Love or Honor (33 page)

Thinking about becoming engaged to this girl was so unreal that it was easy to think about. Everything seemed unreal, now. The fact that he was married and had a wife somewhere seemed unreal. The only thing that seemed real was a given moment, a certain situation. So he just got through the moment, or the situation, as best he could, in any way he could. It was a way of buying time. If he could buy some time, maybe whatever the problem was would go away. Or if it didn't go away, if it came back, by then he would surely have figured out how to handle it. In the meantime, he would just say whatever had to be said to anybody to satisfy them, for the time being. That seemed the only way to handle it. Anyway, he didn't think he had much longer.

When Marty reminded him of the wedding of her school friend, he had to go. He'd promised he would. He'd forgotten about it; she'd asked him so long ago that he must have thought then that the day would never come. But it came, and Marty was a bridesmaid.

He told her he wouldn't go with her to the church. “You'll have a partner there,” he told her. “Somebody will escort you down the aisle, and I'd just be in the way.” He joined her at the reception, at Leonard's of Great Neck. She was stunningly beautiful in a pale-blue dress—more beautiful than the bride, he thought, though that girl was very pretty, too. And Chris was right: Marty did have a partner, a tall, good-looking guy who seemed to think that being in the wedding party gave him some kind of claim on her. The guy kept asking her to dance, and Marty kept saying yes. She explained to Chris that the guy was the bride's cousin, from Chicago, so of course she had to be nice to him. It seemed to Chris that she was being nicer than she really had to be, though. As he sat at the table, drinking bourbon, watching her dancing with the guy, looking at him and laughing happily, Chris realized he was jealous.

When Marty came back to the table, there was another guy right behind her. Marty sat down quickly beside Chris and leaned against him, cocking her head. “Smile,” she told him. “Say cheese.” The wedding photographer snapped the picture so quickly that Chris didn't have time to duck his head or turn away. He just sat there and had his picture taken.

He wanted to do the laundry. When he was first married, he'd found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed domestic chores. Doing the laundry, folding heaps of clean towels, was a satisfying thing to do, for some reason. So he went to Forest Hills, late one afternoon. Liz wasn't home, but there was plenty of laundry around. Some of her things were hanging on the backs of chairs; there were towels all over the floor.

He straightened up the place, stuffed the laundry into big plastic bags, and went down to the basement. He did four loads, but he didn't fold the things downstairs. He brought the bags up and spilled everything out onto the bed. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, folding towels, when Liz came home.

“A friend of mine said he saw you in a nightclub with a woman,” Liz said. Her voice wasn't accusing, just conversational.

Chris tried to keep his voice level, too.

“It's possible,” he said. “It's very possible. Because of the work I'm doing. Somebody could see me with a woman, or two women, or half a dozen women.” He paused. “Who told you?”

“I can't tell you,” Liz said.

“When did your friend see me?” Chris asked. “Was it last night?”

“Yes, last night,” Liz said.

Chris felt worse, in a way, than if someone had actually seen him with Marty. He hadn't been at a nightclub the night before. Why was Liz lying? Was she trying to trap him into some sort of confession? Did she suspect something? Of course she must suspect something. It wasn't bad enough that he was such a liar and deceiver. Now he'd turned his wife into a liar, too.

“Where did he see me?” Chris demanded. “I go to thousands of places. Where was this place?”

“He didn't tell me that,” Liz said.

Chris knew he should drop it, let it go. But he couldn't.

“Well, why is it his business to tell you what I'm doing?” he said angrily. “And why is it your business to tell him all about me?”

Liz just looked at him. “I didn't tell him all about you,” she said quietly. “I've known him for a long time, and he says he knows you, and he knows you're a policeman.”

“Well, who is this guy, anyway?” Chris demanded.

Liz laughed. “Why is that any of
your
business?” she asked.

She walked out of the room. Chris finished folding the towels and put them in the hall closet. Then he went into the den and closed the door. There was no point in trying to talk to Liz now. He thought she probably hadn't wanted him to be a policeman, anyway.

Sundays at Marty's house were becoming unbearable. Anna had always seemed fond of him, but now she smiled at him in a special way. “When you have a place of your own, I hope it will be near us,” she said, one day. “I'd like to watch my grandchildren growing up.”

Chris kept thinking of the Sunday afternoons when he was a kid, when people came to ask George for favors, paying their respects, asking George to vouch for a family member who wished to come to America. Chris remembered how, on their careful budget, his parents had served good wine in Katrina's precious cordial glasses. When he thought of his father's life of thrift and hard work, with no time to enjoy himself, then looked at John at his abundant table, he saw John as sleek and greedy and evil, and he longed to “get him good.” Then he looked to the other end of the table, and he saw Anna. He saw Marty. Then he saw John as Anna's husband, Marty's father. The thought crossed his mind that maybe John knew he was a cop, and was accepting it, because he knew his daughter loved him.

He sometimes wondered whether maybe it would work out. He would explain everything to everybody, and everybody would understand, and he and Marty would ride off into the sunset, just like in a movie. But the movies never showed what happened, after they rode off into the sunset. Of course it would never work. He would have to resign from the department. Even if he resigned, how could he explain that he was going to marry a mob guy's daughter, after working undercover for almost five years? He would be charged with breaching confidentiality; he would almost surely be prosecuted.

Apart from all that, how could he expect Marty's parents to believe him? “I'm a cop, and I've been spying on you, but I've changed my mind.” Even if he didn't explain anything to anybody, and just ran away with Marty—assuming that she'd be willing to run—where would they go? There was no place in the world that would be far enough.

Of course it wouldn't work out. He knew that, and because he knew that, he didn't want to end it. He wanted to prolong it as long as he possibly could.

He had a few more things to do, anyway. He got some more pieces of jewelry for Solly's son-in-law, who had the antiques shop on Third Avenue. He even did some mediating, having been around so long, and being so well-respected.

A guy named Irving, who had a tennis club in Howard Beach, had complained that a wiseguy had come into the tennis club and demanded money. When Irving refused, the hood had begun throwing things around, making a mess of the place. Chris could understand Irving's problem; nobody liked to see fights going on, on the sidelines, when they were trying to play tennis.

When Irving went to Frankie for help, Frankie brought Chris into it. Frankie and Chris met the wiseguy at a booth at the Lindenwood Diner. Chris knew the guy was a bad, bad apple; he'd heard that he'd killed some women. His M.O. was to shoot them, then put them in a car, drive it someplace and burn it. Chris thought the fellow a psycho. Chris had met him at J.J.'s, a joint in Queens, and he wasn't thrilled to be sitting with the guy in a close situation, in a booth at the diner. The wiseguy was quick with a gun; he had a special gun, Irving told them, with a red barrel.

So Chris let Frankie do most of the talking. He just listened as the hood told them he'd loaned money to Irv, to open the tennis club, so Irv owed him, now. Frankie told the guy that he and Chris would talk to Irving to get his side of the story. Irving told them that he had never borrowed that money, though Irv admitted he'd been involved in an airport job with the guy, taking down an armored car. He said the other guy had used the gun with the red barrel.

Chris called the Penguin.

“You wanna buy some TV sets?” Chris asked. “I got some nice new ones.”

The Penguin was ready to deal. Chris loaded a van with thirty thirteen-inch RCA color sets and drove down to Mulberry Street. The Penguin told Chris to take them to another club nearby, not the Ravenite. Chris was pleased, because he hadn't even known about the other place. In a back room, one of the Penguin's crew had the money ready, wrapped in brown butcher paper.

Chris didn't hang around then. One quick drink; he was edgy, being wired. The merchandise didn't have to be actually stolen, under the law. As long as the customers thought they were buying swag, it showed probable cause. The TV sets weren't even confiscated. When the property clerk couldn't come up with thirty new TV sets, Chris had bought them at Alexander's. He paid a discount price, but then he lowballed them for the Penguin, to make the offer too good to refuse, so in the short run, the NYPD lost money on the deal.

For the last few months of his assignment, Chris just drifted through the days and weeks, thinking, floundering, hurting. The lump in his groin was growing; Marty had noticed it, when they were in bed.

“It's nothing,” Chris assured her. “Just an old hernia.”

He was so entangled in his own problems that he scarcely noticed what was going on in the world, though he couldn't help hearing. When Carmine Galante was assassinated, he heard about it from both sides. Nobody seemed surprised at the disrespectful way the guy had been hit—eating lunch at a Brooklyn restaurant—and Chris wasn't surprised, either, considering how Galante had been booted out of the restaurant in Queens. From his side of the law, Chris heard that when detectives reached the scene, one of them stuck a cigar in Galante's mouth. “He looks better that way,” the detective said. The photos of the dead man showed him lying on his back, in his short-sleeved shirt and summer slacks, his head tilted to one side and a cigar in his mouth.

Chris heard the Pope was coming to town.

“Is there any way I can meet the Pope, Harry?” Chris asked. Intel handled diplomatic escorts, visiting dignitaries, that kind of thing. “Not to be part of it, but just to meet the man, you know?”

“Are you crazy?” Harry said. “There'll be pictures, cameras, TV, the works. Of course you can't meet the Pope!”

“Think about it, Harry,” Chris persisted. “I just want to get his blessing. I'll make it quick: in and out. I could wear a disguise.”

Harry grumbled and said he'd think about it. Chris was fairly optimistic. Maybe Harry could arrange it. They both knew this assignment was winding down. And after the night at the Kew, Harry owed him one.

Harry called back to say it wouldn't work. “I ran it by the inspector and he said he didn't see how we could do it. He said if there was a way to do it, okay, but he had his doubts.”

“Keep trying,” Chris urged. “It would be a real honor, Harry. I wouldn't make a big deal about it, I promise. In and out. Pull some strings, Harry.”

Harry called back. “Cardinal Hayes High School,” he said. The Pope would be making a stop there to use the facilities, take a short nap, maybe; have a bite with some church bigwigs. It was a small segment of the Pope's day, very private, closed to the press and almost everyone else. Very few people. Harry would be stationed at one of the entrances; Chris was to use that entrance. “I can't guarantee you'll see him,” Harry said, “But I can get you in. And no disguise, for Chrissake. Just a nice suit.”

The hot Brioni was the nicest suit Chris owned, but that didn't seem right, somehow. He found a three-piece gray suit and had his best silk tie cleaned. It occurred to him he might run into some people he knew. If the mob could penetrate the White House, why not Cardinal Hayes High School?

At the door, Harry looked at him, nodded curtly and handed him a round button to wear, to show that he was authorized. Inside, “very few people” turned out to be swarms of guys with walkie-talkies, some uniformed cops, but mostly men in dark suits—Secret Service, FBI, State Department, you name it. One of them buttonholed Chris the minute he stepped across the threshold.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Chris fingered his ID button and looked the guy straight in the eye. “I'm with catering,” he said. “Where's the dining room?”

“Upstairs,” the man said.

The upstairs hall wasn't as crowded. A few more guys with walkie-talkies, some uniformed cops stationed at points along the wall. Nobody said anything to him, so he wandered around, inspecting the dining room with interest—Harry had said they were even bringing in food tasters.

He wandered out into the hall and was just standing there by the elevator when suddenly the elevator door opened and the Pope stepped out.

Chris looked at the Pope. The Pope looked at Chris. After that frozen millisecond, Chris lunged forward, grabbed the Pope's hand, and bent his head. The Pope laid his hand on Chris's curly mop and murmured a blessing.

As the Pope moved past, with his entourage behind him, Chris straightened up. He stepped into the elevator the Pope had just come out of, and rode down.

In and out.

Marty told Chris that Anna had been preparing for days for Christmas Eve dinner. Both Anna's parents and John's parents had been raised in villages in Italy where seven fish dishes were traditionally served on Christmas Eve, in honor of the seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance, Holy Orders, Anointing of the Sick.

And Matrimony.

Chris was so immobilized by the thought that Marty was expecting an engagement ring at Christmas that he didn't buy anything for anybody. In midafternoon on Christmas Eve he ducked into a department store to buy something for Anna. He stood at the perfume counter, feeling dazed. “I want the best perfume you've got,” he told the clerk. She began naming perfumes, when a name Chris had heard somewhere stuck in his head. “Chanel Number Five,” he said. When she gave him the cellophane-wrapped box, he looked at her doubtfully. “Are you sure this is the best you've got?” he asked. The woman told him he was making an excellent choice.