Titans

by Tim Green

  "Rachel, honey . . . Just relax."

  Rachel raised her voice and said, "I'm not relaxing, Hunter, so stop saying it."

  "Well, you'd better relax," Hunter said, beginning to tire of her attitude. "I knew it was a lock. Win or lose, it's not like I bet like that all the time. It was a one-shot deal. Don't you think maybe you're just reacting like this because you thought I was whoring around or something crazy like that?"

  Rachel stopped as if to consider. "Maybe. Maybe you're right. But it's always just one time, Hunter. That's how that starts. You started with those hundred-dollar bets and now this. I just want it to stop, Hunter. I don't want you betting on anything anymore."

  "Aw, Rachel, Metz and I just have a little fun. That stuff is no big deal. It's nothing like this. Look, I don't bet like that, and I'm not about to start. Come on. I love you."

  A small smile started to form on Rachel's face.

  "Come over here, will you? I don't like not being able to get my hands on you."

  She skirted the table and sat down next to him. Hunter kissed her on the lips. "By the way, not that you don't have every right to look in my glove box, but what were you doing there anyway? You never told me that. You weren't just snooping around, were you?"

  "I don't snoop around, Hunter," she said testily. "I was looking for a can of Mace. I couldn't find mine and I wanted it."

  "Why?"

  "It's silly," she said. "It really is. But there was some weird guy out at our mailbox today when I went to pick up Sara from tennis. He looked almost like a player, like one of those guys on steroids."

  "What?" Hunter said with concern. "What was he doing?"

  "He said he was looking for a friend and that he was checking the mail in the box. He said he made a mistake, but then I drove to the end of the drive and he just seemed to disappear. I saw a van driving away. I don't know. It was just weird."

  "Did he say anything more to you? Did he threaten you or something, or make some kind of comment?"

  "No," Rachel said. "He didn't say anything. He looked more scared than anything else."

  "Well," Hunter said, relieved, "it was probably like the guy said. Maybe he just had the wrong place, or maybe he was trying to find out if we lived here so he could jump me for an autograph or pitch some business deal at me. He probably felt embarrassed as hell. Who knows? I'll talk to the team's security guard tomorrow and see what he thinks, but I wouldn't worry about it."

  "I know," she said. "He probably was just some fan looking for you, but the guy gave me the creeps. In a lot of ways I liked it when you weren't such a superstar."

  "I've got an idea," Hunter said in a low voice as he pulled her close. "How about working on that new baby you've been talking about?"

  "Really!" Rachel said, her eyes incandescent.

  "We'd better, before I get into training camp."

  Rachel led him up the stairs, her face aglow, already completely forgetting about the Mace, the gambling, and the strange man.

  Chapter 15

  Cook sat at his desk. Across from him sat Conrad Duffy and John Marrow. Cook picked up his styrofoam cup and drank some of the coffee that had been in it from the morning. It was awful, but he needed an edge. Something was eluding him. Something was wrong, and he couldn't place it. It was there, just beyond his reach. He could sense it, but he just couldn't see it.

  "Play it again," Cook said.

  Duffy leaned forward in his chair and rewound the tape in the player on Cook's desk for what seemed like the tenth time. The three of them sat silently while the tape spun. Marrow shifted restlessly in his seat as if there were better things he could be doing. The tape clicked to a stop, and Duffy leaned forward again to play it.

  Tony Rizzo's voice came alive in the room.

  "Fast-forward through that beginning stuff about his damn dentist appointment," Cook said.

  Duffy punched the fast-forward button and Rizzo's voice became a high-pitched squeal, buzzing intermittently with his dentist's about what Cook knew to be some enamel bonding he'd had done. The tape held every conversation that Rizzo had on his phone from the entire day before. Duffy stopped the tape and played it at normal speed as a new voice began to intermingle with Rizzo's.

  It was Angelo Quatrini.

  "How's it going?" said Angelo's voice.

  "Good," Tony replied. "Did you get my message?"

  "From Mikey?"

  "Yeah. Can you do it?"

  "Yeah, I can do it if you want."

  "I do."

  "Don't you think it might make the roosters crow?"

  "Maybe. I'm not worried about it. You just set it up."

  "OK. You sure you want her to see it?"

  "What?"

  "You know, where you're going."

  "Oh, I'm not worried about it. Don't you."

  "OK, but you know we got a policy."

  "I'll handle it, Ang."

  "OK, talk to you soon."

  Cook leaned forward himself this time and shut off the tape.

  "It's that part that gets me. I've got a feeling about it that I can't shake," he said, looking at Duffy for an answer.

  Duffy shrugged. "Like I said, sir, there's absolutely no way to know what they're talking about. They haven't given us enough to reference with. For all we know, they could be talking about Rizzo's dry cleaning. We just don't have enough references to decode it."

  "I think . . ."--Cook let the word hang and studied Marrow who was looking at the tape player--".. . that they know they're bugged."

  John Marrow's head shot up and his gaze met Cook's. The two men looked into each other's eyes. The office was silent for several moments.

  "Why?" Duffy finally said, breaking both men's concentration.

  "Because Rizzo talks like there's nothing up when he has conversations with his dentist, or his mother, or his new little girlfriend. But as soon as Quatrini, or Cometti, or any other one of his thugs calls, they start talking in a way that we can't understand. What do you think, John?"

  Marrow looked up again and met Cook's eyes.

  "I think that this is the way these guys talk to each other. I've listened to these kind of conversations before. Most of these wiseguys won't talk business over the phone."

  "I know they won't normally say anything of value, but to talk in code? Isn't that what that was, that bit about the roosters crowing and the policy? And what is 'it' that they don't want 'her' to see?

  That's not normal, is it? I mean, to not say anything is one thing, but to start talking in code words that seem to have come out of the blue suggests to me a level of caution that could only come from knowing that someone's listening."

  Duffy shook his head and said, MI just can't see it, sir. We're tapping from the box under the street. We waited to set it up until Rizzo and all his cronies were gone from the area. We used all the NYNEX equipment from trucks to uniforms to the damn cones we put out on the street. That stuff goes on all the time in the city. It's not like it would have raised any suspicions. We've got trace sensors on the line, and they haven't picked up a thing. I just don't see how he could know. It's not really possible."

  "OK," Cook said cheerfully, breaking the somber mood of the meeting. "I've been wrong before, but I want both of you to think about it and keep your eyes open for any other signs that confirm what I'm saying. You can get back to it, Duffy. John, stay a minute. I want to talk with you about Rizzo's bank records in St. Martin."

  Cook spent the rest of the day going over various aspects of the Rizzo case. So far all their searches had led to nothing. There was some hope that one of their agents would be able to infiltrate the family through one of their bookies on the upper East Side, but besides that long shot, everything else was a bust. Cook was beginning to get frustrated. He had vast resources at his disposal, and he knew that Washington was expecting quick results. At the very least, he knew he needed to show some progress.

  Cook worked until seven, then left the building and made his way home on foot. The
sun was getting low, but the heat still wafted up from the pavement. The city smelled ripe with stale air from the subway, and exhaust vented to the streets from restaurants cooking food whose origins came from every corner of the earth. Cook shouldered his way through the throngs of people until finally he turned off Seventh Avenue and onto his own street, which was relatively quiet by comparison. There was little crosstown traffic this far downtown at this late an hour, and Cook enjoyed a reprieve from the taxi and bus fumes. He eyed a lean, well-shaped woman jogging on the other side of the street in tight black spandex pants and a cutoff T-shirt.

  Cook realized how long it had been since he'd had a woman. He briefly wondered if there wasn't something wrong with him, then stretched for a final glimpse and ended up bumping into a surly-looking doorman who was sweeping the sidewalk directly in front of his building. The man snarled in disgust and glared. Cook wondered if it was his suit or the color of his skin that alienated the man--the bump itself had been mild. The doorman muttered something that sounded like "nigger" under his breath. Cook involuntarily clenched his fists. Then he decided he didn't care, shrugged, and walked off.

  Natasha jumped on him the minute he got home. Cook laughed and kissed her face, holding her light form tight to his chest. She giggled.

  "Can you eat fast so we can go to the park before it gets dark and throw my new Frisbee?" she said in one gasp.

  Cook peered into the kitchen. Esther glared at him, turning her gaze to the clock, then to his dinner plate, which sat alone on the table, carefully covered with tin foil.

  "Couldn't hold dinner I see, Aunt Esther," Cook said mildly.

  "You got that right," said the wiry woman with fire in her eyes. "When I tell you the child needs to eat her supper by six-thirty, that don't mean for you to show up here an hour late making smart comments. Now sit your bottom down and eat so you can take that little girl to the park. Lord help me if I ever saw such a selfish man as you, Ellis Cook. Lord help me. My own husband, the heathen good-for-nothing, was a sight better man than you when it came to being on time."

  "Well, Aunt Esther, any man that coulda been married to you is a damn sight better man than me. That goes without saying," Cook replied mischievously.

  Esther pursed her lips, blew past him, and slammed the bedroom door behind her.

  "Well," Cook said cheerfully to Natasha, "now that's over with, why don't you sit with me, and I'll get this food down as fast as I can so we can go to the park?"

  Natasha tried to frown at her father and said, "Daddy, you're going to have to treat Aunt Esther better than that. That's just bad manners."

  Cook sat down and gazed across the kitchen fondly at his daughter.

  More and more she reminded him of Naomi, even in the things she was beginning to say. Tears misted in his eyes.

  Natasha crossed the floor and hugged him gently.

  "I didn't mean it, Daddy," she said. "Don't be sad."

  "Oh, I'm not sad, sweetheart," he replied, brushing his hand roughly across his face. "I'm happy, happy to have you for my little girl."

  Cook hugged his daughter hard, then fell into his dinner.

  By the time they got to the park, the shadows were long and a breeze that somehow found its way through the streets from the Hudson River made the evening pleasant. It brought relief, but at the same time, the balmy air seemed to draw the city's miscreants out like roaches after dark. Countless bums staggered about the park tipping bottles of cheap wine, and young putrid-smelling men offered drugs for sale without looking Cook in the eye. He looked down occasionally to see how Natasha reacted to the human slag. She observed everything, but it didn't seem to faze her.

  They found a spot of dusty ground spiked with an occasional swatch of crab grass that refused to die and began to throw the Frisbee back and forth. Natasha squealed with delight whenever she caught the lime green disk. Cook smiled back but his eyes furtively scouted the riffraff that surrounded them. Natasha, in her simple white cotton dress and with her smooth dark skin, looked frightfully innocent and out of place surrounded by dirty concrete and shabby derelicts.

  A blue-and-white squad car rolled past. The cops' heads swiveled slowly from side to side, as they coolly looked out of their rolled-down windows from behind dark Ray-Bans. A scuffle broke out suddenly between a leather-booted skinhead and a black homeless man. The squad car moaned and flashed its lights as it advanced on the melee. The skinhead got the bum down on the ground and began to kick him brutally. Before the cops could get out of their car, the skinhead bent down over the bum to work on him with his hands. The bum lashed out suddenly and the skinhead pulled away, bleeding wildly from his face. Bright blood splashed about on the sidewalk as the skinhead danced maniacally, trying to plug the gash that opened his face.

  The bum tried to scurry away, his bloody razor in hand, but one of the cops dropped him in his tracks with a blow from his blackjack across the back of the neck. The other cop clubbed the skinhead in the abdomen, doubling him over before putting him to the ground with another swing that thumped off his head like a soft melon. Each cop bent over his victim with a knee in his back and clapped on their respective cuffs, two trophy hunters bagging their game.

  "Come on, honey," Cook said nonchalantly to his daughter, "it's getting late. Let's you and me go get some ice cream and then head home before your Aunt Esther gets riled."

  "Did you see that, Daddy?" Natasha said, turning to him, her eyes wide and her eyebrows climbing up her forehead. "Did you see the blood? Wow! That raggy man cut that big bald guy up good! And then those policemen, did you see them?"

  Cook nodded and took Natasha by the hand. "Yes, I saw," he said.

  "Do you ever do that to people?" she asked.

  "No, that's not the kind of policeman I am," he said. "Come on, honey. Let's go."

  Cook led her away. Natasha looked back over her shoulder occasionally until they crossed the street and began their walk up Fifth Avenue to the ice cream store. Cook ordered a double mint-chocolate-chip for himself and a strawberry for Natasha. The sky above them was dark as they turned off the avenue onto their lantern-lit street. Mint green ice cream rolled down Cook's hand. He swabbed it with a napkin and licked furiously around the edges of his cone. Natasha broke into a long tale about her friend Rina's cat that had been hit by a car on Sixth Avenue. She seemed to have already forgotten the bloody outburst at the park. As Cook listened to Natasha, his mind fought to come up with a way to get to Tony Rizzo and get his family out of this mean and dirty city.

  Cook rode along slowly in the Manhattan traffic. This was one of the most boring parts of the job and one he wasn't required to do as a supervisor. This was what he had agents for. But Cook had decided on a back-to-basics approach to his mission. He had called on his men to focus their attention on the details. To emphasize his message, he and Marrow had begun to spread themselves among the different areas of investigation to make each man feel that his role had a great importance to the overall effort of quelling the Mondolffi family. That was why Cook was now riding along in an unmarked van with a two-man observation team.

  He suddenly sat up straight when Tony Rizzo's Mercedes veered toward the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. They had all assumed that he was taking the Carter girl out to dinner in Little Italy. There was another agent in a Crown Vic who roamed the streets adjacent to the van as a backup chase car that could move in and take over the tail if the van lost Rizzo or if Rizzo stopped suddenly, forcing the van to continue on in traffic.

  The backup was about a block ahead of them on Tenth Avenue, and Dan Mott, the agent in the back of the van, immediately radioed Ira Stone in the Crown Vic to double back because it appeared Rizzo was headed into the tunnel.

  "Not usual for Tony to head into Jersey on a Friday night, is it?" Cook said.

  Peter Meara, the driver of the van, nodded in agreement. It was eight o'clock, late enough that the congestion at the tunnel wasn't bad. Still, traffic had slowed enough that Ira could catch up and see the van
before it entered the tunnel about ten cars behind Tony Rizzo. Cook could make out the back of Camille Carter's blonde head. There were two lanes going under the river to New Jersey, and once inside the tunnel, traffic sped up to about thirty-five miles an hour. Cook gazed out at the yellowing tile walls of the tunnel. It made him think of a public rest room.

  Suddenly, about four cars in front of the van, an old Fleetwood Cadillac and a beat-up Impala began to slow down dramatically. The two cars swerved back and forth in unison. Then, at about ten miles an hour they bumped and came to a complete stop. Rizzo's Mercedes, along with the rest of the forward traffic, continued quickly through the tunnel until they were out of sight.

  "Shit," Cook said.

  He opened the door of the van and leaned out. "Hey!" he yelled at two burly thugs who had gotten out of the collided cars. "Hey! Get one of those cars over to the side!"

  "Fuck you!" one of them bellowed.

  "Yeah, fuck you," said the other loudly.

  Other cars in the jam began to honk their horns. The two men appeared to assess the damage to their vehicles, which looked to be minimal, oblivious to the sound of the blaring horns. Cook reached the two men in an instant and flashed his badge at them.

  "FBI," Cook said angrily, "now get one of these cars over to the side."

  The two men were apparently unfazed by Cook. They continued to inspect their cars as if he weren't there. A Tunnel Authority officer walked up along the catwalk and jumped down to see what was happening. Cook showed the officer his badge.

  "Get one of these cars out of the way," Cook demanded. 'This is official business."

  The tunnel officer looked at him and smiled.

  "Oh," he said sarcastically, "well, in that case . . . OK, come on, you two. I'll ride up to the end of the tunnel with you and fill out a report. You can tell me all about it when we get out of here."

  "No problem," the one with the Cadillac said pleasantly.

  "See?" said the tunnel officer to Cook with his same smile. "All you gotta do is ask sometimes."

  "Shit," Cook said under his breath, and sprinted back to the van.