Whenever the squad was this busy, Jones put Smasher on guard duty by feeding him his special “killer” diet, which consisted of two cans of wet dog food mixed with a liberal dash of hydrogen peroxide. This caused the rottweiler to foam at the mouth.
Smasher played his part well, sauntering around the room with a frothy mass of bubbles oozing from his mouth, emitting a low-grade growl, pausing long enough in front of each manacled prisoner to give off a bloodcurdling growl that drained the color from the prisoner’s face. Occasionally he’d stop in front of the detention cage and shake his head violently, spraying the white spittle on the prisoners inside.
The prisoners sat perfectly still, terrified.
A burst of gunfire shattered the distant night. Patrick Sarsfield Casey’s ears pricked up; he decided that the rounds were probably coming from one of the ugly guns, a TEC-9 or a Cobray M-11. When he returned his attention to the squad room, he could not help but notice the unspoken hostility between Kahn and the newest member of the squad. They avoided each other’s eyes, and whenever they walked around the room they gave each other a wide berth.
When Stuart came into the squad room, Patrick Sarsfield Casey swung his feet off the desk and walked to the window. “Close the door, Matt,” he said when the whip walked inside. He took another swig from his flask, gazed out over Pigtown, and said, “I was getting laid this afternoon when I got a ‘forthwith’ from the chief of detectives. In all your time on the Job, haven’t you heard of the chain of command? Squad bosses don’t go over the heads of their district commanders with personnel problems. What the hell were you thinking about?”
Stuart didn’t flinch under the onslaught. “The c of d dumped his problem on me, and I want it out of here. I’ve got no time to deal with an asshole like Whitehouser.”
“Your problem is you’ve got open homicides piling up all over the place. Every whip in the Job has disciplinary problems. Exercise some leadership and deal with it, ’cause Whitehouser ain’t gonna go away.”
“That’s the word from the c of d?”
“That’s the gospel according to Hartman.” He took another swig, passed the flask to Stuart. “The good news is that he’s not going to be here that long.”
Stuart wiped the spout with his hand and took a long pull of the single-malt Scotch, his mind racing: He just dumped him into this squad, so he’s not about to transfer ’im out. And he don’t have his twenty in. So? He handed the flask back, saying, “Hartman’s going to get him three-quarters?”
“You just keep the lid on things here.”
Stuart thought, Patrick Sarsfield Casey only goes to the flask after he’s had a few, which means that he probably met Hartman at some restaurant, where they broke bread over a jug and made a deal. I wonder what his price was to save Whitehouser’s butt? Since it’s quid pro quo time in the Job, I might as well join in on the festivities.
“Get him down!” someone screamed from the squad room.
Smasher’s front paws were up on a prisoner’s lap. The rottweiler was baring his awesome teeth and growling into the terrified man’s face.
“Smasher, leave the nice man alone,” Jones said without looking up from his typewriter.
Smasher leaped off the prisoner and continued his patrol.
“You got Smasher trained real good,” Patrick Sarsfield Casey said.
“That’s Jones’s job, he’s really into dog training.”
“Plaintiff still breaking his balls?”
Stuart smiled. “With great regularity.” He looked at his boss and said, “I’ll try my best to sit on this thing, but I can’t make any guarantees.”
“Kahn’s your problem. Deal with it.”
“I might not be able to deal with it.”
“What the hell did he do to her?”
“He fondled her breast and groped her crotch,” Stuart said. Though he didn’t know exactly what went down, he went with his gut instinct.
“This guy don’t belong on the Job. But we both know that sometimes we’re forced to do things we don’t want to do. Can you talk to her?”
Stuart was beginning to enjoy this game. “You know how these feminists are. She’s liable to make a complaint to the DA or one of those antidiscrimination agencies alleging sexual harassment. Allegations like that would send the press and feminist groups into a feeding frenzy.”
Casey rubbed his jaw uneasily. “Shit. Can you think of anything that might calm her down?”
“I gotta tell ya, she’s a great detective. She’s really into high-tech stuff. You probably know she caught the Russo homicide. In fact, a short while ago she was begging me to get her a piece of equipment to help her break the case. You know, I think if she got that toy, and I gave her her head on this investigation, she might just work off her anger. I think that might be the way to go.”
A shadow crossed Patrick Sarsfield Casey’s eyes. “And what might this toy be, Matthew?”
“A Cellmate,” he answered, drumming his fingers lightly on the desk.
Casey glowered at Stuart. “You’re putting the arm on me.”
“Like hell I am. I’m telling you what I think it will take to get her mind off Whitehouser.”
“That toy you want for her costs eight thousand dollars apiece. We only have a few of them in Narcotics and Intelligence. If you ever lost one, there’d be all sorts of hell to pay.”
“We’re not going to lose anything.”
“Awright. I’ll see what I can do. Whaddaya got on the Russo homicide?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, you better get something or both our asses will be in slings.” He screwed the cap back on his flask and slid it into his inside breast pocket. He looked at Stuart with a strange expression. “This is your RDO and you’re here playing cops and robbers. Get a life already, Matt.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He pawed the door open and left. As he walked out into the squad room, he made for Whitehouser’s desk. Resting his palms on top of the typewriter, he bent down and whispered into Whitehouser’s ear, “If there’s a next time, I’m gonna personally put you out of the Job.”
Walking from the squad room, he stopped to pet Smasher and said in a loud voice, “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
13
The tanker truck that parked outside Albertoli’s factory on Rangoon Street Monday morning had a catwalk running around its sides wide enough for a man to navigate to the ladder leading up its oval side to the loading hatch on the roof of the tanker.
Lupo and Frankie Bones Marino were on hand early to check out the inside of the shiny tank that had held the liquid milk. Lupo took off his Armani suit jacket and draped it over the sideview mirror protruding out of the left side of the driver’s cabin. He untied his silk tie and slapped it over his jacket. Frankie Bones hung his jacket over his friend’s. He handed Lupo a pair of gray work gloves. Lupo tugged them on and climbed up the small ladder, on the back side of the driver’s cabin, that led to the catwalk. Frankie Bones slipped on his gloves and followed him.
Lupo walked along the catwalk until he reached the ladder in the center of the tubelike trailer that led up to the loading hatch. Gripping the sides, he climbed up to the top and threw open the hatch cover. A stainless-steel ladder led down into the interior of the tank. Lupo started to climb down. His feet slipped on the damp treads; he cursed.
Lupo pulled a flashlight from his waistband and played the beam over the tank.
A white scum coated the sides of the tube, and puddles of milk were scattered over the floor. The air was heavy with the odor of sour milk.
Frankie Bones stepped off the ladder. “You can’t breathe in this shit.”
“Whaddaya think?”
“I think it’s gonna work,” Frankie Bones said.
“What we have the crew do is mop up the floor and carpet it with thick plastic. We then pack one layer of wheels across the entire floor. We pack the stuff tight in bubble wrap so there ain’t a ch
ance of it moving around.” Lupo looked at his friend, a hint of concern in his eyes, and said, “The vans already brought the stuff here, right?”
“Yeah, it’s stored in the refrigerator.” Smiling, Frankie Bones nodded jerkily, and said, “I really like it, Danny. No cop is gonna think of looking inside a load of milk.”
“We do the whole thing and then stash the tanker back here until Charlie Kee’s ship makes port.”
“What about Angela? Will she go along with that?”
“Leave her to me. Let’s get outta here. I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”
They climbed back up the ladder. Frankie Bones closed the hatch. Lupo sucked in a mouthful of clean air and looked up at the crystal blue sky. “Nice day.”
“Yeah. It’s the kinda day that makes ya glad to be alive,” Frankie Bones said, walking across the plant’s parking lot with his friend.
“Any problem with that thing over the weekend?”
“Naw. Hippo’s a good man.”
“What about that other thorn in my side?”
“This week.” He flicked the ash of his cigarette into the crisp air, fixed his gaze on Lupo’s face, and said, “The guy that Paddy Irish is usin’ to set Stuart up tossed somebody else into the pot with him.”
A quick movement tightened Lupo’s eyes. “What do you mean, somebody else?”
“It seems this cop was banging one of Stuart’s detectives, and she dumped him. And this idiot’s been walking around with a hard-on over bein’ tossed into the Dumpster, so he figures this is a good time for payback.”
“Don’t this moron think she just might figure it out and blow the whistle?”
Frankie Bones shrugged his shoulders.
Anger made the veins in Lupo’s neck stand out. He stalked off, shaking his head and cursing. Then he whirled around, came back, and stuck a finger in Frankie Bones’s chest. “I want you to personally deliver a message to Paddy Irish. Tell that guy that if anything goes wrong, I’m going to have him and his cop friend fitted with cement shoes.”
“Done like a dinner, Danny.”
Lupo raised his chin at the truck. “I want the molds packed inside, and I want them heading for Chicago by this afternoon.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Lupo lightly slapped Frankie Bones on the cheek. “Good.” He turned away from his friend and walked inside the plant.
Angela was talking on the phone to a customer. When she saw Lupo in the doorway of her office, she waved him into one of the leather chairs in front of her desk.
As he sat down, he reached inside his blue suit and slid out a white envelope, which he placed on the desk in front of him.
Angela fixed her eyes on it as she talked. When she finished her conversation and hung up, he pushed the envelope across the desk to her. She opened the unsealed lid and peeked inside. “Do I need to count it?” she asked coyly.
“No.” The grin she had found so irresistible so many years ago spread across his face. He rested his palms on the arms of the chair, looked directly at her, and said, “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think so, Daniel.”
“What about lunch?”
She pivoted around to her computer and said, “Call me later this morning.”
Back in Brooklyn two and a half hours later, a black Buick sedan drove from Midwood Street into New York Avenue and parked across the street from Miami Court, a one-block cul-de-sac of attached brick bungalows. Frankie Bones sat in the passenger seat. A musclebound geek, wearing a white-and-silver warm-up suit and a heavy gold rope chain where his neck was supposed to be, sat behind the wheel. The name on his rap sheet was Joseph Ranaldi; his street name was Joey Hershey Bar.
“We’ll wait here for a while and keep an eye on the bar,” Frankie Bones said. “I wanna make sure there ain’t no cops around.”
“I never liked or trusted dat guy. He was a cop once and he’ll always be a cop,” he said, sliding a chocolate bar out of its wrapper.
Frankie Bones looked at the five balled-up candy wrappers on the floor. “Don’t you ever get tired of eating that stuff?”
“No. It tastes good.”
A battered gray van covered with swirls of black graffiti drove into New York Avenue, past Miami Court. “Check it out, man,” barked Paul Siracusa, a portly anticrime cop in threadbare clothes.
Jack Nagel, a bald cop with a beard, peered through the porthole at the occupants of the Buick. “I wonder what they’re doing parked there?”
“Drive around the corner,” Sergeant Arlene Christopher, the day duty anticrime supervisor, called out to the driver of the van.
The surveillance vehicle was driven into Maple Street; at the corner it turned into Nostrand Avenue and made a left-hand turn into Hawthorne Street. A fire hydrant at the crosswalk of New York Avenue gave the anticrime cops a perfect place to park. They could watch the bar and the Buick from the inside of the van. The skinny driver steered the van into the curb in front of the fire hydrant and slid the transmission into park. Then he slouched down in the seat and pretended to be asleep.
A partition separated the cockpit from the van’s interior. A corkboard was hooked onto the inside wall; it was crowded with mug shots and composite sketches of mutts wanted for crimes within the Seven One and adjoining precincts. A floor-to-ceiling wire mesh cage in the corner, up against the partition, contained the unit’s theatrical props, including phony leg and arm casts, beards, mustaches, Hasidic frock coats, fur hats, a baby carriage, and a collapsible wheelchair with an attached portable oxygen tank.
Sergeant Christopher, a shapely brunette in her late twenties, wearing jeans and a white bodysuit under a black cotton blazer, reached inside her jacket for the portable radio hooked to her belt. She turned the volume knob to off, then put on a pair of tinted sunglasses.
Nagel slid the cotter pin out of the hole and swung open the prop cage. He reached inside and took out the baby carriage. Bracing it between his legs, he pulled out the two side latches and snapped the carriage open.
Siracusa took out a doll and put it into the carriage. He then took a pink cotton baby blanket and tucked it around the doll. He took out a clear plastic baby bottle full of milk and put it inside the carriage.
Christopher climbed out of the van. Nagel and Siracusa passed the carriage down to her. She took it from them and walked toward the corner.
The viewing portholes on the sides of the van did not allow the cops inside to maintain surveillance of vehicles ahead of them, so for this purpose Motor Transport had installed a periscope inside one of the van’s air vents; the periscope also permitted the cops in the van to direct the driver so he could keep his attention fixed on traffic.
Nagel pulled down the periscope and watched Christopher pushing the carriage across New York Avenue. They were parked far enough into the crosswalk so that he could see up past Miami Court.
Christopher walked slowly toward the Buick, her catlike eyes looking sideways behind the dark shades of her glasses at the two men inside the car. When she reached the front of the car, she stopped and reached into the carriage, pretending to adjust the baby’s blanket. She crept her hand over to the milk bottle and tossed it out over the top of the carriage.
Frankie Bones watched as she scrambled for the bottle.
She tossed the bottle back into the carriage, reached into the bag attached to the handle, took out another bottle, and, bending, pretended to put the bottle back into her baby’s mouth. She pushed the carriage to the corner and crossed the avenue. Five minutes later she handed the carriage up to Nagel and climbed back into the van. “Whaddaya got, Sarge?” Siracusa asked.
“They’re just sitting there watching Holiday’s bar,” she said. “We’ll hang around for a while and see what goes down.”
Inside the black Buick sedan, Frankie Bones looked at the driver and said, “Let’s go see Paddy Irish.”
“Want I should go in with you?”
“No. W
ait in the car.”
The Buick pulled up at the curb in front of the bar. Frankie Bones opened the door, reached up and grabbed hold of the roof, and hoisted himself out of the car. He strolled casually to the bar’s entrance, threw open the door, and waved Holiday outside.
“What’s up?” Holiday said, a nervous quaver in his voice.
Frankie Bones slid his arm around Holiday’s shoulder and steered him down the block. “My people don’t like that your friend tossed in the lady detective with Stuart. Getting personal is dangerous. We pay you money to do things for us, not to let your cop friends do whatever the fuck they want to do. You were told to get Stuart off our backs, and you let one of your cop friends get stupid.”
“Frankie, this guy been doin’ good things for us for a lotta years. He’s one of our main connections in the NYPD. This is the first time he has ever gone personal. Trust me, there ain’t gonna be a problem.”
Frankie Bones’s powerful hand clamped on Holiday’s shoulder, pulling him close so their faces were almost touching. Holiday winced. “’At’s good. Because if there is a problem, you two are gonna be history.”
A shocked look came over Holiday’s face. “You guys wouldn’t whack a cop.”
“Dat’s right, we wouldn’t. But your friend ain’t a cop, he’s a fucking thief like us.” He turned Holiday around, heading back toward the bar. “The niggers with the braids haven’t been laundering as much as they usually do. Any ideas why?”
“Who knows? Maybe they made another connection, one that charges them less points. Maybe business ain’t been that good. And maybe they’re pissed off because of Gee and Hollyman.”
Frankie Bones leaned his head alongside Holiday’s and said, “You wouldna gone into business for yourself, wouldya?”
“No. I swear.”
“I love when guys swear.” He stopped, faced Paddy, stuck a finger under his nose, and said, “No fuck-ups, and no excuses.”
Inside the surveillance van, Nagel said, “Holiday’s going back into the bar.” He looked at the sergeant. “S’pose we throw a tail on Frankie Bones, see what he’s into these days.”
Pigtown Page 17
