by Clark Howard
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Vander!” Dan Parmetter objected.
“This is procedure, Dan!” the IA man snapped. “Your men went out of bounds!”
“It’s done all the time, for Christ’s sake. It’s a way for GA cops to get noticed, to get promoted.”
“Well, it got one killed this time!”
Chief Cassidy raised a hand for calm and said to Parmetter, “It’s imperative that we have this situation properly documented, Dan. I’m sorry.”
“Will you sign the statement, Kiley?” Vander asked again.
Joe nodded. “For myself only. I won’t sign anything with Bianco’s name on it.”
“May I ask why not?” Vander’s eyes went cold; IA was very big on cops signing statements.
“Because,” Joe said levelly, “I don’t want some asshole bureaucrat trying to fuck up the Bianco family’s pension by saying Nick was acting outside his authority.”
“Which he was,” observed Lovat of OCB.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Kiley said, his voice taking on an edge of harshness. “We were trying to nail a punk for beating a young woman to death. The punk happened to be a member of an organized crime family. Maybe if your bureau did a little better job, he wouldn’t have been on the street in the first place. ”
Lovat smiled coldly. “That kind of immature, disrespectful remark is exactly why some records are restricted from ordinary officers, Detective Kiley. It’s impossible for you to grasp an overview of what the Organized Crime Bureau is all about. Tony Touhy is on the street because we want him to be. We have plans to use him someday to testify against his brother.”
Kiley grunted derisively. “You’re having a wet dream, Commander.”
“And you, Detective Kiley, are incompetent and undisciplined. You shouldn’t be carrying a badge.”
“Enough,” said Chief Cassidy, pointing his finger, first at Kiley, then at Gordon Lovat. “Speaking of badges, do you know anything about Nick’s?” he asked Joe.
“What do you mean, sir?” Kiley frowned.
“It wasn’t on his body. Did he mention leaving it at home, or losing it?”
“No, sir.” Kiley shot a look at Gordon Lovat. “Pick up Tony Touhy. You’ll probably find that he’s got bruised knuckles and Nick’s badge.”
“Yes, we’ll go out and get him right away, Kiley,” replied the OCB man, openly scornful. “We’ll do it solely on your suspicion and forget all about reasonable cause and constitutional rights.”
“I said enough,” Chief Cassidy’s usual calm tone now carried an edge that was a warning to everyone. The chief leaned back and sighed quietly. His lips pursed in thought, a signal to everyone that they should keep quiet. Cassidy had heard enough for now; he was mulling over a decision. There were a number of cracks to be filled here.
“All right,” the chief was finally ready. “Dan,” he said to Parmetter, “I’ll send you two new GA men today from the uniformed ranks to replace Kiley and Bianco. Al,” he looked at Allan Vander, “finish up whatever you have to do at your end and get the IA report and recommendations to me as soon as possible.” His eyes went to the OCB commander. “Gordon, coordinate with the Homicide officers handling the Lynn and Bianco killings. If the Touhy kid is involved, I want him made for it, regardless of any future plans your bureau might have for him. We don’t let murder go in order to plan organized crime strategy—especially when one of the vies is our own. Clear?”
“Yes, sir, Chief, clear,” said Lovat.
“Les,” the chief turned to his own deputy, “all statements to the media are to come from Public Affairs.” His finger went up and he drew an imaginary line across everyone in the room. “No exceptions.” Another quiet sigh, then: “Joe—”
“Yessir—”
“—you’re on departmental paid leave until after Bianco’s funeral. Stay away from the division. Don’t talk to the press, not even for one of those so-called bullshit human interest pieces about how it feels for a cop to lose his partner. Nothing. Clear?”
“Yessir.” Kiley would not have talked to the press anyway; he ranked reporters somewhere below defense lawyers, barely above child molesters.
“That’s it for now,” Chief Cassidy said. “This is a bad day for all of us, men. Let’s pull together on this as a team. Remember, the good of the department takes priority over our personal feelings. We’ll get back together after Detective Bianco is laid to rest. That’s all.”
Cassidy came around the desk and extended his hand to Kiley.
“I’m truly sorry, Joe.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Kiley said hoarsely.
His eyes filled with tears and there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do about it.
Six
Kiley, along with Dan Parmetter and four other GA detectives from Warren Boulevard station, were pallbearers for Nick, sitting in a row at the church, across from the pew where the slain officer’s widow, daughters, and other family members sat. Nick’s parents were deceased, so it was his father’s eldest brother, Uncle Gino Bianco, who stood in as head of the family and, with his wife, sat with Stella and the girls.
Joe felt as rotten and wasted during the mass as he had felt in Chief Cassidy’s office, even though it was now four days later. Several times during the mass, Dan Parmetter had put a hand over to pat Joe’s knee. In the intervening time since Nick’s killing, Kiley had spent most of his time alone, in solitary drinking. He had been out to see Stella and the girls twice, had been at the wake, and had shown up for pallbearer practice, but for the most part, except with Stella and the girls, he had been remote, noncommunicative, unreachable. He felt zombie-like.
At the cemetery, when the pallbearers had fulfilled their final responsibility of placing Nick Bianco’s casket on the lowering device above the open grave, Joe had moved back to stand in a line with the other pallbearers while Father O’Neill spoke his final words. But Stella Bianco suddenly said, “Joe,” in a broken voice, through her tears, and held out a black-gloved hand to him. Kiley hesitated; it was all family over there. But Parmetter gave him a slight nudge and he self-consciously went around the casket and stepped to Stella’s side. When she laid her sobbing face against his chest, he automatically put an arm around her, and with his other arm held the girls, Jennie and Tessie, close to him. For an instant, Kiley’s eyes met Uncle Gino Bianco’s and he thought he saw displeasure there; but it must be grief, he told himself, because Gino Bianco had always accepted Kiley as if he were a member of the family. Kiley had no time to ponder it anyway, because Father O’Neill finished speaking, the department honor guard fired its twenty-one gun salute into the air, and then, as the mourners began moving past the casket, the pipers of the department band began playing the funeral dirge. One by one, the department brass, led off by Chief Cassidy, stepped up to the casket for the final time. Allan Vander was there, the deputy chief Lester Ward, even Gordon Lovat. The OCB man seemed to study Kiley curiously whenever he had a chance; twice Kiley caught him staring at him, but refused to react to it.
Stella and the girls were the last to go up to the casket, and Kiley went with them because Stella would not let go of him. Her pretty, olive-complected face was not drawn as it might have been, but rather was puffy from her head constantly being bowed over the past days, and the continual crying that drew liquid to her eyes. Her thick black hair was combed straight back on top as always, pulled over her ears at the sides, and held in place by a black comb that had belonged to her grandmother. There was a black scarf over her head that was not as black as her hair. Jennie and Tessie, with hair like their mother, wore similar scarves, but their little faces were drawn, their eyes, especially of the ten-year-old Jennifer, hollow and fearful.
Just past the casket, where Uncle Gino and some other family members were waiting for Kiley to turn Stella and the girls back over to them, Stella said, “Joe, you’re coming out to the house?”
“Sure.” He hadn’t meant to; he did not want to be in the mob of mourners who would
be there.
“Because I have something for you—”
“Sure,” Kiley said, patting her hand.
Kiley rode back to the funeral home with Parmetter so they could talk.
“Where does it go now, Dan?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Parmetter replied, with a shake of his head. “I can’t get a feel for it, Joe. A lot of it’ll depend on what Lovat and OCB finds out, and what Vander and his IA boys recommend. If you and Nick were right about Tony Touhy, it’ll be a big plus for you, of course. But if you were wrong, if Nick was lost because you guys had a wild hair up your asses, well, you can see how it’ll look, you being the senior man and all—”
“Who’ll be primary on Nick’s case?”
“Homicide, I’d imagine,” said Parmetter. “With IA and OCB very strong secondaries. But Cassidy won’t take it away from Homicide. He’s ex-Homicide himself.”
“Can you get me TADed to Homicide, Dan?” Kiley asked. TAD was Temporary Attached Duty, usually an assignment for some special reason.
“I can try,” Parmetter said. “You’re not exactly real popular in Homicide right now, holding back on them the way you and Nick did. But I’ll do what I can.”
Kiley knew Dan Parmetter would. He was the kind of cop Gloria Mendez was—although Parmetter would have hotly disclaimed such a comparison.
At the funeral home, Kiley got his own car and drove over to Nick’s house, a neat, two-story Tudor model tract house on a middle-class suburban block—where Nick was not supposed to reside because he was a City of Chicago employee and was expected to live in the city. Moot point now, of course. Kiley had to park over a block away because cars filled Nick’s block corner to corner on both sides of the street. Walking back, he encountered a number of children playing out front, and found Jennie sitting forlornly on the porch with two little girls her own age, cousins probably, just talking.
“Hi, Uncle Joe,” she rose to greet him.
“Hi, baby,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “You doing okay?”
“Sure,” she said resignedly. She was like her mother: pragmatic, realistic, sensible. It was Tessie, the youngest, who was more like Nick had been: temperamental, impatient, excitable. “Mom and Tessie are somewhere inside,” Jennie told Joe.
As he went into the poignantly familiar house, Kiley again felt an implosion of guilt. Nick was not there. Nick would never be there again. And it was his fault. Nick would never have tried to clear the Ronnie Lynn killing without Joe’s urging. Despite his temperament, his occasional volatility, Nick had been the more cautious one of the team. Only when Joe was the instigator, the encourager, the leader, only then had Nick taken chances.
The house was wall to wall with people, as Kiley had known it would be: relatives, friends, neighbors, cops, priests, nuns—all drinking coffee, eating, talking in small groups. As Kiley inched his way through the family room, he saw Uncle Gino waving to get his attention from the patio outside the room’s sliding glass door. Beyond the patio was Nick’s brick barbecue and a big, aboveground pool he had put in for the girls and their friends. Kiley waved back to Gino and changed direction to thread his way to the patio.
“Joe, come join us,” Gino said, coming over to meet him, putting an arm around his shoulders, guiding him to a group of men sitting at a picnic table. “You know Nick’s cousins: my son Frank; my sister’s boys, Bruno and Carmine Bello; and these are my sons-in-law, Ray Rinni and Michael Russo.”
Nick shook hands all around and accepted a small tumbler of homemade wine that Uncle Gino poured for him.
“We was just talking about you, Joe,” said Gino’s son, Frank Bianco. “How long was you and Nicky partners?”
“Eight years,” Kiley said.
“That’s what I told them. ’Cause I know you was partners before Tessie was born, ’cause you’re Tessie’s godfather.”
“The cops, they gonna get whoever killed Nicky?” asked Carmine Bello. All eyes went to Joe.
“Yeah,” Joe said, “they will. Eventually.”
“You working the case?” Carmine’s brother Bruno asked. Joe shook his head.
“Not yet. I’m on departmental leave until tomorrow. But I’m going to try to get assigned to it.”
“Joe,” said Uncle Gino, “there’s something we’re curious about. Understand, no disrespect is meant, but as Nicky’s partner, how come you weren’t there when he was killed?”
Joe became acutely aware that these six men were Nick’s blood—Italian, all Calabrian—and he had only been Nick’s partner—a shanty Irishman that Nick had somehow adopted as a surrogate brother. With Nick gone, Kiley realized, there was nothing between him and Gino Bianco anymore, no connection whatsoever to any of the Bianco men. Nick was dead—and Joe was being asked to explain why.
“I was on my way there,” Joe said, working to keep his words even. “Nick and I had been on a stakeout and quit when our shift was over. Just after I left, Nick spotted the guy we were looking for and tailed him. When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine telling me where Nick followed the guy to. I got there as fast as I could, but—”
“Who’s the guy you were following?” asked one of the others. Nick locked eyes with him.
“That’s confidential information.”
“Tell us, like, off the record. Maybe we could help the cops on this.”
Kiley shook his head. “The department doesn’t need any help.”
“Nick sure as hell could have used a little.”
Joe Kiley’s light blue eyes hardened. “What was your name again?”
“Ray Rinni. I’m—”
“I know who you are, Rinni. Nick told me all about you. You fence hot car parts, don’t you?”
“Just a fucking minute, man—” Rinni began hotly—but his father-in-law quickly put a tight hand on his arm.
“All right, Ray.” Gino Bianco smiled at Kiley. “No need for that kind of talk, Joe. I hope we all have the same interest here. Ray would naturally like to know the name of anyone who might have been involved in Nick’s killing, as we all would.”
“Nick was a police officer. His killing is a police matter,” Kiley said flatly, putting his glass of wine down. “It will be handled by the police department.”
He turned and walked away.
Back inside the crowded house, Kiley made his way to the kitchen, which was where he thought Stella would probably be. He was right; she was putting two newly arrived dishes of food on an already crowded counter that was serving as a buffet. Three other women were helping in the kitchen: washing dishes, pouring coffee into cups on a tray, tending to all the logistics of feeding the mourners.
“Hi,” Joe said, going up to Stella at the counter.
“Oh, hi, Joe—” She wiped her hands on a dish towel and embraced him, pressing her face into his neck for a brief moment and gripping his upper arms tightly.
“I saw Jen outside, but where’s Tessie?” Joe asked.
“I got her to lie down for a nap, thank God,” Stella replied as they separated. “How are you doing, Joey?”
“Good,” he told her. “I’m doing good.”
Stella took his arm and drew him to the farthest corner of the kitchen. “Is the department giving you a lot of heat?” she asked quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“For not being there to back Nick up. IA has been out, wanting to know if there was any trouble between you two, that kind of stuff. Are they on you?”
“A little,” he admitted. Kiley studied her large, dark eyes, trying to see if there was in them the same thing he had seen in the eyes of Gino Bianco and the men on the patio.
“Joe, I want you to know that I’m not questioning it,” Stella told him. “I know you loved Nicky like a brother. If you weren’t there for him there was a reason.”
“I was on my way, Stel,” he said. “Nick was supposed to be waiting there for me. Something must have gone down before I got there—I don’t know what—” Shaking hi
s head, Kiley decided to level with her. “We weren’t on the job, Stel. We were trying to make a homicide collar on our own—”
“Not on the job?” Stella Bianco’s expression became gray. “You weren’t signed in? You weren’t on duty?”
“No.”
“Christ, Joe, what will that do to my pension? I’ve got the girls to raise—”
“Your pension won’t be affected. At least, I don’t think it will—”
“You don’t think? My God, Joe—”
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he assured, putting a hand on her arm. “I was senior officer; I can cover any question that comes up. If necessary, I’ll say that Nick thought he was on duty, that I set up the operation on my own and he had no part of it.”
“Will they believe you?”
“Doesn’t matter if they do or not; they can’t disprove it.”
Stella covered Joe’s hand with hers. “Then what happens to your career, Joe?”
“That’s not important right now.”
“Joey—” She spoke his name as a plea.
“Let me handle it, Stel. I’ll see that you and the girls don’t lose anything you’ve got coming.” He leaned a little closer to her. “Just keep it to yourself about us not being on the job. Don’t tell Uncle Gino or anybody else.”
“All right, Joe.” She patted his hand. “Come upstairs to the bedroom, Joe. I have something for you.”
Joe followed Stella as she made her way through the clots of people between the kitchen and the entry foyer stairs. Along the way she had to pause a dozen times to accept condolences, hugs, kisses on the cheek, sympathetic handshakes, gentle touches. To each she responded with a sad but still beautiful smile. Her lips were a fraction too wide for the rest of her face, though not unattractively so; and her teeth were straight, perfect, matchless white; making her smile, whether in happiness or grief, a lucent, infectious thing. Just to see Stella Bianco smile, under any circumstances, made people around her feel better.
Upstairs, Stella quietly opened the door to the room her daughters shared, and looked in on Tessie, who lay sleeping, fully dressed except for shoes, with a light blanket over her. Closing the door again, Stella said quietly, “God, I hope she sleeps until these people clear out. She’s so damned confused by all this; I’m not sure she even realizes Nick is permanently gone. Come on in here—”
