bed screaming. Her face was full of bleeding bullet holes, and the blood had seeped into her hair and coagulated there. He put his hands to his head and screamed again…and again…and again.

  After coffee the following morning, he walked into their bedroom and reached into the corner of their clothes closet, withdrawing the black plastic bag containing Rita’s uniform and equipment—all her things he had helped the morgue attendants remove until his wife lay naked on the cold, steel table. He opened the bag with trembling fingers and a heavy heart.

  There was just a small amount of blood on the collar of her blue uniform shirt. Most of the flow from her facial bullet wounds, still vivid in his mind from his actual sight of them and reinforced by the dream, had gone over her forehead and been absorbed into her thick, brown hair. He gently folded her shirt, her trousers and her uniform blouse into neat squares then layered them on top of each other. He then inserted her tee shirt, panties, socks and bra between the layers. Then he laid her handcuffs and gun on top of the pile. He rummaged around the spare bedroom and found a cardboard box of an appropriate size and placed the pile neatly inside it. He picked up the bag and removed the remaining items—her shoes, nightstick, gun belt, and body armor. He transferred the shoes to the box, and placed them along side her gun and cuffs. Before he taped the box closed, he bent over and kissed the bloodstained shirt collar. He returned the box to the closet and discarded the black plastic bag in the kitchen waste basket.