Clear Blue Sky

by F. P. Lione

  Scary thought.

  I left about 10:30, cruising straight through the LIE, the Southern State, the Belt Parkway, and the Verrazano Bridge without any traffic. I stopped at the firehouse on Richmond road and talked to a couple of the firemen about showing up at the block party on Saturday with one of the trucks. The firemen are pretty good about it. They let the kids climb on the truck and teach them about fire safety. I told them to shoot for about 4:00, and as long as nothing else was going on, they’d try to be there.

  I got home at 12:00, set my clock for 5:00, and passed out again without reading my Bible. Sooner or later I was going to have to face God about church, but for now I was just avoiding him. The funny thing was, he was still here all the time, whether I avoided him or not.

  10

  My alarm went off at 5:00 Friday morning, and I snoozed twice, finally getting out of bed at 5:18. I was showered, shaved, and on the road by 6:10. I cut up Sand Lane in South Beach and grabbed a bagel on McClean Avenue before getting on the bridge. It wasn’t my favorite place for a bagel. The everythings were burnt, so I grabbed a plain with cream cheese that tasted stale. I ate half of it and wrapped the rest of it in the wax paper.

  Traffic on the bridge was steady and moving, but as I got near the 92nd Street exit, cars were bumper to bumper for as far as I could see. I threw on 1010 WINS and had to wait until 6:38 to hear the traffic report. There was an accident on the Gowanus, so I got off at the Fort Hamilton Parkway, taking the side streets down until I could get back on the expressway past the accident. Since everyone else was doing the same thing, the streets were all backed up.

  I wound up calling the precinct and telling the desk sergeant I’d be late because I hit traffic in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and all the way up the West Side Highway.

  I got in at 7:20, and Joe was already dressed and drinking coffee. I signed in, changed into uniform, and Joe, Garcia, and I were walking up to the train by 7:40.

  We had to testify in front of the grand jury for the geisha house robbery. Since Joe and I found the guns and Garcia interpreted both at the scene and for the detectives, we all had to be there. We stopped at the newsstand to get the paper and took the A train at 34th and 8th.

  It was about 100 degrees as we walked down the steps from the entrance, and it stunk of urine. We had the subway clerk buzz us in. One of the few things the city does for us is let us ride the buses and trains for free. We waited about three minutes on the platform for the train and then packed ourselves into the third car.

  We stood at the end of the car, Garcia and I at one set of doors, Joe across from us at the other. A group of three kids, two males and a female, got on with a boom box at 23rd Street. They never saw us; otherwise, they would never have made their “Ladies and gentlemen, can we have your attention, please?” spiel before they went into this rap/dance/gymnastics routine. They were actually pretty good and made a human wheel as they cartwheeled through the crowd that had stepped to the side to give them room. At one point the female did a jump and a back flip, and she jumped high enough that I thought she was gonna smash her head on the roof of the train. People were clapping as the kids made their way through the train, throwing dollar bills into a bucket as they passed. They cut it short when they saw us and got off the train at 14th Street.

  We got off at Canal Street and headed east toward Lafayette Street and up to the courthouse. It was hot out, but there was no humidity in the air. We were sucking in the exhaust fumes from the traffic that spilled over from Canal to Lafayette. Trucks were double-parked, loading and unloading boxes onto handcarts and shuffling them into stores or sliding them down cellar doors.

  I watched the Chinese in Columbus Park doing their tai chi moves and was impressed like I usually am by their age and agility. There are some Chinese in this area but not like in Chinatown. I read an article in the paper that said New York City has the largest Chinatown in the United States and the largest concentration of Chinese in the Western Hemisphere. The article estimated between 70,000 and 150,000 Chinese live on the Lower East Side. It’s an estimate because a lot of them are illegal and we can only ballpark how many we’ve got.

  The vendor truck was outside the courthouse, and we waited with the suits and ties for our coffee and buttered rolls.

  We got our coffee and went into 80 Baxter Street and punched in with our ID cards before going across to the criminal court building.

  ADA Katz’s office is on the seventh floor. She’s a special prosecutor that deals with felony arrests in robbery, burglary, gun possession, and assault one cases. Fiore and I both like her. She always tries to get us in and out of there without making us sit all day.

  She lost some weight recently. The last time I was here she said she was on a no-carb diet. She said she hadn’t had bread or macaroni in months. There had to be an easier way to do it. If I couldn’t have bread or macaroni I’d shoot myself. Personally, I thought Katz looked better with the weight on. She didn’t seem as happy now, and for some reason, losing the weight made her look older.

  She smiled when she saw us. “Officer Cavalucci, how are you?”

  “I’m good, Rachel, how’ve you been?” I said. “Still no macaroni?”

  “No, still no pasta. Hi, Officer Fiore, and you must be Officer Garcia. We’ve met before, haven’t we?” she said as she shook Garcia’s and Joe’s hands.

  “Yup, gun collar last June,” Garcia said.

  “The one in Times Square,” she recalled with a nod.

  “I’ll be putting all three of you on. Officer Garcia, you interpreted for Officer Cavalucci and Officer Fiore?” she asked. “And for the spontaneous utterances at the scene?”

  “Yeah, they started talking amongst themselves and didn’t realize I spoke Spanish.”

  “Officer Cavalucci and Officer Fiore, you’ll be testifying about the guns and the workers being duct taped at the scene. You found the videotape and the money that was taken, so we’ll talk about all that.” She smiled again. “Who did the lineups?”

  “I was there for the lineups with Detective Sullivan,” I said.

  “I spoke to Detective Sullivan. He won’t be here until about eleven, so I’ll put the three of you on first.”

  We’ve done this enough times she doesn’t have to walk us through it.

  The grand jury is basically a preliminary hearing to see if the grand jury feels there’s enough evidence to go to trial. It’s similar to a trial; they swear you in and there’s a jury, but we’re usually not cross-examined by the defense attorney.

  We had more than enough for a trial, and it’s a lot easier to get an indictment than a conviction. I don’t worry about testifying in the grand jury. The ADA is on the same team as us, and I know there are no trick questions, just straight questions about the arrest.

  We sat in the witness waiting area, reading the papers.

  Garcia asked us if we watched The Sopranos. He said he couldn’t wait for the new season to start. The whole city was psyched; they loved The Sopranos.

  “What about you, Tony, is your family like that?” Garcia asked, and Joe smirked.

  I thought about that. There are only a couple of wannabes in the family, mostly my knucklehead uncle and his sons. But they’re low-level goombahs, gum on the shoes of organized crime. The truth is, my father wouldn’t watch The Sopranos. He loves Mario Puzo’s Godfather trilogy, and I remember him reading the book before the movie ever came out. Plus, my father would never go to a shrink or move to Jersey.

  But some of my uncles and cousins do wear track suits, velour in the winter and light-weight material in the spring. They eat gelato, drink cappuccino, eat macaroni on Sundays, cheat on their wives, and slap their children in the heads. My family is also run by my grandmother, and although I’ve only seen The Sopranos a couple of times, I think the grandmother runs the family there too.

  We talked about The Sopranos until Garcia said, “You guys are crazy going fishing with Rooney. I’ll never do nothing like that again with him.�
�

  “He’ll be alright,” I said.

  “No, he won’t. He was hammered out of his mind before we left the dock. He was so obnoxious the captain told him he’d never take him out again. Then Rooney started getting loud with the captain, and the first mate stood up to him. Rooney threatened to throw him overboard, and the captain wound up taking us back early.”

  “I never heard that part,” I said, looking at Joe.

  Nick Romano was gonna be out there with us, and the last time Nick and Rooney were drinking together they almost had a fight. Between the block party tomorrow and the fishing trip on Sunday, I was starting to get agita, and I could feel the acid in the back of my throat. I guess it could’ve been the buttered roll, but I didn’t think so.

  The court officer called me in first. The jurors were sitting along the far wall. I scanned them as I sat down, seeing everything from fascination to boredom to aggravation in their eyes.

  After I was sworn in I gave my name, my command, and my shield number. Rachel asked me the basic questions about the date and time of the arrest. She asked questions like, “Did there come a time that you arrested so and so?” “Did there come a time that you found weapons on these individuals?” and “What were the weapons?” We went into it about the lookout, the money, the videotape, and the duct tape. I tried to keep my answers short and to the point so that when the defense attorneys looked over my grand jury testimony it was just the facts of the case. I was done within twenty minutes, and then Joe went on.

  After Joe testified, Rachel told us Sullie would be going on next and we’d have to come back after lunch for Garcia to testify. I thought about going over to the federal court building to see my father, but with the way things have been between us, I didn’t think it was a good idea. Garcia wanted to go over to City Hall Park. It had been closed for about six months while they redid it. They put in a fountain and new benches, but there’s a lot of brass over there, and I didn’t feel like getting hassled by them. We decided to go to a deli in Little Italy and walked two blocks up to Canal Street and across to Mulberry Street. Even without the humidity I was sweating in my uniform.

  The deli always has a good lunch special and tables outside. Joe and I got the special of the day, a chicken cutlet hero with broccoli rabe sautéed in garlic and oil and a soda for seven bucks. Garcia didn’t even know what broccoli rabe was and didn’t like the look of it, so he got a meatball parm hero. Joe and I would never order meatballs while we’re eating out. We’re used to our own gravy and meatballs. Garcia probably never gets good meatballs at home, and he thought the sandwich was delicious.

  We sat outside under the awning of the deli for half an hour, sucking exhaust and watching people talk on their cell phones as they walked by. Little Italy was gearing up for the San Gennaro feast that would start next week on the 13th and run for eleven days until September 23. This year would be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the feast, which started in 1926. They were calling it the diamond jubilee. I’ve been to the feast plenty of times, but I’ve never worked the detail. I guess the 5th precinct handles it.

  When we walked back to the courthouse, Corrections had the street blocked off, and I knew they had a CMC, or centrally monitored case. The Department of Corrections is responsible for transporting prisoners from the jails to the courts. Corrections doesn’t shut the streets down for the everyday perps, just for the high-profile cases. If it’s a cop killer, a big enough drug dealer, a rapist, or any other lowlife that makes headlines, anything with a lot of media attention, they close it up like this.

  We waited outside the perimeter that was closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The bus to transport the prisoner was out front, and the area had Corrections officers stationed with machine guns. They do this to make sure no one tries to get in there and help the prisoner escape or kill the prisoner. I think a CMC is the only time Corrections has jurisdiction over the NYPD and they can keep us from crossing the line.

  The Corrections officer closest to us, a female, made eye contact with us and waved us in. “Go ahead in before we move him,” she said.

  “Thanks,” we said as we passed her.

  We went back upstairs and waited another half hour before Garcia went in to testify.

  “So is Pastor cheating on his wife?” I asked Joe once Garcia went inside.

  Joe didn’t seem surprised that I said it. He was quiet for a second before he said, “Not that I know of.”

  “But something’s going on,” I said. I could tell he knew something.

  He took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know, Tony.”

  I made a face and shook my head.

  “Tony, Pastor is human just like everyone else—”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” I said, disgusted. “Is he standing up there preaching to me, telling me how to run a marriage, and he’s cheating on his wife?”

  “Tony, I don’t know if he’s cheating on his wife. I know he’s struggling,” Joe said.

  “Don’t tell me he’s struggling, he knows better. Is that why he’s feeding us all that stuff about David getting in trouble? What a bunch of crap.” I got up and started pacing. “And why didn’t you tell me this if that’s what you thought?”

  “Because I don’t know if it’s true. I know they’ve been having some problems—”

  “Yeah, the problem is he’s got his eye on that singer,” I said.

  “And I didn’t want you to fall away because of it,” Joe finished.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know, doubting God because Pastor let you down.”

  “Because I accepted Christ because of what he said?” I looked at him. “He’s always telling us the way to stay out of trouble is to read the Bible and pray. Isn’t that what he does all the time? How could he be reading the Bible and praying all the time and this happens?”

  What I didn’t say was that if someone like Pastor, who lives his life day and night for God, could want to cheat on his wife, how was I not supposed to do it? I also didn’t understand why this was bothering me so much. Now I felt like I couldn’t believe anything the guy said.

  “If he’s looking where he’s not supposed to be looking, then he’s being selfish and forgetting his covenant with his wife, Tony. It’s a decision for him the same as it is for you and me,” Joe said.

  “No, it’s not. I don’t have all these people looking up to me. If you cheat on your wife, you’re not letting down a whole church,” I said.

  “I’d affect a lot of people. My wife, my kids, our parents and friends, even people I work with. It would affect people that know I’m a Christian. When they see Christians sin like that, they think everything about God is a fraud, and it brings shame to the church. That’s why God doesn’t want us committing adultery—it hurts so many people. This woman, Nicole, she’s slick,” Joe said, surprising me. He never says anything about anyone. “I don’t know what her agenda is, but she’s got one.”

  I almost laughed.

  “I don’t care what her agenda is. He knows he’s married, and he knows he’s the pastor. I don’t go for that crap that she seduced him. It takes two to tango,” I said, remembering what my mother always said about my father. “And you’re the one that’s always saying we’re responsible for our own actions. You sound like my grandmother— ‘Men fall because of women.’”

  I saw him smirk. “You’re right, Tony. Pastor is responsible for himself.”

  “What do you know about it? Tell me the truth,” I said.

  Joe ran his hands over his face. “Not much. I just know that they’ve been spending a lot of time together. My father saw them having lunch together at a restaurant in Patchogue, and he said it looked a little cozy. He approached them, and Pastor said they had been working out some kind of recording deal for the worship team and stopped after the meeting to have lunch.”

  “I saw them at the picnic,” I said. “They were making goo-goo eyes at each other. Then the next Sunday when I we
nt to church he was talking about how great she was. It made my stomach sick,” I said as I waved my hand. “Please, his wife and kids were sitting there.”

  “I know,” Joe said, sounding disappointed.

  “It’s just like these clowns preaching on TV. You find out they’re sleeping around, stealing money, they’re so full of it,” I half yelled. “And he’s scamming us, just like the rest of them.”

  “Tony, they’re not all like that. There are some very good preachers on TV. But this isn’t about them. Your relationship with God has nothing to do with what any of these people do,” Joe said.

  “Yes, it does. Because people give their lives to churches. They give their money, their time. I’ve worked all night and gone to church exhausted to hear what this guy says.”

  “No, you went to hear what God says.”

  I shook my head. “You know something, Joe, these people who supposedly work for God and they’re so special because they preach or they wear robes, then do stuff like this, cheat on their wives, steal money, or molest kids—I don’t see why they don’t get struck by lightning or burst into flames or something.”

  “I guess for the same reason nobody else does. Because God is merciful and he wants them to repent,” Joe said.

  “Screw that. They should be held accountable for their actions. They should fear God. A few lightning bolts or heart attacks while they’re preaching and I bet they wouldn’t be so quick to pull this crap. He acts like he can do whatever he wants and we can’t say anything about it because he’s God’s man. He should get over himself,” I said.

  “Tony, if Pastor is doing wrong, especially committing adultery, then he should step down.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure he sees it that way,” I said.

  “If he’s not obeying God’s command to love his wife, then everything he’s doing is off.”