Clear Blue Sky

by F. P. Lione

  In a case like this there’s a lot of work. The detectives get involved and do the interviews on both the perps and the complainants. They would watch the videotapes that filmed the whole robbery, so the perps wouldn’t be able to get out of this.

  Jack Sullivan and Eileen Toomey are the RIP, or Robbery in Progress, detectives. I’ve worked with both of them before. Eileen is Italian, married to an Irishman. Sullie is an Irishman, married to Jack Daniels and paying child support to two women. I liked them both, but Sullie was funnier.

  Before we took the perps one by one into the squad room, we started with our boy Rocco.

  Rocco’s story was the same as what he told me before.

  “What do you do, own and operate a geisha house?” Sullie asked him.

  “No, I own a shoe store in downtown Brooklyn,” Rocco said, seeming almost surprised that we thought he owned the geisha house.

  “A shoe store? What do you sell, cement shoes?” Sullie asked.

  “No, women’s shoes imported from Italy. I run the shoe store, and I work at the geisha house four nights a week.”

  “What do you do at the geisha house?”

  Rocco thought about it for a couple of seconds. “I make sure everything operates properly,” he replied with a shrug. “I keep the books.”

  “Who owns the geisha house?” Sullie was writing as he talked.

  “A corporation called Equinox.”

  “And who owns Equinox?”

  Rocco shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Stop playing games with me,” Sullie snapped. “Who do I contact if I want to talk to someone over at Equinox?”

  Rocco got amnesia after that, but he did remember his lawyer’s phone number.

  Next we brought in the first gunman and played the videotape for him.

  “Hey, this guy looks just like you,” Sullie said as we watched him duct tape the complainants. “Where’d you learn how to tape like that, the Boy Scouts?”

  The perp had a “This can’t be good” look on his face. We watched as one of them grabbed the madam and threw her and the two girls on the floor. The girls were crying, but the madam was snapping like a terrier. She’d been robbed before. Three guys went into the back and came out with the johns and the other two girls. The tape ended when they grabbed the madam and pulled her into the office. A minute later the tape went blank.

  We went through the same thing with the four gunmen. The only one who tried to get out of it was the lookout.

  “I had no idea they were gonna rob the place,” he said, all innocent. “I thought they were going to get girls.”

  “Why didn’t you go get girls?” Sullie asked. “Are you gay?”

  “No way, I’m not gay,” he said puffing his chest out a little.

  “Are you saying there’s something wrong with being gay?” Sullie got in his face.

  “No!” His voice rose an octave. “I got no problem with it.”

  “So you’re telling me your friends went up to buy some geisha and you stayed outside to lean against the building? Why didn’t you go up and wait on one of the couches?”

  “I didn’t have any money,” he said.

  “Tony, did he have any money on him?” Sullie asked me but was looking at him.

  “Sixty-seven bucks,” I said.

  “I’m sure you could’ve got something for sixty-seven bucks.” Sullie looked at me and said it like a question.

  I shook my head. “Probably not.”

  “Well, you could’ve gotten the complimentary beer.”

  Sullie hammered away at him for a while, but the guy didn’t change his story. All five of them had records, with everything from larceny to robbery to assault and burglary. The lookout had been involved with a robbery before; I guess he’s always the lookout.

  Joe came in with the madam and stayed with the pros as we called them in one by one. The madam had to interpret for the girls. They all told pretty much the same story, making gun gestures and showing their hands taped behind their backs.

  This was pretty cut and dried. The lineups would take time to set up; they probably wouldn’t be ready until after 8:00 in the morning. We use cops, people off the streets, merchants in the area. We have a list of people we can grab from. Plus, there’s a lot of Hispanic guys in the area, but it was five perps and we had to do separate lineups.

  We spent the rest of the night doing the interviews and vouchering the guns, videotapes, jewelry, watches, money, pictures of injuries, and duct tape. We stopped about 4:00 when Sullie ordered out coffee and sandwiches from the deli across the street. He got Joe and Toomey turkey on a roll and roast beef and Muenster with spicy mustard for me and him.

  We went down to the lounge to eat, and when I finished my sandwich I turned my cell phone on to check the messages. I usually don’t check it until morning, but something was telling me to take a look. Sure enough, there was the envelope showing I had three new voice mails.

  “Tony, it’s Denise. Grandma’s in the hospital. They took her by ambulance, I think to St. Vinny’s. I don’t know if it’s a heart attack or what. Give me a call.” The message was at 11:45 p.m.

  “What’s the matter?” Joe asked, staring at me.

  “Denise said my grandmother got taken to the hospital, she might have had a heart attack.”

  He looked away as I accessed the second message, which was from my father.

  “Tony, Grandma’s in the emergency room at St. Vinny’s. Get over here as soon as you can.”

  I deleted my father and answered the third one.

  “I know this family isn’t important to you anymore,” Vinny’s voice said, “but Grandma’s in the hospital and it would be nice if you showed your face and at least let her think that you care.”

  “What is his problem?” I snapped.

  “Who’s that?” Joe asked.

  “My brother, Vinny. He says my family’s not important to me anymore and it would be nice if I showed my face at the hospital and at least pretend to care.” I shook my head, angry and scared at the same time.

  My mind started racing. What if Grandma died, what if this was all my fault because everyone was mad at me and the stress killed her? The last time Grandma was at the doctor he said she was fine, good cholesterol, good blood pressure.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Joe said, sounding certain.

  “How do you know that?” He looked funny, and I said, “Say what’s on your mind.”

  “I have a feeling it might be a bid for attention.” He shrugged. “You never fought with Vinny before, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “And?”

  “Maybe this is something to make you come around to Grandma’s way of thinking and make you realize all the trouble you’re causing.”

  I didn’t want to admit I had the feeling he might be right as I called information and got the number of the hospital.

  I got through to the emergency room and identified myself as both a police officer and Anna Cavalucci’s grandson. I heard talking, and a minute later my father got on the line.

  “Dad, it’s Tony,” I said.

  “Where’ve you been?” he half yelled.

  “I’m at work, my cell phone is off. What happened?”

  “Your grandmother started having chest pain, and it got bad enough around 7:30 that she called an ambulance—”

  “Why didn’t she call one of us?” I asked. “She could have gotten ahold of someone.”

  “She didn’t want to bother anyone,” he said.

  “What’d the doctor say?”

  “They’re doing tests now. When can you get here?” He sounded impatient, like he wondered why I wasn’t already there.

  “I’m in the middle of an arrest, an armed robbery. I probably won’t get there till this afternoon,” I said.

  I heard him sigh, and then he said, “Not for nothin’, Tony, but you got your friggin’ priorities all screwed up.”

  “Dad, it’s my collar, you know I can’t leave.” I waited for
him to answer me, and I said “Dad?” twice before I realized he’d hung up on me.

  “He hung up on me,” I told Joe, stunned the way you always are when someone hangs up on you. “Do you think it’s serious enough that I should leave?”

  “Call the ER back and talk to the doctor yourself,” Joe said.

  It took me about ten minutes to get the doctor. He told me Grandma’s EKG was fine, her blood pressure was fine. He said they’d be doing some tests so they’d wait and see. I thanked him and hung up the phone, so aggravated at my father. He was a cop for twenty-two years. He knows you can’t leave a robbery collar like that.

  “Well?” Joe asked, eyebrows raised.

  “He said so far she’s fine, but they’re gonna run some tests.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “Joe, what are you seeing that I’m not seeing?” I asked, since I could tell by his face that he thought this was bogus.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Tony, your family seems to always have an emergency. It’s like they feed on some kind of drama all the time, and if nothing’s going on, they create it. Do you think your grandmother would play sick just to get everyone jumping?”

  There was a time I would have said no, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  Joe was sitting on one of the benches, reading his devotional book, when I asked, “Can I see that when you’re done?”

  “Sure, take it,” he said, handing it to me.

  I felt him watching me as I read it, and I laughed out loud. The passage was from Judges 6:25–26. “Tear down your father’s altar. . . . Build a proper kind of altar to the Lord.” The devotional reading was the story of a man who never got a compliment from his father. His father thought it was unmanly to show affection, and this guy passed it on to his kids and did a lot of damage. He saw his kids doing the same thing to his grandchildren, and he wished he could change things. I didn’t see what this had to do with the Scripture until it talked about how God told Gideon to tear down his father’s altar and build a proper altar for God. It said that in the same way, we should tear down old habits and ways of communication and bless our children and honor God.

  “This is true,” I told Joe, handing the book back to him.

  “So what’s with you, Tony? Why you ducking church lately?”

  “A lot of it is money, like I said. I guess the other part is that I don’t feel as close to God as I did at first,” I said. “I was getting a lot out of praying, but it’s just not the same.”

  “Maybe it’s time to come up a level,” Joe said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our relationship with God is like anything else; it’s supposed to grow with time. If you find that what worked then isn’t working now, you need to go to the Word and find out why.” He started thumbing through his Bible. “It says here in Hebrews 4:16, ‘Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.’ How do you interpret that? What does ‘come boldly before the throne of grace’ mean to you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess you take a deep breath, suck it up, and hope lightning doesn’t hit you when you go in.”

  “Is that how you go into Michele’s house?” he asked.

  “No, of course not, it’s my house too,” I said.

  “I would use your own father as an example, but I think you probably approach his house the same way you approach the throne room of God.” He smiled. “You’re comfortable with Michele’s house because there’s a place there for you, you belong there. The Bible tells us in Ephesians that God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms. That means we have a right to be there. You need to come up to that place in prayer.”

  “What do you mean?” Sometimes he gets so deep, this stuff flies over my head.

  “Like, before you dedicated yourself to Christ, what kind of prayers did you pray?” he asked.

  Usually it was the morning after and my head was hanging over a toilet bowl someplace I didn’t remember getting to. I’d be begging God—I’ll never drink again. I’ll never drink and drive again. Please don’t let her be pregnant. I’m sorry, I didn’t know she was married.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “just your basic I promise to be good if God would get me out of this.”

  “But you’re different now. Your relationship to Jesus is different. Back then you were a sinner, without Christ. You were without hope and without the covenant you have with God. Jesus is our mediator, or our way to the Father. When he died for you, he saved you a seat in God’s throne room. So when you go to the throne now it’s as a son, and a son who’s loved. In Matthew 6 Jesus gave us the Our Father and told us to pray like this. Not pray this, but pray like this.” Joe’s Italian, so he uses his hands a lot when he talks.

  “‘Our Father, who art in heaven’ says a lot. Unfortunately, father means a lot of things to a lot of people. It doesn’t mean the Father of love like God is; to a lot of people father conjures up memories of abuse and cruelty, so they can’t relate to God as a loving father. ‘Who art in heaven’ makes people think of this mystical far away place. It’s not, but it’s where God’s throne is, and for lack of a better way to explain it, it’s where he does business. We approach God like children in the fact that we trust him, but we can go in there as grown men who are about our Father’s business, just like Jesus was.”

  Joe stopped talking when the door to the lounge opened and Bruno Galotti came in and put a brown paper bag down on the table.

  “Hey, Tony, Joe,” he said, taking off his shoes and gun belt. “Jeetyet?” Which translates to “Did you eat yet?”

  “Yeah, we got sandwiches from the deli,” Joe said. “What about you?”

  “No, but I brought in some homemade ravioli that my mother made. You want some?”

  “Was it in the fridge?” I asked. I wasn’t eating anything outta that fridge.

  “No, I left it in the custodian’s fridge, that one’s clean,” he said as he took out a big plastic bowl and popped it in the microwave.

  “I’ll have some,” Joe said.

  “I’ll have a couple,” I said. I wasn’t really hungry, but I’m not about to pass up homemade ravioli that someone from Italy made.

  These were the real deal, big and round like someone used a coffee cup to cut them. Some were cheese and some were spinach and cheese covered in a meat gravy. They were delicious.

  We finished the ravioli, thanked Bruno, and passed out on the benches.

  7

  We were back upstairs at 5:30 to finish up the paperwork on the arrest. Joe went home at the regular time, and I stayed around for the ADA to call me. I went outside on the front steps of the precinct at 7:30 and called Michele.

  “Hey, babe,” I said when she picked up.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding hurried. “I have six minutes to talk. I’m starting to forget what you look like.”

  “Five ten, black hair, hazel eyes, two holes in my nose,” I said.

  She laughed. “Now I remember. Did you speak to your father?”

  “Yeah, Grandma’s in the hospital,” I said.

  “I know. Your father called here at 11:30 last night looking for you.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He was very nice, he said he was looking for you and that Grandma was having chest pain and if I heard from you to let you know she was at Vinny’s, which I didn’t get.”

  “He meant St. Vinny’s, the hospital.”

  “So when will I see you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I’ll try to get out there tomorrow or the next day. If not I’ll see you Saturday.”

  “I miss you,” she said. “Do you think I’ll see you once in a while once we’re married?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “That’s why I’m working all the OT now, so I can stay home for a while.”

  Then she got all mushy—“I love you, can’t wait till we’re married”—which I love hea
ring, but I looked around hoping Rooney didn’t hear me talking or I’d never hear the end of it.

  The ADA called at 8:30. Her name was Rachel Katz, and I’d worked with her before. She was in the special prosecutors section and deals with only felony arrests like burglary, robbery, gun possession, and assault one.

  “Good morning, Officer Cavalucci,” she said. I could picture her with her big smile and brown frizzy hair. I could hear the chaos of the DA’s office in the background, phones ringing, people talking, and computers clicking.

  We went through it pretty easy. I gave her a brief scenario—we had five perps, four with guns (one of them a toy), and they robbed the geisha house. She wanted to make sure it was a felony and wasn’t gonna get knocked down. She said she’d call me later for the whole deal after the lineups were done.

  It took a while to get the lineups set up. We used a couple of Hispanic cops from the day tour in civilian clothes. We also have a list of merchants, a couple of skells that we throw a few bucks to, along with other people in the area that we call when we need to put a lineup together.

  Sullie and I brought in the madam first. Sullie explained the lineup to her, telling her that there were going to be six people standing in line holding a number.

  “They can’t see you, but you can see them,” he said.

  “Okay, okay.” She nodded as Sullie knocked on the block of wood covering the two-way mirror to alert the officer on other side of the wall that we were ready to begin. We heard a knock from the other side letting us know they were all in position.

  “You ready?” Sullie asked.

  She nodded, and he pulled the block of wood away from the window.

  Whenever I’m at a lineup I picture all but the perp wearing police uniforms and pointing at the perp so the complainant will know who the bad guy is.

  “Take your time,” Sullie told her as she squinted. “Do you recognize anyone?”

  She pointed at the window. “Number two.”