Clear Blue Sky

by F. P. Lione

  We went into the security office just past the front desk. Louie stopped the tape that was filming and rewound it to where the white Suburban pulled out of the parking garage.

  I saw our victim walking down the street and watching the couple as they started backing up. He stopped, still on the sidewalk, and looked up and down the street. He slammed the back of their car with his hand and lay down on the ground, flat as a board. Then he grabbed his hip and writhed in pain.

  Typical hustle. Next he’d ask them for fifty bucks or tell them he’d sue their insurance company. But he didn’t know Big Brother was watching and had caught the whole thing on tape.

  “Lou, let me take the tape with me,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” he said, pulling out another tape and sticking it in the machine.

  I put the tape under my arm and walked back outside. Bruno was getting the information from the driver, and I saw Walsh and Snout were there. Walsh shows up at every job he’s so gung ho. I thought he learned his lesson at the West Indian Day parade, but I see he’s a little thick.

  EMS was there, Burns and Foley were their names. Burns, the chubby female with the short, spiky black hair, was getting the victim on the gurney.

  “Hey, hold up,” I called to her, thinking this was gonna be good.

  She smiled. “You again, Tony?”

  “How you doing?” I said as I smiled back.

  “Doreen,” she added for me.

  “I knew that,” I said. “Hey, you.” I pointed to the guy on the gurney. “Get off of there.”

  Everyone turned to look at me, and I saw Joe trying not to look like he was smirking.

  The victim stopped moaning long enough to say, “Huh? What?” I could see him thinking, Is he on to me?

  “You heard me, get off the gurney,” I repeated, jerking my thumb toward the sky.

  He gave me a blank look.

  I leaned in close to his face and spoke quietly to him so no one else could hear me. “You see the tape I have tucked under my arm?”

  He looked at the tape and nodded.

  “I just watched your whole scam. Now you have two choices. One”—I counted off on my thumb—“I can lock you up right now. Two”—I used my index finger—“you can apologize to these nice people and walk away. Now I’m gonna hold on to this tape, and if I ever see you pull this stunt again, I’m gonna charge you for this too.”

  Technically, I couldn’t do that, but he got the message.

  He looked embarrassed and panicky as he got off the gurney and started walking away.

  “Hey! I said apologize to the nice people,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m okay now,” he said as he scurried out of there, looking back to see if I was coming after him.

  “He was faking?” The wife looked shocked.

  “I knew I didn’t hit him,” the husband said. “Was he trying to hustle us? Trying to get money from us?”

  “I can’t believe this,” the wife went on.

  “It’s a miracle,” Joe said.

  “Amen,” Bruno said, making the sign of the cross.

  8

  Joe got back on the radio and told Central there was no pedestrian struck, and EMS was notified at the scene, because it would take Bruno too long to figure all that out.

  We left Bruno talking to Walsh and Snout as we started patrolling our sector.

  “You didn’t get to finish telling me that stuff on prayer this morning,” I said. “About how I need to change the way I pray.”

  “Not change it, just develop in it. If you feel like it’s a struggle to pray and you’re not getting out of it what you used to, then God’s probably drawing you into a different level.”

  “There’s levels to this?”

  “For lack of a better word, yeah,” Joe said with a shrug. “It’s like Gracie—we used to feed her, and now we put the food on her plate and she eats it herself. We still cut it up for her, but she’s grown enough to put the food in her mouth herself.”

  Joe has three kids, Joshua, Joey, and his baby daughter, Gracie. I noticed that when he’s trying to show me something, he uses them as an example. Either that or he thinks I’m as immature as they are.

  “I hear what you’re saying, and I understand what you meant about going into God’s throne room as a son, but it’s still hard for me,” I said. “When I’m praying I pray for Michele and Stevie and the family, and then I run out of things to say.”

  “I think, Tony, it has to get to the point where it’s a back and forth type of thing. It’s like we pray for the family, for God’s protection and provision, and we’re supposed to pray for the leaders of our country—”

  “We are?” This was news to me.

  “Yeah, it says in 1 Timothy 2, I think it’s verses 1 and 2, to pray for kings and all in authority and expect to live a quiet and peaceable life,” Joe said.

  “Really, is that what you say? I pray for kings and all in authority and expect to live a quiet and peaceable life?”

  “I pray for the president, his advisers, the Congress, the judges, that they make decisions based on God’s Word. I ask for wisdom and godly council for them, and I ask God to remove those who oppose righteousness and replace them with people who will follow God,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you could pray stuff like that,” I said. “I figured the cards just fall where they’re gonna fall and we have no control over that.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Tony, our prayers are powerful, and they can affect the whole world. Do you remember the story of Daniel?”

  “I think so, the lion’s den and the fiery furnace, right?”

  “Right. Do you remember who was in control of Babylon at the time?”

  “King Nebuka-somebody?” I was taking a guess here.

  “No, not King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel was.”

  “Daniel?”

  “Yup. His prayers changed the whole nation at the time, and it’s the same with us. We have authority in prayer, not our own authority, Jesus gave it to us. He gave us his name to use and all the authority that goes with it. When we pray for people and for our country, even our job, things change.”

  I was driving down 43rd Street and made a right onto 9th Avenue and headed south. There was a line of cabs lined up in the left lane under the overhang that runs the length of the back of Port Authority.

  “I never thought of it that way,” I said, noticing a cab pulling to the left along the curb like he was going to drop off his passengers on the corner.

  Someone was hailing a cab halfway up the block, and the cab went to shoot up the block, I guess to drop his passengers there and pick up the fare. Another cab pulled out in front of him, cutting him off. He stopped short but not in time and rear-ended the other cab. He didn’t hit it hard, just bumped it. I doubted there’d be any damage to either cab, but I threw my lights on and pulled up behind him.

  Joe and I got out of the car and started walking over to him. When we got to the front of our car he put the cab in reverse and started backing up. We both stopped and automatically put our hands on our guns. He slammed the cab into gear and shot forward, clipping the back of the other cab as he took off down 9th Avenue.

  The two passengers in the backseat looked back at us with their eyes wide as he drove away.

  “Great,” Joe said.

  “It’s probably stolen,” I said as we scrambled back to the car. “Now we gotta chase this clown.”

  “South David to Central,” Joe was on the radio. “We’re following a yellow cab, possible stolen vehicle heading south on 9th Avenue from 40th Street.” Joe gave the number of the cab and license plate; they’re easy enough to read.

  We took off after him, and as we passed 40th Street the lights turned red down 9th Avenue, but our cabbie was flying through them.

  “Doesn’t this idiot realize he’s gonna get himself killed?” I asked Joe.

  Joe stopped answering questions like this the first week we started working together. He was looking to the ri
ght; I looked to the left. When I slowed and whooped at each intersection he yelled “Good” when traffic was clear on his side, and I’d hit the gas.

  We were keeping our eyes on the side streets and the cab and not telling Central that we were in pursuit of the cab. Technically, high-speed car chases are frowned upon, because they usually end up in accidents and possibly injured pedestrians or destroyed property.

  Sure enough, when the cab got to 37th Street we heard the screech and bang as he got T-boned by a westbound cab crossing 9th Avenue, right by the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

  “Ya see,” I yelled as the cab spun at impact.

  “Alright, Tony,” Joe said. “Just pray everyone’s okay.”

  I did, but I found I couldn’t focus trying to pray, drive, and keep my eye on the cab at the same time. Joe seemed to be fine with it, so I left the praying to him. We passed the hero store and the Italian deli run by the brothers who everyone says own stores next to each other and haven’t talked to each other for thirty years. I wondered if Vinny and I would wind up like that.

  The driver gunned the cab and went eastbound, the wrong way on 37th Street toward 8th Avenue.

  “I guess he’s not done yet,” I said.

  “It has to be stolen,” Joe said. “Why else would he be taking off like that?”

  We could see the passengers slamming on the glass partition that separated the front and back seats of the cab. We could hear the engine racing. After the hit it took I was surprised the cab was still moving.

  The other sectors put over the radio:

  “South Eddie going.”

  “South Adam on the back.”

  We were catching up to him now. About thirty feet before the corner of 8th Avenue he slammed on the brakes, forcing me to slam on the brakes and fishtail sideways.

  I guess he couldn’t open his door, ’cause he jumped out of the passenger side with the cab still in drive and fell on the ground. He looked at us and took off running. Joe and I bailed out of the RMP with Joe yelling on the radio, “Foot pursuit, Central, going toward 8th Avenue from 37th Street, jeans, black shirt, white sneakers!”

  Yeah, the same thing a million other people in New York were wearing.

  The cab was still rolling down the street when we caught up to it. I tried the door handles for the passengers, but they were locked. The two females were screaming, trying to get out of the car.

  “You take him,” Joe yelled, nodding toward the cabbie. He jumped into the cab through the passenger side door, and a second later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cab stop.

  The cabbie was running south on 8th Avenue and turned right at 36th Street. I put over the radio, “Going west on 36th Street from 8th Avenue.” Maybe he didn’t realize he was running toward the back of the precinct.

  When I came around 36th Street I didn’t see him anywhere. I slowed to a walk, looking in doorways or an open building that he might have run into. I saw RMP lights coming down from the other side of 8th Avenue as either Eddie or Adam caught up with me.

  As I passed a building on my right, I saw a guy lying curled up under an arched doorway. His collar was pulled up around his head, and his cheek was resting on his hands. He had his eyes closed like he was sleeping, and I thought, Is he kidding me? I ran over to him and put my hand on his chest and felt his heart pounding a mile a minute.

  Yup, this was him.

  I grabbed the back of his shirt and put him on the ground with my knee in his back.

  “What? What’s going on?” He tried to sound sleepy. Everyone’s an actor today.

  “Oh, cut the crap,” I said as I took my cuffs out. “What do you think, I’m a moron?”

  Okay I didn’t say crap, I said the S word and was feeling guilty about it. Then I thought about what Joe says, that God forgives me if I ask him to, and I felt confused that I cursed and now I expected God to forgive me when I did something wrong. Then I got aggravated that I had all this crap in my head when I was trying to cuff this guy and was glad when Rooney and Connelly jumped out of the car and ran over to help me. Rooney jumped on the guy’s back too in case he had thoughts of running again.

  We pulled him up and got a look at him for the first time. He was skinny, stood maybe five foot nine, and had black hair and brown, almost black eyes and olive skin. He was a little banged up, but it didn’t look serious.

  “Call it off, Central,” I said over the radio. “South David has one under at 305 West 36th Street.”

  “That’s zero zero forty hours.”

  I gave him a fast toss up against the wall. I had Rooney take him back to the house for me, and Connelly and I walked back over to 37th Street. Joe had an ambulance there, Burns and Foley again.

  “You guys having a good night?” Burns asked.

  “Yeah, and we’ve only been out an hour,” I said.

  I walked back up to 37th and 9th to see the cab that T-boned them. The driver refused medical help; he said he was okay, just shaken up. I got his info and the info on his cab and gave him my name and the phone number of the precinct so he could get the number of the accident report. His cab company was over on 10th Avenue, and they were sending a tow truck to pick up the cab. Joe drove the stolen cab back to the precinct, and Connelly and I drove the RMP.

  I stood outside on the front steps of the precinct smoking a cigarette, looking up at the red on the New Yorker Hotel, which is probably visible from space, while I waited for Joe to park the cab.

  When we went inside, there was a blond female who looked forty or better talking to Terri Marks at the desk. She was tall and thin, not bad looking, dressed in a blue skirt and white blouse with a pair of black heeled sandals with stockings. The reason that I noticed this is because it drives Denise nuts. She says you never wear stockings with sandals, it’s tacky. I don’t know if it’s tacky, I think it just defeats the purpose of wearing sandals. It’s like the old Italians with the sandals with the black socks. Why bother?

  This lady wasn’t a skell, but something about her was off. She didn’t have a New York accent, and I could tell she was educated. She was agitated with Terri and turned to me and Joe.

  “Officers, please, can you help me?” She looked at both Joe and me but moved closer to Joe. “This officer refuses to take a complaint from me.”

  “What’s this about?” Joe asked her, looking at Terri.

  I guess we both thought Terri was just blowing someone off as usual.

  “Someone is trying to kill me,” she said, sounding completely sane.

  “Who? Terri?” I asked, pointing at her.

  “No—”

  “She thinks the CIA is trying to kill her, Joe. I don’t have time for this,” Terri said, cutting her off and looking aggravated.

  “Officer, I have all this information,” the blonde said, walking over to three shopping bags lined up on the bench on the side of the desk. She pulled out a file folder and took a piece of paper out and handed it to Joe.

  He looked at the page and said, “What is this from?”

  “A woman was murdered in my building, and I was a witness. Since then there are people following me, my phone is tapped—”

  “Lady, if the CIA wanted you dead, you’d be dead already,” Terri said. “And how do you know they’re CIA, anyway?”

  She ignored Terri now, focusing all her attention on Joe and me.

  Joe handed me the piece of paper, which was a witness report from Dr. Nancy Allen. She described people coming in and out of the apartment down the hall from her.

  “You’re a doctor?” I asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of doctor?”

  “I have a Ph.D. in philosophy. I’m a college professor.” She named the school, nothing too impressive.

  I’ve seen this before. I guess paranoid schizo is what they are, conspiracy theorists who crack after being traumatized by something. They’re not completely out of their minds, and you usually have to listen to them for a couple of minutes until you realiz
e they’re making no sense. The paperwork they have is useless, usually fragments of different things that add up to nothing. It always makes me think of the Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory and how he was actually right about a conspiracy. But these people are off their bird. There’s never anything going on.

  “You said you saw a lot of people going in and out of the apartment,” Joe said. “Could this woman have been a prostitute, or could it have been drug related? Both of those things would bring a lot of traffic into the apartment.”

  “How long ago was this?” I asked, still reading the piece of paper.

  “Three years ago,” she said, her voice cracking a little like she was about to start crying.

  “Three years ago?” Terri shook her head. “If the CIA can’t kill you in three years, this country’s in trouble.”

  “Okay, Terr,” Joe said, a little impatient. “Let her talk a minute.”

  “What makes you think someone is trying to kill you?” Joe asked, sounding serious enough that I almost laughed.

  “I told you, I get calls and no one talks. When I ask who it is, they hang up. There’s a clicking sound every time I use my phone, like it’s being tapped. People watch me outside my building, and I’m afraid to go outside.”

  As she blathered on, she seemed relieved that Joe was listening to her until he asked, “Do you take medication?”

  “Oh, because I’m crazy, right?” she said, starting to cry. “Why won’t anyone believe me?”

  “I just thought maybe you took something for anxiety. I can see you’re very afraid,” Joe said soothingly.

  “I can’t take the pills, they’re poison. That’s what they want me to do, so they can keep me quiet.”

  Behind her Terri crossed her eyes and mouthed “Psycho” as she gave the universal sign, twirling her finger next to her head, that shows she’s nuts.

  To give him credit, Joe’s face never changed. If I didn’t know him better, I’d have thought he was talking to someone with all their marbles.

  “Listen,” Joe said quietly. “You’re at a police station in the middle of the night reporting that the CIA wants to kill you. Writing a report that you saw people going in and out of an apartment doesn’t explain to me why the CIA is trying to kill you.”