Queens Noir (23 page)

"Those guys? Nah. I'm here with my friend Lily." Who is
over there with those gangsters, I'm thinking. Lily is studying
her tiles, but even across the park I can tell she's watching me
from the corners of her eyes. "I didn't know you were going to
be playing here. You're really good."

"Um, thanks ..." He's pulling the ends of the towel, rubbing it back and forth over his neck. "I uh ... I'm glad you're
here."

Before we can say anything else, he's called back into the
game. The sun feels good on my face.

And now, a couple of hours later, the sun is starting to set.
The basketball game is winding down, without him for the last
hour-Jimmy ended up leaving the game to come back to me
on the bleachers, and we just talked about everything. He told
me he thinks I'm the most mature sophomore he's ever met.
I played it cool and did not tell him how I've been practically
stalking him.

Eric yells to him that it's time to go, and as he turns to
leave he bends and quickly kisses me on the lips.

"See ya at school!" He grins at me, then heads toward
Union Street. I am too stunned to reply, so I just smile weakly
at him.

But as the two of them walk off with some of the other
ball players, one of the spiky-haired guys struts up to him and
bumps him with his shoulder, hard enough not to be an ac cident. It's my algebra classmate. Eric looks at him as if to say,
What the fuck? but once he realizes who it was that bumped
him, he just mumbles, "Excuse me."

"Why you bump into me, man?" Algebra says. His voice is
louder and shriller than I've ever heard it, but then again, he
hardly ever speaks in class.

"I'm sorry. It won't happen again." Jimmy has his hands up
the way basketball players do when they're trying not to foul
out. Behind him, Eric Martinez and the other guys who were
on the court stiffen. Smiles disappear as fists tighten. Jimmy
backs away, holding his arms out from his sides to keep them
at bay. His friends back off too. They're not stupid.

"What's your problem? Get the fuck out of my face!" Algebra is clearly drunk and enjoying the moment of power, but
he doesn't push it any further. He holds up his hand, thumb
and forefinger out, and pretends to shoot Jimmy in the head.

Back at the chess tables, Peter and his friends are chuckling amongst themselves. The mah-jongg tiles have been
packed up and the table is littered with several more of those
paper bags.

An unfamiliar emotion washes over me as I watch Jimmy
leave with his friends, who are no longer laughing and joking.
My eyes burn with tears and the words come to mind: fear,
shame, anger. There was just no reason for that, I'm thinking
to myself. And this is what Lily thinks is so cool? I look over at
her, now leaning languidly against Peter's arm. Her fingertips
are at her lips and I can tell that she's as shocked as I am, but
she's trying to hide it, to look grown-up and still perfect.

"Let's go, Lil." I don't even want to make eye contact with
anyone else. She nods and reaches for her bag, but as she slides
away from Peter, he grabs her arm and pulls her toward him in
a gesture that's meant to look gentle but isn't.

"Don't leave me, Little Sister. It's early. We're going to
a party. I want to show you off." He looks me up and down.
Without his sunglasses his eyes look dead serious and kind of
scary. "You can go home."

"No, Tina's my best friend. I can't go without her." Lily
shakes her hair as if to clear her head of cobwebs. "Where are
we going?"

"There's a party at Kuo's place, the Tulip. It'll be fun. We'll
make a karaoke video." His voice is too sweet when he speaks
to her.

A lump forms in my throat. Even I've heard of that nightclub, the Yellow Tulip. It's always in the news; it's been raided
several times for prostitution and there's a shooting there every other weekend. Of course, I can't say any of this. These are
probably the people who do the shooting.

"Isn't that a bar?" I ask innocently. "Lily and I can't go.
We're not twenty-one."

This makes everyone laugh. Except for Lily, who is staring
at me as if I should spontaneously combust.

"What? They know how old you are," I whisper to her.

"No they don't," she hisses. She pulls me aside as darkness
descends on the playground. Most of the group staggers out of
the park, but Peter lights up a cigarette. His cell phone blares
an electronic waltz and he answers it, leaning against the gate.
The streetlights cast a shadow of the chain-link fence, crosshatching Lily's face.

I whisper to her: "Lil. You can't be serious. Isn't he like
thirty? He knows your dad, so he's got to know you're only
fifteen. He's not someone you should be messing with."

"Look. If you want to go out with a nobody, that's your
problem. I think you can do better. But don't you ruin this for
me. I really like him."

"You mean, you like `Big Brother's' connections." I point
at her expensive purse. "By the way, it's pronounced Loo-ey
Vee-tawn." Her face twists, and she looks like she's going to
cry. I've pressed her button. Her dad didn't always own his
restaurant; he started out in the business as a dishwasher. "I'm
really sorry. It's just-"

"It's just that you're jealous," she states flatly. "They chased
your little boyfriend away and now you don't want me to have
any fun. Well, I'm sorry if they want me at the party and not
you. Maybe we're just too different. Maybe you're not my best
friend after all. Maybe you're nothing." She steels herself for a
fight. The defiant set of her chin makes me think of her mahjongg partners.

It's the liquor talking, I tell myself. I imagine what would
happen if she were to go with them to the Tulip. Peter Wong
and the drunk, sexy, teenaged daughter of his business associate. Algebra shooting invisible bullets with his thumb and
forefinger. I imagine her beautiful hair splayed out across a
dirty, beer-soaked stage.

With a grace worthy of a professional athlete, I reach under her arms and tickle her. At first she looks at me as if I've
gone crazy, but as she begins to giggle she realizes what I'm doing, and her laughter turns intense, and then furious. She tries
to fend me off but she's too drunk and I'm too quick, having
trained myself since childhood to know her weak spot. Laughing and sputtering uncontrollably, she can't even turn away
from Peter when a stream of vomit erupts from her mouth and
all over his Bruno Magli shoes. The look on Peter's face as he
studies his sopping shoes, before he turns and walks away, says
it all.

The party is over.

hen the over-muscled hulk in the studded leather
jeans smacks the fat guy in the polka dot sundress, the eight patrol officers gathered around
the small TV in the muster room cheer loudly. The body
builder is a prostitute, the fat guy a prominent New York politician. The video is evidence discovered in the apartment of
an extortionist.

Groans and cat calls greet the white guy's flabby thighs
and flaccid penis when the hulk tears off his dress. When the
fat guy turns to reveal a cotton-white ass the size of a watermelon, the boys nearly fall off their chairs.

I'm the only woman in the room, Officer Jill Kelly, and I
feel sorry for the fat slob in the dress. I wonder what it's like to
be a City Councilman, a Catholic, a husband, a father, a transvestite in a hotel room with a leather boy. The truth is that I
can smell his desperation. The truth is that some cop's gonna
leak the tape and the fat guy's life is gonna drop out from under him like a body through the trap door of a gallows.

"Jill? The captain wants to see you."

"Thanks, Crowley. I need to get away from this."

Bushy enough to conceal small game, Sergeant Crowley's
eyebrows rise to form lush semicircles as he jerks his chin at
the TV "I woulda predicted this was right up your alley."

Captain McMullen's office is another world altogether, a
quiet, clean world-unto-itself. Instead of peeling green paint,
the captain's walls are lined with expensive paneling. Instead
of scuffed linoleum, his floor is covered by a Berber carpet
flecked with beige and gold. His walnut desk is big enough to
land helicopter gunships.

I close the door behind me, shut out the squeals of the
fat politician, the mindless comments of my peers. Captain
McMullen is nowhere to be found, but the man seated behind
his desk is very familiar.

"Whadaya say, Uncle Mike?"

Deputy Chief Michael Xavier Kelly offers a thin smile. He
has a very narrow face with a prominent jaw that dominates
veal-thin lips, a button of a nose, and blue glittery eyes that
rarely blink. Uncle Mike is Deputy Chief of Detectives and
heads the Commissioner's Special Investigations Unit, an
attack-dog bureau far more terrifying to ranking officers than
Internal Affairs.

"Jill Kelly," Uncle Mike squawks, "in the flesh." Thirtyone years ago, as a rookie on foot patrol, Uncle Mike took a
bullet that passed from left to right through his neck. Now he
can't raise his voice above a hoarse whisper. "Take a seat, Jill.
Please."

I do as I'm told. "So, how's Aunt Rose? And Sean?"

"Fine, fine." Uncle Mike walks his fingers across the desk
and over a bulging file. "I hear the boys have taken to calling
you Crazy Jill."

"I consider it a compliment."

My admission evokes a raspy laugh, immediately followed by the most somber expression in his repertoire. "I
came here for a reason," he announces. "Tell me, do you
believe in redemption?"

Ah, right to the point. I was a naughty girl, a girl in need of
punishment, but now I can make it up. Just do Uncle Mike this
unnamed little favor-which will not turn out to be little-and
retrieve my working life. Uncle Mike will pluck me out of the
75th Precinct in the asshole of Brooklyn. He'll restore me to
the Fugitive Apprehension Squad and the SWAT team. I only
have to do this one little favor.

It was last August and blazing hot. I was in an uninsulated
attic, looking out through a window at the house across the
way. The man in the house, George Musgrove, had butchered
his ex-wife, then taken his three children hostage, naturally
threatening to kill them as well. At the time, I was part of
a SWAT team assigned to eastern Queens, a sniper, and my
orders were to acquire a target a.s.a.p., then notify the boss.
The first part wasn't a problem. When I came into the attic,
George was standing in a bedroom window, completely exposed.
He wanted out by then, but didn't have the balls to kill himself.
That's what I figured, anyway. Just another suicide-by-cop.

I had my partner call down to the CO and explain that I
was thirty yards away with a clear target, and that I couldn't
miss. But Captain Ed McMullan-known to his troops as Egg
McMuffin-turned me down flat. The hostage negotiator, he
told my partner, was confident. Musgrove would be talked out
eventually. There would be no further loss of life.

All through this back-and-forth, Musgrove stayed right
there, right in front of the window with a cordless phone
pressed to his ear. And I started thinking, Yeah, most likely
he'll give it up without hurting the kids. Maybe even nine out
of ten times he'll surrender. But when you consider what happens if he ends up in the wrong ten percent, a hundred percent is a lot better than ninety. I was in a position to guarantee those kids would survive and I exercised my options.

If Uncle Mike hadn't intervened, I would have been
charged with disobeying a direct order, and might have faced
criminal charges. But that was Uncle Mike's way. Clan Kelly
first became prominent in the NYPD a hundred years ago,
when Teddy Roosevelt was Acting Commissioner. Clan Kelly
is still prominent today. This was especially relevant to Uncle
Mike, who fully expected to become the next Chief of Detectives. Obviously, the Kelly name could not be besmirched. We
were a self-policing family and a Kelly could be punished only
by another Kelly. Thus, at Uncle Mike's behest, my gold shield
was taken away and I was exiled to the Seven-Five, there to
languish until he needed a favor.