Badge of Evil (33 page)

A. J.'s wife Nikki was relaxing out on the lawn with the kids. Nikki was sitting in an Adirondack chair reading the paper, and the kids were throwing a ball around and chasing each other. Nikki looked across the broad expanse of property at Lucy. She was just standing there, staring down at the grass. She wondered what Lucy was doing. Nikki was very fond of Lucy and looked at her almost like she was Annie's older sister. She felt terrible about what had happened on Shelter Island and hoped it wouldn't have any lasting effects. Nikki was just about to call out Lucy's name to see if she was okay when all of a sudden Lucy started running in her direction. She wasn't jogging; this was a flat-out sprint, and she had a wild look on her face.

Nikki stood up as Lucy approached and she reached out to grab her. “Please, please, Nikki,” Lucy blurted, barely able to catch her breath. “I have to get to A. J. I have to talk to him
now
!”

Racing into the guesthouse, she went straight to the phone. She desperately needed to tell A. J. what she'd just realized. The morning Brock spoke at the press conference after the raid; the photo by the fireplace of Anderson receiving his lieutenant's shield from police commissioner Brock; the night of the murder attempt on Supreme at Roxx. All of these had one thing in common—Lucy didn't know the man's name, but she remembered his swarthy, slightly fleshy face. She remembered him standing in the background behind Brock at the press conference. She could picture his face in the corner of Kevin Anderson's promotion photo. And now she could see the night at Roxx in her mind's eye. In that split second after the third shot rang out, after Supreme's bodyguard had been hit, she looked into the crowd and saw a white guy, pulling off a wig, revealing his shaved head. He stood out because he was the only middle-aged white guy besides Bishop in the club. As she struggled to dial A. J.'s cell number with her trembling hand, she guessed that he was probably also the sick fuck who'd terrorized her on Shelter Island. She had to let A. J. know.

BISHOP RUSHED OUT
of the Thirty-Third Precinct and started walking down Amsterdam Avenue. It was about two in the afternoon and the streets were crowded. This far uptown, Manhattan looked and felt more like one of the outer boroughs. The buildings were much smaller, traffic was lighter, the streets seemed wider, everything felt more open. There were also very few white people. About two blocks from the precinct, Bishop saw a bar and went in. He needed a drink.

As Bishop took a seat at the far end of the bar, the door opened. Pennetta walked in and took the empty seat next to him.

They both ordered two shots of vodka, then sat for a while in silence. A small TV over the bar was playing one of the daytime courtroom shows with no sound. Finally, after about ten minutes, Bishop spoke first. “Why?” was all he said. Pennetta let the question hang in the air. “Why?” Bishop asked again. “It makes no sense. Everything good about the job, everything right about being a cop, I got from Chief Fitzgerald. Whenever I felt like it was all a bunch of crap and none of it meant anything, he was the guy who showed me I was wrong. He could always make me feel like being a cop made a difference,” he said, downing his second shot, then swiveling in his seat to look at Pennetta.

“I know the chief's not about money,” he continued. “He never gave a shit about anything other than the fucking job. I had a gig once and I really hit a home run for the client, and he gave me a Rolex. I already had one so I decided to give it to the chief, you know, as a thank-you for all the shit he put up with from me. And he wouldn't take it. ‘What the fuck am I gonna do with something like that?' he said to me. ‘Where am I gonna wear it?' He wouldn't take a fuckin' watch as a gift. So this, this just makes no sense.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself for a moment 'cause you lost your mentor,” Pennetta said. “Fitzgerald didn't do it for the money, at least not in the way you're looking at it. Stop for a minute and think about this. What happened to him like twelve or thirteen years ago when he started drinking again?”

Bishop looked down at his glass. At first he didn't remember. But then it came back to him.

Pennetta saw the look of recognition on Bishop's face. “That's right,” he said, “Fitzgerald's daughter!”

“Shit,” Bishop said, shaking his head. “We never really talked much about it. He never wanted to and I never pushed him. I remember she was born with all kinds of medical problems—like she had cystic fibrosis and some kind of rare blood disease. I remember at one point when I was still practically a rookie there were fliers posted around the precincts advertising fund-raisers for a Lieutenant Walter Fitzgerald. I didn't know him then. We met like four or five years after she was born, and he almost never mentioned her.”

Bishop stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar, then turned away when Pennetta started talking. “All the special treatments, the drugs, the home care, must have cost huge amounts of money. I think she was even in some kind of facility for the last two years before she passed. It would be very easy to justify doing anything when you're trying to save your daughter's life.”

Bishop was disgusted.
Nothing
, he thought,
is ever what it seems
. The bartender passed and he ordered another round.

•  •  •

Traffic in the Holland Tunnel was light, and Chief Fitzgerald appeared relaxed as he drove. He looked at A. J., who was sitting next to him, and noticed how active his eyes were, taking in everything. Oz, sitting in the back, hadn't said anything since they left police headquarters. “So what's the deal, Chief?” A. J. said. “You're looking a little informal today. The department have casual Mondays now?”

Fitzgerald laughed. “Casual Mondays, that's funny. Today's just my regular day off. But apparently the PC has something to tell us, and he insisted we all be there.”

“Any idea what it is?” A. J. asked.

“Not a fucking clue,” the chief said. “Maybe you're gonna get that big scoop you've been looking for.”

Before A. J. had a chance to respond, his cell phone started vibrating. He had a policy of not taking calls when he was working, so he let it go to voice mail.

•  •  •

Lucy looked at the phone and cursed as soon as she heard A. J.'s voice mail. She knew his rule about not taking calls when he was reporting a story, but this was different. She had promised him she wouldn't use her cell phone, but she had to get a message to him somehow.

•  •  •

“If the commissioner's taking the shuttle to DC, why didn't he just go Delta out of LaGuardia?” A. J. asked as the Cherokee came out of the tunnel and into New Jersey. The chief smiled uneasily at him.

A. J.'s phone buzzed again. Annoyed, he took it out of his pocket to see who was trying to reach him. It was a text from Lucy. “
CALL ME ASAP—U R N DANGER—BROCK'S RT HAND MAN WAS SHOOTER AT ROXX.
”

A. J. looked at the text and realized how stupid he'd been. He'd let hubris completely cloud his judgment. He was angry about everything that had happened and so intent on having it out with Brock, he'd missed all the obvious signs—Oz intercepting him in front of police headquarters, traveling in a Jeep Cherokee instead of an official car, and Fitzgerald out of uniform on supposed official business. Of course they weren't going to Newark.

Oz said it first. “
He knows.
”

“I know he does,” Fitzgerald responded calmly as he plucked the cell phone out of A. J.'s hand. “But A. J.'s not stupid. He's aware that you have a silenced automatic pointed at the small of his back and that doing something heroic would not be in his best interest. He should realize if he behaves and does what he's told, he'll be able to walk away from this without a scratch.”

The conversation reminded A. J. of the way Nikki and his kids would sometimes talk about him at the dinner table as if he weren't there. He shook his head. Now was not a good time to think about his family. He needed to focus; he needed to figure out what the hell he was going to do. He looked at the signs as they passed the exit for the Newark airport and headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike. The three of them rode in silence.

•  •  •

Bishop rarely did any serious drinking with the guys. For him, alcohol, and vodka in particular, was simply a means to an end. The end being the beginning of a great time between the sheets. Nevertheless, Bishop and Pennetta were half in the bag when Bishop's cell began buzzing. It was Lucy. With a wry, half-drunk smile, Bishop showed the phone to Pennetta so he could see it was Lucy calling. Prepared to be playful and sexy when he answered, Bishop quickly lost his buzz when he heard her voice. She was frantic, talking so fast Bishop at first had trouble understanding.

“
It's him, it's him
,” she screamed over and over.

“Lucy,” Bishop implored her. “Lucy, slow down, I can't—”

“Listen to me,” she said, controlling her breathing now—inhaling and exhaling slowly, one breath at a time—the way A. J. often told her to. “There's no time to explain. The shooter at Roxx was the guy who works for Brock, that weird, creepy guy. You know who I mean? The bald, Middle Eastern guy. And I'm guessing he's the freak from Shelter Island too.”

“How do you know? What is—”

Lucy cut him off. “The only thing that matters is A. J.! We need to find him.”

 “Okay, okay,” Bishop said. “I hear you. Listen to me, don't say anything to Nikki yet. No need to panic anyone. I'm here with Zito and we got it—”

Before Bishop could say covered, Lucy, fully composed now, was on him.

“Just please get it done,” she barked at him. “Now!” And she hung up. 

Bishop looked at Pennetta, who had overheard most of the short conversation.

“Oz,” he said. “That's the name of Brock's guy.” The lieutenant said he was a mysterious figure around police headquarters whom he'd met a couple of times when dealing with the commissioner.

Since there was little they could do, except stop drinking, they decided to wait at Pennetta's house in Wantagh, out on Long Island. They figured that was the safest place, given that no one had any idea Pennetta was involved. The house was a fairly typical split-level, the kind found in middle-class suburbs by the thousands. What was atypical was the number of women living there. Pennetta, who was in his early fifties, lived with his mother-in-law, his wife, and his four daughters—a thirty-year-old from his first marriage, a twenty-two-year-old from his second marriage, and a six- and nine-year-old from his current wife. The place was like a life-size dollhouse, with loads of pink and frills and stuffed animals everywhere. Bishop thought it was a riot.
Serves the testosterone-loaded fucker right
, he thought.
It's great how nature works to balance the universe.

The basement was Pennetta's sanctuary. All of the girls, including his wife and mother-in-law, knew not to go downstairs for any reason. It was his place. In contrast to the rest of the house, it was a man's space, with a big-screen TV for sports, dark wood paneling, and two beat-up old couches. Against one wall was a bar and on the opposite one was his wall of fame. There were photos of him as a young marine in uniform, photos of him in the Aviation Unit, and a big eleven-by-fourteen of Zito in full assault gear with his ESU team.

Several hours had passed since the call from Lucy, and there still hadn't been any word from A. J. Bishop had called Eddie and verified that he'd dropped A. J. off at One Police Plaza and left after A. J. told him not to wait. He'd also gone through the motions of calling Brock's and Fitzgerald's offices. As expected, he was told on each call, “I'm sorry, he's out of the office. Would you like to leave a message?” The hours went by. At a little after midnight, both Pennetta and Bishop were passed out on separate couches in the basement.

•  •  •

Around one thirty a.m., Chief Fitzgerald, in complete darkness save for his headlights, pulled off the main road in Morganton, North Carolina, and onto a dirt track. The dirt road continued for about a quarter mile, where it came to a stream and a small wooden bridge just wide enough on each side for the Jeep to cross. Just beyond the stream an open field stretched for several hundred yards in every direction. The road continued up a gentle rise to the base of a mountain, where, on a piece of land cut out in the forest, there was a nearly ninety-two-year-old two-story house, built right into the side of the hill so that the main floor was level with the ground and the second floor was up on the grade of the hill.

The place, the chief had mentioned a few miles back, had been in his wife's family for years. There was a big utility barn that housed a tractor, a lawn mower, a snowplow, and assorted farm equipment. There was an old chicken coop that hadn't been used in years and an old dilapidated, unused outhouse as well. The place was so off the beaten path that there was a hunting lodge about two miles west of the house, and in season, lost hunters would often knock on the door to ask for directions.

Fitzgerald found the house by memory. When he shut off the car lights, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. He'd driven the entire way, nearly twelve hours, and he was tired. The drive had been more tedious than usual because the car was so quiet. No one said a word practically the entire trip. A. J. had spent the twelve-hour ride trying to figure out what they were up to. He wasn't particularly scared; he was really more concerned than frightened. He thought if they wanted to kill him, they probably would've done it already and just dumped him somewhere in South Jersey. They obviously needed or wanted something, but he had no idea what it was.

•  •  •

Fitzgerald's head was in a completely different place.
How,
he wondered,
could this have happened?
How did almost forty years of devoted service to the NYPD come to this—first a kidnapping, and now he was on the threshold of possibly getting involved in murder? He was a good man, a devoted husband, and a responsible father. He'd overcome many obstacles in his life. Ironically, were it not for his devotion to his family, he wouldn't have been here in the dark in the middle of the night with A. J. and Oz.
Sometimes life really sucks
, he thought. When Brock had offered him the opportunity to make some money all those years ago, he wanted to say no. More than anything, he wanted to tell him to go to hell. He despised crooked cops, and he despised Brock for even thinking he could come to him with such a proposition. But he was desperate. The drugs were going to be on the street anyway, he started rationalizing; wouldn't it be better if he helped control the violence? In the end, what difference did it make if he made a few bucks on it to help his daughter? But he never really believed that. He never managed to convince himself it was okay, and his life was never the same once he started taking the money. And now, it was only about to get worse.