by F. P. Lione
I nodded. “Thanks, Joe, I appreciate that,” I said, having no intention of telling him anything. Just then Mike Rooney stopped me before he left and said to meet him over at the bar.
“It’s been a rough night, Tony, kind of depressing, dontcha think?” Joe asked once Rooney was out of earshot.
I nodded.
“I could stay awhile, we could go get some breakfast and talk if you’d rather do that.” His eyes followed Rooney as he left the lounge.
“I’m tired. I’ll just stop and see Mike for a minute and then I’m gonna head home,” I said casually.
He nodded, looking concerned. “Okay, I’ll see ya tonight.”
“Yeah, I’ll see ya tonight. Thanks, Joe.” We shook hands.
I napped for about an hour, finished with the detectives, then changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. My uniform was damp from sweat, so I put it in my bag so I could wash it when I got home. I signed out at 9:00 and drove my car to 9th Avenue so I wouldn’t have to walk back over to the precinct after I’d been drinking.
Rooney, McGovern, O’Brien, and Garcia had already been at it for an hour by the time I got there. I bought a beer and walked to the back, where they were playing darts, laughing and joking. O’Brien and McGovern left by 10:00, Garcia left at 10:30, and Mike Rooney drank steadily with me until noon. I tried to get him to talk about the dead guy, but other than a few remarks about “goombahs” and “wise guys,” he really wasn’t interested. We walked outside together and stood out front in the rain and humidity, talking about our softball game against the 46th precinct that Wednesday.
The rain had cooled things very little, and the clouded sky added to my dark mood. There was no traffic on the way home, and even the lower lanes on the bridge were clear. I stopped at Montey’s deli for a six-pack and a meatball hero and got home by 12:40.
There were two messages when I got home, one from a title company about the house and the other from my partner John Conte. Normally I would have called him back, but I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm. I didn’t feel like talking about the job, and he would want to know what was going on. John was kind of clueless—things like the shooting he would just chalk up to stupid bent noses and be on his way. The way he saw it, if they wanted to live that way, they paid the price. I agreed with him on that, but lately I couldn’t shake it off like before.
I went downstairs to wash my uniform and opened the doors to the deck while I ate my sandwich. I put the six-pack on the kitchen table and cracked open a beer. When I finished the sandwich, I drank another two beers in quick succession, hoping some numbness would seep into my brain. The beers I’d had at the bar were slow and steady so I had an even buzz on. Now everything I drank was coming down on me.
I’d been feeling so alone and couldn’t seem to escape it. My mind kept going back to the dead guy. His friends were there when he was doing the robbery, but once he got shot and needed them, they left. From there, my mind went to my family and Vinny leaving and how much I would miss him. Now that I knew my house was sold, it didn’t feel like home anymore. In a few months it would belong to someone else, and I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t get a place with Denise; we were too old for that. It was time she moved on, anyway. I felt old and tired and, for the first time in my life, hopeless. I hadn’t been looking to get drunk, but now I was. I opened another beer, relieved that I no longer felt guilty about drinking it.
My gun was digging into my hip, so I pulled off my belt and took off the holster and laid it on the table, staring at it. I drank my last beer, and I was exhausted from the booze and lack of sleep. I decided to close my eyes for a second before I went up to bed.
I woke up in a dark and empty room. I couldn’t tell where I was and felt like I had when I woke up in that strange house down the shore. My heart pounded so hard I could feel my pulse throbbing in my neck and echoing in my ears. I broke out in a sweat as I strained my ears for sounds that would give me a clue as to where I was. As my eyes adjusted I realized that the light was dim from a red lightbulb on the far wall. The room was small, maybe eight by eight with no furniture except a small table in the middle of the room. I checked for a door but there was none—no windows and no doors. I walked over to the table and saw my Glock 9-millimeter. It was loaded, still in the holster, just the way I’d left it when I’d closed my eyes. Fifteen rounds in the clip, one in the chamber. That’s when I realized where I was. Alone in a room with no windows and no doors, and the only way out was my gun.
I woke with a start. I was at my kitchen table with my gun staring at me, along with the empty beer bottles and the wrapper from my sandwich. My hands were shaking, my shirt was damp, and my heart was racing in my chest. I looked at the clock; it was 2:20. I tried to remember how long I had been sitting there but couldn’t. The house was silent—the only sound was the soft sound of the rain as it hit the grass outside. I picked up my gun and stared at it. Depression was becoming so familiar, I couldn’t shake it off anymore. Every day something happened to make it worse.
A room with no windows and no doors. That’s how I felt.
I picked up my gun and went upstairs to bed.
8
Fiore would later tell me a story about two houses, the house on the rock and the house on the sand. That night at work, my house built on the sand collapsed.
I woke up at 9:30 on that Tuesday night. No sound came from downstairs, so I showered and shaved before going to the kitchen. A note from Denise on the table told me that she had left dinner. Sal had grilled swordfish and she left a plate of it in the refrigerator. Along with the fish were tiny red potatoes, heavy on the garlic, with parsley and olive oil, and a corn on the cob. I went to the basement and put my uniform into the dryer. I took my baseball bag out and put it by the front door for my game against the four-six precinct in the morning. I popped two Tylenol and guzzled them with my soda before eating dinner. My stomach was a little queasy, but I managed to clean my plate. I left late, 10:40, but at least my uniform was dry.
The sky was still a little cloudy, but the rain had cooled things. There was even a breeze in the night air. I got to roll call two minutes after the “fall in” order. Fiore must have gotten in on time—he was in the muster room drinking a cup of coffee when I came in. I nodded over to him as Sergeant Hanrahan called attention to the roll call. He gave the color of the day, orange, and he gave out the sectors, then the foot posts, then the details, and then ended with a message from the platoon commander.
“The platoon commander will begin giving out minor violations to anyone late to roll call,” he said, his eyes scanning the room and resting on me.
I smiled sadly. I was so sick of this. I didn’t care anymore about the job or all the crap that went with it. I wished I could feel the old rebellion rise up in me. Normally I would have planned to be late for the rest of the week, but it just didn’t matter anymore.
Fiore caught my eye, and I felt guilty for a minute. Would it bother him later, knowing that he had worked with me the night before and didn’t realize anything was wrong? I quickly dismissed the thought. I dealt with it, so would he.
Panic seized me as I realized what I was thinking, and I fought the urge to run out of the muster room. I stood outside smoking a cigarette to calm my nerves. I had grabbed my radio and waited for Fiore while he talked to the sarge.
The night was busy with alarms. We had four that were 90U, unfounded alarm, premise secure. Then we answered five in a row that were no entry. We stopped for sandwiches at 3:00; we both got turkey with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayo and ate them in the car. I’d wanted to get something else in my stomach. I kept burping up the garlic from the potatoes I ate for dinner.
We had a 5:00 meal. Since we picked up sandwiches earlier we both slept in the lounge for an hour, and by 6:00 we were driving to the Sunrise Deli on 40th Street to get some coffee. The sun was up and the streets were starting to fill up with people moving to get to work. The air was clear but already hot, almost eighty degre
es.
We went up to 42nd Street and made a right, heading down to 7th when a woman in a beige cotton suit ran up to the car and said, “I think someone’s jumping off the roof up there.” Our eyes followed her pointed finger to a hotel above us. We saw a body up there, hanging over and getting ready to jump. We pulled the car out of the way so he wouldn’t land on it and parked it across the street. The hotel had an entrance on 42nd Street, not a main entrance, maybe a service entrance, that we walked toward. Both Fiore and I were trying to count the windows as we crossed the street. I counted fifteen, he counted sixteen. The building had about thirty-five stories—it turned out the jumper was on the seventeenth floor.
Fiore called Central, telling them there was a possible jumper and that we were checking it out. We grabbed the guy at the desk to ride up with us. On the elevator ride calls were coming in to Central about the jumper. The hotel was old and shabby, one of those forty-dollar-a-night jobs with musty rugs and ancient furniture. Nothing you’d find in the tour books.
We got off on the fifteenth floor and knocked on a door. The man who answered didn’t have a ledge, but he said there was a ledge two floors up. We looked out his window and could see the jumper two flights up. We ran back up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.
The desk attendant didn’t have keys, so we kicked one of the doors open. The lock on the window was tied with a thin wire, which we had to unravel to get the window open. For a second I thought that maybe the jumper put it there so we couldn’t get out there to him. But I realized he couldn’t get the wire on from outside the window. Apparently whoever was staying in that room had put the wire on so no one on the outside landing could get in.
From the window I could see the jumper hanging out there. I would have broken the window, but I didn’t want to startle the guy any further. I started cursing as I pulled at the wire.
“What’s with all the suicides lately? I thought everyone likes to kill themselves around the holidays. You know, give the family something to remember for the years to come,” I rambled, yanking on the wire with hard jerks.
“Tony, want me to get that?” Fiore asked quietly.
“I got it!” I snapped as the last of it came free.
We climbed out of the window onto the ledge only to find a black iron fence five feet from us. We walked toward the jumper, hearing his groaning as soon as we stepped outside.
He was hanging at a bizarre angle—his back was toward the street and his legs were toward the building in a stretched-out position. What was this guy doing? As we approached I saw that he was impaled on top of a black iron fence about three feet high that went around the walkway outside. One spike of the fence was through his left leg, his hamstring actually, the point of it showing through his pants. Another spike was in his left side, through his ribs. His left arm was moving spastically; his right arm was still. My stomach felt sick for a second looking at him, but I shook it off.
Fiore rushed out to grab him, and he screamed and ended with a high-pitched moan. I was sure that if Fiore had realized he was impaled, he wouldn’t have grabbed him like that. The jumper’s head was lolling back and forth as Fiore called back Central, asking for an ambulance and emergency services. We didn’t want to move him; Fiore loosened his grip but continued to hold the man while I sent the desk clerk back downstairs to meet emergency services. I told him to make sure he found out exactly where we were because I had no idea. The building came out in steps, with the lower floors out further and thinned as it neared the top. He must have jumped from higher up, unaware that he’d only fall a few floors.
I held his right leg loosely. He was trying to ease the pressure on his left leg, but as he pulled back he would cry out from the pain in his right side. He was white, late twenties or early thirties with shaggy brown hair and a lanky build. His eyes were green and clouded with pain. I smelled alcohol on him, along with sweat. I was worried that he was going into shock, so I tried to get him talking.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Leave me alone,” he murmured.
“What happened?” I asked again.
“Hang on, buddy,” Fiore said in a quiet, reassuring voice.
“Let me die,” he moaned. “I can’t even die right.” He had a slightly Southern accent. He wouldn’t be the first guy to take a trip to New York to kill himself. They like the anonymity that comes with the city.
“Hey, take it easy. Buddy, look at me,” Fiore said quietly. “Why do you want to kill yourself?”
“’Cause I don’t want to live.” He sighed. “Try to throw myself off the building, and the friggin’ wind blows me back. Didn’t know the building came out this far. Never could do anything right, anyway.”
“I’m glad you didn’t do this right,” Fiore said. “This won’t help anything, only make it worse.”
“Leave me alone and let me die,” he muttered.
“Talk to me, buddy. What’s going on? You’re not from New York. What are you doing here?”
“What do you care?” His skin was getting chalky.
“Where’s your family?” Fiore prompted.
“Back home. Lost my job, can’t pay child support. Haven’t seen my family.”
“Where’s home?” Fiore asked.
“Maryland,” he said with a groan.
“What about your parents? This is gonna hurt them.”
“Like they care. Nobody cares.” He started to cry, a low, mournful sound.
“There are people who love you, people who will be hurt if you die; you have to think about them,” Fiore said as if the guy didn’t want him to shut up. “You divorced from your wife?”
“Left me. Says I’m a drunk. No one will notice if I’m gone. No one cares. Even God hates me, won’t let me die. Don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Do what?” Fiore asked.
“Live,” he said, looking Fiore in the eye.
I heard the wind, the traffic moving as the world went on below us. Horns blew, the exhaust roared from the back of a bus, I could hear a radio playing, and the bass vibrating up seventeen floors. Standing on that building I felt with clarity everything he was feeling. He didn’t want to feel it either. I felt sorry for him, sorry that he had to jump off buildings without having the capability to end it in one second like I could. I stared at him, fascinated, understanding his logic. I was so sick of this job, sick of seeing this crap every day. I wallowed in garbage every night and I was tired of it. I had no wife, no family, no one who loved me. How long did I want to keep doing this? Not one more day, just like him.
“Listen to me,” Fiore continued. “God doesn’t want you to die. He doesn’t want this for you. He loves you.”
“No one loves me,” he moaned. “Can’t do nothin’ right, never could.”
I could see it was a struggle for him to talk. He must have been in agony. The fence was keeping the bleeding to a minimum, but emergency service would have to cut the fence and take it with them.
“God loves you,” Fiore said.
“God hates me.”
“No, he doesn’t, he loves you.”
“Then why am I here?” the man moaned.
“Listen to me!” Fiore said urgently. “Look at me.”
The man’s eyes focused on Fiore.
“You need to understand that you really don’t want to die,” Fiore said.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“No, you just don’t want to hurt anymore. Do you think God doesn’t know your pain? That he hasn’t been right beside you all this time waiting for you to come to him? He knows what you’re feeling; he knows what brought you to this place and time. He knows that you think you’re always gonna feel this way and that you…”
Fiore put his head down as if trying to concentrate. He pulled his head up as realization crept into his face. He spun around toward me. “Tony, what are you thinking?” he asked quietly.
I stared at him, wondering if he could read my mind.
“Tony!” he
said a little louder.
I took a step back away from him as my heart started to hammer in my chest.
Fiore seemed torn between me and the guy on the fence. I don’t know how, but he knew what I was thinking. We stared at each other as the sergeant and other officers entered the landing.
I backed away from them as Fiore kept speaking quietly to the jumper, whose name was Russ. He came up from Baltimore the day before by bus, planning to throw himself off the Empire State Building. Did he really think he’d be the first guy to try to jump off there? They’ve seen his kind before.
I caught bits and pieces of the conversation as Fiore continued to talk to him. I heard him say at one point, “Jesus paid such a high price for you, he doesn’t want you to die this way. When he died on the cross it was to set you free from all the pain you feel and draw you to him. Take the step, come on.” Fiore didn’t care that the sergeant was there; he just talked on and on about God. How God loved this guy and wanted to save him and did this guy want to accept Jesus in his heart. The jumper, Russ, was grabbing Fiore’s hand, crying and nodding as they spoke. Everyone else looked uncomfortable as this was going on, and when emergency services arrived, Russ asked Fiore to stay with him while they cut him out.
The paramedics worked on him first. They set up an IV and started taking his blood pressure while emergency services took out their gear. Fiore was rubbing Russ’s shoulder, repeating, “It’s all right, it’s gonna be all right.”
He started to cry again while emergency services put a harness around him. They attached it to the fence on either side of him so he wouldn’t fall off when they cut him out. Then they put harnesses on themselves and hooked on to the fence so no one would go over. They wrapped a blanket around his skin so the sparks wouldn’t hit him and used a small circular saw with a carbide bit to cut him out. They would remove the metal spikes in surgery once they got him to the hospital.
